If you were "willing", what would you have to do, to adress your W's issue?

And if you answer with being more "successful", how would you have to actually do that?

You know what I can't figure out?

Why people keep reading and posting to Hold. Seriously. And I ask that question of myself too. Because I keep reading and posting.

Hold, I have zero sympathy for you and your money woes. You make roughly 200K a year. I don't know what you are doing with your money that prevents you from simple things like insurance for your teenager.

If a family of 4 cannot live on 100K a year then there is something really really wrong with the family finances and the spending.

Did she run up all the credit cards again on fancy parties for the kids? I know that one party for the boy was 30K.....

When you spend 30K on one party, that is 1/3 of your yearly income. And that would be simply:

C-A-R-A-Z-Y !!!!!!

I think Hold said recently that HE charged a party for the ds and the dd (2 parties) recently on credit card.

SM: correct.

I see how I posted 8 years ago when I arrived here. My wife is wonderful and I want to be in love with her and she with me. Not doing as well at work as I wish but hope to do better in the future and achieve my goals.

Now I post how I have no hope for my marriage or my career and can't wait to die. Not a good progression. I downloaded the list of psychiatrists covered by our insurance. Hopefully I will find the motivation to call them. Hopefully I am open to making changes in the tape playing in my head. I have never been, despite many courses of therapy over 30+ years. Maybe now I am ready.

Clearly, coming here during the day and playing video games at night to medicate the pain, but making no changes in behavior, is not a productive coping strategy.

Had a discussion with Mrs. Hold about seeing a psychiatrist. She agreed that it would be pointless to ask for help not seeing myself as a failure in my career, because on paper it doesn't look good. She said "You need to work on where you go from here given that you are a failure at work. You need to focus on other areas of life where you have had success." I said "well, it is not like my wife is happy and we have a good marriage. You wanted the life that my career success would have brought, and you are not going to get it." She said "true". I replied "at least my kids like me." She said "you have to learn to want what you have instead of striving to have what you think you want." I said "yes, that would be the road to contentment."

Unbelievable.

I don't understand the bit about it not looking good on paper. Am I missing something that wouldn't be covered by patient confidentiality?

Are you paraphrasing or quoting her, Hold, because if you're quoting her, wow...

I replied "at least my kids like me." She said "you have to learn to want what you have instead of striving to have what you think you want." I said "yes, that would be the road to contentment."

This bit above...she might not have been responding to the 'at least my kids like me'. Her thought pattern may have already been in another direction. Clarification with her might prevent that statement from settling in and growing roots.

I got out of it that no one is going to see him as a 'failure' because he looks good 'on paper' even though Mr. and Mrs. Hold see him as a failure. Ugh.

Hold why don't the two of you take a week of your vacation and go work in a homeless shelter?

Hold...remember to mirror and clarify what she's saying before you allow what she's saying to take hold and fester. It's for your own good.

Thanks ladies, but you have this backward. I see myself as a failure because I am not as successful as my father despite being provided financial and educational advantages as a child / young adult. I have squandered the opportunity to move beyond where my father was - I will never even get to where he got. And it is not like he founded Microsoft so it isn't even worth trying. It was quite reasonable 20 or 30 years ago to think that I would be even more successful than he was, and I have failed to realize my potential. Combined with being far less financially successful than most of my law school classmates, and no one is going to be able to convince me that I have had a successful career.

So my wife is not sending out a message I disbelive. She is not poisoning my self-image. My wife is merely agreeing with my self-assessment. She expected that I would be able to afford the country club and kids' summer camp and fancy cars and paying for kids' college that my father was able to afford. She is bitterly disappointed that I cannot afford that lifestyle. But no more disappointed than I am.

Smiling, what is "clear on paper" is that I have NOT accomplished what I set out to do. That I have not accomplished what could have reasonably been expected 25 years ago. She agrees that no psychiatrist could say I have done a good job of taking advantage of my talents and education. She wants the psychiatrist to help me deal more productively with my failure.

It is like being a #1 draft choice in the NFL, and then not being able to make the starting team. That is not success relative to what was reasonable to expect on draft day. Sure, it is wonderful to have been drafted. But few people view "draft busts" as successful professional athletes. They have to pick themselves up and reinvent themselves as something else (although the millions of dollars of signing bonus helps).

No one is ever going to convince me that I am not a failure at work. The key, as Mrs. Hold said, is where do I go from here?

I have squandered the opportunity to move beyond where my father was - I will never even get to where he got. And it is not like he founded Microsoft so it isn't even worth trying. It was quite reasonable 20 or 30 years ago to think that I would be even more successful than he was, and I have failed to realize my potential. Combined with being far less financially successful than most of my law school classmates, and no one is going to be able to convince me that I have had a successful career.

