I have a friend who went through exactly what you are experiencing......she was in a career military family & did all the entertaining things & they had 3 boys that she put her life into.

The only thing is that she held onto that helpless attitude I think because she wanted to draw her boys into staying close & taking care of the things that she couldn't.

Also, she had lived on a good income & after the divorce, ended up with nothing like the life style she was used to living & in that, she is very irresponsible with her spending & doesn't even know how to keep a budget.

There are definitely things that we need to be capable of doing in caring for ourselves & honestly for me, being independent now (even though I was very much so during my marriage) has made me feel even better in many ways because for me, I couldn't depend on my H to take care of anything & he wasn't a partner from the beginning so I wasted the 33 years I spent married to him & now he's being a jerk about getting the divorce even though I left him 7 years ago.