Should I Stay or Should I Go?

[tercelkisor]

The pithy title of this post aside, I am currently, and have been for some time, experiencing difficulties with my marriage.  To preface, I think that my marriage is probably my largest blindspot when it comes to self knowledge. It's so emotionally charged that I fear coming to solid conclusions about anything, leaving me paralyzed, unable to take action.  

 

Here's the short version:

 

When I was 14, I became a Christian.  I wasn't raised in the church, and my family never converted.  It wasn't nominal in any sense.  I lost all my friends, and I eventually paid my own tuition to a small christian school since my mother couldn't afford it. There was nothing more ultimate in my life than the preeminence and glory of Christ.  Quite literally, all of my decisions were filtered through the lens of Christ being glorified.  There wasn't any bedrock to my identity, since my very identity was secondary to the aim previously stated.  Christianity had its hold on my until the age of 22, and it was then that I was awakened to the truth that I had squandered my existence for the most important or formative years of my life. It was like I was pulled from the matrix, my existence being spliced onto the tail end of that of another. I was forced to continue on in the life momentum and constraints of a man that wasn't even recognizable to me anymore.

 

In real words, I was married and owned a home at 22 or 23 (I'm 25 now), and I felt placed into the arbitrary existence of another man. So I panicked.  I not-so-affectionately refer to the time as my quarter-life crisis. I was lost for a few months, and when I felt as though I arrived at a decision to make in response to the psychological chaos, it backfired.  I proposed divorce, and for several weeks, there was much pain in my home.  I wife handled it as you'd expect a surprise divorce request at first, but when I persisted, she ended up taking way too many sleeping pills and passing out.  I didn't sleep that night for fear that something would happen to her. It scared me, so I retracted.  We've discussed it here and there since then, but it's always a difficult topic for her, so it never goes far.

 

I find myself longing for emotional connections with other women, even women that are clearly less of a catch than my wife.   Honestly she's pretty great.  She's beautiful, intelligent, caring...  She mostly gets me, and that's rare, but I flirt around quite a bit, and I'm always interested in connecting with other women on an emotional level.  I just can't disconnect her from my past.  The only reason that she's in my life is because of christianity, and I can't get over that.  I cannot maintain the amount of enthusiasm it takes to have a good relationship, and I know she's ultimately unhappy.  I am too.  I am certain that I would not be the man she would choose if she had to decide today.

 

My issue is this:  The way I have been getting through each day is by telling myself that I'm just being immature, that eventually, I will wise up and realize that she's a great woman to be married to.  It may be kicking the can down the road, and I'm not sure if that is a wise thing to do or not.   Am I just being immature, or is this a legitimate issue that should be addressed with divorce?  How do I deal with the guilt if she does something like she did last time?  How do I overcome the fear of the unknown if the correct choice is divorce.  

 

Thanks for the input. I'm sure I missed or glossed over some things. I'm more than willing to clarify or further explain something.

[dsayers]

she ended up taking way too many sleeping pills and passing out...

 

Honestly she's pretty great.  She's beautiful, intelligent, caring...  She mostly gets me

I won't pretend to be able to answer the titular question for you. However, I wanted to push back on these quotes here as I find them to be competing claims. Beautiful is not a quality. Intelligence is only as useful as what it's being applied to. Having potential and squandering it would actually make that intellect a strike against her in my book.

 

How caring is it to attempt suicide? Can she truly "get you" if she tries to hurt you in this fashion? This is dicknapping and the highest order of manipulation. Did you two talk about it afterwards? Was she triggered?

 

Do you personally want children at some point? Would future you want for you to have tried to reform what you have or cut your losses for his sake?

[brucethecollie]

I'm not sure you mentioned what the problem is in your marriage?  

[Will Torbald]

She's crazy. And yeah, I think you're afraid that if you try to leave again she's going to kill herself, and that you'll blame yourself for it. I would get out of there, divorce or no divorce, and disappear. But that's just me, seriously don't take it as an advise from me to you. Sorry you went through the Christianity thing, I had a similar experience with the religion I was in at that age.

[flazak]

I don't think this is very fair on her, I presume she has not undergone some kind of awakening herself and I would start working on causing her to awaken. It will take time and effort to do but I think you should try it out or else if something does go wrong you may find it difficult to forgive yourself.

[Eh Steve]

First off I'd start with....it sounds like your wife almost committed suicide and you should both be taking that very seriously.  

 

My sincerest sympathies man this all sounds really stressful and difficult.  You've got a potential suicide, a divorce, figuring yourself out, these are all huge issues to be dealing with.

 

To me your story is highly complex and has a lot of details that aren't necessarily included.  Not a lot of people turn Christian without having Christian families. 

 

With divorce you mention a fear of the unknown.  Could it be you had that same fear when you were 14 and found Christianity was a way of coping with it?

 

At the moment it sounds like you have a dichotomy of "should I stay or should I go".  Neither one is really necessarily the correct option.

