I'm pretty new to this forum. I've posted a few responses to some threads but have just been an advisor and observer up until now. I have been reluctant to post my own story because I'm not sure that I even know what I want.
Here's my story. Please try to see through my babbling.
I am 28 years old. My husband and I got married after dating for just over a year and have been married for 2 1/2 years now (first and only marriage for both of us). We were both 25 when we married. We don't have any kids. We own a large home together in a very nice neighborhood. We are both educated and employed and make decent livings. We both have supportive families and a good group of friends. Neither of us abuse the other and neither of us do drugs or drink heavily. Neither of us have had any affairs.
I have everything that any normal person could want. Right? Problem is, I don't think I want it. My whole life, society crammed my head full of happy ending stories of a right process: college, marriage, house, babies. My whole life I imagined that my life wouldn't begin until I found someone to marry. Now that I'm married, I feel like my life won't begin until I get divorced.
My marriage has been tumultous to say the least. We have a history of fighting. He is selfish and lazy which causes a lot of issues. We are both control freaks and both like to be right. I have struggled with some depression and anxiety, which he doesn't handle very well.
Basically, I'm not happy. I'm struggling with the urge to stay in my marriage for the sake of the union, or to get a divorce for the sake of my own happiness. How does one choose? I am not religious, so don't have those expectations looming over my head.
I don't see us lasting for a lifetime. When I think about spending the rest of my life with him, I feel like I'm wasting away. I feel like I have so much to offer the world that he holds me back from. I feel like I have an amazing, wonderful, helpful person inside of me that just can't get out because he's restricting my ability to be myself. Perhaps I am restricting myself from being myself for this idea of what a wife should be. I put pressure on myself to do things a certain way because I feel like a wife must act a certain way and I must live up to those actions.
Even worse, I feel physically ready to start having children, but I'm afraid of bringing children into this world when our marriage seems to be so unstable and unfulfilling. Furthermore, I don't doubt his ability to be a good father, but I DO doubt his ability to be a good husband while he's a good father. His selfishness and laziness scares the crap out of me and I fear that he'll expect me to do all of the baby work. So how does one handle the fear of the unknown future?
I'm really starting to question whether I belive in marriage or not. The idea that the government can hold two people accountable for a committment seems ridiculous to me now that I think about it and have experienced it. Two people should be together because they want to be together, not because they feel obligated or forced to stay together, right?
I do not want to leave him to find someone better. There are no other men in the picture. I actually figure that if I divorce him, I won't ever want to get married again. Perhaps marriage is just not for me. I want to find myself. I guess you could say that I want to be free to do whatever I want, whenever I want, without worrying about how he would react. I'm not talking about partying and socializing either. I'm talking about things like: letting my sister and her kids move in temporarily because she has fallen on bad times, or maybe donating money to help a good cause, or maybe traveling to see my dad just because he misses me. All of these things are examples of things I want to do, but can't because my husband would object or make me feel guilty about.
We have talked about divorce on multiple occassions. We have agreed to work on it. We went to see a sucky counselor who told us it seemed we had all of our issues worked out and not to go back to see her for at least a month. My husband took that as we were fixed, but obviously we are not fixed if I still have these issues. He has told me that he wants to be with me, but if I don't want to be with him, then he doesn't want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with him.
But when the opportunity presents itself to walk away, I just can't bring myself to break it off. I do love him and care about him deeply, but that loving feeling has started to fade. Everything he does annoys me and I don't want to be intimate with him anymore. I just don't like him.
So if you marry someone that you clearly don't have a "connection" with, or someone that you aren't entirely compatible with, do you stay together for the sake of the union and the sake of your committment, or do you divorce for the sake of finding happiness although it might seem selfish?
Am I entitled to admit that I made a mistake? Am I entitled to say that I wouldn't have known that it would've worked unless I at least tried it once?
Although this example is over-simplified, I feel like this situation is like trying out a musical instrument. You REALLY want to be a guitar player. You have tons of friends who play and they really love it. So you buy an expensive, amazing guitar, buy the speakers, amps, music, and charts that you need to learn, you invest in playing lessons, and you do it. You learn. Your fingers hurt at first, but you figure that feeling will go away eventually. You find out you're really good and people love to hear you play. So you book tons of gigs at all kinds of places. After all of this investment with time and money, and all of the committments you've made, you realize that you don't like playing the guitar at all. In all actually, your fingers still hurt really bad and playing depresses you. You'd rather be doing something else with your time and energy. Do you continue playing to make everyone happy and do it just because you invested so much money and time in it, or do you give it up because it doesn't make you happy?
