Controlling relationship

I’m trapped in a relationship with my wife, I feel like I am wasting the last few good years of my life. She controls every aspect of our lives, finances, friends, Sex life and children. She only seems attracted to me if she’s been drinking and makes me feel like garbage when she’s sober. I can’t get out, yet I can’t go on….

20 Comments

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Choices abound

Sep 26, 2021 at 5:03pm

This is why I don't get married. The financial trap, with children as emotional hostages. Being in perpetual misery while failing to convince one's self that the creature comforts make up for the slow erosion of one's soul or buying into the crap that being single is worse. Worse than this!? Really!?
You do have a choice. It requires sacrifice, compromise and follow-through. It means having to face whatever emotional consequences because staying is worse, and not just for you but the kids, too, who live in great stress knowing exactly what's going on.
Get. A. Divorce. Pronto.
If she controls finances, take half and get alimony. Negotiate custody. Every person who got divorced may miss some of the financial perks for a few years but ultimately they are way happier and don't regret it. The children are also better off.
I lived in a house where the parents stayed together "for the kids". It was awful. We wished to drive them to lawyers on our own dime if we could. And the dysfunction became a bad role model for future relationships. It took years to unwind that upbringing. Garbage role models indeed. It rubs off, you know.
So get over the excuses. Get a divorce. It's never too late.

39 4Rating: +35

Amir Shihates

Sep 26, 2021 at 5:38pm

Become an alcoholic and show her what she looks like?

Love's Tug Of War

Sep 26, 2021 at 6:45pm

@choices abound

A Marriage is a struggle between our ego needs and our innate drive to receive unconditional love. Imagine two people actively wrestling one or the other from one another? It makes you ask yourself why and is it worth it? Marriage, is great fun during the honeymoon phase, then it's all down hill from there.

13 6Rating: +7

Feels

Sep 26, 2021 at 6:53pm

I’ve been in an unhappy marriage myself. I left. Unfortunately I didn’t truly process all of my issues before I got involved with another very controlling, and I wound up even worse off. So please do the work! Leave this relationship if it’s the only option, but don’t get involved again until you understand why you allowed this to happen in the first place.

34 2Rating: +32

True Love

Sep 26, 2021 at 10:32pm

I married my one true love. Sure I had been in other relationships before, but he was it for me. Then he got cancer and died. Life is so short.
I'm not telling you what to do. Maybe couples counselling is an option, but it's hard for people to change. I hope you can live a life that you enjoy so later, hopefully when you are very old, you can die happy and without regrets.

PS as a child of divorce, I can say it's probably better to split up if you guys are fighting and miserable beyond repair.

19 2Rating: +17

anonymous

Sep 27, 2021 at 12:10am

I know the feeling well, although without the alcohol abuse in my case... You feel trapped, but also somehow obligated to continue on with it. But, like others have said here, it is in everyone's best interest to end it.

I struggled with bringing my marriage to an end for a long time before I actually did it. It got to the point where I was sure that if I didn't do it, I was going to become physically ill. I was having crazy symptoms from the stress. Stomach pain, anxiety, constant worrying... Then finally, one day I couldn't take it anymore, and we had a long talk and decided it was best for us to end it. I could literally feel the healing begin, and my stomach problems went away in a few days later.

Of course, it's not an overnight thing, to go through a divorce. There is a whole other process of healing and self discovery awaiting you. But, there is no better time to start that process than now. Good luck!

17 2Rating: +15

Listen

Sep 27, 2021 at 7:05am

My life, who I am, is the result of two people who stayed together for 18 years. I could tell they were unhappy when I was 5 and the house was always uncomfortable.
I didn't understand when I was growing up relationships back then finances etc and really very few people got divorced. Looking back, if they did get divorced it would have been much much better for me and my future.

8 2Rating: +6

@ Choices abound

Sep 27, 2021 at 7:49am

I totally agree with the whole post, except to me you are talking about bad marriages, not marriage itself. When it's bad, time to go, but I know so many people who are just fine together, happy even.

6 4Rating: +2

Anonymous

Sep 27, 2021 at 11:48am

In order to keep my wife from taking over the marriage from time to time I still get really very very drunk, and then all of the shit comes flying out of me ... and she's freaked out enough to see the madman she is really married to that she stops bothering me for a while.

That's how we roll.

9 6Rating: +3

Dang

Sep 27, 2021 at 12:10pm

Marriage is tough. No wonder so many people are divorced.

8 2Rating: +6

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