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Unrealistic Expectations?


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Hi I've been reading this forum for several days now, and thought I'd finally post and see what others think. Excuse the wall of text, it was cathartic just to write this down...

 

Background: I've been married to my wife for 8 years, she came to Canada from oversea's just for me. We met online (before it was cool to do so!) so our relationship was based entirely on communication. Before I met my wife I had been with a woman for 1.5 years who was very selfish, a taker if you will, after that relationship ended I wanted to be with someone who was a giver. My wife was (and is) a very kind person, she is a giver by nature, kind, caring, gentle and all around a nice person.

 

We have an education gap, not to mention an age gap (7 years) and to be frank we also have an intellectual gap. When we get married I knew all of this, and it really didn't matter to me at the time.

 

About 1.5 years into our marriage after the birth of our son my wife became ill. We didn't know what it was for a very long time, at first we thought it was MS, that was ruled out after about a year of tests, then they thought it was fybromaligia, that has been replaced by a diagnosis of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. After the birth of my son, my wife's energy level went to nill...and everything hurt her. It was extremely hard to see her physcial decline, coupled with the complete uncertainty about what was wrong with her.

 

I was left to do basically everything, I worked fulltime, cooked, cleaned, did the shopping the laundry the groceries...literally everything. My wifes total energy was used up taking care of my son. After a year and a half her condition basically stabilized at a not so good level. For the next 5 years I did everything in the house, and worked etc...we also had no "love life" as it hurt her too much. She was willing to make love, but frankly knowing how badly she would suffer physically made the idea of making love rather unappealing.

 

During this time, I developed a serious anxiety disorder and gained a massive amount of weight, which in hindsight I know was caused by stress. Well fastforward to this summer...I had become completely emotionally disconnected to my wife...I spent most of my time either playing video games or with my son. I was very unhappy, and had been unhappy for several years....I asked my wife to leave and told her I didnt love her anymore. She was shattered, completely shattered...it was a very brutal conversation....so she left with my son and returned to her home country...I missed my son terribly, but her not so much.

 

No one seemed to understand how I felt, everyone from my family to hers couldnt believe my actions. I was just completely done...there is no other way to describe it, I was burned out...the start of school was fast approaching and I was missing my son, so I asked them to come back home. She returned with my boy, and we decided to try. While she was away I managed to get myself off of the antidepressants and to date am down about 85 pounds...I still have some weight to drop still, another 40-50 pounds...and I still have anxiety issues but I am able to cope without the meds.

 

So my wife is back and we are going to a MC...and I am not feeling it...I care about her, I want her to be happy. On the otherhand we don't really talk about anything other than our families and our son. We have completely different interests, I am left wondering what it was that we talked about all those years ago. I am very much emotionally disconnected from her, when she cries I don't feel the urge to comfort her at all, even though I know I should. On a bright note, she seems to have made a remarkable recovery, while she is not 100%, she is about 90% of what she was before she became ill. She has taken up a great degree of the household chores which certainly has eased the strain on me.

 

One of the big problems I face is if we divorce she will go back home with my son, and that will be extremely hard on me and him. Now I know many will say I shouldnt let her leave the country with him. Selfishly I agree, but I do care about her, and she has no one here...all of her family is oversea's she came all of this way for me. I would be overwhelmed with guilt if she stays here because I force her to, away from all the support she has...it would not be fair to her at all...she also is keenly aware that I might stay in the marriage for the sake of my son...she has openly said she doesnt want to stay married simply for the sake of our son. She doesnt want to end up with him leaving the home in 10 years followed by me shortly after announcing we are divorcing. If I want out, she wants a chance to start a fresh life, which is fair.

 

She very much wants our marriage to succeed, she loves me very much...she thinks I am depressed and should go on medication again. I am most certainly unhappy...as I have been for years, but I do not believe I am in a depression...nor do I want to go on antidepressants again. I was on the medication when I asked her to leave this summer, and I found it fairly easy to do so at the time as the medication dulls your emotions. This time around, I have struggled intensely with my emotions...if I do decide to end our marriage I want this decision to be made with my full senses...

 

She wants me to either "really" start trying, or call it to an end...and she wants me to make my decision before her parents come to visit in early January.

 

I want to be with a woman who is a challenge for me mentally, who is my partner, where I don't make 90% of the decisions, where I am not the only person driving the relationship...that said, being split from my son is heartbreaking....

 

I wonder if I have unrealistic expectations? Should her good qualities of which there are many be enough? Most of what we had for me, just seems gone...completely burnt out...I know what I "should" be feeling...but I don't...and I feel alot of guilt about it...and both families just want me to stop fussing...sigh...anyone else ever been here??

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Chronic fatigue doesn't cause pain. Chronic pain causes pain. And that can be caused by a number of things primarily of a neurological nature.

 

If she is feeling better after being back home then I think that says a lot. She is experiencing less stress obviously.

 

I think you should think about what's best for your son right now. Is she providing him with the love he needs to grow? You say she is loving and giving. That's a good choice to have as your son's mother. And children would rather grow up in a one-parent loving home than an unloving two-parent one.

 

Can you make this work? Do you have what it takes to be the man you need to be for your son to ensure that his is a loving two-parent home because really that would be the best thing of all.

 

If you are the smart one in this marriage then do your wife a favor. Look up Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy or Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome. They are one of the same ailment but with different names.

 

Try to be loving and giving back.

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Do not be married to someone whom you do not love. It is as "simple" as that.

 

Son or no son, I am sorry. Children need great, strong, involved parents. Children are beings seeking excellent guidance for the storms of life. What they do not need and have never needed is hypocritical household theater.

