SOWHATNOW- I'm terribly sorry that you are living without love or a decent man in your life. Your statement about your husband, " He doesn't want his life disrupted ". I think it's high time that you " disrupt " his life. You've put up with too much selfishness on this man's part for WAYYYY too long. Ask him to go to marriage counseling with you to improve your marriage ( if that's what you want to do ) and if he refuses - start making plans to either leave him and start a new life on your own in order to find happiness - or settle on being miserable the rest of your life. Seems like your only options at this point. Life is way too short to stay in a relationship when all you are going to be is miserable the rest of your life. Sounds like you have some important life decisions to make here. I wish you the best. If it was me experiencing what you've been through - I'd have left LONG ago and left my selfish partner in the dust. But that's just me. Hang in there, we are here for you if you ever want to talk
can an unhappy married woman vent?
by sowhatnow 45 Replies latest social relationships
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GrreatTeacher
If your name is on the deed, you own half the house. You're probably entitled to half his retirement already even if he's still working. You have more power than you realize.
So, go to a counselor, sure. They're going to ask you what you want out of life, and if you're not getting that in your marriage, then why do you stay?
What kind of payoff are you getting by staying? Security? Is that enough to trade for the negatives that you are dealing with?
A counselor will help you this kind of an inventory, but the bottom line is :What do you want?
Do you really know what you want right now?
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NeverKnew
marking to reply later
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Sail Away
kurtbethel: “You are a tenant who lives in a nice big house, rent free. Your husband is paying all the bills, and rightfully asserts his say over what goes on in his home. . . In all those years of easy life letting someone you don't love pay your bills, you never made a viable plan to change your situation. It looks like you set yourself up for this. How sad.”
sowhatnow, I am so sorry that you felt the need to defend yourself here on this forum due to such a uncalled for verbal assault. Most of us here understand that JWs marry young and for all the wrong reasons. Essentially, we enter into an arranged marriage. Maybe, it wasn’t arranged by our parents, the organization arranged it. We were taught to play by their rules.
besmart rightfully stated, “If you were raised a witness they set you up.... doesn't matter if you married a "worldly". The man is the "head".
Frankly, the headship principle is misogynistic crap from a patriarchal society! Marriage partners should be just that—partners. You have as much right to say what goes on in your family home as your husband does. Please don’t feel “guilty for not working full-time outside the home and getting a real paycheck.” Do you see how you have taken on your husband’s hurtful attitude toward yourself? No wonder you are depressed. You said you ran your home, raised your children and did back breaking house cleaning as well. You do deserve respect and affection, and yes, you can ask your husband to stop drinking. It is up to you to decide what behaviors you will accept and what behaviors are deal breakers for you. We set boundaries for ourselves, not others.
As JW wives, we were not taught to be assertive. We were essentially told to put up and shut up. It is not disrespectful to speak up for yourself. Please listen to the other posters who have encouraged you to get counseling. One of the best things I did for myself when I left was to go for Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) for my severe, recurrent clinical depression and PTSD. You will learn sorely needed communication and coping skills. In my opinion, it is more important right now for you to learn these skills than it is to go to marriage counseling with a man who likely doesn’t want to go to a therapist anyway. There is time enough for that later when you are feeling stronger.
The entire DBT program takes about 4-5 months. It is evidence-based therapy, and it works! Here is a link to the DBT handbook. The communication skill called DEAR MAN is on pages 20-21. It outlines how to ask for what you want in an assertive way.
http://www.bipolarsjuk.se/pdf/Handbook%20in%20DBT%20Group.pdf
Hugs,
Sail Away
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LisaRose
I am sorry you are in a bad situation right now. You need to start valuing yourself, whether you make money outside the home or not, you deserve respect and an equal say in family decisions, period, end of story. If your husband doesn't get that, then maybe it's time you left, nothing can be worse than being treated like a second class citizen.
I have been in both situations, the main breadwinner and now a stay at home wife. I hate not earning a paycheck, but that is the reality for me right now due to health issues. At first I felt that I didn't deserve a say in financial matters, or to buy things without asking, but I got over that. I do all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, gardening and home repairs, plus volonteer work, so why should I feel like a charity case? We are married, it's a partnership. It my case it was my own problem to deal with, it wasn't coming from my husband, but maybe if you start to feel better about yourself your husband will get that you aren't going to be a doormat. If he doesn't, well, then maybe it's not a marriage worth saving. Of course it's scary to think about being on your own at this age, but there are all kind of programs available for people in your situation, you might be surprised. Now is the time to contact a woman's shelter and find out what your options are.
