My wife and I have been together for 12 years. The first 10 and a half were loaded with ups and downs as lifes roller coaster moves along. My wife and I have been through tons of good times and tons of bad times as well. She has stuck by my side through thick and thin. She has been there for me every time I have fallen flat on my face to pick me up, brush me off, and set me back on my horse. Why now, after all these years do I feel as though I love her for who she is, but that I feel empty inside myself and that I feel incapable of showing her the love that she deserves and giving her the life I want for her to have. She is so in love with me that it hurts me to hurt her this way. She has had a really negative life before me (negative childhood, negative and abusive first marriage, depression, anxiety, negative influences, etc), and all I want for her is for her to be happy and to have a good life. But, with the loss of my job after being laid off earlier this year, everything has gone down hill, fast. I have had difficulty in obtaining another career which would provide for her the way I want to provide for her. I feel as though I am a failure as a husband, a lover, a friend and, a father. These feelings have caused me to not love myself, much less anyone else. I fear that all I have done over the last year is hurt her, but she won’t tell me so. I sense it, I feel it, I see it. Our financial stability down the drain, in a negative balance in all of our bank accounts as we are overdrawn, my retirement account tapped out, our investments sold off and the funds used up, potentially on the verge of bankruptcy, our financially secure future up in smoke (??). What makes this more difficult for me is that we have an 11 yr old son together. Our son knows we are having difficulties and he is also aware that his mother and I may be on the verge of seperation/divorce. She is doing all she can, as she always has, to support me, help me, be there for me, but all I do is turn her away and I can’t help but think that if I can’t provide what I want for her, then, it’s best to let her go. I am in extreme turmoil and duress. I can’t sleep, can’t eat, have no feeling, no emotion, an empty shell, can’t make love, but, I LOVE HER, and I can’t show her. I can tell her, but the words feel as though they are hollow when I hear myself say it. She feels it. She senses it.
I fear that my own pride, my own fear, my own anxiety, my own issues are tearing me apart inside, and, therein, tearing apart my relationship with her. For the love that I have for her, I feel that it is best to stop dragging her down with me. I think it best to let her go so that she can go on with her life and not go down in flames with me. She says "…for better or for worse…", but, how can I continue to hurt her by not being able to provide her the life I promised myself and her that I would do my best to give. I pride myself in not hurting ANYONE, but here I am, hurting the one person in my life that has loved me for me, the one person I swore to hold and cherish til death do I part. I have told her that I do love her, but that I am just incapable of showing her. I have told her that I feel it is best for her to leave me so that she does not watch the man she married fall to shambles. I feel that if it was meant to be, and the love that we had was real all along, love will return her to me when I am stable again, but, how much more can I hurt her due to my own failures. Help. I am losing it, I am losing everything I am and I feel as though I have come to the end of my only opportunity to love for eternity.
Oh, and by the way, I am 35, she is 39. She has so much more in store for her out there than I can be and she does not need a failure for a husband. She says, supportively of course, that I am not a failure, but until I can feel in myself that I am not a failure, I can’t believe it from her or anyone else.
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