 

You mentioned desiring emotional connection with other women.  How is your emotional connection with your wife?  If you're both unable to really explore something as difficult as a divorce, particularly if she's going to potentially kill herself, I can understand why emotional connection with her isn't very appealing.

 

You say she is a great catch, and then also that she's only in your life because of Christianity.  Those two don't really make sense to me in combination.  Would you still love her without the Christianity?  

 

To me all of this is a legitimate issue for suuuure.  There are a lot of legitimate issues going on in your relationship and your life.  I don't think a divorce immediately is something that is going to resolve the underlying emotional issues going on.  But I can't at all say you should divorce or not divorce.  For what it is worth the issue you are having is basically the issue for all of humanity.  Communication in relationships and self-knowledge.  The answer to that issue I recommend is getting into therapy and for your relationship both of you learning to communicate your feelings. 

 

I truly do sympathize with your situation.  I can't give you a really clear answer as to what you should do.  But I believe the answers you are looking for you will be able to find by emotionally connecting with yourself, your wife emotionally connecting with herself, and you two communicating more clearly on an emotional level.  For that I think you'll need to find a therapist ideally or take the time to journal quite a bit to figure out exactly what it is you feel and what it is you want.

[aviet]

It's difficult to give any personal insight into the situation from just the post.

As Bruce asks: Are the specific problems in your marriage? Or is it just a combination of your restlessness and your wife's behavior?

I'd imagine that becoming a Christian in combination with loosing friends and then realising it is not real is probably quite traumatic and likely to be unprocessed as such. Your world has gone from one where you believe in a mystical realm with a heavenly kingdom waiting for you to a world where there is presumably nothing but the physical.

The sleeping pills seems like it was a mechanism of imposing guilt on you. If that is the correct reading of events, then this is Milgram experiment levels of stress which have been imposed on you. Seems like you already believe that.

Do you have any idea why you might seek emotional connection from other women? Are you just seeking it from one woman? As many as you can get?

As for your penultimate statement. It sounds as if you are in a state of considerable turmoil and that it has been going on for some time. My thought is that you need to confront all of these issues with your wife. It seems you have not done that, partly due to her unwillingness. Let her know what your feelings are towards everything you have mentioned here, including the guilt. Say you are willing to make the relationship work (if that is what you truly want), but are unsure whether it is healthy for both of you. I don't think your relationship can be anything other than dysfunctional with these thoughts and feelings festering.

This would be a good one for a call-in.

[EclecticIdealist]

I think that my marriage is probably my largest blindspot when it comes to self knowledge. It's so emotionally charged that I fear coming to solid conclusions about anything, leaving me paralyzed, unable to take action.

Fear is the mind killer. Until you overcome your fear of coming to grips with a situation, you will not be able to see it clearly, which will make it impossible to process it emotionally.

 

When I was 14, I became a Christian. Christianity had its hold on me until the age of 22, and it was then that I was awakened to the truth that I had squandered my existence for the most important or formative years of my life. It was like I was pulled from the matrix, my existence being spliced onto the tail end of that of another. I was forced to continue on in the life momentum and constraints of a man that wasn't even recognizable to me anymore.

You were a cult member from the age of 14 until the age of 22. You allowed others to define your identity, values, and morals.  At 22 you awakened to the fact that you'd been allowing others to define your identity and the choices you would make. In truth, you went through the years of adolescence and young adulthood without getting to experience it on your own self-defined terms, but instead on the terms defined by others.

 

You say you long for emotional connections with other women. Might I suggest you long for HONEST emotional connections with who you are rather than the person you were being as a cult member.

 

My issue is this:  The way I have been getting through each day is by telling myself that I'm just being immature, that eventually, I will wise up and realize that she's a great woman to be married to. Honestly, she's pretty great.  She's beautiful, intelligent, caring...  She mostly gets me, and that's rare.

 

You clearly find your wife to have many great qualities, but you also indicate that because you married her when you were involved in the cult, you have a negative association with her.

 

- Do you have, or have you developed, an honest, emotional connection with her since abandoning your role as cult-member?

 

- You say you "cannot maintain the amount of enthusiasm it takes to have a good relationship" with your wife. Do you honestly believe this would be the case with other women as well, or is this just the case with your wife? Is the amount of enthusiasm necessary in order to play the role of cult-member husband to your wife, or is there something inherently challenging about the relationship with your wife that has nothing to do with your previous cult-member husband persona?

 

- You have said that you are certain that if you were not already together that you are not the man your wife would choose today. Is she the woman that you would choose today?

 

-Have you tried marriage counselling to help each other work through your very significant change in your loss of religious belief?

 

- How open are you to being with her if she were to have no demands on your believing something you no longer believe?

