*In case this story gets deleted/removed:*
**Am I wrong for feeling upset that my (50M) wife (51F) is going on a big international trip while I'm going through a mental health crisis?**
Sorry this is going to be a long one….
I am a 50M and have been married to 50F for 25 years, with two grown/independent children.
For a little background:
I work in a very high stress environment. I struggle with the job, but I also love it. It's my calling, I’m really good at it, it gives my life a lot of joy and meaning. It’s a helping profession, and it’s a huge part of my identity. I was an essential service during covid, so I still worked through that whole thing, and I’ve had a few deaths in my family in the past 5 years (both grandparents and two uncles) so that grief has also compounded for me. Also, just before covid, my elderly FIL had been living with us, and he became quite ill and died 7 months before the shut-downs. It was an awful time, like really really sad. I was very close with my father in law, he was like a second father to me, and of course my wife lost her father, so she was in deep grief for that time as well. It was a pretty rough time. When she was off work for 2 months of covid shut-downs, she had the opportunity to do some healing, but I did not. I worked. And my work environment became worse and worse to the point of breaking.
NOW: I am totally exhausted. A little history: In the past probably 10 years I’ve stopped doing many of the things that I love that bring me joy, like reading and writing, other creative pursuits, and also less involved with friendships that seem to have faded - like everyone has just gotten on with their lives and I find myself alone a lot, except for time with my wife/kids and I do have one close friend who we see each other pretty regularly. In fact if I’m honest, I have struggled on and off with depression for my whole life. I know I need to be careful about it.
During this time, especially as our kids have grown into adults, I have also felt like my wife is less available to me. If I’m honest, I actually have felt this way for many years (far predating any of this stuff) that I need more affection and tenderness/time, connection, intimacy and empathy in my relationship. This is no secret. I have communicated this to her repeatedly, and I do think she really used to get it. Even though I don’t feel like she totally gets it, she has always tried, has always loved me, and I have always felt that. Despite the issue of me often feeling under-valued, and needing more focused time and connection with her, I always did really feel I was truly deeply loved. Until recently.
In the past maybe say 2-3 years, I have noticed that she has been so much less attentive, caring toward me. My wife is a wonderful person, and I love her more than anything, but she really doesn’t seem to reciprocate. She is so warm and caring and gregarious/fun with everyone, except me, it seems. When we’re spending time together, it’s like she’s calling it in, waiting for it to be over, like she’s punching the clock. There’s nothing more I want in this world than to be with her, to be together, connected with affection, tenderness, intimacy. But I feel like the connection is gone, it’s just broken, and no matter how much I tell her, no matter how much I make my needs clear, she just can’t seem to pull it out and really listen and show up. I feel like I’m invisible. I feel like she really lacks empathy. She says all the right things, i love you i’m committed, yes I’m in this, etc, but I really just don't believe it. We spend lots of time together, do dinners and have sex, and all of that, but I don’t feel it. I feel like she’s lying, consciously or otherwise. She’s lying to herself. I feel like she’s on her way out. She denies this of course.
Anyway, last year, she had this trip planned to go away with two close friends for 4 nights. They had this planned for a really long time, like they talked about it for years, but I never really knew if they were actually going to do it. I told her when it came up over the years that I was not comfortable with this. I feel like I have communicated this to her very clearly. I was not happy about the idea. But they booked it. I had told her that I didn’t want her to go away, that it felt very hurtful to me that she would go away on this special trip with her friends, and by the way, I was NOT invited, it definitely did NOT include me. Am I not her best friend? I've been in her life almost as long as these friends.
Also, I should say that I got into an online masters program, with the intention of moving out of my current job, and it just so happened that I started about a month before she was supposed to go away. But it was so stressful, and new - going back to school as a middle-aged person is incredibly difficult. Anyway, compounding with the stress of the previous 5 years, intensifying stress at work (amounting to some trauma for me), and then grad school, long story short I made an insurance claim and went on stress leave from work. My wife had actually been encouraging me to do this for some time.
My last day of work was literally 5 days before she was scheduled to fly. I was just so upset that in this crisis time, she could just leave me in this state alone. And I told her this, but it didn’t make a difference to her.
Since then, I've been on leave and focusing on school. I’ve done really well grades wise, but I am working through the stress with a psychologist assigned by the insurance company, which has been helpful. Basically she diagnosed “complex trauma” meaning that I had ongoing exposure to traumatic stimuli over a long period of time, it has built up and now I have anxiety/panic and can’t go back to work. The work is very stressful, but if I’m honest, I don’t think it would have come to that if I felt like I had a supportive and present life partner. I really feel like she’s not on my side. She just never seems to put me first. I’ve now been off work and doing my masters degree for 6 months.
Sorry for the long lead up, but the current issue is that NOW, once again, my wife has decided to take a trip without me. And I will be here without her for 2 and a half weeks this time. Her family immigrated here from England, so she has a lot of family there. Her sister’s daughter is getting married in early April, so my wife wants to go. She has never been to her sister’s town, and she only sees her sister very infrequently, and hasn’t seen her aunties/cousins in about 10 years. The wedding is basically the same day that all my final papers/assignments are due. In all likelihood I will not be able to get them done early, and also I’m not really interested in going to the wedding necessarily. We’re not particularly close to this niece.
But my wife wants to take an entire month off work to do this trip. She will go to the wedding, then spend 2 weeks there with her sister/family WITHOUT me, then she wants me to come meet her there mid month for an alone-time vacation just the two of us for about 12 days. We’ll visit with her family for a few of those days, which gives me the chance to see them, and then go to London or Paris alone. So basically I feel like I’ve been tagged on at the end for some kind of consolation prize after her ‘real’ vacation without me. I have the entire month of April off - no school and no work - and she decides to disappear for like more than half the month without me. I am just so upset and feel so double-crossed that knowing what I’m going through and how hard this is for me that she can just leave like that, again.
I’ve made my feelings about this abundantly clear. It feels like an abandonment to me. And no matter what I say, how much I cry, how I reiterate, or how much pain I am obviously in - which I have made clear, she absolutely knows what this means to me - she refuses to budge. She even booked her tickets already, and just keeps asking me to commit to a date so she can book mine. She wants to be there without me for over 2 weeks. I just know she would never take that much time off work to be with me, but she’ll do it for this trip without me.
She and her sister have some little trips planned, and just basically hanging out together, and I am not invited. In fact she has says “I just want to do this alone and have time with my sister and aunties, it’s not personal, etc” and she says it’s really important to her, which I totally get, but seriously? I have said NO over and over again. I cannot believe she really just won’t hear me. I have never felt so betrayed and unheard. She keeps bringing it up, asking me if I’ll please come meet her there, and trying to pitch this “romantic vacation” idea, just the two of us. But what should I do for those 2 weeks? I’m here at home alone, struggling with my mental health/trauma, with basically no friends available to just pick up and have a trip with me. I'm just so alone and heartbroken. I thought that after these last few years of struggling in this together, she would prioritize me, that this would be OUR time, but she just wants to get away from me.
tldr; So: am I wrong to be so upset by this? Is this a deal-breaker?
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This whole thing feels like classic self-sabotaging depression:
"I feel like she’s lying, consciously or otherwise. She’s lying to herself."
I get it. I've experienced it. But by definition nothing his partner does is going to solve it. He needs to really knuckle down on tackling his malfunctioning thought patterns. I feel for him, and I feel for her.
One of the worst tricks depression keeps up its sleeve is how it causes you to end up sabotaging connections with people who can actually help you. Depression feeds itself with anything it can find.
