The long this goes on

The longer this drags out, the more I realize that I miss having a husband who has my back. I miss having a husband who loves me. I miss having a partnership between us. I miss feeling secure and safe in the relationship.

I also realize that I don't have any of this in this marriage, and the grief I feel isn't so much at ending things with this husband; the grief is about my belief that I will never have a chance at it again based upon my age and stage in life.

I really didn't want to enter old age alone.

I hear you. I entered "old age" alone (never married). And while I am sad I will never get to have my own children or a husband and a family of my own, I have no choice but to move on with my life.

It's easy to limit ourselves with false beliefs that we create based on our negative experiences. Like yours, "I really didn't want to enter old age alone." Well, do you have friends? Family? Coworkers? If you do, you are definitely not alone.

Maybe you'll get married again. Maybe you won't. That hinges on how much credibility you give to your self-limiting beliefs. If you know that you want to get married again, then you will. But if you are afraid that you'll never get married again because of your horrible experience with your divorce, then, you will set up your relationships and your life to reinforce the self-limiting belief you have about yourself, your worth, and marriage.

Thank you, Motts. I hadn't thought of it in those terms. To answer your questions, I have 1 co-worker and I have 1 friend who lives distantly from me. My family are deceased.

I am sorry to hear that you have no family left. I understand your emotional pain and it sounds like you feel trapped inside your marriage. Well, would you rather be lonely and married, or lonely and alone? Which feels worse to you? If you are alone, you increase your chances of finding a more suitable husband who includes you in his life as his partner. It sounds like your husband doesn't include you in his life and rather just treats you like his roommate. That's terrible, if indeed that's the dynamics of your marriage.

It's important to step back from the "feelings of" and look at reality because often people are missing the illusion of thinking they had more security than they actually had. It can be the ignorance we miss aka, "Ignorance is Bliss".

Thank you, Open Eyes. I know this. The financial security was real though.

Pink and Blue.. I can relate to what you are going through. I am merely someone who is here to make meals, and pick up after him. I get no conversation.. I have had room mates back in the day I was friendlier with. Sadly this behavior from him go worse over time.. and started after I had learned he was one person here with me... and being a completely different person while he was at his job 2 hours out of town.. and I confronted him... He completely turned on me...I was the bad person all of the sudden... He had some resentment. yet would say all the right things at the time... My regret.. not leaving sooner... Loneliness sucks I agree.. But the worst kind of loneliness is when the person who is supposed to be your partner, best friend is in the house. .. and avoids you, ignores you if you try to talk... and just makes you feel like your "bothering" him... This I have lived with for far too long.... I dont deserve this.. I have been good to him throughout all of this... and it never got better.. just worse... I would rather be alone than be broken down every damn day.

Hi Laurierocks, I am very sorry you are going through this. I don't know what the answer really is. Right now, being in the forest, it is hard to find the best way out for me. I know the divorce is coming sooner than I feel prepared for. He has always taken great delight in throwing me to the wolves since day one of the marriage. I wonder what kind of personality defect this is. Yesterday he said that I don't respect him.... well duh!

what really has just made me feel like the biggest fool is how many years I cheated myself out of happiness.
I have no family left. Parents are deceased, and it was just him.. he knew my situation.. That's what makes this the ultimate stabbing in the back.. He does the damage.. And does nothing to aid in cleaning it up... Sits back and watches me just fall apart... It makes me so mad now thinking about it all. I wanted to leave long ago.. You should have seen the spectacle he out on about how much he loved me and it was a mig mistake and blah blah.... It was a a banquet of ********. Financially.. We own a house together... No children.. we've been together since 1999 married 2012. I never imagined i could go back to that place that i was before all of this... I had trauma as a lid. trusted no one was very angry... now looking back that girl had no feelings like the ones incapacitating me now.... I was much tougher before i let someone in...my regret. You only get so long here... don't spend it with someone that cant appreciate being with you. I could not mourn my mother because I was scrambled eggs with the BS he was putting me through after I confronted him.... I should have cut him at that moment....I will never cheat myself out of being content and happy for the sake of just to be with someone.... I would rather be alone... Dont cheat yourself out of waking up everyday and having a great day.

Hi Laurielrocks,

We share similar experiences. I don't understand why people behave this way. My stbx took and took and abused and then decides to waltz off into the sunset. I suspect it is either his sister or an other women planting these ideas and behaviors in a fertile field. I am very saddened by the whole thing and don't feel that I have a safe place to grieve the end of the future and dreams I had been working toward.

Look at Ava Gardner. Her first husband was Andy Rooney. She divorced him after only 1 year because he was a serial womanizer. Then, Ava married her second husband a renown Jazz musician Arty Shaw who emotionally and verbally abused her, and dumped/divorced her for another woman. Finally, her 3rd husband was Frank Sinatra. Sinatra accused her of cheating on him all the time, meanwhile, his career was in the toilet, he was a raging alcoholic and drug addict and so Ava divorce Sinatra and spent the rest of her life alone until she died.