Really, life is too short to be miserable.
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sowhatnow
oh dont worry about it, im not a bit upset or offended over a comment that led me to post that i have to defending myself, Im
im sure it wasnt meant to be read as a verbal assult,
remember, not tone on text, lol,
I know what the poster was going for with that, reasoning. but i figured id clarify so as not to leave unanswered questions.
well as with all of us it take a year to explain all the ins and outs of our messed up past lives. its like a puzzle, when we find out why 'this' was , then 'that' makes sense.
one of you said 'do you know what you want' , i have no idea, it was never about what I wanted but rather what 'jehovah' wanted.
so I ve never thought about it.
what I want is my past 20 years back when I had the energy to do something! and thats not happening. What I want I cant have. what I want Ill most likely never get to experience, namely, meeting someone with the same intrests as me , falling in love with that person, sharing freinds and family, and doing good things for others with that person.
I dont have the evergy and means now, to get involved in world affairs, hug trees , local politics, join the pta, own my own buisness or design cars houses , do photography , publish a magazine , design greeting cards, or all the other interesting things I used to ponder while raising my kids.
I dont think like that because i consider myself already 'blessed' while so many others have nothing. I tend to look at what others dont have and what i do have and then reason, that i complain for no reason!
now im running out of strength, i dont have it in me physically to work a 40 hour work week. thats a problem for me because how does one support themselves with not enough income? I have no useful 'resume'. when my husband left me two yeas ago, i got a job as a cashier, I was a horrible cashier, they kept giving me fewer and fewer hours to make me quit.
selling shoes was ok but too competitive where i was, too many employees and then they wrote me off the scedual, i was too slow .
I cant bend a lot, lower back issues, or lift anything heavy, kids annoy me, so i wont babysit. plus i cant lift them. Im allergic to chemicals soaps and perfumes,so any store that puts scents in thier air blowers to make the store smell nice. I cant be in there for long, so working in a craft store or gift shop is out.
so in my mind, I have no way to save money with the goal of leaving, when i do have a casual housecleaning job its goes in the gas tank so i can go someplace extra.
Im unfortunately dependant on someone taking financial care of me while I help out with all the duties a wife can do when she can.
i dont mind being a wife, what i mind is being treated like a fleshly sister and not a wife. I get no comforting when Im sad, but Im his right arm,
no fun, no sex, no date nite, no freinds ,no common intrests. so im basically single now.
Im not so rotten as to demand that my husband sell the house and give me half. though I can. he has not done anything in the past few years that any judge would consider good enough reason to demand he surrender half his assets.
I always have it in the back of my mind that if I have to leave , I can and will, and Im certain that I will have half his retirement. which will not be too much anyway. my car is in my name though its got almost 100000 miles on it. so how long is that going to hold up? Im sure I could stay on his insurence somehow, dont know how, he told me if were divorced, i get kicked off it. hed also allow me to use the credit card if i needed something like a repair or food or a utility paid. he wouldnt leave me high and dry, but If I left for no reason in his mind, he might give me a fight.
I have had many discussions with him about his drinking, he has tried to stop several times , and then caved in about week 3. he wont go to AAA becasue someone where he works said al lthey do it talk. well my husband is private and rarely talks.
so its all a matter of what circumstance is going to arrise to change the path? and for that I wait.
im off to bed, thanks all for such good advice. will look into some of those sugestions.
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Sail Away
sowhatnow, I don't know you, and no one really knows what goes on behind closed doors. The thing I do know is that I have been where you are. You are stuck. A good therapist will help you get unstuck. JW doctrine teaches that couples should stay married no matter what. It teaches that we are worthless specks of dust and that any pursuit of personal interest that may bring us joy is "vanity" and a waste time. Life is short. I got out when I was 52 also. I'm making up for lost time rather than wasting away the rest of my life on regret.
I opened the WT Libray and typed in "speck of dust". This is the latest WT magazine reference recycling it's old vomit from 1957. This is what I grew up with. It is not truth, it is a manipulative lie to get people to serve WT corporate interests.
