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TragedianActor, Holy Cow is right — you must get yourself help immediately. I’m not sure if this is OK, but I’m going to do it anyway and post some chat and phone resources of organizations whose sole purposes right now are to listen to you. National Suicide Prevention Lifelinehttp://www.youmatter.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/home/get-help/getting-hel/ 1–800–273-TALK (8255)
Live Chats: crisischat.org (2pm-2am ET) or imalive.org
Chat anonymously with an Active Listener:
http://www.7cupsoftea.com/ TragedianActor wrote:So clearly I’m not going to get the help I’m looking for from this forum. I posted this hoping to get some help to save our marriage. Instead, I’m getting a whole bunch of people trying to convince me of the lie that divorce is okay. I can tell you I’m certainly not going to go to a therapist if that’s what they’re going to tell me.
So I guess the only thing to do is what I’ve done every other time we’ve had a meltdown – ride it out and hope things smooth over somehow.
But if not, I guess I’d better be prepared to put my money where my mouth is and actually take my own life.
Because the way life is is not okay.
And it’s not okay to say it’s okay.
I have been where you are at a few times in my life for many different reasons. Yes, you need to get some close personal help. This is just a text based forum. Yes, divorce is better than suicide. I’m not advocating divorce. But if you are at that point of throwing life away, then you must say to yourself that if you can’t stand to live like this, then you must be willing to realize that you may be in an abusive relationship. Verbal abuse is still abuse. You probably still love your wife, and see her many good qualities. Anyone would in a relationship, that doesn’t mean it’s ok.
Suicide will destroy your sonand leave a wake of destruction in the lives of everyone you know. You need to get that thought out of your head, things are desperate. We’re here for you, but we are all impersonal. Get help, you don’t need to tell her you’re doing it but get help.
Hi TA, My heart goes out to you. I know that there are some techniques that have been helpful in my marriage. Unfortunately, it takes both of you to make those techniques work (and it sounds like she either won’t or can’t contribute). If you have been to a marriage counselor and that did not help – I can’t imagine that my humble suggestions would make much of a difference.
I would seriously recommend going to a counselor yourself – not to fix your marriage but just to have someone to talk to. (If you can’t get to a counselor right away the links and phone numbers already provided could help in the interim.) After the stillbirth of our third child, my assumptive world with a God that blesses me fell apart and much of the LDS church went with it. My wife grieved differently than I did and shut me out. She saw my FC as a betrayal of everything our marriage had stood for.
During this time I saw a counselor (and found staylds). Both of them together helped me gain perspective on what I was going through that I couldn’t have seen from the pain of my isolation. DW and I are now both at a better place.
I do not know what your future will bring but I do know that you are not alone.
Your semi-anonoymous friend,
Roy
Hi, TA – I’m very sorry. You’re in a terrible position right now. If you’ve said in earlier posts, I apologize, but do you have an established relationship with a primary care doc, therapist or psychiatrist? It looks like you’ve moved recently, so you may not. TA- my heart goes out to you. My marriage has been in some dark places as well and the pain you describe hit that same nerve again. My first marriage counselor was absolutely AWEFUL. If it was my first experience with counseling I would be very discouraged to try and find help again. But I had personal counseling in the past and knew there were better people out there. My second marriage counselor was much better. My wife just recently got started on personal therapy. Our marriage is far from perfect but these things help relieve some pressure and help me focus less on how stressful my marriage is and more on things that were neglected, like my kids. Please seek help. You are worth it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Nobody here is saying divorce is a good thing, in and of itself. We are saying suicide is worse. That is all, and that is true. There are some good suggestions here, and some good resources provided. We can offer sympathy, empathy, encouragement, and love – but you need more than that. Please seek professional help.
TA, I think you’re brave to come here and look for help. I respect that.
I think you have great strength and determination to not give up on your marriage. That’s the kind of quality that is needed to avoid divorce. Good for you. Don’t give up, on anything. You can survive this trial.
So, you asked for help, so here is what I think you should do:
1) Take suicide off the table. It’s just not an option.
2) Take divorce off the table, it’s not something you want to do.
