Starting to realize that I have lost and never had a chance.

[sadsilvermoon]

I have suffered so much. I have been fighting and I have been feeling desperate. Now I slowly begin to realize that I have lost, and that any other outcome had basically been impossible from the beginning. I should feel horribly sad. But somehow, I don't feel sad. I feel... mostly confused.

 

As far as I can tell, I really love my wife, and I know she genuinely loves me. That's why I have been fighting for our relationship for a long time. But we have been destroying each other. I think the relationship was destroying my wife, and I can definitely say that it has been destroying me. I am not myself anymore. Maybe I can recover, I don't really care. I only care about my wife. I hope she will be fine without me. I really want to keep taking care of her, but I just can't do it any longer without collapsing completely. I hope somebody else can take care of her. I always thought that, if a person gets divorced from a person that they still love, it would hurt them infinitely to know that their former partner has a new lover. I would not feel hurt if my wife found a new husband. It's actually what I want most in this world: to know that someone else takes care of her, and that she is fine.

 

At this point, you will probably wonder why I insist that she needs someone to take care of her. Why can she not take care of herself? I believe I know her very well (too well), and I know she is this kind of person. Two years ago, this was certainly true. Now she is a lot stronger. Maybe she can take care of herself and does not need anybody. I still feel guilty because I have promised that I would take care of her forever, and now it turns out that I can't.

 

What we want from life is just too different. I have been trying to persuade myself that I want what she wants. Just so that I could be with her. I always knew it wouldn't work. I always ignored that knowledge. In our day-to-day life, I have been doing everything for her. She only had to say one word about some item she had lost somewhere in the house and I would spend an hour or two to find it for her. Or, that she needed to reply to an email and she hated writing emails, and I would do it for her. Or that she would want to apply for a job, and I would immediately stop doing my own stuff and start writing her application. (Remark: she is very qualified; in fact, both of us are PhDs. But while I have work that I'm satisfied with, she has during the last years been unemployed or done jobs that she disliked). I believe I have always treated her well. I was always nice to her.

 

Unfortunately, she has never been happy with what she had. Well, sometimes she was happy with what I did for her. But only for a moment. In the next moment, she would start complaining about her (or our) lives again. How bad everything is, that we don't have anything and cannot afford anything(objectively certainly not true), that everybody treats us badly. Everybody who is not us. I never agreed; I always tried to explain other people's views to her. Then of course she was sad because I was on other people's side, not on hers. For example, our wedding photographer did an amazing job for a very good price, and she still accused him of scamming us. She wanted me to complain and maybe get our money back. I wouldn't have known what to say, I just couldn't see anything negative that I could have complained about (I found her points totally ridiculous, but couldn't tell her since I didn't want to upset her and "be always on other people's side"). So, I just kept quiet about it and hoped (successfully) that she wouldn't bring it up again.

 

She has verbally (and in some rare situations physically) abused me. I have never done anything like that to her, but I have accepted that she did. I always tried to tell myself that she didn't mean it the way she phrased it. That didn't really work though, since I knew that she said this stuff because she was genuinely disappointed of me, so I tried to tell myself that it was in fact my fault. That was also hard, since the reasons why she was so disappointed of me were, from my point of view, incredibly silly: for example, when I gave change to a beggar, she would tell me that I can't even cover for her living standard, but I still would want to give money to a beggar. Of course I learnt very quickly to not give change or tips to anybody, and she complimented me for "growing up" and "realizing that we have to think of ourselves first". Well, no, I did neither; I just didn't want to make her upset.

 

Whenever I was stressed and unhappy, I still wanted her to be as happy as possible and tried everything to make that happen. When she was unhappy (which was most of the time), she couldn't stand it if I was happy and became angry, ranting about how unfair and unbalanced our relationship was. Thus, I would pretend that I was unhappy as well, just to make her feel better.

 

Of course I know that I have been incredibly stupid all the time, and I should have left a long time ago instead of sacrificing myself. Interestingly, she thinks I have just been wasting her time. Maybe it's true, but it hurts anyway. I always knew that this relationship made no sense, but I couldn't break up out of guilt: I always felt it was my responsibility to take care of her. Secretly, I always hoped that someone else would come to take care of her and thereby free me.

