What kind of support network do you have? Do you have anyone with whom you can discuss this offline, who will support you?

Don’t have any. My whole family basically are the same as my wife.

Also, I assume this is something where you don’t feel safe just leaving when your wife is there.

It helps me to understand what precisely is the mechanism by which this would go wrong, if you just told her “I’m leaving”.

Can you describe that? The reason why it has to be when she’s away?

Pppp! It’s mental. I’m in a god awful amount of pain (not in quality, but in quantity, the sheer number of parts of my body that hurt is too many to count, and it’s extremely erratic, changing constantly. And then when she finally allowed me to use money to see a doctor in late 2021, the meds they prescribed messed up my stomach, lungs, and I’ve gotten pretty bad dizziness, chest pain, and now stomach pain, and it’s just as erratic as my pains are. Then throw in just normal aging pains, and my mind is just nuttier than hell). On top of that dealing with her…erm…lack of empathy/love/caring/whatever does not bode well when I need to concentrate on driving. There may be other mechanisms that cause such distress, but for the most part it’s just to be far more relaxed and have nothing more stressing me out.

I can connect you with people who run men’s groups online, if that would be helpful for you in establishing a support network.

It would be nice if I could use it, but unfortunately my situation is just so convoluted. The chronic pains, GERD like symptoms from those meds, and her attitude towards me all mashed together creating a quagmire of nonsensical mental duress. The really only way I’d be able to see if there can be anything that can calm me down would be getting away, but that’s if and only if my pains don’t get in the way.

When I did try leaving in 2017, I couldn’t find a job that wouldn’t exacerbate my pains, and I ran out of money and came back to work for my brother in law doing electrical. I pushed myself for full time and in two months, that was it. I pushed myself too hard, and the pains have never calmed back down to…meh…sort of…kind of…a little bit better.

I finally got out of a long relationship which I had thought was going to last until my death. I was resigned to an unhappy, unfulfilled fate. Then I got out, and boy has it been hard. But worth it! SO WORTH IT.

I am myself again. I would be honored, if this is what you need, to help you find that in your own life as well.

I should have left a long long time ago, but I am my father’s son, and he basically lived the same kind of life with my mother. So one could say it’s a curse.

Anyway, there’s a lot of things I live with from this marriage that I’d like to forget. Like witnessing two of my son’s suicide attempts and his case workers completely ignoring me when I tried to get help for both of them. “Why doesn’t she love me?”, I still hear those words a lot, and I still see images of things that never happened a lot.

Erf…I better not say more, I’ve been eating the wrong things today and am having a hell of a time breathing. Back hurts in several spots, entire body feels weighted down, and I’m so dizzy…Yeesh! Can’t concentrate very well.