Dear pixie:

I re-read your previous thread and the answers to your question “why can’t I just end it?” are:
1) You are afraid he will not cope without you, that his mental health will suffer and maybe he will harm himself and that if he does, you will be responsible for it.
2) You feel that if you end it you will be admitting that you failed in this marriage.
3) You are somewhat attached to him after this more than a decade relationship, attached to him and to the marriage.

I sure hope you take this job, moving away from him and yes, ending the relationship. These are my reasons:

From your examples in the previous thread, he is far from being a good partner, husband. He is not even a good friend. He doesn’t listen to you, doesn’t remember what you shared, no matter how important to you these things are. He got together with his friends on his birthday while you were at work (how rude, and after cancelling a get together with you included!) He reached out to you for support when he needs to and otherwise treats you like you don’t exist.

I am thinking he is quite selfish, an it-is-all-about-me kind of a person. If he really needed you for his well being, why isn’t he SEEING you when you are there, present (except when he is desperate)? If he needs you so much – that without you he will fall apart- why is it that he got together with his friends on his birthday, you not included?

I think that you believing he needs you much is a delusion, a false belief.

When you leave him, you will not be there with him. When you are with him, you are invisible to him. What is the difference for him?

Is it that he wants you there for his desperate moments only? Is that a good reason for you to stay with him, as insurance for his desperate moments?

anita

Dear pixie:

Maybe he is manipulative. Maybe he needs professional help.

Maybe he needs a competent therapist, not a wife.

It is probably not good for him to go through this again and again. Better for him you make a clear cut, a final ending, instead of this…

I suggest you end this relationship once and for all. You can suggest to him to attend therapy to deal with his desperation while, if you need to attend therapy to deal with your guilt- do that.

anita

Dear pixie:

In your first thread here you wrote: “I feel responsible for his happiness. I sometimes worry about his mental health, he has told me before that he can’t live without me and I just don’t know how he would cope if I wasn’t in his life anymore.”

Problem is you worry about his mental health while your mental health is deteriorating. You feel responsible for his happiness/ mental health while in reality you are responsible for your own mental health, not for his. You worry about how he would cope if you weren’t in his life anymore, but see how YOU are coping having him in your life!

I think you can’t end it (the answer to the title of your thread) because you got confused about what your responsibilities are. You are not responsible for him, you are responsible for you. And you worry about his mental health, while it is YOUR mental health that is in trouble.

When you were a child, pixie, did you feel guilty? Did you feel responsible for the mental health of one of your parents??? Looking into the origin of your guilt and self sacrifice can be helpful in resolving your current situation.

anita

Dear pixie:

On July 11 last year, in your original post here, you wrote: “I am… feeling terribly guilty for the prospect of hurting (your husband). He has suggested that he would hurt himself if i left him. Im trying to move on but everytime i think about initiating the conversation i get so anxious i make myself sick.”

In your second post you wrote: “He had a total emotional breakdown… He laid in bed and cried all over me all night”

In your most recent post, seven months later, you wrote: “My dad used to cry all over me and tell me how much he was hurting which made me feel like his pain was mine to fix.”

Clearly, your husband is doing what your father did and you are stuck in the same guilt you had when you wanted to get away from your father crying-all-over you. Your father’s pain imprisoned you as a child, and your husband expressed pain is imprisoning you now.

To break free from your past and current prison, the false belief that you are responsible for your father or husband’s pain, competent psychotherapy can do wonders for you.

And by the way, it was abusive of your father to express his hurt to you, his daughter, a child. He should have expressed it to an adult, and an adult who is not his daughter. Your husband, reads to me, repeats the behavior that works for him- he cries, you stay. And yet, he doesn’t seem to love you. He just wants you there. Why? I don’t know…

anita