 

Thank you for reading.

[Marc878]

Sounds like you are codependent. You should see an IC

[MidnightBlue1980]

Sounds like you are codependent. You should see an IC

 

I actually agree with Marc. That might be a first.

 

How long have you been married, SadSilver? You mention wedding photographer so I am guessing not too long. Your wife is obviously intelligent since she has a PHD but here is a secret about marriage and life in general. Many people (always exceptions) are as lazy as you let them be. I will call my husband at work because I cannot find my shoes or keys. I can be quite lazy and dependent on him. However there are things he depends on me to do and would never get done without me. Bills, kids anything, laundry. It can take a long time to sort this all out and deal with resentment.

 

Have you talked about all this with your wife?

[Mr. Lucky]

As far as I can tell, I really love my wife, and I know she genuinely loves me. That's why I have been fighting for our relationship for a long time. But we have been destroying each other. I think the relationship was destroying my wife, and I can definitely say that it has been destroying me. I am not myself anymore. Maybe I can recover, I don't really care. I only care about my wife. I hope she will be fine without me. I really want to keep taking care of her, but I just can't do it any longer without collapsing completely. I hope somebody else can take care of her.

 

You're doing a lot of beating around the bush for an anonymous online forum where you'd be better served describing your situation and the problems more directly. There's certainly unhappiness in your marriage, but "destroying each other"?

 

This emphasis on drama might be central to your issues with your wife...

 

Mr. Lucky

[sadsilvermoon]

Sounds like you are codependent. You should see an IC

 

Marc, thanks for the advice. I will inform myself about this. It could very well be. I know that I have some issues. I am somehow addicted to helping friends or strangers, donating, solving problems for others... I don't know, maybe it's a way for me to escape my own problems? But I don't really think I have many problems apart from those that come from my relationship (I actually consider myself very lucky in general). Anyway, that's certainly related to why I got together with my wife. When we met, she had a serious depression and clearly needed help - and from my point of view, she needed my help... (of course there were also other reasons why I fell in love with her).

What's an IC?

 

I actually agree with Marc. That might be a first.

 

How long have you been married, SadSilver? You mention wedding photographer so I am guessing not too long.

 

Married one year ago. We had already been in a relationship for three years at that time. And already at that time I had had a very strong feeling that the marriage would be a mistake. I essentially married her because she was suffering from serious insecurity problems, and I hoped marriage could give her some security. Incredibly stupid, I know.

 

Many people (always exceptions) are as lazy as you let them be. I will call my husband at work because I cannot find my shoes or keys. I can be quite lazy and dependent on him. However there are things he depends on me to do and would never get done without me. Bills, kids anything, laundry. It can take a long time to sort this all out and deal with resentment.

 

That sounds healthy and balanced. I'm afraid I never depended on my wife; I feel responsible for everything. Fortunately, we could easily agree that we wouldn't get kids, although we had different reasons: I felt that I already had to solve all the difficulties of two individuals, I simply didn't feel like I would have the energy to do more. My wife thought we simply wouldn't be able to afford it. Objectively, her argument was of course silly. Even with her being unemployed, we would have been able to raise a child; but she has some super-rich friends who spend thousands [uSD/Euro/GBP] every month or even week on their child, and my wife always compares herself with them. Even if we had that kind of money, I wouldn't want to spoil a child like that and I doubt it would be good for the child in any way, so we would never have been able to agree on how to raise a child. Anyway, I was just glad that we could agree on not having children, no matter how stupid the reasons were. (If the marriage was more balanced and happier, I believe I really would want to have kids.)

 

Have you talked about all this with your wife?

 

Yes... we do try to understand each other, but she says she doesn't understand why I feel the way I do, and I can't explain it. At the same time, I don't understand why she feels so insecure about not being as rich as her friends. She also tried to explain it to me, and it made no sense to me.

[AussieDad]

Hi Sadsilvermoon,

 

You have described a lot of similar symptoms that I found I had too, years ago in relation to helping people.