Maybe it is time to change professions, start over. Maybe you are not doing well because you don't like what you're doing. If you're going to be making, perhaps, half of what you felt you would, perhaps it is time to switch professions and possibly even excel there with the same income. What's the worst that can happen?

You've been failing, perhaps, because you've been driven by perceived or real expectations of your father and your wife. Two very influential people in any man's life.

Time to do the things that make you feel like a man in your own right, Hold, not what other people expect of you. I don't know how ANY person could be happy living solely to please others.

Maybe it is time to go out on your own and start your own practice. Your wife can begin earning her keep by being your office manager/researcher.

This way she will be part of the success/failure, and you will have a more vested interest in whether it works out or not.

Well, I guess you will have to define success for me. I agree you aren't sucessful, but it has little to do with the 'measley' $200K you make a year. It has to do with YOUR expectations and the way YOU allow others to define you and your happiness by your paycheck.

And whose rule is that that a son must make more money than his father did. That is a ridiculous notion. Good grief.



Ok, so I had it backwards....and guess what? It is just as pathetic this way as the other way. You didn't address my suggestion that you two go spend a week working in a homeless shelter. I have an even better idea....sell everything you own, quit your job, move to a small town Anywhere USA and open a small practice. Have Mrs. Hold work in your office. Learn to appreciate the small things and stop this whining nonsense about how much of a failure you are.

(Green Acres keeps playing in my head for some reason)




Green Acres is the place to be
Faaaarm Living is the life for ME!

Those guys who say the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result" are wrong. The definition of insanity is smashing your head into a brick wall again and again, NOT expecting a different result, and continuing to bang your head against the wall. At least the guy who thinks it may eventually produce a different result doesn't want and expect the bad result he keeps getting. Continuing even when you know darn well all you are doing is compounding the hurt is REALLY nuts.

I get that you don't want to really know your wife. I believe you believe the same of her--that she doesn't really want to know you. These conversations are crazy to me...because the come in the guise of knowing one another.

And they aren't. They are a subtle war you wage.

If you wanted to really know her, you would have asked her in that exchange, "Is that what you've begun doing, striving to really want what we have? Can you help me with that?"

She may have been sharing that her expectations of you, which were true, are no longer...and her concern now is very real, for you to stop the self-flogging and deprecation. She may hurt for you. You won't know because you still are erratic with honestly sharing and striving to know and being known.

My DH hurt when I would make fun of myself. Until he told me to stop doing that, I didn't know. I thought it modesty. It wasn't. Wasn't sharing, either. He still, six years later, questions me if he hears it. He asks if I'm being honest or wry.

You're partners. Not about disappointing one another...it's about knowing and being known. Please, Hold, take these posters advice and act on it...and if you won't do it for yourself, then do it for the marriage, instead.

Which is the crux of your stagnancy. Not your wife. To know who she is today, what she's working on, her stuff...is a privilege. Take it.

Not to get her to do/say/believe anything. Be really selfish and do it just to have this experience. So you will stop your self-loathing, horrific manipulation (review your conversation) and self-deception. From practice. Whether you feel like it or not.

LA

Hold...I really want the best for you, but does anything anyone posts to you here inspire you to make a change of any kind? Does it help you in a real and possible way? Just wondering.

VERY insightful LA.

Not quite. I don't want her to know me, because she will realize what a loser I am and not want to be with me. Of course, that makes me the crazy one, since it is long since clear to her what a loser I am and she hasn't left. I figure she doesn't feel she has any good options, and it is my job to make sure she never realizes HOW bad it is to be stuck with me, or she might rethink her conclusion.

The above might have been false when we started marriage counselling 13 years ago or when I arrived here 8 years ago. I wasn't in such a bad state and there was hope things would improve in time, and maybe being with me wasn't as bad as I thought it was. Now that I am so irredeemably depressed and resigned to failure, I have made what were warped thoughts into reality.

I understand that many people think the essence of marriage is to share your true self with your spouse and be accepted. I have long since given up any hope that my true self would be accepted, so I have long since stopped sharing my true self with my spouse. Not that I do a very good job of hiding it. But I use whatever flashing lights and shiny objects are available to distract her. And myself.

The key is that I am not willing to undertake the effort to make myself into a more attractive person, so that my true self would be attractive. I have given up and given in. I am going quietly into the dark night. I am not bothering to put up a fight.


If you think it is subtle, then I must not be doing it right.


I do that to her. Complain when she is self-deprecating and tell her to stop. Tell her that I will not have anyone talking about my wife that way, not even my wife. I think she likes hearing that.

I, on the other hand, don't want to hear that from her. When I complain about myself, I am merely stating the truth. I don't want to hear from anyone else that I am wrong.

This will only change when I want change badly enough. Amazingly, despite all my complaining, I don't.