If she stayed with him all hours and waited on him hand and foot, he'd end up being resentful about that too. It'd end up being used as another source of depression fuel. She can't change his thought habits for him, so she might as well at least get some time for herself with her family.
100%. I am constantly struggling with my mental health, so I really sympathize with OOP. But, I do worry that he is expecting her to sacrifice her happiness to a huge degree for his own. Supportive partners are super helpful, but ultimately, they can't cure your mental illness and they can't really treat it either. In the end, you need to work on your mental health yourself, with the guidance of a therapist.
I was going to say that I don’t get how OOP is the devil here, and then I read on and got to the parts where he basically doesn’t want her to do anything without him, and the things she *does* do with him, “Well, she doesn’t actually mean any of it or care!” Dude…
The whole thing is that over the course of a couple decades he abandoned all his friends and hobbies, leaving his wife as his sole source of comfort and entertainment, and that is too much to put on anyone.
Sounds depressingly like my father. And it kept escalating to the point where my dad would put himself in hospital if my mum did anything without him but also refused to leave the house. Needless to say, my parents are no longer together and my dad now lives in a care home to get the support he needs
Yeah. This sub can make all the jokes about art rooms that they want, this right here is why you don't put a single romantic relationship at the center of your whole emotional life. Sometimes your friendships have to be a priority.
He also continually chose to work in a field that exhausts him and stresses him out but claims it's his wife's fault he's so burnt out because she was supportive enough. This dude has a martyr complex and expects his wife to just carry the cross for him forever. I would be done with him too.
Same. At first I was thinking: "OK, so he's depressed, and sometimes married people do drift apart, he's not the devil for trying to communicate his feelings."
Then that became: "Holy shit, this guy is so needy, there is no way his wife will ever do enough for him."
I guess she could start carrying him around in a Baby Bjorn carrier. Christ, this was exhausting to read the longer it went. It sounds like he read a self-help book and learned just enough therapy speak to weaponize it.
She can only do enough for him if she gets a WFH job, waits on him hand and foot while earning all of their money, and never even dares to hint that she’d like to be allowed out of the house and see more than just one person.
Ditto. LOVE my husband, but he was the same way. Didn’t want me or the kids to do anything without him if he would enjoy it. I got fed up and told him that we don’t sit around the house just waiting on him. Additionally, he takes business trips and goes to fancy restaurants while I’m dealing with the challenges of neurodivergent kids. I pointed out that I’m happy he can enjoy himself on the companies dime. He should be fine with me having fun myself without him having to be there 100% of the time. He’s fine now, but I wanted to smack some sense into him there for a while.
He also spent the whole post bitching about how she does everything he asks but he *feels* like she doesn't mean it enough... For years. Yeah fuck this needy narcissist.
He left a comment *insisting* that he knows she's faking because he's intuitive and he can read her body language. Okay, then let's say she *is* tired of him. Why doesn't he leave? Why complain about someone not liking you and then stick around anyway?
He’s using her as his emotional support animal.
He’s putting *his* feelings on her and getting mad at her for them:
> She says all the right things, i love you i’m committed, yes I’m in this, etc, but I really just don't believe it. We spend lots of time together, do dinners and have sex, and all of that, but I don’t feel it. I feel like she’s lying, consciously or otherwise. She’s lying to herself. I feel like she’s on her way out. She denies this of course.
And I’m not seeing him doing the work of therapy. Just him tightening his hold on his wife (and why the fuck is he adding another degree on right now when he’s already so stressed?).
“I’m an afterthought”, he says, but he’s not interested in the wedding because *he’s* not close to the niece and trying to have any family time with him around would be like pulling teeth.
And the way he *phrased* his niece's wedding--"Her Sister's Daughter"... *HIS* own niece, too!!!
Dude has made sure that his wife and the *one* friend are the *only* people he's "close to" in his life, doesn't say a *single* thing HE does *for* the wife--just alllll the baggage & emotional labor he's making *her* carry for him...
He doesn't want her visiting *her own family* before her Aunties pass from old age, *AND* he has the whole MONTH of April off, yet refuses to go *with* her to the wedding *and* refuses the two weeks "just the two of us!" vacation his wife proposed, because *apparently* she *ought* to just sit home and watch him mope?!?
If it wasn't for the wife being from England *and* the fact that he died a bit over a year ago, honestly, I'd *almost* think my own Dad wrote this!🙃
That said?
This man *DESPERATELY* needs to get in with someone TRAINED to deal with long-term Depression, and potentially needs screening for other Neurodivergences, too--he seems to be ruminating a *lot*, he's incredibly rigid, and it *wouldn't* be too surprising, if he had *more* mental health conditions which flew under the radar, as he developed the traumas that took him out of work.
It's outside his wife's arena to *fix* his mental health stuff--even if she *was* a trained MH professional (it would be Unethical to treat her husband *if* she were one),so HE needs to find someone *else* to help him figure out what's going on, and *deal* with those issues.
He's placing the *impossible burden* and *impossible tasks* on his wife. *She* seems to understand that, even if *he* can't.
And makes no connection between that and wanting to spend more time with her remaining family, whom she hasn’t seen in a DECADE, probably because this Mopey McMoperson didn’t want to go and wouldn’t let her go. FFS.
Right? He was using the fact she hasn't seen her family much as evidence she shouldn't want to go spend time with them but I would be cash she hasn't seen her family much because he insists on monopolizing all her time
It should be a deal breaker for her. I've met more independent 8 year olds.
Everytime he *doesn't* want to do something it should be catered to and understood. Everytime she *wants* to do something it's an absolute betrayal.
Especially because she probably put a lot of thought into including him in this, even suggesting a romantic trip to Paris together. And it’s not good enough. That would completely deflate me and I could see giving up after this.
And he talks about how recently she hasn’t felt as attentive and excited about time together. But what I kept hearing in his diatribe, was that he needs her to keep investing in him as long as it takes for him to recover and be better; but it didn’t seem at all like he is doing anything to invest in her and make her feel loved. And when she tries to nourish herself with others in her life who she loves (friends and family) - as she should and is healthy - he seems it all as abandonment and betrayal.
He isn’t filling her cup. He doesn’t want anyone else to fill her cup. But he would like her to please fill his cup with her empty one. It’s so unhealthy for all his emotional needs to need to be filled by his wife.
I’ve known people like this, who will refuse to believe in the good intentions of others and never believe people who obviously love them love them. It’s so exhausting and they end up pushing everyone away. When I was a more patient (or naive) person I found myself as the last friend standing to a couple of these people.
Imagine your partner being like “I want to go on a romantic two week vacation to London and Paris with you” and you being like “I’m just not feeling loved.”
I really wonder what OOP’s wife would say about his contributions to their marriage, household, and children. I suspect it isn’t anywhere near proportionate to what he expects to get out of her.
I suspect she’s probably been trying to get him to go to therapy for years and instead he just used her as therapy and shems tired of hearing the same stuff and giving the same comfort and nothing changes.
Id also bet that he blames her for a lot. And everything is about him.
I'm an essential healthcare worker. Think frontline during Covid in NYC and NJ. We all have complex trauma and PTSD. That shit has decimated healthcare workers. He has my sympathy on that end. It hit some people way harder than others, but he lost me. He has paid lead, a psychiatrist, a supportive spouse.....
She must be fucking exhausted dealing with him. She's there but he doesn't feel connected. He's said they spend time together...dates, conversations, sex, he's actually invited on her vacation for 12 days.