 

 

Do some research on the "White Knight Syndrome", it may open your eyes to truths.

 

https://psychologenie.com/white-knight-syndrome-explained

 

I have managed to work thru it myself.

 

 

Good luck.

[BaileyB]

I totally agree with the other posters... You are very codependent and you definitely have "white knight syndrome..."

 

You make a lot of assumptions about what your wife feels and what she needs... The truth is, she is a woman who has her own thoughts and feelings and she is likely very capable of taking care of her herself, despite what you may think... .

 

It's time to get yourself to an individual counsellor. One of the first things to learn, you are responsible for you and she is responsible for taking care of herself. I do believe that you have the best of intentions, but for you to stay in an unhealthy and abusive relationship with a woman because you think she needs you to take care of her is presumptuous, and arrogant, and not smart.

 

Good luck to you!

Edited August 16, 2018 by BaileyB

[Ralph79]

Hellp sadsilvermoon,

 

I'll give you a breakdown of what I understood from your original text: [Apologies if I'm inaccurate, but sometimes we say much more than we think we do]

 

As far as I can tell, I really love my wife, and I know she genuinely loves me. That's why I have been fighting for our relationship for a long time.

To express feeling love in terms of possibilities and guesswork, ("As far as I can tell"), tells me a lot. It tells me that you were more obsessed with feeling useful and doing everything in your power to sustain a toxic relationship for the sake of your ego and self esteem.

 

But we have been destroying each other. I think the relationship was destroying my wife,

Wrong again. The relationship wasn't destroying your wife. You found a purpose in life, catering to your wife, but in the process you handicapped her to the point where YOU magnified her problems and were the reason this persisted. I'm not saying you caused it, but it was definitely up to you to end it before it got out of hand.

 

and I can definitely say that it has been destroying me. I am not myself anymore. Maybe I can recover, I don't really care.

To willingly live your life at the behest of another, even if that were to be the love of your life, is an exercise in futility. Yes you can recover. Stop living for other people. Start caring for yourself. The reason SOME people spend their lives trying to FIX the world and helping others while ignoring their own needs, is because the haven't figured out that the problems they seek to fix lie within. It may seem honorable to sacrifice everything for others, but when you have nothing to sacrifice because you are empty inside, it's a cowardly act. Rather than resolve their own problems, there are those who prefer to hide in the problems of others.

 

I only care about my wife. I hope she will be fine without me. I really want to keep taking care of her, but I just can't do it any longer without collapsing completely. I hope somebody else can take care of her. I always thought that, if a person gets divorced from a person that they still love, it would hurt them infinitely to know that their former partner has a new lover. I would not feel hurt if my wife found a new husband. It's actually what I want most in this world: to know that someone else takes care of her, and that she is fine.

Your wife will most likely struggle without your help to start with. But for her sake, I hope she doesn't find anyone soon. I hope she learns to be an independent person. She will HAVE to get up and do stuff herself. If you truly loved her as you say, you would have helped her face life, instead of keeping her in a bubble. And STILL you would hope someone else keeps her in a bubble in your stead? You can't keep doing this to her. You are only doing more harm to this woman by being in her life in my opinion based on what you have typed.

 

At this point, you will probably wonder why I insist that she needs someone to take care of her. Why can she not take care of herself? I believe I know her very well (too well), and I know she is this kind of person. Two years ago, this was certainly true. Now she is a lot stronger. Maybe she can take care of herself and does not need anybody. I still feel guilty because I have promised that I would take care of her forever, and now it turns out that I can't.

 

What we want from life is just too different. I have been trying to persuade myself that I want what she wants. Just so that I could be with her. I always knew it wouldn't work. I always ignored that knowledge. In our day-to-day life, I have been doing everything for her. She only had to say one word about some item she had lost somewhere in the house and I would spend an hour or two to find it for her. Or, that she needed to reply to an email and she hated writing emails, and I would do it for her. Or that she would want to apply for a job, and I would immediately stop doing my own stuff and start writing her application. (Remark: she is very qualified; in fact, both of us are PhDs. But while I have work that I'm satisfied with, she has during the last years been unemployed or done jobs that she disliked). I believe I have always treated her well. I was always nice to her.

