Quote:
Originally Posted by Honeywith4bees  Hey Sisyphus2 ~
I can really relate to your story. I spent quite a few years married to a guy who had kind of "given up" on life. He decided he didn't want to do anything anymore but smoke pot and play his guitar. We had four kids together and we were broke. I spent quite a long period of time trying to "help" him. The more I tried to "help" and take care of him, the worse he treated me and the worse I felt. I was consumed with resentment that left me utterly depressed. It seemed hopeless for sure.
Thing is, all those years of "helping" him, I should have been taking care of myself.
It's been said already, start thinking about yourself. Where do you want to be in 5 years? Start going there, if hubby wants to follow, he will, if he doesn't, then you will have to say your goodbyes. It may sound painful, the idea of separating from him, but is it any less painful then what you are going through now?
Good luck! |
I thank you all for writing. Of all the replies I've gotten, the one quoted above is the most helpful, because Honeywith4bees has personal experience with what I'm talking about.
So, Honeywith4bees, how did you finally bring yourself to break up with him? And how did you handle the logistics of it? Did he have somewhere else to go as soon as you kicked him out? Did he start to change afterwards? What's he doing now?
I am worried not only about the pain of separation, but whether or not he will even be able to survive. He does not have anywhere else to go. He has pets that would have nowhere to go. I honestly think he will probably be dead within three months, either from effects of homelessness (illness that he can't afford to treat, frostbite from sleeping outside), or from suicide. And in order to make it happen, I would literally have to physically throw him and his things, including his pets, out of the house and then change the locks, and try to ignore it as he's pounding on the door, stuck outside in the snow with nowhere to go. I can't imagine doing this to my best friend. This is why it is not easy to solve this problem. Because I actually care about this person. I actually care about what happens to him, even if we don't stay married.
Some of the other advice I received here, while I'm sure it was given in earnest, was not very helpful, and I see the same problems in advice given to other members of this forum, so I will offer my critique, in hopes of improving the ways in which we forum members try to help each other.
The advice that I should
blame myself for everything, and not blame anyone else for anything was not very useful because I already have and do blame myself. Of course, I chose to marry this guy and to stay with him for this long, so I am to blame for that. But he has failed to live up to all of the most basic responsibilities that a husband has towards his wife. It is a breach of contract. He is to blame for that. And my description of the situation, as a set of problems
caused entirely by him, were statements of fact. If it wasn't for his refusal to cooperate, there would be no problem. We would have a happy marriage. Therefore the blame does naturally reside with him. But I am the one who will end up having to fix the problem, because he won't do anything to fix it.
The Law of Attraction mindset teaches you to be aware of the effects and control you have over your own life. But you can't really control someone else. You can only try to treat them the way you yourself would want to be treated, and hope for the best. When you marry someone you've known for years, you have a reasonable expectation that they will treat you with respect, and that includes at least covering his/her own expenses in the household. My husband has not met that expectation, and I am angry. I think that is reasonable. But unfortunately, blaming the victim is one of the unfortunate manifestations of the Law of Attraction mindset, just like it is with the similarly flawed "social Darwinist" mindset. [Example - Q: "Why are all those kids starving in Africa?" A: "Because they don't have a positive attitude!"] Self-awareness and personal responsibility are good, but I don't think it's effective to just blame yourself and wallow in self-hatred because someone else screwed you over, nor is it wrong to place blame on the person who screwed you over. The same goes for a situation where the problems are caused by circumstances beyond a person's control (like the kids starving in Africa).
I have tried to do whatever was in my power to fix this problem. At first I tried to help him get a job, and I was successful several times at getting him a job, but he would quit within a few days. So after much frustration with this, I decided to quit trying to control him, and to concentrate on making more money myself. But after years of trying to do that, I've realized that I do not have it in my power at this time to earn enough money to support 2 people. If I could, I would, but I can't.
I find blaming myself to be just as useless as blaming others. It doesn't get me any closer to solving the problem. So thanks, but no, I'll pass on that.
I resent the implication by one forum member that I have used credit to
solve my problems. I never said anything to indicate that, and it was an unfair assumption to make. When I moved in with my husband, I owned a business, and I had racked up a couple of charge cards in my own name to pay for printing catalogues. I was making payments and everything was fine. But after living with him for a couple of years, it got to the point where I couldn't make the payments anymore, and that's how my credit got screwed up. I invested in a business, and it didn't work out. It could happen to any of you. It happens to multi-billion dollar corporations all of the time, but they are not held to account for the bad investments they make, like human beings are.
I wouldn't use credit to solve my problems, but having bad credit creates a number of road blocks that make it harder to get your life on track. For one thing, you have to pay twice as much as a normal person to get into an apartment. There are many jobs you can't get if you have bad credit. For cars you pretty much have to buy something outright, which usually means something that's broken and dangerous. This is why I mentioned my lack of credit. Because it creates these road blocks in life.
Regarding hobbies that may bring new meaning to my life, etc, I actually already have something I'm passionate about, that I'm very talented at, and that I've been doing somewhat successfully for many years now. I still make a couple hundred dollars a month in royalties from things I've done in the past. In fact, I used to make a lot more money with my talent, and for a while I was supporting us both on the money I made from it. But it was never enough, of course, for two people to live comfortably, and I have frequently had to find jobs outside the house to fill in the gaps. Now I've been working full-time for a year. In this time my talent has gone largely unused because I no longer have time to devote to it, and because I now live in a place where I have no space or privacy in which to work. I suppose I would have more space and privacy without my husband around.
Someone asked, why is my husband so lazy? I had spent a lot of time psychoanalyzing him, and this is what I've come up with. His stepfather was very abusive to him, his biological mother and father both never cared about him at all. I know: I was friends with him when we were both pre-teens and I witnessed it myself. They made him so miserable, that the only way for him to cope was to shut down emotionally and make himself not care what happened to him. They never gave him any encouragement, and so therefore he never had any desire to do anything that would make them proud. So early on he never had any personal goals for himself, nothing he wanted to accomplish in life. Now he's all grown up, and he's still stuck in the mindset he created for himself as a defense mechanism, even though he doesn't need to defend himself anymore.
None of this is an excuse, of course. Unlike his parents, I love him, and I've sacrificed so much for him. I have no doubt that I am the best thing that's ever happened to him. Without me he would have been dead long ago. So you would think that if nothing else, his goal would be to please me by making something of himself, and contributing to the household finances. But that doesn't seem to be the case.
At any rate, I would be interested in hearing more from Honeywith4bees and anyone else who has ever had a similar situation.