Hi Airene.

Us men, take time to really mature and finally know the value of the people we claim we love. Some do it sooner, some later on in life. I can tell you for a fact, nothing wakes a man’s conscience like letting him be, or giving him space to continue being ignorant while you finally choose to be unbothered. The ton of guilt that haunts a man therafter… get it from me. We do a 360 of our lives, start living right and never look back. Maybe he’s at this point, maybe not. Only time will tell.

So be patient with him, but your focus should now be more on your well being, peace of mind, peace of heart & soul. And not his feelings on a revised letter.

About your marriage to him, we’ll i believe marriages are divine unions and are meant to last. But at this point, only his actions going forward should be able to determine your decision to stay or not.

Dear Airene:

This is my understanding based on your threads:

You are heavily invested in “the helper/ giver.. peacemaker” role beginning in your family of origin where you “helped keep divisiveness among other family members low” and throughout your life. You wrote that this role helped you “feel better about myself and everything going on around me knowing I was easing some of the tension”.

For a long time, you held on to a belief in helping people “without regard to what the other person can do for us or give us or if the person is worthy of it… because it is the ‘right’ thing to do”.

You need to act based on the motivation of love, not anger: “There have been many times where I struggled with resentment and anger, but ultimately did something because of the love I feel.. maybe not for the person benefiting from my actions, but because of love for my kids, or someone related to that person, or even for my own well-being. It’s as if I need to find a reason I am doing something and be at peace with that reason”.

In April this year you shared about Sue, the mother of your daughter’s roommate. I suggested asserting yourself with her regarding her white lie. You answered: “I do not want to alienate Sue by calling her out of her lie, but do not want to be taken advantage of”. You are calculated, you think of the consequences of what you do on the people you care about, in this case, your daughter.

In much the same way you were calculated in your marriage, staying with your husband because you believed that if you divorced him, he wouldn’t have supported his children. You thought about the consequence of a divorce on the well being of your four children.

You repeatedly think about the consequences of your actions on the well being of others, including your son: “I have talked openly and honestly with my son about developing friendships (without going overboard because I don’t want him to think there’s something wrong with him)”

Back to your family of origin, you learned to accept what-is because things could be worse. You learned to point out to yourself and appreciate any positive things in a bad situation and in a person: “I grew up with a mom who was an alcoholic. There were definitely things I would have changed, but I also like to think that things could have been worse. I have also come to accept what is, is. I also recognize my mother’s strengths and shortcomings”.

Same in the context of your family-of-choice, and regarding your husband, you point out the positive things in the situation and in your husband and you think how things could be worse: “he supported our family financially through some things that some dads might up and quit.”

You repeatedly see things from others’ point of view in an empathetic way. Regarding your husband: “However, I also recognize that his road has not been easy either”. Regarding the mothers of your daughters’ friends: “it is the moms who are very willing to accept invitations, but don’t reciprocate (probably because like me, they are exhausted)”.

And now, my thoughts this very morning: considering who you are and how you operated throughout your life, I trust your evaluation of who your husband is, and I trust that you did the best job possible communicating with him and bringing out the best in him. And so, I figure, he really is who you say he is, aggressive toward you (in a passive way), requiring you to keep your mouth shut, if you want him to around.

Now that your four children are adults living outside the home you and it is only you and him in the house, why live a life that is not “a good way to live out the rest of my life”, why continue to keep your mouth shut, why “being married to a tree” and so forth?

You wrote earlier in the year, “I need to find a reason I am doing something and be at peace with that reason”- what is the reason for you living with him?

You care about doing “the ‘right’ thing to do”- how is living with him the right thing to do?

anita

Dear Airene:

You are welcome.

Before I read your recent post, I re-read my own post to you from yesterday. In the first paragraph I wrote that you are heavily invested in the “helper/ giver… peacemaker” role (your words, in quotes), and I quoted what you wrote about how this role makes you feel: “I feel better about myself and everything going on around me knowing I was easing some of the tension”.

This means that without tension in the home, you don’t have the role that makes you feel better about yourself. After this thought,  I read your recent post, and it reads like you do intend to keep the tension and your role by keeping the marriage going.

That role, I am thinking, is something very important to you, important to your sense of well being, something that carried you through a difficult home when you were a child and throughout life. To suggest to you that you separate from him and live alone in a calm home is taking away that role from you, and you will be alone. I don’t think you’d like either one, role gone or alone. What do you think?

anita

Dear Airene:

“maybe… Or maybe… Or maybe… and that is why I suggested to my husband we talk honestly about what we need from each other and our marriage today, going forward. I’d want him to understand I have changed and am done not saying anything, keeping the peace, etc.”

I don’t know the man you are married to and yet, is it possible that I know him better than you know him? That sounds arrogant of me, isn’t it? I mean you lived with him for thirty years and I never met him, never read from him, and yet… is it possible that I know something about him that you don’t know?

This is what I think I may know that you don’t: “we talk honestly” is not possible because he won’t. I think I know that “him to understand” is not possible or highly unlikely, because he didn’t care to empathetically understand you for thirty years.

If he wanted to understand you, he wouldn’t have made you keeping your mouth shut his requirement for that peace in the home that you were after. If he wanted to honestly talk with you, it would be those honest talks that would be his requirement for a peaceful home. He demanded his price for the peace you sought: keep your mouth shut.

(Whatever trying he did or may do, it will probably be of the “superficial stuff” you mentioned about him before).

anita