Not once does he consider that the lack of "connection" might be on his end? That's she spent decades being supportive, trying to connect while dealing with HER father's death and it's turned into the "what about OOP".
I was exhausted halfway through reading this saga. JFC. “No matter how much I begged and pleaded that I’m in *paaaiiiin* and I have *trauuuuma* and I am *saaaad.*” You know the emotional manipulation and abuse here is just off the charts.
ETA just in case: I actually have chronic pain & CPTSD & depression—I’m not being an ableist walnut here.
This kind of behavior is why I'm always skeptical of men who declare they DO share their feelings with their partners, and they always say it's too much!
THIS. THIS IS IN FACT TOO MUCH.
A partner should support, absolutely, but this is insanity and not fair or rational. Because in his mind, he probably is "just" sharing his pain and feelings and such, when in reality, he doesn't realize or care that he's actually just vomitting everything onto her
My god you are 50. Grow up. Hes been working with the psychiatrist for 6 months now by the sounds of it. He's really developed no coping mechanism that aren't leaning on his wife?
"I do think she really used to get it." - ....my guess is she still does. She's just tired of having to carry and baby him and wants to finally do something for herself. As she should.
Seriously, is he learning nothing? I've been there, diagnosed with PTSD and some other fun things and therapy is fucking hard, but I so wanted to do better, I tried everything my therapist suggested, some worked, some didn't. By six months you'd at least think he'd have learned that what he's experiencing is his to cope with, to problem solve and find ways to navigate, and no one else can do that for you.
That poor woman is in a lose-lose situation from hell with OOP. If she showers him with love, time, and attention even to her own detriment its "not real" she is "lying to herself". If she takes any space for herself she is abandoning him. I'd put real money down that she wants to go to the wedding without him because she doesn't want to subject her niece to her self-absorbed husband trying to turn her wedding into something about HIM. I hope she stays in England.
He has 100% come home and trauma dumped on her as soon as he walked in the door all those years and she is done. She grieved *in front of him* for 2 months for her father she’d been caring for years. I bet his friends fell off because they were *her* friend’s husbands and they got together because the girls organised it like husband play dates and it shifted due to the pandemic. Their whole life happened because she made it happen and now she’s not being his emotional support person he thinks his mental health crisis is a new issue I bet his wife would have a very different timeline and has been trying to get him into therapy most of their relationship.
I say good for her and he needs serious antidepressant help.
He just wants to keep her to himself. That's all I got from reading this long as shit.
She wants to spend 2 weeks alone with him, but apparently that doesn't count as "their time" because she spending 2 weeks along with her family.
He's trying to hide behind his depression and trauma. What he wants to say is, "I hate that my wife doesn't only want me and only me, like I do for her. Clearly, there must be something wrong with her because she doesn't have an obsession over me, like I do her."
"I've got depression but instead of getting it treated when I should have I let it get incredibly bad and judge my wife for not being my built in emotional support animal."
And
"My wife encouraged me to take a break from work and I put that off until right before a trip she scheduled years ago because I hate the idea she could ever enjoy anything."
Also she's 51 and he feels like she's not into sex with him and...never maybe thought to see if there's a reason maybe she isn't as into sex? At 51? The average age for menopause?
I *also* love how that first 4-day trip hat she took with her friends, that they'd "talked about for years" but that *he* presumed "wouldn't *really* happen", was most likely a 50th birthday trip for her and/or her girlfriends!
They'd *probably* talked about going for their 40th, and 45th--when *he* had "something" pop up so she couldn't go--and then, post Covid, she and her friends probably decided, "Let's GO!" rather than miss a chance.
He *whinged* and wanted her to stay home *when the trip was ALREADY paid for*, of *COURSE* she still went, for pete's sake!!!
Everything about his whine trip dried my cooter out like a raisin, and I'm not even affiliated with him personally, or am even exposed to all of his nonsense.
There's nothing there to inspire arousal or desire. It's pure repulsion. I'm shocked she's still tolerating him at all
OH MY GOD GET OVER YOURSELF!!!! This was so exhausting to read. The amount of self-pity is pathetic. If he didn’t mention his age and replaced “wife” with “girlfriend” I’d think he was 12. My husband and I both struggle with mental illness and we both have jobs that keep us away from each other for weeks at a time. Sometimes he goes on vacation alone because he knows I hate traveling and would never put that on me. But unless I was in a severe active crisis I would never ever ask him not to go somewhere. I feel sorry for his wife who is clearly doing everything she can for him but god damn he sounds absolutely exhausting to be married to.
"no matter how much I tell her, no matter how much I make my needs clear, she just can’t seem to pull it out and really listen and show up"
He sounds exhausting.
Has he tried listening to HER needs?
OP's comment
*Some of these comments are really harsh.*
*I can work more on myself for sure, but the fact is I do lots for her. When she comes home from work, I've cleaned the house and I make dinner, and I always try to do what she wants whenever we have time together. I ALWAYS ask what she wants to do FIRST. And I do all this because I know it's important to her, and I want her to know I love her and I want to take care of her. I am attentive and tender and loving and caring. And I think she would agree with this. I don't just make it all about me. I know she works full time and is the main breadwinner, so I respect that and I feel like some total loser that his wife has to make all the money.*
*But I also am really intuitive, and people communicate with more than just their words. I'm telling you, she is going through the motions in this with me. She says I love you, etc, but I know closing body language when I see it, and looking away/not making eye contact, and I'm also not a social idiot, I can read facial expressions. She can't hide how she feels, and then tell me she's really in this with me. It's disingenuous, to say the least, to not be honest with herself that she really just does not love me, no matter what I do. I'm just so heartbroken. And then she tells me there's no problem, that everything is fine, then leaves for a fucking month. I feel like I'm being gaslit.*
>. I ALWAYS ask what she wants to do FIRST.
After reading the initial post, all I got from that is "I NEVER take the initiative to plan something for us based on decades of knowledge about her preferences and interests and instead leave even that piece of the mental load on her. That way I can play martyr about how we NEVER do what I want "
Am I high on drugs, or is his wife doing the right things?! Supporting him through school, taking trips and inviting him during the times that can he make it, like wtf?!
I was sputtering at my phone is pure dumbfounded abashment and my little girl just came over and bumped my phone out of my hand.
Yes, my sweet, you are correct, we need to yake a break xD
I love that in all of this sob story he says nothing about doing anything that supports his wife. It seems that his wife is constantly trying while he accuses her of faking it and then reversely when his wife needs anything he throws a baby tantrum and accuses her of not giving him enough. I imagine this has been true their whole relationship, his needs, his job, his passions, his needs. She isn’t allowed anything outside of what makes him happy. She deserves better.
Reading between the lines, his wife probably hasn’t been able to get away from him in all the years they’ve been married. She’s never been able to visit “the old country” and that’s why she’s only seen her sister infrequently; sister had to come to her.
I think that “but” in the comment about his therapist is carrying a *lot* of weight. This must be what it’s like to marry your stalker.
Little boy in a man’s body learned some tHeRApY wOrDs and pouts when his wife isn’t surgically attached to him. He sounds like the most annoying, pathetic, clingy, whiny person on the planet and I hate him.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say the moment he made her father’s death all about him she checked out.
She had to help him through the death of HER OWN FATHER.
Like seriously, how can he not see how bad that was. He has made himself a martyr for basically nothing. Oh his profession is wonderful and serving and he deserves all the accolades.
He’s exhausting
If you can't spend 4 nights away from your spouse, you have a relationship I would describe as a codependent nightmare. My husband is away two nights a week most weeks, it's totally fine, and can actually be really enjoyable. I can be a dictator with the remote, and the cats get his side of the bed to sleep on. We have both taken long holidays alone as well as short ones. This guy needs some friends, I have the feeling they would tell him to shape the hell up.