*** w97 2/15 p. 16 “The Whole Obligation of Man” ***
The Watchtower once made this insightful comment: “We should not waste this life on vanities . . . If this life is all there is, there is nothing important. This life is like a ball thrown into the air that soon falls into the dust again. It is a fleeting shadow, a fading flower, a blade of grass to be cut and soon withered. . . . On the scales of eternity our life span is a negligible speck. In the stream of time it is not even a healthy drop. Certainly [Solomon] is right when he reviews life’s many human concerns and activities and pronounces them vanity. We are so soon gone we might as well have never come, one of billions to come and go, with so few ever knowing we were here at all. This view is not cynical or somber or morose or morbid. It is truth, a fact to face, a practical view, if this life is all there is.”—August 1, 1957, page 472.
sowhatnow, " no fun, no sex, no date nite, no freinds ,no common intrests. so im basically single now."
I get that you really believe you are dependent and trapped financially because of poor health and lack of education. Please hear me when I tell you I was there. Your health and energy levels will improve when your depression is properly addressed.
Hold your husband to a higher standard. My husband is a much better husband now that I throw down the B*ll Sh*t Card when he tries to play the Headhip Card. Teach your husband how to treat you well. And before anyone jumps on me for maligning my husband on the Internet, please know that I leave my computer logged in to JWN, and we discuss my posts here and his posts on the ex-JW Reddit. I wouldn't say anything here that I haven't already said to his face.
sowhatnow, "Im not so rotten as to demand that my husband sell the house and give me half. though I can. he has not done anything in the past few years that any judge would consider good enough reason to demand he surrender half his assets."
You already own half of all community property. They are not "his assets" to "surrender". His actions in the last few years would not factor into any judge's decision, but they should factor into yours.
By the way, my therapist says the best lies have some element of truth to them. Yes, ultimately human life is infintesimally small in the universal scheme of things, but that doesn't mean the WT conculsions about that fact are truth. Enough said.
Wishing you happiness,
Sail Away
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LV101
sowhatnow - I wasn't targeting anyone in particular and I apologize if I came across like that. We've all seen and lived thru too much relationship drama with friends/family and everyone has their memory bank full.
There are some creative divorce/separation/relationships out there. I know a couple or two (this is crazy but works for them) who have remained in the residence together but have their own areas of the home and live their own separate lives according to whatever they'd agreed upon. Guess they trusted one another as far as roommates go or learned to compromise. If the couple loses too much financially (bad real estate market, recession, etc.) it's not unheard of and, obviously, other reasons. I know one couple who divorced but carried on their separate lives - I don't understand but certainly none of my business. My husband told me (his firm's divorce wing) judges have actually ordered the home to both parties and one did not have to vacate -- they had to work out the living arrangement although initiating divorce proceedings - probably until such time the properties could be sold and divided when no agreements can be reached or one of them has lost their means of support or have none. One couple has continued like this and she, in fact, takes care of him now that his health is failing. They've been together since teenagers and it's unlikely it will change. I think generally one party can't wait to run away but with aging, health benefits, assets that have plummeted in value, etc. You are the only one who knows what is best for you and it will work out.
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LisaRose
what I want is my past 20 years back when I had the energy to do something! and thats not happening. What I want I cant have. what I want Ill most likely never get to experience, namely, meeting someone with the same intrests as me , falling in love with that person, sharing freinds and family, and doing good things for others with that person.
You are correct that you can't get the last twenty years back, but you can choose how you spend the next twenty. Finding someone else is not impossible, or even that difficult. There are probably a lot of men that would be happy to have someone, and the internet makes it so much easier to find them. I found my soul mate at 45 (actually I met him at 16, long story), But even if you don't find someone being by yourself is better than what you have.
Im not so rotten as to demand that my husband sell the house and give me half. though I can. he has not done anything in the past few years that any judge would consider good enough reason to demand he surrender half his assets .
Girl, I don't know where to start with this. It's not rotten to ask to sell the house, you already own half of it if you live in a community property state. The law recognizes that even when you don't work you are entitled to property accumulated while you were married. When I got divorced my ex got half of my 401K, even though he had worked, but stupidly chose not to put money in his own retirement plan. I didn't think it was fair, but that is the law. In your case you worked all these years taking care of your husband and doing things for him, so it is fair and legal that you should get part of the house.
i dont mind being a wife, what i mind is being treated like a fleshly sister and not a wife. I get no comforting when Im sad, but Im his right arm.