Possibly a bad analogy, and i'm not saying the significance of marriage can be reduced to learning to play an instrument, but hopefully you get my point.
Any advice?
Here's my story. Please try to see through my babbling.
I am 28 years old. My husband and I got married after dating for just over a year and have been married for 2 1/2 years now (first and only marriage for both of us). We were both 25 when we married. We don't have any kids. We own a large home together in a very nice neighborhood. We are both educated and employed and make decent livings. We both have supportive families and a good group of friends. Neither of us abuse the other and neither of us do drugs or drink heavily. Neither of us have had any affairs.
I have everything that any normal person could want. Right? Problem is, I don't think I want it. My whole life, society crammed my head full of happy ending stories of a right process: college, marriage, house, babies. My whole life I imagined that my life wouldn't begin until I found someone to marry. Now that I'm married, I feel like my life won't begin until I get divorced.
My marriage has been tumultous to say the least. We have a history of fighting. He is selfish and lazy which causes a lot of issues. We are both control freaks and both like to be right. I have struggled with some depression and anxiety, which he doesn't handle very well.
Basically, I'm not happy. I'm struggling with the urge to stay in my marriage for the sake of the union, or to get a divorce for the sake of my own happiness. How does one choose? I am not religious, so don't have those expectations looming over my head.
I don't see us lasting for a lifetime. When I think about spending the rest of my life with him, I feel like I'm wasting away. I feel like I have so much to offer the world that he holds me back from. I feel like I have an amazing, wonderful, helpful person inside of me that just can't get out because he's restricting my ability to be myself. Perhaps I am restricting myself from being myself for this idea of what a wife should be. I put pressure on myself to do things a certain way because I feel like a wife must act a certain way and I must live up to those actions.
Even worse, I feel physically ready to start having children, but I'm afraid of bringing children into this world when our marriage seems to be so unstable and unfulfilling. Furthermore, I don't doubt his ability to be a good father, but I DO doubt his ability to be a good husband while he's a good father. His selfishness and laziness scares the crap out of me and I fear that he'll expect me to do all of the baby work. So how does one handle the fear of the unknown future?
I'm really starting to question whether I belive in marriage or not. The idea that the government can hold two people accountable for a committment seems ridiculous to me now that I think about it and have experienced it. Two people should be together because they want to be together, not because they feel obligated or forced to stay together, right?
I do not want to leave him to find someone better. There are no other men in the picture. I actually figure that if I divorce him, I won't ever want to get married again. Perhaps marriage is just not for me. I want to find myself. I guess you could say that I want to be free to do whatever I want, whenever I want, without worrying about how he would react. I'm not talking about partying and socializing either. I'm talking about things like: letting my sister and her kids move in temporarily because she has fallen on bad times, or maybe donating money to help a good cause, or maybe traveling to see my dad just because he misses me. All of these things are examples of things I want to do, but can't because my husband would object or make me feel guilty about.
We have talked about divorce on multiple occassions. We have agreed to work on it. We went to see a sucky counselor who told us it seemed we had all of our issues worked out and not to go back to see her for at least a month. My husband took that as we were fixed, but obviously we are not fixed if I still have these issues. He has told me that he wants to be with me, but if I don't want to be with him, then he doesn't want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with him.
But when the opportunity presents itself to walk away, I just can't bring myself to break it off. I do love him and care about him deeply, but that loving feeling has started to fade. Everything he does annoys me and I don't want to be intimate with him anymore. I just don't like him.
So if you marry someone that you clearly don't have a "connection" with, or someone that you aren't entirely compatible with, do you stay together for the sake of the union and the sake of your committment, or do you divorce for the sake of finding happiness although it might seem selfish?
Am I entitled to admit that I made a mistake? Am I entitled to say that I wouldn't have known that it would've worked unless I at least tried it once?
Although this example is over-simplified, I feel like this situation is like trying out a musical instrument. You REALLY want to be a guitar player. You have tons of friends who play and they really love it. So you buy an expensive, amazing guitar, buy the speakers, amps, music, and charts that you need to learn, you invest in playing lessons, and you do it. You learn. Your fingers hurt at first, but you figure that feeling will go away eventually. You find out you're really good and people love to hear you play. So you book tons of gigs at all kinds of places. After all of this investment with time and money, and all of the committments you've made, you realize that you don't like playing the guitar at all. In all actually, your fingers still hurt really bad and playing depresses you. You'd rather be doing something else with your time and energy. Do you continue playing to make everyone happy and do it just because you invested so much money and time in it, or do you give it up because it doesn't make you happy?
Possibly a bad analogy, and i'm not saying the significance of marriage can be reduced to learning to play an instrument, but hopefully you get my point.
Any advice?