Ok so here goes. My marriage has/had been on very rocky ground since 2013. To be honest from my perspective it had been long before then but that year is very important to the overall story. I am currently still married but we are separated as of mid December of 2016. I am the one who wants the divorce.
The problem is that since I have moved out the overwhelming guilt I feel is starting to drive me in a dangerous direction. Be careful what you wish for, for you may surely get it as they say. We have been married for 18 years and together for over 20. The divorce papers won’t be filed until after our 19th anniversary.
I have been unhappy for more years than I can count. Let me also start by saying I take full responsibility for all actions and inactions on my part during our time together. We are the proverbial couple that if it weren’t for bad luck we would have no luck at all. If there is something bad that can happen, it happened to use basically starting about three months into our marriage.
Three months in my wife started to develop pain in the neck and shoulder that was debilitating, as it turns out she had a massive herniation at C5-6 in her neck that was pinching her spinal cord to the point that as her doctor put it one false move and she could become a quad. At the same time she was having to take care of her father who was suffering from congestive heart failure while he and she were both trying to take care of her mother who has Multiple Sclerosis and plays a huge part in the rest of this story. She has an older brother who is a belligerent high functioning alcoholic who never lifted a finger to help and only caused problems after her father died.
My wife had no choice but to have a massive neck surgery which was “successful” but is and always will be a chronic pain sufferer. She is however able to manage her pain with medication and hold down a very stressful full time job with the State. Her father passed away the same day she had her final follow up with the surgeon who performed the neck procedure.
This left her mother to deal with. I won’t bore anyone with the details of trying to manage sitters for an elderly parent but it was a nightmare so eventually she moved in with us in February of 2002 and has lived in our home ever since.
She is completely disabled and has been for over 10 years. She cannot do anything for herself, wears diapers, the whole bit. The child we never wanted. We have a sitter for her during the day so we can both work and on Saturday so that we can go to the store etc or just get out. As you can imagine this is /was a huge stressor on our relationship. If you are not currently in this situation just imagine never being able to be alone with your spouse in your own home.
I desperately wanted for my wife to find a nursing facility for her mother so that we could have a life of our own but she would contend that she would be treated so poorly that she would have to go there every day to check on her anyway which would just make things harder on her. I had no desire to make anything harder on her than things already were, I won’t even go into the details of the laundry list of health problems my wife has had and the unbelievably poor treatment she received from more doctors than I can count over the years we were together. Let’s just say the chronic appendicitis is so incredibly rare that doctors don’t even consider it but the end of this story is she had it and ended up with a gangrenous appendix that almost killed her.
So the long and short of all this is there has always been a tremendous amount of stress on my wife that I tried my best to help with and be supportive of.
The flip side to this is that at the same time all this was going on I felt like I was treated so incredibly poorly. NOTHING I did was every the correct way to do it or was done right. Have you ever spoken with someone who never, ever allows you to finish a sentence? It is incredibly frustrating isn’t it? Well I hadn’t finished a sentence in 20 years. I was constantly compared to everyone else’s husbands who apparently were perfect. Do you think X would ever say that to Y? etc.
So I withdrew, she made me feel like nothing, like I wasn’t good enough and not appreciated. SO that’s when I really started to move away, became a very heavy drinker and likely verbally abusive at times rationalizing it as defending myself.
Ive said terrible, horrible things to her out of spite and anger which I regret more than I can say. When it came down to it I was at the end of my rope and everything just exploded.
I suggested counseling, which we went to three sessions of. The bottom line was “are you willing to start over, leave the past behind and hit the reset button? “yes” she said. “Are you willing to start over, leave the past behind and hit the reset button? “yes” I said.
The problem is she tried and I admittedly did not. I just got worse. I think I was just already checked out or was too far gone at that point. I believed I wasn’t the one who needed to change, she was. I just never ever wanted to hurt her, so rather than man up and just say I didn’t want to do it anymore I just said “yes” and hoped that she would change all the things I felt she needed to change. Which makes me a selfish, self-absorbed, piece of S**t.