Thank you, Motts. One of things that has always stuck with me is when I was told: if you were abused as a child you are more likely to marry an abusive man. You simply don't recognize the red flags, I wonder what Ava Gardner's childhood was like because she married men with similar behaviors.. Meanwhile, I have worked very hard to recognize the signs... and still, I don't. This whole thing makes me very cautious about being around people.

We are scheduled to go to marriage therapy. I don't know what the point of it is. I doubt he is even going to try to change because he is very busy blaming me for his behaviors. I also suspect he is talking with someone (I suspect it is his sister who never wanted him to marry me) feeding him a lot of his current ideas. He is a weak person and easily led by his family.

Well, Ava's childhood was pretty awful. Her father wasn't a very emotionally supportive guy to his children or wife and he died from pneumonia when she was only 15 years old. Both of her parents were dirt poor immigrants, who moved Ava and her siblings around a lot until her father's death. Then, Ava when to Los Angeles with her older sister and was discovered by accident when a talent scout saw her photo hanging in her sister's boyfriend's photography studio storefront.

So, yeah. Ava married 3 versions of her father, you could say. I think that's the way we're doomed to repeat our childhood. The romantic partners i've chosen have all been emotionally unavailable men who verbally abusive and control me -- like my dad did. I'm not married and don't plan on ever getting married. I'm ok with being a single ol spinster because its safer for me, that way. I could easily marry an abusive guy otherwise. So, I stopped dating.

I really hope that marriage therapy works for you and your husband. Even when we abused recognize the signs and intellectually know the signs, we are conditioned to ignore the signs because that's how we spent our youth. Its not a helpful pattern as adults, but trying to break a pattern of abuse is pretty tough. I can't and I've done about a combined 20 years of therapy for it. I still can't break my attraction to broken men, even when they are obvious about their problems they're like magnets to me. I know I deserve healthy functional men to date or marry but either they are not attracted to me, or I am not attracted to them.

If your husband is having an affair I hope that he will use the counseling sessions to come clean with you, and will want to salvage the marriage (if that is what you want). I don't think you should be scared of divorce though. Divorce is a way out of a bad marriage that is dysfunctional, toxic, and not fixable. If your husband is weak and easily influenced by his family then you can get your marriage therapist to help you break through your husband's emotional barriers. I hope it has a positive outcome for you, marriage counseling.

Motts, I enjoy your perspective. One of the concerns I have is living alone and aging, who helps to protect any vulnerabilities that may arise? Who helps when the time comes that I may not be able to live alone any more? When you have a partner, presumably there is some help, even if it is only financial. How does one mitigate the loneliness? I think these are my greatest concerns at this time.

Well, no one else is responsible for your happiness. You, and you alone are responsible for your own happiness.

Having a partner is not a guarantee of protection against life's challenges. To think that, I feel, is very naive. My aunt abandoned her husband when he got a brain tumor.

My cousins had to fly in and arrange for his care because their mother focused on her real estate business. My dad got cancer and my mom refused to support him through that journey, even abandoning him in his last dying breaths (she wouldn't go into his hospice room to say good bye to him).

There is no financial help always, when you have a partner. My sister's husband can't hold down a job so my sister is the sole bread winner. Do you know the pressure that puts on her shoulders? Because her husband isn't reliable? They have children and a home mortgage and medical bills to pay. Do you think he contributes to that? Nope.

I will never be married but that doesn't mean my life is hopeless or lonely 24/7. I will be able to pay rent with social security when I turn 55 even as I work. I will be able to drive myself around to appointments and social events. Just because I"m alone doesn't mean my life lacks meaning or security or value.

Why are you so adamant that being single means one's quality of life is less because they don't have a partner. Just because you have a partner doesn't guarantee your life will be more stable more secure.

I feel like you have the perspective that its the partner's job to provide for your every need. Is that how you feel? Because that's just not true or fair to the other person. Just my perspective from my own life experiences.

If I develop dementia, get into a car accident, have a terminal illness thats just life. I can't control any of that from happening to me, even were I with a partner. If and when any of those things happen to me, I will just deal with it to the best of my ability and ask other people for help.

That's all you can do, married or not, is ask for help when you need it. But to think marriage solves all of your problems or that it should, well, I don't view marriage like that.

I have been single most of my life. I did just fine. In fact I did well. You don’t need a man for financial security and unless you are a child you don’t need anyone to protect you. I mean there is police and medical facilities for resource. You can friends and hobbies. I am sorry you are hurting but it’s better to be alone than with a man who makes you miserable

My apologies. I did not mean to upset anyone. I may not have phrased my thoughts clearly. My thinking was meant to convey, that when there is a good marriage, which involves a caring partner and having each other's back, and facing life's problems together... there are advantages. One of them is that there is more money coming into the household, another is having someone to be there so that you don't have to rely on strangers or friends to help.

This reminds me of after my first husband died. I needed to have a medical procedure and it required that someone stay with me after I was released. The person had to sign a form stating that they would not leave me alone and assuming liability in the event something happened if I were left alone. I called two or three friends but no one wanted to take off from work to stay with me. I called a home health aide company but they refused to sign the form. Eventually I gave up trying to find someone to do it and just didn't have the procedure done. At the time I was thinking that this was one of the things I very much missed about my husband. I don't think that makes me child-like. A very strong and capable friend has faced the same issue when she needed the same procedure. I wound up staying with her because I know just how difficult it can be to find someone willing.