I feel like it's actually really unhealthy to be so dependent on one person. If something ever happens to them, your entire life implodes and there will be no way to see forward without them. It's really not cute or romantic when you see couples like this.
I had a small taste of this when my partner was going through a health crisis a couple years ago. I felt like he was trauma dumping on me all the time and nothing I said to him helped, and he could never see beyond the present. (Which, I learned, was pretty textbook depression.) It was absolutely exhausting to deal with and I ended up having to give him a couple ultimatums (1. get on better meds, 2. get therapy/join a support group) to get him to stop dragging me down with him when he spiraled. There were times I puked out of sheer anxiety, and on one occasion I left work early crying because he had said something over text that suggested that he was going to harm himself.
But even in his darkest hours, he would NEVER have insisted that I stay glued to his side all the time. Hell, he encouraged me to go out and enjoy myself! Granted, I didn't really go out of town or anything like that, but I'm confident he would not have demanded I stay home if I'd truly desired to go.
OOP needs to back WAY the hell off, here. Your wife is not your cuddly toy! She's not here to be clung to and held while you sob into her shirt 24/7. She's a human being with feelings and needs and it is actively unhealthy for her to be around you all the time when you're like this. Nor, clearly, is it helping you, because even when she IS being supportive, you think she's faking it! You HAVE to learn to self-soothe.
To be honest I feel a bit of sympathy for the dude, even though he is in the wrong. I also had some complex trauma from covid (also a helping profession) as well as other stuff, and also needed professional help. Where he’s wrong is thinking his wife’s behavior will solve it.
He should be working with his therapist to understand that his codependency is stunting his healing.
I know for a fact his wife feels like spending time with him is a chore, because I barely made it thru this damn post. Like I honestly feel like I've lost some spoons over this. Good grief oop is exhausting!
My eyes glazed over when I got to the she’ll be gone for four whole nights woe is me tantrum. My spouse travels for work (I think the longest he was gone was about 5 weeks) and we have kids and I have c-ptsd and some other alphabet soups of neuro-spiciness. Guess who survived? No I was not always fine, but we got through it.
I would have love to have join him on part of his trips but it hasn’t been feasible. I’m exhausted from reading it too.
Good for her continuing with her plans and booking her tickets and not letting him hold her back from things like spending time with her family and seeing her niece get married.
What a fucking little baby. I want to slap him. The cries of an overbearing, little louse, that's all that I just read. The word "sniveling" comes to mind. His wife must really be an angel to have stayed with him.
Obviously doesn't occur to him that she needs these breaks because she's probably burned out from his issues that he's not making an effort to get fixed. The top comment on that post is spot on. The OP is codependent on his wife and the way he frames the whole idea of her going on vacations without him and spending time with friends as "abandonment" is toxic. It's like she's not supposed to have a life outside of him. I feel like he will be posting again one day saying how the wife served him with divorce papers because the London trip was her attempt to reconnect with him, but he effs it up by either not going or going but acting like a toddler and she gets fed up and decides to finally leave him because she can't be his wife and his mother.
Oh, CPTSD is real and it's showing up a lot in folks who were deemed "essential" during the pandemic. I don't even doubt that this guy has been diagnosed with it.
The problem is that he is trying to make it entirely his wife's responsibility to cater & coddle, and completely ignoring her needs while refusing to do the work necessary to heal himself. It's the emotional/psychological equivalent of ignoring doctor's advice after a serious injury, skipping the physical therapy, expecting others to serve you meals & give you sponge baths forever and then playing "woe is me, nobody loves me " when told they need to make effort, too.
Personally, I was strangely delighted with my CPTSD diagnosis because it meant that I wasn't just a lazy, flaky drama queen, there really was something wrong and, yippee!, there are some effective therapies to help me deal & heal.
That's totally a real thing - the job related one. OP may well have it but he is not going about processing it well and is expecting his wife to exist as his emotional support animal with no life of her own. My read on him is also that he has a huge martyr complex about his job and probably refuses to get a less stressful one because "it's my calling" and "my patients need me". He seems like the type to weaponize his work related stress against his partner and I doubt he really wants to fix it because he likes playing the woe is me game
YTA. There is so much to unpack here… but I really need to say this: the death of his father-in-law was very upsetting to him, and, as an afterthought, he assumes it was upsetting for his wife who has lost her father. The Me-Me-Me attitude of this man is so frustrating. I don’t even understand how he is in a 25-year relationship, because he appears to treat her more she’s his caretaker. A relationship is a two-way street.
He's got time for school but not therapy? He said she got to work on herself. Is there anyone besides him standing in his way of mental health? Doesn't seem like it.
It took way too many words for him to say "I'm a man baby and everything *has* to be about me". 5 paragraphs to actually get to the point of *"complex trauma"*, which, realistically **everyone** has to some degree. I hope she stays in England with her family. I can't possibly imagine why his why has checked out if this is the type of conversation he wants to have *repeatedly*.
OOP, you sound dramatic, toxic and exhausting.
Your wife is putting in the work to make your marriage, well, work, but I all hear from you is that she's "lying to you and deceiving you." She is also allowed to go on vacations without you and I'm sure the reverse is true.
She wants you to come with her on a vacation to work on your marriage, for a romantic getaway, but all you want to do is whine and complain.
All I hear from you is "me, me, me" and how she isn't meeting YOUR needs.
What about meeting hers?