3) make a safety plan and a promise that should you feel suicidal thoughts you’ll contact the resources others provided above. That is critical to have a plan in place.
4) Start making a list of things you want to do to save your marriage.
I think a marriage is built on 2 things. Trust and Commitment.
You have the commitment…you won’t entertain the thought of the marriage breaking down, you’re ready to fight for it. Good for you!
Trust: how do you trust your spouse? How do you live to be trustworthy?
Apologies: own up to mistakes. Honestly apologize when you mess up. And tell yourself you’re ok…we all mess up. You build trust when you apologize and take ownership without blame or excuse.
Compliments: Can you remember the beautiful qualities that attracted you to her so that you got married with so much hope of love? Do you express these, even during the angry times? How are compliments received?
Those would be some starter points on building the relationship. What can you tell us about your efforts in those areas? The more we know, the more we might be able to help.
What have you done today to show her you love her?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
TA: I agree with those who urge you to talk to someone about the suicidal thoughts. If that’s no longer a concern, I’ll just add that marriage is hard. Divorce is hard. Parenting is hard. You are half of the equation. Many church leaders will say that you have to give 100% and expect nothing from your spouse, which is great to a point, but you are also parents, so it’s more complicated than that, and on some level, you also have needs that must be met as a human being. You’re not superhuman. You need to get to the point that things are OK in your life, and you need to cut yourself some slack here. I just finished reading a book about marriage called The New “I Do.” It talks about marriage from the radical perspective of not marrying for life (let alone eternity), but of creating a marriage contract that is shorter term and time bound. Now, of course, you could have a marriage throughout life that is a series of renewing contracts. The problem she points out in the book is that we enter marriage without setting expectations, goals and boundaries. Then we fail to communicate throughout the marriage and we hide our resentments rather than dealing with them. She talks about different kinds of marriages, although they could be seen as different phases of marriage: starter marriages (first getting set up financially, no kids yet, usually marry for love or romance), parenting marriages (need a good partner who shares the work of parenting well, but the love & romance are less important), companionship marriages (empty nesters sometimes discover they aren’t friends any more when they kids leave home), caretaking marriages (when spouses primarily need to help one another with health related things as they age). We expect our marriages to be all these things and more, but we enter them when we are just thinking about love & romance (or sex), and not mature enough yet to realize all the things we will need to be for and to get from our partner. So while divorcing may not be an option, I think it’s a great idea to set a 5 year plan or goals, talk about expectations in terms of partnership, and define who will do what. You don’t have to have love and passion to be great partners. Just communication.
I haven’t been on this forum in a while, so I just saw this post today. While I agree with everyone else that you, TragedianActor, need to get help about your suicidal thoughts right away, I did have some thoughts I wanted to share about a way to approach your wife. We really only have control over how we ourselves act. So while you may not be able to get your wife to be more patient with you directly, you can affect how she responds to you to some degree by how you respond to her. This may be a time when you can focus on what you can do for her to show you love her. Small, daily acts of kindness can have a big impact. If there are things you could do for her that she would notice as an effort of connection on your part, she may start to focus on your good traits and behaviors and start to be more patient with you because of that. It may help you be more patient with her too as you focus on her experience in your relationship instead of just your side of it.
As far as your problem with feeling like God is giving you this challenge and then not helping you, I don’t believe that’s how life works. I think everyone has huge problems just because that is a part of being a human and living with other humans. I don’t think God gives these problems to us, they just happen. So yes life is hard, and right now your life is particularly hard, but there are ways to make it less hard. You don’t have to completely give up. When you are having suicidal thoughts like you have been, you need to realize that those thoughts are not accurate to reality. They certainly feel real, but they aren’t not realistic. You don’t have to think that God is expecting you to buck up and keep trying. But it can be something you can decide to expect from yourself. You are strong enough to keep going, just like the rest of us who experience huge problems. Sometimes it feels like we can’t, but again that isn’t reflecting reality. There are people who can and want to help when things get really tough. We don’t have to face things alone. Those are false feelings and thoughts that lead us to think that. There are solutions and ways to get through any big challenge. That is the reality of life. Please keep that in mind.
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