Home→Forums→Relationships→Is it a mid-life crisis?
- This topic has 21 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 11 months ago by Anonymous.
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November 15, 2017 at 11:52 am #178237alibro991Participant
Thank you for your responses Anita. You are a huge help.
November 15, 2017 at 1:04 pm #178241November 15, 2017 at 7:11 pm #178295alibro991ParticipantDear Anita,
My husband is grieving the loss of me. He gets very angry and uses my daughter against me knowing he should not. He was told about this when we were both in counseling. I am pretty sure he has told my daughter that I was with another man. He was beside himself with anger and grief when I left. Like I said before, I love my apartment and having alone time. I have been out with a few men and I am enjoying it. However, I feel like a bad mother leaving my perfect family to date and have fun with other men.
Allison
November 16, 2017 at 5:19 am #178319AnonymousGuestDear Allison:
There are a few ingredients to this situation:
1. Your motivation: we as human animals are born with the motivation to move away from pain and toward pleasure. It is both these inborn motivations that lead you to leaving your marriage:
“I wanted to have fun… I wanted to go out and do things…I started imagining myself… dating someone who was fun… I wanted to go out after dinner. Maybe go out to a club. Stay out late”- this is your motivation to move toward pleasure.
“I just got sick of his attitude and he became very negative, judgmental… have to listen to him judging me and cutting me down when I was sad…. resented him so much…he was very rarely sympathetic and always managed to make it my fault…and I learned a lot of bitterness from him”- this is your motivation to move away from pain.
It is not one or the other, it is both.
2) Your husband: who is he? You wrote: “My husband is a good man and father” but he is clearly not a good husband when judging you, cutting you down, rarely being sympathetic, making it all your fault, and expressing bitterness a whole lot. And then, he is definitely not a good father when he “often turns to my daughter for someone to talk to…adds fuel to (her) hate… uses my daughter against me knowing he should not. He was told about this when we were both in counseling. I am pretty sure he has told my daughter that I was with another man.”- the way he uses his daughter, knowingly, makes him an abusive father. He is knowingly damaging his own daughter, and does so repeatedly.
He is not a good father, far from it.
3) You wrote: “I feel like a bad mother leaving my perfect family to date and have fun with other men”- your guilt is misleading you to think incorrectly, that is, that you had the “perfect family”, and the big item: that your husband is a good father.
It reads to me that in your marriage it is possible that indeed your husband pointed the finger of blame on you repeatedly, and you believed that you are indeed guilty. And so, in your thread here, you minimized his faults, called him a good husband and father, and pointed to yourself as the guilty one, the one who had two extra marital affairs, the one who is… guilty.
You have your share of correct responsibility, the biggest one, currently, is allowing your daughter to be misused by him and in so, to be damaged by him.
But he has his share of responsibility, the biggest one is the one I just mentioned. But also his ongoing bitterness and cutting you down and so forth.
I am curious about the bitterness- did he share with you a lot, throughout much of your marriage, about how other people hurt him, other people causing him misery that he doesn’t deserve and such?
anita
November 16, 2017 at 7:02 am #178343alibro991ParticipantDear Anita,
You have made some excellent points. My father was and alcoholic growing up. So my husband always said aren’t you glad I’m not like your Dad out in a bar. That is what he used constantly to justify what a good husband he was and use his sobriety as a crown of some sort. I have to admit to you, in the last year, feeling lonely in my marriage I too have become a functional alcoholic just as my father was. So I became the scapegoat as you will with our marriage failing. The focus is all on me, never on him. My family feels my husband can do no wrong. But they haven’t lived with him for 25 years.
Allison
November 16, 2017 at 7:13 am #178345alibro991ParticipantAnd allowing my daughter to be used by him? With her living with him I am not there to protect her all the time. He said the other day he was crying alone and she came to him. I don’t know how to stop that. Except to keep telling my husband to put the kids feelings first instead of his own. My son is the opposite, he isolates himself on his video games and chooses not to have any interest in what’s going on around him.
November 16, 2017 at 7:59 am #178349AnonymousGuestDear Allison:
You wrote that he told you that he was “crying alone” and “she came to him”. He wasn’t alone.
Your story, unfortunately, is a very common story: the parents mess up and the children pay the price.
anita
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