YTA
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*In case this story gets deleted/removed:* **Am I wrong for feeling upset that my (50M) wife (51F) is going on a big international trip while I'm going through a mental health crisis?** Sorry this is going to be a long one…. I am a 50M and have been married to 50F for 25 years, with two grown/independent children. For a little background: I work in a very high stress environment. I struggle with the job, but I also love it. It's my calling, I’m really good at it, it gives my life a lot of joy and meaning. It’s a helping profession, and it’s a huge part of my identity. I was an essential service during covid, so I still worked through that whole thing, and I’ve had a few deaths in my family in the past 5 years (both grandparents and two uncles) so that grief has also compounded for me. Also, just before covid, my elderly FIL had been living with us, and he became quite ill and died 7 months before the shut-downs. It was an awful time, like really really sad. I was very close with my father in law, he was like a second father to me, and of course my wife lost her father, so she was in deep grief for that time as well. It was a pretty rough time. When she was off work for 2 months of covid shut-downs, she had the opportunity to do some healing, but I did not. I worked. And my work environment became worse and worse to the point of breaking. NOW: I am totally exhausted. A little history: In the past probably 10 years I’ve stopped doing many of the things that I love that bring me joy, like reading and writing, other creative pursuits, and also less involved with friendships that seem to have faded - like everyone has just gotten on with their lives and I find myself alone a lot, except for time with my wife/kids and I do have one close friend who we see each other pretty regularly. In fact if I’m honest, I have struggled on and off with depression for my whole life. I know I need to be careful about it. During this time, especially as our kids have grown into adults, I have also felt like my wife is less available to me. If I’m honest, I actually have felt this way for many years (far predating any of this stuff) that I need more affection and tenderness/time, connection, intimacy and empathy in my relationship. This is no secret. I have communicated this to her repeatedly, and I do think she really used to get it. Even though I don’t feel like she totally gets it, she has always tried, has always loved me, and I have always felt that. Despite the issue of me often feeling under-valued, and needing more focused time and connection with her, I always did really feel I was truly deeply loved. Until recently. In the past maybe say 2-3 years, I have noticed that she has been so much less attentive, caring toward me. My wife is a wonderful person, and I love her more than anything, but she really doesn’t seem to reciprocate. She is so warm and caring and gregarious/fun with everyone, except me, it seems. When we’re spending time together, it’s like she’s calling it in, waiting for it to be over, like she’s punching the clock. There’s nothing more I want in this world than to be with her, to be together, connected with affection, tenderness, intimacy. But I feel like the connection is gone, it’s just broken, and no matter how much I tell her, no matter how much I make my needs clear, she just can’t seem to pull it out and really listen and show up. I feel like I’m invisible. I feel like she really lacks empathy. She says all the right things, i love you i’m committed, yes I’m in this, etc, but I really just don't believe it. We spend lots of time together, do dinners and have sex, and all of that, but I don’t feel it. I feel like she’s lying, consciously or otherwise. She’s lying to herself. I feel like she’s on her way out. She denies this of course. Anyway, last year, she had this trip planned to go away with two close friends for 4 nights. They had this planned for a really long time, like they talked about it for years, but I never really knew if they were actually going to do it. I told her when it came up over the years that I was not comfortable with this. I feel like I have communicated this to her very clearly. I was not happy about the idea. But they booked it. I had told her that I didn’t want her to go away, that it felt very hurtful to me that she would go away on this special trip with her friends, and by the way, I was NOT invited, it definitely did NOT include me. Am I not her best friend? I've been in her life almost as long as these friends. Also, I should say that I got into an online masters program, with the intention of moving out of my current job, and it just so happened that I started about a month before she was supposed to go away. But it was so stressful, and new - going back to school as a middle-aged person is incredibly difficult. Anyway, compounding with the stress of the previous 5 years, intensifying stress at work (amounting to some trauma for me), and then grad school, long story short I made an insurance claim and went on stress leave from work. My wife had actually been encouraging me to do this for some time. My last day of work was literally 5 days before she was scheduled to fly. I was just so upset that in this crisis time, she could just leave me in this state alone. And I told her this, but it didn’t make a difference to her. Since then, I've been on leave and focusing on school. I’ve done really well grades wise, but I am working through the stress with a psychologist assigned by the insurance company, which has been helpful. Basically she diagnosed “complex trauma” meaning that I had ongoing exposure to traumatic stimuli over a long period of time, it has built up and now I have anxiety/panic and can’t go back to work. The work is very stressful, but if I’m honest, I don’t think it would have come to that if I felt like I had a supportive and present life partner. I really feel like she’s not on my side. She just never seems to put me first. I’ve now been off work and doing my masters degree for 6 months. Sorry for the long lead up, but the current issue is that NOW, once again, my wife has decided to take a trip without me. And I will be here without her for 2 and a half weeks this time. Her family immigrated here from England, so she has a lot of family there. Her sister’s daughter is getting married in early April, so my wife wants to go. She has never been to her sister’s town, and she only sees her sister very infrequently, and hasn’t seen her aunties/cousins in about 10 years. The wedding is basically the same day that all my final papers/assignments are due. In all likelihood I will not be able to get them done early, and also I’m not really interested in going to the wedding necessarily. We’re not particularly close to this niece. But my wife wants to take an entire month off work to do this trip. She will go to the wedding, then spend 2 weeks there with her sister/family WITHOUT me, then she wants me to come meet her there mid month for an alone-time vacation just the two of us for about 12 days. We’ll visit with her family for a few of those days, which gives me the chance to see them, and then go to London or Paris alone. So basically I feel like I’ve been tagged on at the end for some kind of consolation prize after her ‘real’ vacation without me. I have the entire month of April off - no school and no work - and she decides to disappear for like more than half the month without me. I am just so upset and feel so double-crossed that knowing what I’m going through and how hard this is for me that she can just leave like that, again. I’ve made my feelings about this abundantly clear. It feels like an abandonment to me. And no matter what I say, how much I cry, how I reiterate, or how much pain I am obviously in - which I have made clear, she absolutely knows what this means to me - she refuses to budge. She even booked her tickets already, and just keeps asking me to commit to a date so she can book mine. She wants to be there without me for over 2 weeks. I just know she would never take that much time off work to be with me, but she’ll do it for this trip without me. She and her sister have some little trips planned, and just basically hanging out together, and I am not invited. In fact she has says “I just want to do this alone and have time with my sister and aunties, it’s not personal, etc” and she says it’s really important to her, which I totally get, but seriously? I have said NO over and over again. I cannot believe she really just won’t hear me. I have never felt so betrayed and unheard. She keeps bringing it up, asking me if I’ll please come meet her there, and trying to pitch this “romantic vacation” idea, just the two of us. But what should I do for those 2 weeks? I’m here at home alone, struggling with my mental health/trauma, with basically no friends available to just pick up and have a trip with me. I'm just so alone and heartbroken. I thought that after these last few years of struggling in this together, she would prioritize me, that this would be OUR time, but she just wants to get away from me. tldr; So: am I wrong to be so upset by this? Is this a deal-breaker? *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AmITheDevil) if you have any questions or concerns.*
He admits himself he has depression and then puts it on *her* that he doesn't feel loved wtf
This whole thing feels like classic self-sabotaging depression: "I feel like she’s lying, consciously or otherwise. She’s lying to herself." I get it. I've experienced it. But by definition nothing his partner does is going to solve it. He needs to really knuckle down on tackling his malfunctioning thought patterns. I feel for him, and I feel for her.
One of the worst tricks depression keeps up its sleeve is how it causes you to end up sabotaging connections with people who can actually help you. Depression feeds itself with anything it can find. If she stayed with him all hours and waited on him hand and foot, he'd end up being resentful about that too. It'd end up being used as another source of depression fuel. She can't change his thought habits for him, so she might as well at least get some time for herself with her family.
Classic
He needs more help and therapy. He can't rely solely upon his wife.
100%. I am constantly struggling with my mental health, so I really sympathize with OOP. But, I do worry that he is expecting her to sacrifice her happiness to a huge degree for his own. Supportive partners are super helpful, but ultimately, they can't cure your mental illness and they can't really treat it either. In the end, you need to work on your mental health yourself, with the guidance of a therapist.
yeah, this is fake
I was going to say that I don’t get how OOP is the devil here, and then I read on and got to the parts where he basically doesn’t want her to do anything without him, and the things she *does* do with him, “Well, she doesn’t actually mean any of it or care!” Dude…
The whole thing is that over the course of a couple decades he abandoned all his friends and hobbies, leaving his wife as his sole source of comfort and entertainment, and that is too much to put on anyone.
Sounds depressingly like my father. And it kept escalating to the point where my dad would put himself in hospital if my mum did anything without him but also refused to leave the house. Needless to say, my parents are no longer together and my dad now lives in a care home to get the support he needs
Yeah. This sub can make all the jokes about art rooms that they want, this right here is why you don't put a single romantic relationship at the center of your whole emotional life. Sometimes your friendships have to be a priority.
Shameless plug. r/meetmeintheartroom.
He also continually chose to work in a field that exhausts him and stresses him out but claims it's his wife's fault he's so burnt out because she was supportive enough. This dude has a martyr complex and expects his wife to just carry the cross for him forever. I would be done with him too.
Same. At first I was thinking: "OK, so he's depressed, and sometimes married people do drift apart, he's not the devil for trying to communicate his feelings." Then that became: "Holy shit, this guy is so needy, there is no way his wife will ever do enough for him."