[tercelkisor]

Brucethecollie: Sorry for the confusion.  I can only sum it up as feel I have explained it already.  I was married when I was a christian. After a violent deconversion, I decided to divorce my wife since she was only my wife because of christianity, and I needed to tangibly do what I considered to be course correction.  She basically attempted suicide, and now I'm only married because I'm afraid she'll actually succeed next time.  I believe it is clear that there is at least one problem in there somewhere.  If you find it difficult to understand-and I don't mean any disrespect-, but you don't have to have input.  Maybe you just cannot connect to what I mean when I say I wasn't a nominal christian, and the trauma that came with the departure from that.  I don't intend to write you off, only to inform you on the nature of the issue so you can use your judgement when deciding to respond or not.

[n4hpg]

I've decided to redo my entire message.

 

The fact that your wife has already attempted suicide shows that she has, in fact, already tried to leave you. That she threatens suicide for YOUR leaving is simply emotional extortion. Had her suicide been successful, you wouldn't be here torturing yourself over the decision as SHE made it unilaterally. She already determined that the relationship is not worth saving.

 

I'm assuming that you've been honest with her and did not provoke the suicide attempt through manipulation.

 

What you both owe each-other first and foremost is honesty. If you can't have a free-flow of non-combative discussion about how you feel, there is no point in continuing a charade. Your decision boils down to only one simple question: do you love her enough to attempt to work together to fix the relationship? If not, then that's the way you feel and you should leave the relationship.

 

Conversely, does she love you enough to work on fixing the relationship? It would seem that she's less interested in working on it than she is in taking her own life. I would ask her if she loved me and if she would be willing to work on the relationship with a counselor.

 

You can't even begin to repair the damage until the scabs are torn off in honest discussion.

 

Being depressed and mentally ill is nothing to take lightly. Hence my suggestion of a counselor. But to even get to that point, you both have to agree to it. That you love each-other and that the marriage is worth saving.

 

I divorced my first wife because she was steadfast in her refusal to go to counseling and to work with me. Everything was MY fault. It was my depression. It was my super high IQ, etc. etc. I had to make a choice and the choice was terrible since I have 2 beautiful daughters that I love very much and the divorce tore us apart.

 

My present marriage has its ups and downs like most, but being honest and being real partners, we sought counseling when we needed it and have a deep, mutual respect for each-other that maintains us.

 

Be honest with yourself, be honest with her. She should be honest with you and the answer to your question will become apparent.

[dsayers]

After a violent deconversion

What does this look like? Also, I know my last post was late to the party, so I wanted to point it out since it kind of got buried under other posts that went live faster. I made some points and asked some questions and am curious as to your thoughts/answers.

[tercelkisor]

dsayers:

 

I know that those claims are competing, and I would raise the same question if someone were to say to me what I said there.  I guess I mean that she behaves in generally caring and thoughtful ways when not under external stress.  I know that it is or seems superficial, but I'd like to give her the benefit of the doubt, and assume that it was a moment of weakness.  It still scares me.

 

What I mean by " she gets me"  is also somewhat superficial and unimportant, but comforting.  I'm a big jokester and have silly quirks that seem to be a turnoff to others, but not to her.  I know that it's super surface level, but it's nice to have someone who you can generally be inhibited around.

 

By violent deconversion, I mean that it tore me up inside.  It uprooted everything that I thought was permanent about myself and forced me to shift and remap my identity to something of an entirely different  nature than what I thought was important for basically my entire life.  Basically, it was a way to get at the idea that the "deconversion" would have its unmitigated affect on every aspect of my life since all of my life was build on the rug of christianity.  What that rug was pulled out, everything shifted in ways that seem unpredictable and terrifying.

[dsayers]

I really appreciate the honesty and empathy in your post here

 

I know that those claims are competing, and I would raise the same question if someone were to say to me what I said there.  I guess I mean that she behaves in generally caring and thoughtful ways when not under external stress.  I know that it is or seems superficial, but I'd like to give her the benefit of the doubt, and assume that it was a moment of weakness.

I wouldn't say it is superficial. NOBODY is perfect. Even if she was well-steeped in self-knowledge, if she was damaged, it's entirely possible she could find herself in a situation so stressful that she would default to her initial programming. This is actually why I had asked if she was triggered. There were a couple times when my fiancee had been triggered and actually attacked me. It was nothing like her at all. For this reason, I set aside my injury in the moment, fought her inner-abusers for her, and rescued her from them. If you are committed, then I think this is a very appropriate and loving thing to do. Which is why it hurt so badly when the one time *I* was triggered (by her no less), she turned her back on me and wasn't there for me when I needed her most.

 

I'm still having a hard time squaring this circle though. On the one hand, you say that she gets you and you find value in having somebody you can be uninhibited around. On the other hand, you say that you're only married to her because you were a Christian. The violent deconversion leaves you a different person. I get that. But what's important to you here? You're talking about the rest of your life. Did you two talk about her suicide attempt afterwards? Is she doing anything to address this in her so that it won't happen again? Would you be willing to accept staying in a relationship just to be their crutch?