This brought back the picture of my father......I had the hardest time wondering why my mother chose someone like that who had no ambition to do much of anything with his life other than get by....he never wanted anything in his life that caused him stress & yet he died of heart failure from damage he'd had due to untreated high blood pressure most of his life.

I thought he never gave himself a chance to succeed & thought he never had any ambition. I thought he was a looser because he would always argue with friends given his point of view which was so far off from reality that even at 5 years old it was obvious.

Then my mother told me all he had gone through as a child.....WWII over in Austria......& of course, he father would argue the same way he did so much of it was a learned behavior & he lost his mother to cancer when a senior in high school & he was the one staying at home caring for her.

The point....we don't know what the person who we feel has never given themselves a chance has really gone through in their life that has brought them to where they really are. Having a better understanding of the person & their life & past life can really be an open book to why it seems they have never given themselves a chance......there are usually some pretty good reasons.

I know for my stbxh.....he didn't give himself a chance because he choose to be arrogant in college & think himself better than the instructors & he didn't want to bother doing anything that he didn't feel was enough of a challenge.....throughout life we have to do things that are & aren't a challenge. He had parents that gave him a good home & everything he wanted, he got on credit....his parents never taught him the real value of $.......so in reality he never gave himself a chance to succeed because his attitude blocked him.

There can be all kinds of reasons......one really has to see the reality of the situation to be able to make any kind of appropriate determination.