I also think about our former neighbors across the street. They are in their 80's. His wife is bedridden and he is there to help her dress, and to help her with things that she cannot do due to advanced age. She has it a lot easier than our neighbor who was to the left of us. They were also in their 80's but one night her husband died, and she had no one to help her with the daily living activities that she could no longer perform. Eventually her family realized she was in trouble and got her into assisted living.... but what would have happened to her if she could not afford assisted living, or if no one had realized she needed help because she couldn't get to a phone?

These are just things I think about because they require an extra plan for that possible eventuality.

I realize I came down rather hard on you unnecessarily PinkandBlue. So, my apologies. I just have not witnessed any reciprocal couples throughout my life, who are really there for each other. That is a shame that none of your friends would help you. They abandoned you when you needed them, and you compromised your health by not going through with a procedure you probably really needed to have done. I'm sorry that happened to you.

I understand what you are saying about the qualities that make for a good marriage: true reciprocity; both people are there for each other in their times of need, financially supporting each other and the family they create together, and emotionally supporting their partner whom they have love and respect for. I don't think that makes you child-like to need your friends to help you. I'm sorry if my post gave you the impression I view you that way. I don't. Not at all.

The things you think about are practical worries and you gave good examples of the outcomes for those worries. Having a community of support can be helpful for older single adults. But, you experienced disloyalty from your friends when you needed them to be there for you. And that is one of the risks of relying on people for help. They won't always step up to help.

Being single isn't ideal and there's no way to control every possible outcome even if you're married. I think being human is an adventure we can't really control, no matter how much we try to.

Since this is your second marriage, how invested in it are you? Do you want to work things out with your husband? Or, do you feel like its better to leave? Have you and your husband had your first marriage counseling session yet?

Motts, I appreciate your no-nonsense outlook. I find it enlightening that there are so many dysfunctional marriages. I come from a background where mostly everyone I knew had a healthy, happy and loving union and that is what has shaped my wish to have the same again. On my stbx's side, his family does not typically forge a happy or reciprocal union, so that is why our marriage really has little chance of success. I know this logically. Emotionally I am still grieving and all over the road.

We are about to have our first marriage counseling session in a few days. I did speak with the doctor and I asked him what he would do "if" he received an email from my stbx prior to meeting us which had a format of: poor me I am a tragic figure, I am treaded badly by women, this is the diagnosis I am expecting you to render and the burden of change needs to be on my wife. He let me know that he is a doctor with years of experience and is able to see through the manipulations my stbx may try to perpetuate. He said that in session (and in front of me) he would let him know this is unacceptable. The doctor assured me he is professional and will not "take sides". I suspect the stbx is only willing to go to therapy because he currently believes he is going to manipulate the doctor and his interest will wane as soon as he sees the doctor is more intelligent than he is and won't be played.

I also see that a marriage cannot survive where there is no trust, where there is abuse, where there is no real union. So, I suppose it doesn't really matter that I want a good marriage. I don't have one in this marriage and I will need to let go of the one benefit there is in this union -- which currently I am finding difficult to accept. Time heals and I am working on plans to make myself happy after the divorce.

I hope you are doing well, Motts, and that you will have a happy and healthy July 4.

Thanks. Most people don't appreciate my no-nonsense outlook. I am am empathetic person but I don't present it as people expect from empathetic people. Does that make sense? I'm very blunt. To the point. Direct. A lot of people don't like that about me. But it's who I am. I try to respect other people's feelings but often come across too pedantic for my own good.

I'm glad you were able to get confirmation from your marriage counselor ahead of your first session about his boundaries with emotionally manipulative clients. If your husband is an emotional manipulator, hopefully your marriage counselor will call your husband out on it. At our first family therapy session after my father died when I was 21, our family therapist called out my siblings and mother for being emotionally manipulative and gaslighting towards me. I felt victorious when that happened, watching the three of them argue in protest and further gaslight me during the session, which the family therapist put a stop to. We only lasted 6 sessions before those three quit, further preventing any possibility of healing my dysfunctional family system. It remains fractured to this day.

I know the thought of being single scares you for the financial reasons. But you can use social security can't you? To help you with your rent payments once you are on your own? You can also look for older women roommates a la The Golden Girls. There are solutions to the financial losses of divorce. I've never been married. But I've been in financial straits long enough to know how to make ends meet for myself when I have to.

I agree with you that a marriage cannot survive without trust, where abuse is present, and there is no real union between both people. It does matter that you want a good marriage. But if your stbx isn't capable or doesn't want that, then he's doing you a favor by the divorce. Why stay married to a toxic partner for the financial security? I mean, people do that ALL the time. Stay married to toxic spouses b/c they need the financial security. I get it.

Just turn off your fears and try to problem-solve all the solutions to financial straits after divorce: roommates, social security payments, savings, etc.

I hope you can have a relaxing day today. I'm going to clean my studio apartment windows and go for a walk. That's how I'll spend my 4th!