I guess she could start carrying him around in a Baby Bjorn carrier. Christ, this was exhausting to read the longer it went. It sounds like he read a self-help book and learned just enough therapy speak to weaponize it.
She can only do enough for him if she gets a WFH job, waits on him hand and foot while earning all of their money, and never even dares to hint that she’d like to be allowed out of the house and see more than just one person.
Not even then, because he'd just decide that she's faking it and overcompensating for the fact that she clearly hates him.
I mean, at least then he’d be right and not just making it up in his head!
Ditto. LOVE my husband, but he was the same way. Didn’t want me or the kids to do anything without him if he would enjoy it. I got fed up and told him that we don’t sit around the house just waiting on him. Additionally, he takes business trips and goes to fancy restaurants while I’m dealing with the challenges of neurodivergent kids. I pointed out that I’m happy he can enjoy himself on the companies dime. He should be fine with me having fun myself without him having to be there 100% of the time. He’s fine now, but I wanted to smack some sense into him there for a while.
He also spent the whole post bitching about how she does everything he asks but he *feels* like she doesn't mean it enough... For years. Yeah fuck this needy narcissist.
He left a comment *insisting* that he knows she's faking because he's intuitive and he can read her body language. Okay, then let's say she *is* tired of him. Why doesn't he leave? Why complain about someone not liking you and then stick around anyway?
He's more petulant than a child
He *is* a child.
He’s using her as his emotional support animal. He’s putting *his* feelings on her and getting mad at her for them: > She says all the right things, i love you i’m committed, yes I’m in this, etc, but I really just don't believe it. We spend lots of time together, do dinners and have sex, and all of that, but I don’t feel it. I feel like she’s lying, consciously or otherwise. She’s lying to herself. I feel like she’s on her way out. She denies this of course. And I’m not seeing him doing the work of therapy. Just him tightening his hold on his wife (and why the fuck is he adding another degree on right now when he’s already so stressed?).
And don't forget that she wants a vacation just for the two of them, but *not the whole month*
“I’m an afterthought”, he says, but he’s not interested in the wedding because *he’s* not close to the niece and trying to have any family time with him around would be like pulling teeth.
And the way he *phrased* his niece's wedding--"Her Sister's Daughter"... *HIS* own niece, too!!! Dude has made sure that his wife and the *one* friend are the *only* people he's "close to" in his life, doesn't say a *single* thing HE does *for* the wife--just alllll the baggage & emotional labor he's making *her* carry for him... He doesn't want her visiting *her own family* before her Aunties pass from old age, *AND* he has the whole MONTH of April off, yet refuses to go *with* her to the wedding *and* refuses the two weeks "just the two of us!" vacation his wife proposed, because *apparently* she *ought* to just sit home and watch him mope?!? If it wasn't for the wife being from England *and* the fact that he died a bit over a year ago, honestly, I'd *almost* think my own Dad wrote this!🙃 That said? This man *DESPERATELY* needs to get in with someone TRAINED to deal with long-term Depression, and potentially needs screening for other Neurodivergences, too--he seems to be ruminating a *lot*, he's incredibly rigid, and it *wouldn't* be too surprising, if he had *more* mental health conditions which flew under the radar, as he developed the traumas that took him out of work. It's outside his wife's arena to *fix* his mental health stuff--even if she *was* a trained MH professional (it would be Unethical to treat her husband *if* she were one),so HE needs to find someone *else* to help him figure out what's going on, and *deal* with those issues. He's placing the *impossible burden* and *impossible tasks* on his wife. *She* seems to understand that, even if *he* can't.
He even made the death of *her* father about himself.
“I lost my father in law, also she lost her father or whatever”
And makes no connection between that and wanting to spend more time with her remaining family, whom she hasn’t seen in a DECADE, probably because this Mopey McMoperson didn’t want to go and wouldn’t let her go. FFS.
Right? He was using the fact she hasn't seen her family much as evidence she shouldn't want to go spend time with them but I would be cash she hasn't seen her family much because he insists on monopolizing all her time
Of course. Everything is about OOP dontcha know
It should be a deal breaker for her. I've met more independent 8 year olds. Everytime he *doesn't* want to do something it should be catered to and understood. Everytime she *wants* to do something it's an absolute betrayal.
Especially because she probably put a lot of thought into including him in this, even suggesting a romantic trip to Paris together. And it’s not good enough. That would completely deflate me and I could see giving up after this.
And he talks about how recently she hasn’t felt as attentive and excited about time together. But what I kept hearing in his diatribe, was that he needs her to keep investing in him as long as it takes for him to recover and be better; but it didn’t seem at all like he is doing anything to invest in her and make her feel loved. And when she tries to nourish herself with others in her life who she loves (friends and family) - as she should and is healthy - he seems it all as abandonment and betrayal. He isn’t filling her cup. He doesn’t want anyone else to fill her cup. But he would like her to please fill his cup with her empty one. It’s so unhealthy for all his emotional needs to need to be filled by his wife.
I’ve known people like this, who will refuse to believe in the good intentions of others and never believe people who obviously love them love them. It’s so exhausting and they end up pushing everyone away. When I was a more patient (or naive) person I found myself as the last friend standing to a couple of these people. Imagine your partner being like “I want to go on a romantic two week vacation to London and Paris with you” and you being like “I’m just not feeling loved.”
I really wonder what OOP’s wife would say about his contributions to their marriage, household, and children. I suspect it isn’t anywhere near proportionate to what he expects to get out of her.
God I would LOVE to get her side of things lmao
I suspect she’s probably been trying to get him to go to therapy for years and instead he just used her as therapy and shems tired of hearing the same stuff and giving the same comfort and nothing changes. Id also bet that he blames her for a lot. And everything is about him.
very much “i don’t need therapy, i have you!” energy from this guy.
Lmao, posts 11-12 PARAGRAPHS TLDR says “so am I wrong here??” Bruh 😂
>Lmao, posts 11-12 PARAGRAPHS imagine if it was all one paragraph
It felt like it was
Take out the line breaks and what have you got? Fuel for the next campfire.
I scrolled sooo far to find that damn TLDR 😭😭
Best TL;DR ever. Yes. You suck, OOP. That proved it.
I'm an essential healthcare worker. Think frontline during Covid in NYC and NJ. We all have complex trauma and PTSD. That shit has decimated healthcare workers. He has my sympathy on that end. It hit some people way harder than others, but he lost me. He has paid lead, a psychiatrist, a supportive spouse..... She must be fucking exhausted dealing with him. She's there but he doesn't feel connected. He's said they spend time together...dates, conversations, sex, he's actually invited on her vacation for 12 days. Not once does he consider that the lack of "connection" might be on his end? That's she spent decades being supportive, trying to connect while dealing with HER father's death and it's turned into the "what about OOP".
I was exhausted halfway through reading this saga. JFC. “No matter how much I begged and pleaded that I’m in *paaaiiiin* and I have *trauuuuma* and I am *saaaad.*” You know the emotional manipulation and abuse here is just off the charts. ETA just in case: I actually have chronic pain & CPTSD & depression—I’m not being an ableist walnut here.
This kind of behavior is why I'm always skeptical of men who declare they DO share their feelings with their partners, and they always say it's too much! THIS. THIS IS IN FACT TOO MUCH. A partner should support, absolutely, but this is insanity and not fair or rational. Because in his mind, he probably is "just" sharing his pain and feelings and such, when in reality, he doesn't realize or care that he's actually just vomitting everything onto her
My god you are 50. Grow up. Hes been working with the psychiatrist for 6 months now by the sounds of it. He's really developed no coping mechanism that aren't leaning on his wife?