 

And I when I say someone you "love", I mean true love in the sense of all the right levels of connection two people need for a successful relationship. I do not mean roomates tolerating each other with a sense of resignation, calling it, as so many do, "care" for another person.

 

Your situation will not improve and five, ten years later you might still be banging your head against a wall, regretting the time wasted. Best to be honest and end this while you can and invest the time in finding the right person for you.

 

OE

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Chronic fatigue doesn't cause pain. Chronic pain causes pain. And that can be caused by a number of things primarily of a neurological nature.

 

If she is feeling better after being back home then I think that says a lot. She is experiencing less stress obviously.

 

I appreciate your advice, but you are 100% wrong on the pain issue, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome:

I am not sure if staying in a relationship with no love is really the right thing for my son....

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Do not be married to someone whom you do not love. It is as "simple" as that.

 

Simple it is not...I know I may have come across as rather cold in my original post, but I am more sensitive than I care to admit, and I am just burnt out...and I feel very guilty for coming to the end of my rope...I have stayed in this relationship for years despite not being happy...and I find it very difficult to walk away, not because of guilt, but because of a feeling of duty...and of course my son...

 

-sigh-

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The link you sent had no information available. So I will take your word for it.

 

Regardless she feels better since she's left you and is back to where people love and accept her. If you can't or won't do that then you should call a lawyer and file for divorce. Since she is the primary care giver of your son you will most likely lose physical custody.

 

So yeah I think you have unrealistic expectations if you're wishing for a happy ending.

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Sorry the colon borked the link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_fatigue_syndrome

 

Try this one^^^

 

I have no interest in contacting a lawyer...if divorce is the course we go down I hope we can come to our own agreement rather than get into an adversarial situation...

 

I guess my question about expectations was not if I expected my own situation to end in happiness, but rather if my view on what marriage should be was unrealistic. Are people who are married for 10+ years still "in love" or is that all an illusion created in hollywood? I understand that relationships evolve over time, but what is it that they evolve into?

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I think that marriage takes work. It takes commitment but mostly it takes love, patience and kindness.

 

It isn't always easy. It isn't always good. That's why when you take vows you promise all those things in all those circumstances.

 

If you don't honor you vows, and sometimes that takes major effort, well then your marriage fails. It's really quite simple to figure out but much harder to do.

 

You don't love your wife at all? Have you met somebody else?

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We have an education gap, not to mention an age gap (7 years) and to be frank we also have an intellectual gap. When we get married I knew all of this, and it really didn't matter to me at the time.

 

About 1.5 years into our marriage after the birth of our son my wife became ill.

I was left to do basically everything, I worked fulltime, cooked, cleaned, did the shopping the laundry the groceries...literally everything.

 

No one seemed to understand how I felt, everyone from my family to hers couldnt believe my actions. I was just completely done...there is no other way to describe it, I was burned out...

 

I want to be with a woman who is a challenge for me mentally, who is my partner, where I don't make 90% of the decisions, where I am not the only person driving the relationship...that said, being split from my son is heartbreaking....

 

I wonder if I have unrealistic expectations? Should her good qualities of which there are many be enough?

 

Wait a second here. You knew going into the marriage about educational and intellectual gaps and it was fine then, but not now???

Your wife became ill and you had to suck up the extra work?? Do you think you're the only one that this has happened to??

You've become burnt out?? Are your expectations unrealistic??

 

Ok, here's the news.. Father knows Best and Leave it to Beaver families don't exist. Marriage is hard work. Your vows were for better or for worse, in sickness and in health, until death... etc...

Now I've gone through a long term marriage and worked out the problems and I've ended up getting divorced. Ordinarily I'd say you ain't happy then move forward, divorce and let her find someone she'd be happy with. BUT in this case you've brought a human life into the world and you have an obligation to make sure he's protected, provided for and raised in a safe loving environment. With both parents. At least until he's old enough to understand that daddy doesn't love mommy.

Frankly your post sounds like it's all about you. Have you even thought about what your wife is going through in her illness?? How she has coped??

 

I think you need to find an alternate solution to simply leaving. You need to deal with your burn out and depression. Meds, therapy, but get yourself fixed. You can't make a decision in this state.

 

I don't mean to be harsh but your post really rankled me. It sounds very self centered. Bottom line?? You have an ill wife and a child to raise and this means you come second.

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While she was away I managed to get myself off of the antidepressants and to date am down about 85 pounds...

On a bright note, she seems to have made a remarkable recovery,

To be honest, it seems that you both do much better, emotionally and physically, without each other! It may be difficult for you to accept, but more than likely your wife will be better off without you, too.

 

I want to be with a woman who is a challenge for me mentally, who is my partner, where I don't make 90% of the decisions, where I am not the only person driving the relationship...

 

In and of themselves, those are not unrealistic expectations, no. But it WAS unrealistic to expect it with someone you clearly feel intellectually superior to!

If you were to be deeply honest with yourself, how much did your attitude disempower your wife? How often did you *allow* her to make decisions... without jumping in with your better, smarter idea or way of doing things?

 

that said, being split from my son is heartbreaking....

 

Well, yes. And, if they do leave the country, that will always be terribly difficult for you. But it's also the price of your not accepting and loving the woman you married, instead of maintaining expectations that she couldn't possibly live up to.

 

IF you do decide to make your marriage work, I suggest to consider ways that you can empower your wife, and make her feel loved, special and needed just EXACTLY the way she is. (Which is another way of saying, stop looking at it from the misguided view that she is inferior to you in any way.)

 

If that's not something you can do, then do the Lady a favour, let her go... and learn to live with your guilt and heartbreak as best you can.

 

I know it isn't easy, and I know it hurts. In the end, I do wish you whatever will be best for all three of you.

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