What was the quality of her life before she met you. What is the quality of her life now? Is she actually a better & more qualified person because of your presence in her life? Or has she taken a step back? Have you 2 grown as individuals ? Ask yourself these questions.

 

Unfortunately, she has never been happy with what she had. Well, sometimes she was happy with what I did for her. But only for a moment. In the next moment, she would start complaining about her (or our) lives again. How bad everything is, that we don't have anything and cannot afford anything(objectively certainly not true), that everybody treats us badly. Everybody who is not us. I never agreed; I always tried to explain other people's views to her. Then of course she was sad because I was on other people's side, not on hers. For example, our wedding photographer did an amazing job for a very good price, and she still accused him of scamming us. She wanted me to complain and maybe get our money back. I wouldn't have known what to say, I just couldn't see anything negative that I could have complained about (I found her points totally ridiculous, but couldn't tell her since I didn't want to upset her and "be always on other people's side"). So, I just kept quiet about it and hoped (successfully) that she wouldn't bring it up again.

Of course she wasn't happy with what she had. Yes, she will thank you for the small favors you would do for her, but that doesn't make up for everything else that's gone wrong. You always QUIETLY took her side. Don't you think she saw you didn't have any backbone to speak of? No wonder you can't take it anymore. You never stood up for yourself. And that made her even more demanding towards you. Rather than trying to please her by always being accommodating, you made things worse.

 

She has verbally (and in some rare situations physically) abused me. I have never done anything like that to her, but I have accepted that she did. I always tried to tell myself that she didn't mean it the way she phrased it. That didn't really work though, since I knew that she said this stuff because she was genuinely disappointed of me, so I tried to tell myself that it was in fact my fault. That was also hard, since the reasons why she was so disappointed of me were, from my point of view, incredibly silly: for example, when I gave change to a beggar, she would tell me that I can't even cover for her living standard, but I still would want to give money to a beggar. Of course I learnt very quickly to not give change or tips to anybody, and she complimented me for "growing up" and "realizing that we have to think of ourselves first". Well, no, I did neither; I just didn't want to make her upset.

 

Whenever I was stressed and unhappy, I still wanted her to be as happy as possible and tried everything to make that happen. When she was unhappy (which was most of the time), she couldn't stand it if I was happy and became angry, ranting about how unfair and unbalanced our relationship was. Thus, I would pretend that I was unhappy as well, just to make her feel better.

You allowed her to be verbally abusive. Unfortunately, it's hard to explain but you created that "monster". You were content doing her every will. As if you were her slave. NOBODY wants to be married to their slave. We all want our partners to have a will of their own. Yes a lot of people can be very confrontational, but as long as it's done respectfully, it's actually healthy and sometimes I would dare say even necessary. You never did anything to earn her true respect as her partner.

 

Of course I know that I have been incredibly stupid all the time, and I should have left a long time ago instead of sacrificing myself. Interestingly, she thinks I have just been wasting her time. Maybe it's true, but it hurts anyway. I always knew that this relationship made no sense, but I couldn't break up out of guilt: I always felt it was my responsibility to take care of her. Secretly, I always hoped that someone else would come to take care of her and thereby free me.

 

Thank you for reading.

No, you weren't stupid, because you knew what was going to happen. You were weak. You couldn't even build up the courage to get out of this #%#hole of a relationship. You hoped someone would come in and do it for you. You CANNOT continue being this weak. If you do, ALL partners for the rest of your life will treat you the same way.

 

I'm sorry if my words are harsh. I know you come looking for solace to these forums, and these are merely my opinions on your situation. I'm sorry you are going through this, but pity will not get you ANYWHERE. You need help, and IF you already haven't , you need to hit rock bottom until you have had enough and decide to stop being the worlds door mat for your sake.

 

Relationship wise I was able to overcome this, but I am still trying to get more assertive in other aspects of my life. It's hard, I get how you are feeling, but you will get nowhere beating around the bush or always being Mr. Nice Guy.