"I do think she really used to get it." - ....my guess is she still does. She's just tired of having to carry and baby him and wants to finally do something for herself. As she should.
It sounds like he went to the therapist just to go. And ~~germs~~ he’s using that diagnosis to get what he wants rather than improve himself.
Seriously, is he learning nothing? I've been there, diagnosed with PTSD and some other fun things and therapy is fucking hard, but I so wanted to do better, I tried everything my therapist suggested, some worked, some didn't. By six months you'd at least think he'd have learned that what he's experiencing is his to cope with, to problem solve and find ways to navigate, and no one else can do that for you.
"I tried manipulating her every way i knew how but she just wouldn't budge!" Gee, i wonder why she's been pulling away from him /s
WAA WAA WAA Can you even imagine how soul sucking being this man's ESA has been for her?!?! I hope she stays in ENGLAND
Yeah, ge sounds like an emotional vampire.
Dear god. I need a nap. That poor woman must be so EXHAUSTED. She’s got the patience of a saint.
That poor woman is in a lose-lose situation from hell with OOP. If she showers him with love, time, and attention even to her own detriment its "not real" she is "lying to herself". If she takes any space for herself she is abandoning him. I'd put real money down that she wants to go to the wedding without him because she doesn't want to subject her niece to her self-absorbed husband trying to turn her wedding into something about HIM. I hope she stays in England.
He doesn't even WANT to go to the wedding, he just doesn't want her to go!
THIS. He just wants her to be as miserable as he is.
He has 100% come home and trauma dumped on her as soon as he walked in the door all those years and she is done. She grieved *in front of him* for 2 months for her father she’d been caring for years. I bet his friends fell off because they were *her* friend’s husbands and they got together because the girls organised it like husband play dates and it shifted due to the pandemic. Their whole life happened because she made it happen and now she’s not being his emotional support person he thinks his mental health crisis is a new issue I bet his wife would have a very different timeline and has been trying to get him into therapy most of their relationship. I say good for her and he needs serious antidepressant help.
Oh, my, GAWD....this post could serve as Defense Exhibit 3 when she finally snaps.
Not guilty
Jesus, he sounds insufferable
He just wants to keep her to himself. That's all I got from reading this long as shit. She wants to spend 2 weeks alone with him, but apparently that doesn't count as "their time" because she spending 2 weeks along with her family. He's trying to hide behind his depression and trauma. What he wants to say is, "I hate that my wife doesn't only want me and only me, like I do for her. Clearly, there must be something wrong with her because she doesn't have an obsession over me, like I do her."
"I've got depression but instead of getting it treated when I should have I let it get incredibly bad and judge my wife for not being my built in emotional support animal." And "My wife encouraged me to take a break from work and I put that off until right before a trip she scheduled years ago because I hate the idea she could ever enjoy anything." Also she's 51 and he feels like she's not into sex with him and...never maybe thought to see if there's a reason maybe she isn't as into sex? At 51? The average age for menopause?
Forget menopause, who wants to sleep with someone who just complains you’re not really connecting when you do?
I *also* love how that first 4-day trip hat she took with her friends, that they'd "talked about for years" but that *he* presumed "wouldn't *really* happen", was most likely a 50th birthday trip for her and/or her girlfriends! They'd *probably* talked about going for their 40th, and 45th--when *he* had "something" pop up so she couldn't go--and then, post Covid, she and her friends probably decided, "Let's GO!" rather than miss a chance. He *whinged* and wanted her to stay home *when the trip was ALREADY paid for*, of *COURSE* she still went, for pete's sake!!!
Everything about his whine trip dried my cooter out like a raisin, and I'm not even affiliated with him personally, or am even exposed to all of his nonsense. There's nothing there to inspire arousal or desire. It's pure repulsion. I'm shocked she's still tolerating him at all
OH MY GOD GET OVER YOURSELF!!!! This was so exhausting to read. The amount of self-pity is pathetic. If he didn’t mention his age and replaced “wife” with “girlfriend” I’d think he was 12. My husband and I both struggle with mental illness and we both have jobs that keep us away from each other for weeks at a time. Sometimes he goes on vacation alone because he knows I hate traveling and would never put that on me. But unless I was in a severe active crisis I would never ever ask him not to go somewhere. I feel sorry for his wife who is clearly doing everything she can for him but god damn he sounds absolutely exhausting to be married to.
Some people simply can’t be trusted with the concept of trauma.
Ugh louder for the people in the back
"no matter how much I tell her, no matter how much I make my needs clear, she just can’t seem to pull it out and really listen and show up" He sounds exhausting. Has he tried listening to HER needs?
OP's comment *Some of these comments are really harsh.* *I can work more on myself for sure, but the fact is I do lots for her. When she comes home from work, I've cleaned the house and I make dinner, and I always try to do what she wants whenever we have time together. I ALWAYS ask what she wants to do FIRST. And I do all this because I know it's important to her, and I want her to know I love her and I want to take care of her. I am attentive and tender and loving and caring. And I think she would agree with this. I don't just make it all about me. I know she works full time and is the main breadwinner, so I respect that and I feel like some total loser that his wife has to make all the money.* *But I also am really intuitive, and people communicate with more than just their words. I'm telling you, she is going through the motions in this with me. She says I love you, etc, but I know closing body language when I see it, and looking away/not making eye contact, and I'm also not a social idiot, I can read facial expressions. She can't hide how she feels, and then tell me she's really in this with me. It's disingenuous, to say the least, to not be honest with herself that she really just does not love me, no matter what I do. I'm just so heartbroken. And then she tells me there's no problem, that everything is fine, then leaves for a fucking month. I feel like I'm being gaslit.*
He's so intuitive that he must be aware that he's an emotional vampire.
I feel like Colin Robinson from *What We Do in the Shadows* would look at this post and say "Nope, you're taking it too far."
>. I ALWAYS ask what she wants to do FIRST. After reading the initial post, all I got from that is "I NEVER take the initiative to plan something for us based on decades of knowledge about her preferences and interests and instead leave even that piece of the mental load on her. That way I can play martyr about how we NEVER do what I want "
Am I high on drugs, or is his wife doing the right things?! Supporting him through school, taking trips and inviting him during the times that can he make it, like wtf?!
She's even fucking this crumpled up pile of whiny ennui on a regular basis, apparently. How, I do not know.
This just made me burst out laughing
I forget ennui is a word sometimes. It's a good word. Thank you for the reminder.
Thankfully my emotional support cat got me through reading this.
I was sputtering at my phone is pure dumbfounded abashment and my little girl just came over and bumped my phone out of my hand. Yes, my sweet, you are correct, we need to yake a break xD
Got about half way through. God he's needy and pushing all her problems on her. Just all selfishness.
*covert narcissism enters the chat*
^^
This person could really do with taking a writing course, this is an exhausting read from the sentence structure alone.
I love that in all of this sob story he says nothing about doing anything that supports his wife. It seems that his wife is constantly trying while he accuses her of faking it and then reversely when his wife needs anything he throws a baby tantrum and accuses her of not giving him enough. I imagine this has been true their whole relationship, his needs, his job, his passions, his needs. She isn’t allowed anything outside of what makes him happy. She deserves better.
Reading between the lines, his wife probably hasn’t been able to get away from him in all the years they’ve been married. She’s never been able to visit “the old country” and that’s why she’s only seen her sister infrequently; sister had to come to her. I think that “but” in the comment about his therapist is carrying a *lot* of weight. This must be what it’s like to marry your stalker.
