In a nutshell, I basically left everything I know–my church, my family, my career, my friends, my house, my car, my comfort zone, etc–to relocate and be with my husband. Nothing from my past ever comes up, because I have no skeletons or baggage. I gave up everything. He did not give up anything. He acquired me. He didn’t have to turn his world around. I did. So please, PLEASE, don’t ever tell me I have not sacrificed anything.
Yes, you relocated however many miles away, but you did it because** you wanted to be with your husband**. You didn’t sacrifice for him, you sacrificed for you because you wanted to be with him. Besides, what was he supposed to do? Abandon his child to come live with you?
Thank you, Contra Mundum. I do need to breathe. But I am faced with this situation every day, so it’s kind of hard. I’m a stay at home wife and pretty much have very little contact with my friends and family. They are all over the US, so I feel so alone. And I would not want them to get involved with this, because I don’t want them to get worried.
I am on this forum, because I am already depressed… I have been in this depression for some time and it is eating me up…
I don’t know how to build my life again, not when I am in this situation,** because my hatred for that woman and my husband’s passiveness is consuming me.** People I have tried to be friends with over here all defend my husband, because this is his turf.
The only thing that’s wrong is people think I should go to counseling. I CAN’T. It doesn’t work for me. I’m not responsive to such interventions. It’s one thing to be judged online, but face to face… No, I have to keep my dignity… at least what’s left of it.
Annnd there is a huge part of your problem.
A lot of people feel they have lost who they are when they marry. And there’s a reason for that…because when we marry we aren’t just ourselves anymore. We become half of a whole, for lack of a better way to describe it.
Being a housewife with friends and family close by can be isolating enough. Being a housewife far away from friends and family is even worse. No wonder you obsess over your husbands sexual past and the mother of his child! You say that the child is there only a few days a month and yet you obsess and feel tortured by this every day… What else have you got to occupy your time and mind?
You had a career before and have no children now, right? Why not look for a job? A job, or even just the search for a job, would give you a useful preoccupation, a way to meet people and make friends, some extra money to save or spend etc. And if you did become pregnant you could always go back to being a stay at home wife.
Don’t want or can’t find a job? Get a hobby. Join a church group or a secular group. Volunteer for those less fortunate. Learn to garden or do household renovations. Always wanted to take a class or go back to college for a better/different degree? The options are endless…whatever you think you’d enjoy.
The reason that the people there you have spoken to defend your husband is because he isn’t doing anything wrong. It has nothing to do with location. When people in your life and online tell you the same thing it’s probably time to consider they might be right. And you have considered and even said that everyone is right, yes? You have agreed that you are the problem here. So, doesn’t that mean that you need to do some work on you?
Give it 6 months. In those 6 months get a job and/or some hobbies. Meet people, make friends, rediscover who you are as an individual and as a wife. Start going to local events and festivals Basically, get a life. Once you have a life again you’ll feel better, be a lot less insecure, and be much better able to handle the situation.
Oh, and P.S.
It’s not that your husband doesn’t love you dearly. Men really do view some things differently than women. He probably honestly and truly cannot understand why you can’t get over it or even understand why it’s a big deal in the first place. I think it took my husband about 3 months to “get over” the fact that I was married and had 2 kids from that marriage. And a lot of that time had to do with him trying to figure out if he could raise and provide for a couple of kids when he had never been responsible for anything before. From his point of view, it couldn’t be changed and I was worth the hassles of having kids around. End of story. Sometimes, men see things very logically and very simply.
