Yo Tommy I don't think you hate women, I just think you don't understand women.
You were brought up in a time when a man's only role was to provide for his family.
I bet that is how you were raised and that is how you acted in your marriage. I don't think you intentionally tried to hurt your W but my guess is she just wanted to heard and understood.
None of us were perfect spouses or we wouldn't be here unless we married sociopaths.
We are all here to learn and grow because we don't ever want to go through this again.
Onward and upward Tommy!
Well, LH. I don't know whether you had a change of heart of just wanted to be conciliatory for the sake of things. It doesn't really matter anyway!
Read back a bit and you'll see that I posted my 180s. That's where my head is at.
As for my sich, here it is in a nutshell. I couldn't have written this back in August when I joined DB, by the way.
Met XW in my mid 20s and were married two years later. She was attracted to me because I gave off power and confidence; I had an excellent tech education and was already in leadership roles. While my gift was that, hers was relationship. Everyone, everyone loved XW. Said she was a doll, the sweetest woman on the planet. I was fortunate to have snared her. We were very dissimilar but we complimented each other. She wanted to be a SAHM, raising children in a house with a white picket fence; I didn't need that per se but I was so smitten with her charm, her beauty, her ease with people. I was OK with it if the woman I loved wanted to be a mom full-time.
As for me? I might be technical, and excessively logical (and blunt!), but I am also a sweet tender man. [Yes, I'll convince you LH another time!] Old fashioned, too, but that mostly relates to culture, Americana, and -- yes -- vive la difference, as the French would say.
But the seeds of the failure of the marriage were probably already there. I am Mediterranean background -- romantic and sensual -- she is Scottish background, more reserved. I had thought that marriage would make her more comfortable at the romantic and sensual side, but it did the opposite. We had symptoms of a SSM within the first six months; I was too much a nice guy to make too big a deal about it -- who wants to go to counseling 6 months into a marriage when she's the sweetest girl ever? I just toughened myself up and moved on.
Time went on, years went by, and neither of us attended to essential needs. She wanted acts of service. I wanted acts of romantic, sensual love. Our marriage was very functional during many of those years. But we got by, as many many couples do, we had many good years. LH, you caught that comment about her feeling like she was part of the furniture. That's on her. Sometimes I would be dismissive of a comment she made, too much in fact, and rather than talking it through she would sulk, and hurt privately. My Italian background is such that you challenge me, don't let me get away with it, and I apologize! But she acted like she was afraid. But feeling like she is part of the furniture is on her. She had me all those years and never really figured me out!
She was pushed over the edge by some very unique stresses in my personal life that resulted in lawsuits in 2016. I beat them, after three years, yet suffered from some mild depression over those years. I retreated into my man cave a lot during that time. I did not take it out on her, ever! There were some financial stresses although we still have a net worth that would be the envy of many others. Still, the money issue terrified her.
The week before the lawsuits were dismissed she walked out. She said the stress was too great. She never said she didn't love me, but that was very evident as a few months passed. I know her ever so well; she was traumatized by the divorce filing, to be sure, but after 90 days she would have convinced herself that "I can live without him" and "I don't need him."
What could I have done better? Attend to her love languages for one, which is acts of service. Surprise her with dinner. Do the laundry early on Saturday morning before she woke up. Make the bed before she gets out of the shower. Such small acts, yet to her they would be so huge.
Isn't it funny that a couple can spend years, even decades, not attending to each other's needs yet still moving along in the marriage? That's what Michelle's DB book acknowledges, that even smart sensitive people can be so clueless, so stuck in their ways, for so long.
I suppose the only difference, in essence, is that I was in the marriage for life, she wasn't. She had to leave. I also happen to believe that our marriage was salvageable, now that I have read DB and spend four months on the forum here. But it takes two to tango and she did not want to tango with me anymore.
