SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Gruesome but fabulous description of life with a WS who just cannot/will not do the growth needed. I am sorry you aren't feeling any better by now. Wow. Maybe a stint with Doctors without Borders somewhere in South America for a while? Just kidding. There HAS to be a solution to this situation but you're so down right now it's all too much work to think about it, right?

I actually thought about doing a sabbatical with MSF (Medicine Sans Frontiers, aka Docs without borders). But the pay is literally shit and I have teenagers who need cars and college, and I’m getting too old for an Only Fans. Lol

If I was single, I’d be down in a heartbeat for MSF.

Not sure where life is leading me. I’m usually the one in favor of driving instead of going where the wind takes me, as evidenced by a pointed drive in my career life.

So this brings up another thought I have. A lot of medical practice is holding onto patients until you have a clear diagnosis, and going zebra hunting. I feel like I have a good clinical sense of stuff.

I have a gut feeling something bad is happening medically to him. Like that I need to wait it out. I don’t know if this is some sick hopeful thinking or if it’s real. Or maybe it Is a weird guilt thing? I don’t know. But my spidey sense says not to leave yet, stay put.

And I don’t know why. It’s certainly not because he’s turned into a wonderfully supportive loving guy. Maybe it’s the kids? Maybe it’s me trying to justify inaction? Maybe it’s fear? I don’t know.

But I just have a feeling that things will look dramatically different in five years. And that I need to stay put.

I mean, this is the same spidey sense that knew to open up his email and caught him cheating in the first place. So there is that?

It could be some weird insecurity? I just can’t describe the feeling.

Sounds like "the power of the Narrative" that you want to have about your life is pointing the way towards surviving your dysfunctional spouse until he is no longer in your life through natural causes? Then you would never have to go through with an ugly legal process and all the explaining to children about their parents' broken marriage. Widowhood is socially supported universally and can start to look like a preferable outcome when there is no fixing the marriage and we are growing old. Some variation on the sunk cost theory?

Nobody can predict who will go first, as you well know. It would really suck if the stress of hanging in there destroyed your health and took you out before he declined to whatever his fate may be. And nobody can predict with real accuracy what those odds might be.

What I really want is for my WS to turn into a sensitive guy. And that won’t happen.
So I’m mourning the death of my hope. And maybe I’ll amputate the dead limb one day before sepsis sets in my soul?

This entire post just made me laugh continuously. I truly appreciate the gallows humor.

I feel so much of what you're putting out there. I can both relate to your pain and also see parts of what you're feeling and wonder if my wife feels that way about me.

The common theme seems to be that you "don't know what you want", while you clearly know exactly what you don't want.

I think it makes so much sense to be taking care of yourself.

Marriage is weird though. I mean, I'm 52, and I also worry so much about retirement (I'll probably be working into my 70's). I also worry about my health. Although I've lost over 60 lbs through diet and exercise (I'm so proud of that), I'm old! Everything is just getting worse all the time.

I just started taking a testosterone pill yesterday, and it's like, oh great I can now look forward to greater bone density, more energy, and sexual health improvement. But what's the trade off? Prostate cancer? Hair Loss? Frequent urination? Talk about Sophie's Choice. My wife and I haven't had sex in months, so is pissing myself and being bald with cancer even worth it? I guess we'll find out, roll the dice!

Again, marriage is so weird. Like I know my wife doesn't want to be married to someone that is getting old and taking on all the weight of that reality. I know she doesn't want to someday become a live in nurse. Who would?! But that's what we both signed up for. She's literally getting a mammogram this week for the first time in her life, if that thing comes back all wrong, I'm on call. It's my job to help her (unless we get divorced, and then maybe still, I don't know).

Although we seem to have a lot of similarities in our situations, I think the major difference is that I KNOW exactly what I want, and my wife (and you) don't seem to know. It feels like there's a little bit of a flip in perspectives here.

So I don't know if this will help. But I'd much rather my wife divorced me than stayed in a marriage with me for financial or other reasons (the kids, etc). I would be devastated, but jesus christ I don't want to be in a loveless marriage where I don't have emotional connection, can't get sex (or if I ever do it's horrible), and this is the most important thing, I don't want to be in a marriage where I make my wife miserable. That seems to be where I am now, and I'm just going to pull the plug on that at or near the end of the year if it hasn't improved. I'll pay the toll for that very difficult and unsatisfying decision if it means (and it will mean this) that I will now get hope (no strings attached) of finding happiness in the future.

I really don't want this to be the outcome, but I'm grieving the death of my marriage every day and it just sucks the joy out of life. I need to know that I can one day be happy, and my wife (whatever she does) is no longer able to use me as a foil for her unhappiness.

A few more thoughts:

1. John and Julie Gottman say that their research suggests that 69% of all marriage issues are not fixable. Meaning you're going to have to find compromise, you're not going to fix them. What this means to me is that I am who I am. My wife can't fix me.

She keeps telling me I don't "see and hear her" and I'm like "I see you and I literally hear you all the time." I know what she means is that I don't know her the way she wants to be known, but that's her problem. I'm trying the best I can, and that's my problem, it's apparently not good enough.