[sadsilvermoon]

Thanks to all of you for your advice. I have learned a lot from your posts. Sorry that I haven't said "thanks" earlier. Indeed, "codependency" and "white knight syndrome" were things that I wasn't aware of and of course, their descriptions match my case pretty well... currently, my wife and I are in different countries without contact.

Some individual answers, sorry again that it has taken me four weeks:

 

[...] There's certainly unhappiness in your marriage, but "destroying each other"?

This emphasis on drama might be central to your issues with your wife...

I don't normally describe things so dramatically, I was just in a strange mood, sorry. I don't think it's central to my issues. By "destroying", I meant that I had changed a lot and got used to doing things that were/are out of character for me, which has also not been so good for my mental health, and so on.

 

Do some research on the "White Knight Syndrome", it may open your eyes to truths.

Thank you AussieDad! This has been very helpful.

 

I do believe that you have the best of intentions, but for you to stay in an unhealthy and abusive relationship with a woman because you think she needs you to take care of her is presumptuous, and arrogant, and not smart.

One of the reasons why I felt I couldn't leave her was my fear that she would do something to herself. (I don't want to get into details, but I think this fear was justified. Obviously, I tried to get professional help for her but this turned out to be very difficult because she actively sabotaged all my attempts, but in the end, she at least accepted some medication.) Anyway, that was already quite some years ago and, as I said in my first post, she is more stable now. Even with what I know now, I don't see an easy solution. Luckily, the current situation is much easier because she does not suffer from depression anymore.

 

To express feeling love in terms of possibilities and guesswork, ("As far as I can tell"), tells me a lot. It tells me that you were more obsessed with feeling useful and doing everything in your power to sustain a toxic relationship for the sake of your ego and self esteem.

To be honest, I felt humiliated many times, and I always thought a proud person would just walk away without looking back. I wrote "as far as I can tell" because I know I loved her, but I don't know what my current feelings are because it feels like they are covered under a lot of problems.

 

Wrong again. The relationship wasn't destroying your wife. You found a purpose in life, catering to your wife, but in the process you handicapped her to the point where YOU magnified her problems and were the reason this persisted. I'm not saying you caused it, but it was definitely up to you to end it before it got out of hand.

I certainly waited too long.

 

you weren't stupid, because you knew what was going to happen. You were weak.

Agreed.

 

I'm sorry if my words are harsh.

No need to apologize!

[preraph]

I don't know you guys, but a couple of things stand out that I'll just mention, and they're linked.

 

One is you became her parent. That never works. Basically, you're doing her homework for her when she needs to learn to do it for herself.

 

Two is she may run right out and snag another man, but most will not coddle her as you have done, but what would help her most is if she had to learn to live on her own doing everything for herself and grow up.

 

Becoming her parents is usually a sex killer, but it's always going to cause resentment and tension. You're doing everything, so you have certain expectations.

 

She's a PhD, for chrissake! She is perfectly capable of learning to take care of herself. I am sorry for you in the extreme that her parents did not raise her to be an adult, but thank the lord they got her a good education at least.

 

Let her grow up and hope she doesn't go through man after man trying to find one who will let her be this helpless before she finally just has to learn to survive on her own. She has a PhD, so she should be making enough money to hire whatever else she needs done, but she can't keep a job, and of course, that is for the same reason: Her parents didn't teach her that she can't just do whatever she wants and everyone else will pick up the pieces.

 

You act far more like a nervous father sending your daughter off to move overseas than a husband. But it's time this woman learned to make it on her own and keep a job whether she likes it that much or they coddle her or not. I promise you, it's the best thing for her. She will have better self-esteem and everything once she stands on her own merits.

 

You move on with your life and find an equal mate, not someone else to parent. Good luck.

[sadsilvermoon]

Thanks preraph.

 

One is you became her parent. That never works. Basically, you're doing her homework for her when she needs to learn to do it for herself.

Yes, I think you're right...

 

You act far more like a nervous father sending your daughter off to move overseas than a husband.

Well phrased, that's exactly how I feel

 

Thanks. You're right with everything of course.