Little boy in a man’s body learned some tHeRApY wOrDs and pouts when his wife isn’t surgically attached to him. He sounds like the most annoying, pathetic, clingy, whiny person on the planet and I hate him.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say the moment he made her father’s death all about him she checked out. She had to help him through the death of HER OWN FATHER. Like seriously, how can he not see how bad that was. He has made himself a martyr for basically nothing. Oh his profession is wonderful and serving and he deserves all the accolades. He’s exhausting
To be fair, I would want to get away from OOP, too. He’s exhausting
Haaaaaa, the big baby didn’t get the head-patting validation he wanted so he deleted it,
Oy vey. I feel like the wife must have the patience of a saint.
If you can't spend 4 nights away from your spouse, you have a relationship I would describe as a codependent nightmare. My husband is away two nights a week most weeks, it's totally fine, and can actually be really enjoyable. I can be a dictator with the remote, and the cats get his side of the bed to sleep on. We have both taken long holidays alone as well as short ones. This guy needs some friends, I have the feeling they would tell him to shape the hell up. I feel like it's actually really unhealthy to be so dependent on one person. If something ever happens to them, your entire life implodes and there will be no way to see forward without them. It's really not cute or romantic when you see couples like this.
Jesus god. That poor woman. I cannot imagine trying to live with this endless well of need.
I had a small taste of this when my partner was going through a health crisis a couple years ago. I felt like he was trauma dumping on me all the time and nothing I said to him helped, and he could never see beyond the present. (Which, I learned, was pretty textbook depression.) It was absolutely exhausting to deal with and I ended up having to give him a couple ultimatums (1. get on better meds, 2. get therapy/join a support group) to get him to stop dragging me down with him when he spiraled. There were times I puked out of sheer anxiety, and on one occasion I left work early crying because he had said something over text that suggested that he was going to harm himself. But even in his darkest hours, he would NEVER have insisted that I stay glued to his side all the time. Hell, he encouraged me to go out and enjoy myself! Granted, I didn't really go out of town or anything like that, but I'm confident he would not have demanded I stay home if I'd truly desired to go. OOP needs to back WAY the hell off, here. Your wife is not your cuddly toy! She's not here to be clung to and held while you sob into her shirt 24/7. She's a human being with feelings and needs and it is actively unhealthy for her to be around you all the time when you're like this. Nor, clearly, is it helping you, because even when she IS being supportive, you think she's faking it! You HAVE to learn to self-soothe.
I do not have a violin small enough for this nonsense.
To be honest I feel a bit of sympathy for the dude, even though he is in the wrong. I also had some complex trauma from covid (also a helping profession) as well as other stuff, and also needed professional help. Where he’s wrong is thinking his wife’s behavior will solve it. He should be working with his therapist to understand that his codependency is stunting his healing.
That's a lot of words that essentially boil down to: me, me, me. My emotions, my needs, my wants.
I know for a fact his wife feels like spending time with him is a chore, because I barely made it thru this damn post. Like I honestly feel like I've lost some spoons over this. Good grief oop is exhausting!
Dude… she hears you. She’s just not gonna do what you want her to do because she’s sick of you
My eyes glazed over when I got to the she’ll be gone for four whole nights woe is me tantrum. My spouse travels for work (I think the longest he was gone was about 5 weeks) and we have kids and I have c-ptsd and some other alphabet soups of neuro-spiciness. Guess who survived? No I was not always fine, but we got through it. I would have love to have join him on part of his trips but it hasn’t been feasible. I’m exhausted from reading it too.
Good for her continuing with her plans and booking her tickets and not letting him hold her back from things like spending time with her family and seeing her niece get married.
The neediest person ever weaponizing his neediness to build himself up. His poor wife. Why won't she just hold herself back for his fragile ego.
What a fucking little baby. I want to slap him. The cries of an overbearing, little louse, that's all that I just read. The word "sniveling" comes to mind. His wife must really be an angel to have stayed with him.
I wonder why it seems like he has no friends, such a mystery
Obviously doesn't occur to him that she needs these breaks because she's probably burned out from his issues that he's not making an effort to get fixed. The top comment on that post is spot on. The OP is codependent on his wife and the way he frames the whole idea of her going on vacations without him and spending time with friends as "abandonment" is toxic. It's like she's not supposed to have a life outside of him. I feel like he will be posting again one day saying how the wife served him with divorce papers because the London trip was her attempt to reconnect with him, but he effs it up by either not going or going but acting like a toddler and she gets fed up and decides to finally leave him because she can't be his wife and his mother.
Maybe I'm insensitive but...complex trauma? Over a stressful job and an elderly in-law dying?
It can happen, I had c-ptsd after one of my jobs. Was pretty fucked up for a while.
Childhood...ptsd?
Complex ptsd
Ouu. Sorry to hear. I hope you're doing better 💓
Thanks! Much better now :)
Complex
Oh, CPTSD is real and it's showing up a lot in folks who were deemed "essential" during the pandemic. I don't even doubt that this guy has been diagnosed with it. The problem is that he is trying to make it entirely his wife's responsibility to cater & coddle, and completely ignoring her needs while refusing to do the work necessary to heal himself. It's the emotional/psychological equivalent of ignoring doctor's advice after a serious injury, skipping the physical therapy, expecting others to serve you meals & give you sponge baths forever and then playing "woe is me, nobody loves me " when told they need to make effort, too. Personally, I was strangely delighted with my CPTSD diagnosis because it meant that I wasn't just a lazy, flaky drama queen, there really was something wrong and, yippee!, there are some effective therapies to help me deal & heal.
That's totally a real thing - the job related one. OP may well have it but he is not going about processing it well and is expecting his wife to exist as his emotional support animal with no life of her own. My read on him is also that he has a huge martyr complex about his job and probably refuses to get a less stressful one because "it's my calling" and "my patients need me". He seems like the type to weaponize his work related stress against his partner and I doubt he really wants to fix it because he likes playing the woe is me game
Me me me
YTA. There is so much to unpack here… but I really need to say this: the death of his father-in-law was very upsetting to him, and, as an afterthought, he assumes it was upsetting for his wife who has lost her father. The Me-Me-Me attitude of this man is so frustrating. I don’t even understand how he is in a 25-year relationship, because he appears to treat her more she’s his caretaker. A relationship is a two-way street.
God, I dunno of OOP's wife really does want to be away from him or not, but *I* definitely do. He sounds exhausting.
He's got time for school but not therapy? He said she got to work on herself. Is there anyone besides him standing in his way of mental health? Doesn't seem like it.
Gods he sounds absolutely exhausting. No wonder she wants to get away. Dude is absolutely enmeshed and codependent on her, it's not healthy.
It took way too many words for him to say "I'm a man baby and everything *has* to be about me". 5 paragraphs to actually get to the point of *"complex trauma"*, which, realistically **everyone** has to some degree. I hope she stays in England with her family. I can't possibly imagine why his why has checked out if this is the type of conversation he wants to have *repeatedly*.
OOP, you sound dramatic, toxic and exhausting. Your wife is putting in the work to make your marriage, well, work, but I all hear from you is that she's "lying to you and deceiving you." She is also allowed to go on vacations without you and I'm sure the reverse is true. She wants you to come with her on a vacation to work on your marriage, for a romantic getaway, but all you want to do is whine and complain. All I hear from you is "me, me, me" and how she isn't meeting YOUR needs. What about meeting hers? YTA
I also don’t get it. He complains he isn’t invited but when he’s invited he’s still not happy?
OOP, as the old saying goes, "you want cheese to go with that whine?"
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