I don't know you or your husband, but it sounds like you don't want a divorce, but for your husband to be more loving. If that is the case, there are a number of things you can do to change things. The most important thing is that your husband will never value and cherish you if you don't value and cherish yourself. It's very clear you have low self esteem, which is hardly surprising given your history of being a JW. They like to make people feel worthless, it's how they work. It also doesn't help that you don't have a job outside the home, people often get validation and self esteem from their job. But that doesn't mean you are hopeless, only that you will have to work at it a bit more.
You need to stop thinking about yourself the way you do. No matter what has happened in the past,you are a human being and as deserving of respect, happiness and love as much as anyone else. So stop thinking of yourself as hopeless, because you aren't. I a lso have health issues and am not employed outside the home, so I get it, really I do. Being sick makes it really hard to think in a positive way, but I realized that if I am ever to get better I needed to stop putting myself down and start thinking positive. Have you ever heard the term "fake it till you make it"? I decided to do that, to start acting as if I was happy, healthy and an optimist, even if that was not what I felt like. You know what? It worked. It's not easy some days, but I kept at it, eventually I started actually feeling positive.
I have a really great husband, but at times I felt he didn't respect me also. I had a hard time asking for things because I felt guilty for not working, and when I did ask, he would sometimes say no. I finally realized I needed to stop acting like a doormat, that my doing so was contributing to his treating me like a child. Now if I need something, I simply state what and why, I present it as a done deal. I am careful to not abuse this, I don't spend money frivolously, but I don't apologize that I need something. Of course your situation is different, but it's a given that no one will feel your needs are important until you feel they are.
Another issue I have had in my marriage is communication. I sometimes thought Mr. Chips knew that I didn't like something, so when he continued to do it, I took it as disrespect and became hurt and angry. I finally realized that many times he actually didn't know, he either forgot what I told him, or didn't realize how much it bothered me. So it's very important to be absolutely clear on what you need and want, and also what you don't. It's not magic, he may still not get it, but if you are clear and consistent as to your needs, you at least know what you are dealing with. Men tend to be big picture thinkers and not pick up subtleties of relationships, it's just how they are wired, so you need to be very clear and consistent to get your point a cross. It's unfair to him if you are mad at him if he doesn't know what he did wrong.
It's OK to ask to be consoled, if that is what you feel you need. It doesn't make you a witch to ask for comfort, most men want to feel helpful, it may actually make your husband feel better to think you need him. If you are sad, say you are sad and if he made you feel sad, it's OK to say so, as long as you don't do it in an angry way. This is really a hard one for me, I hate to ask for things, but men don't read minds, so you have to get over that. It's hard at first, but gets easier.
now im running out of strength, i dont have it in me physically to work a 40 hour work week. thats a problem for me because how does one support themselves with not enough income? I have no useful 'resume'. when my husband left me two yeas ago, i got a job as a cashier, I was a horrible cashier, they kept giving me fewer and fewer hours to make me quit.
It's hard getting a job st this stage in your life, I am struggling with his as well. I had a business where we used to live, but haven't been able to establish myself here, and having health issues makes it ten times more difficult. I even failed at volunteering. But don't give up, there has to be a job out there for you. You may be a bit slow, but you have years of experience in doing things, that counts. Studies show that younger people learn faster, but older people are better at using the things they do know. Present yourself as a mature, dependable worker, someone who can be relied on. Be open to different possibilities. For now, make finding a job your job and devote just as much time to it as you would a job. Set time aside every day to look. Get help getting your resume put together, emphasizing your skills and maturity. Consider taking a class in a marketable skill. There are lots of jobs out there that don't demand lightning fast reflexes.
For now I am working at my business, making inventory so that when I get an opportunity I will be ready. I am planning to look for work or a new volunteer opportunities next month also, I think I will feel better if I am more productive. I am also catching up on organizing and cleaning my house so that I can focus on my business and/or volunteering next month. The point is to keep moving forward in some way. Doing so will give you more strength, as you get excited about your life and get a feeling of accomplishment.
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whathappened
You are a survivor and just try to find the most happiness for yourself as you can. Maybe if you could get your hubby to lighten up a bit...he sounds like he is no fun to be around.