At one point she straight up asked me if I wanted to do this, “please just don’t waste my time”. And I said I did, I couldn’t bear the thought of hurting her and walking out given all that she was going through with her job( which if I went into all of that we would be here forever), her mother still living with us, her health issues etc. All the while I had completely separated myself from her, I didn’t spend time with her, I was an A**hole you name it. She was always in a bad mood so if she came home in a bad mood and I was in a good mood my good mood was over. But if she came home in a good mood I would purposely be a jerk just to show her (in my mind) what it was like to have to deal with that every day.
Did I mention she is a borderline hoarder? Not the filthy disgusting trash everywhere kind, the every single spot on every surface has something piled on it still with price tags on it but hasn’t been touched for 5 years kind.
Anyway, I guess I finally had enough. But she was the one who had to drag it out of me, not man enough to just say it I admit. “Do you want out of this?” “Yes” I said. From that point on I lived upstairs on the couch and she downstairs in our bed. I did not move out for over a year. It wasn’t until she had just become so bitter and ugly at every chance she could that I had enough. She told me that all she ever thought she was to me was a meal ticket and now that I didn’t need her anymore she was disposable. That she in hindsight did not have one, single, good memory of our time together. Nothing she could take with her after I was gone. I was the worst human being on earth for wasting her time. Not only the three years we were supposed to have started over, but the entire time we were married.
There are so many more details and stories back and forth good and bad for both of us it would take forever to tell the story but here is where I will try to wrap up.
When her father died she inherited their house as well as a sizable amount of money. We knew that we were going to have to move her mother in with us so she used that money to put down on the house. I had nothing to contribute as I came from nothing and didn’t have any money to give. The house her mother lived in sat empty for years.
She will eventually move into that house.
So, now it’s time to start talking about the divorce and the separation of assets. This is a community property state. But that means nothing to me. All I want is out. She purchased all the furniture in the house while I worked to pay all the household bills etc.
At the time of the sale of our mutual home, because she put down inherited money which is considered by the state not community property she is entitled to all that money back. Let me be frank it’s about 80k. Also, the house she inherited is also not considered community property so I have no claim to it. That is perfectly fine with me, it’s her house I have no intention of contesting that in any way.
The bottom line is I was miserable and simply did not want to be married anymore. I didn’t see anything ever changing in a positive way or in a way I wanted. I had grown so far away from her I just didn’t want to be with her anymore. I love her and always will but I am no longer in love with her.
I want to ensure she gets every nickel back that she deserves, she is entitled to half my retirement honestly she can have it all.
Up until last night I had not spoken to her since I left in December. The conversation was brief and ugly. She said few words but they spoke volumes, and the tone of her voice was one of controlled rage. She made it crystal clear she wanted nothing whatsoever to do with me ever again, she was sickened by just seeing my name in print and the sound of my voice was like nails across a chalkboard. She would interact with me only when absolutely necessary.
After all she said about what a terrible horrible person I am, it is my thought that she is better off without me. I want her to forget me and have a happy life, to be treated the way she deserves to be treated, to be loved and adored. Not the way I treated her. There were times when I did but of course that is all forgotten now and all she sees is the horrible human being.
At any rate, what I’m here for is that the guilt and depression I feel for walking out, even though I feel I should if I want any chance at a normal life, is overwhelming me to the point that I have been starting to have suicidal thoughts. I am a horrible person for what I’ve done. I didn’t treat her as I should have, I said horrible things to her. I’ve forgotten myself the times when I was there for her and did love her and tried to be the best husband I can be. It’s all washed away in my head and all I see now is the narcissist who walked away, and it is debilitating. This guilt, I feel, will kill me.
I have an appointment with my therapist today, but I don’t know that it’s going to help much.
I’m just a horrible person and I need to just accept that and resign myself to being alone because I am no good for anyone, including myself.
I’m sorry to all for the ridiculous length of this message, there are so many more pieces to all of this but I do have a job I’m supposed to be doing right now so I should get back to it. I’m not looking for pity or for anyone to sugarcoat anything. I guess I just want to know if anyone has experienced the same and what the hell do I do now??