I wish to God it was good enough, but I'm doing all I can. So like, either accept that's who I am (and who you married, because it is!) and love me for it, or don't. That's her choice, but I can't change that. I'm still the same guy she asked to marry her almost 23 years ago. There's no good reason to resent me for being the same person. I like myself, and I thought she liked me too.

2. I've had a lot of doctors over the years, and my absolute favorite rockstar of a doctor just sent out a letter stating that he's "unexpectedly retiring" which I took to mean that something awful happened in his life or with his health. He's done in a few weeks.

I've really been shaken by this as I've been spoiled for the last 20 years, and I was hoping he would be around for at least 10 more.

The reason I bring this up is that he seems like a wonderful person, and he and I would talk a lot about weight loss, and he motivated me to exercise and change my diet. Each time I went in for an annual check-up I would try to do better than the previous time I'd seen him. I'm down under 220, and I've been working hard to be around 210-215 by the time of my next appointment with him in the summer. But he won't be there. It makes me very sad. But what I think it also does is it's a reminder that we're not guaranteed another 5 or 10 years doing anything. So, we really owe it to ourselves to learn and grow from our mistakes and try to make the best of each situation (Sophie's Choices be damned).

3. My WW is wicked smart (outside of her poor life choices - ha!) and she should've been a doctor. Long story short, I think I should've been a stay at home dad, and she should've been pulling down the long hours at work, empathizing with her patients, and generally being the awesome person she is. But that didn't happen. She instead stayed home and schooled 4 kids, as I paid the bills and worked on my career. It was a choice (a compromise really) that we both made and now that the kids are mostly grown, she's looking at her life in disgust and rewriting history.

In a lot of ways, I see your marriage as kind of a mirror image of ours (in some ways). Yet we both seem to be reaching the same place. Where I think we might be the most similar is that two people that were probably very opposite to one another, were at some point very attracted to each other, had kids, lived a challenging life, but never learned to effectively communicate or compromise on deeply important issues. Once the career climb and the child rearing were at a climax, both people looked around and said "what's next" and perhaps one person said "I'm good with where we are" and the other person said "I want a lot more out of life".

Sorry if I'm reading too much into your marriage. But I definitely feel like this is what happened in mine. I'm the same guy my wife asked to marry her. But her goals and her expectations have changed over time, and maybe mine have too, but whatever the case, we're not aligned anymore. I'm more than willing to realign with her, but she resents me for not being in alignment, and like so sorry I didn't realize that when you were people pleasing me for 20 plus years you were also becoming a ticking time bomb that would explode in a resentment fueled mushroom cloud. (speaking to my WW here)

Anyway, really hope you find a clear path. I think doing what works best for you is the key (just don't hurt other people in the process. You took an oath remember? ;) ).

Now then, I have to return to my regularly scheduled program, "Waiting for my WW wife to come home and make me feel more alone than I already do."

[This message edited by 4characters at 6:16 PM, Friday, May 9th]

Ugh yes, your posts speak to me.

I was an absolute people pleaser and tried my hardest to make everyone happy. Because it made me happy.

Then I found out he had three random hookups from toothless strangers on Craigslist, one of them age 20 when he was 43. While I was pregnant with my now 14 year old.

He blamed it on me briefly. (I believe the exact words were, "I just needed some affection". I laughed and asked how that worked out for him. He said not well.) Then I found my anger and I realized I deserved better. It’s not even about what I want, as you said. It’s about what I don’t want.

I made the stupid mistake of letting him talk me into cancelling out post nupt, because he needed to feel valued.

And here I am, feeling decidedly not valued.

I will do the right thing, and yes, gallows humor gets me through all of this. My therapist says it’s a mature coping skill, so I’m sticking to it.

I literally ask for very little. I just want a toilet seat without piss on it (I am willing to lift it up after I’m done, I’m easy), sheets on the bed when I haven’t slept in two days (they don’t even need to be clean), and not stirring up shit with the 16 year old, (who hates him at this moment in time, because 16).

Yeah, this whole thing sucks. I’m going to beg to differ, though. Your WS wants 100 problems. I only want 99. Fuck people, I ain’t looking for love. She sounds like she is. Good luck, honey. Let me know how that works out for her.

I’d kill for my husband to just have some ED. Jfc at my age, there’s fucking cobwebs up inside of me. So yeah. Not a priority.

I was hoping to have some good meals with him, while we enjoy watching each other’s bodies fall apart. But it’s not a safe place to fall apart around him anymore. So I’m dotting my Is and crossing my Ts, waiting for him to decompensate when the wind blows a bad way for his moods. Or when things get hard as he gets sicker and older and needs to fuck a 20 yr old instead of buying a corvette like a normal old dude.

I would have gladly bought him a Lamborghini and given him head in the front seat if he had just kept it zipped. But here we are.

Mine bought two sports cars AND had two affairs. He went the extra mile on the midlife crisis.

Sometimes life deals us a bad hand. I had a happy and satisfying life for a long time. And weirdly, while my personal life was in meltdown crisis (health problems, ddays), my professional life was doing well.

3yrsout, it sounds to me like you're not ready to walk away, and I think that's okay. My therapist has been telling me (for 3 years now) that when I'm ready to make a decision, then I'll make the decision. And that's pretty much what has happened. It's emotionally hard to live in limbo, but it's not necessarily easier to give up on a life that you've spent many years building.