Yes, it's our fault they're batshit crazy. We did it to them. Yup, all our fault. And every bad decision / every decision they now regret is our fault too.
Yep, and we're always the ones who have to change. Not them, NO NO NO NO NO NO! They NEVER do anything wrong. No sir, they NEVER do anything to piss us off. Nope, that's all our fault too!
Truth be told, I've heard that for 20 of the last near 30 years I've been married. I've about had my fill and I'm ready to walk. My wife lately (as in the last two years now) has done things I'd NEVER thought she'd do, and said things I'd NEVER thought she'd say. To say I no longer recognize her would be truthful.
We're in counseling, she's said repeatedly to our counselor it's all my fault, I have to change, it's not her. It doesn't matter how many times SHE (our counselor) tells her it's never just one person's fault, that seems to be wife's position and she's sticking to it.
I'm at the point I know every 2 bedroom apartment, condo and town home within 15-20 minutes of my home and I've visited a few of them. I already have my game plan on when to take half of all the accounts, how to do it without her finding out about it until it's already done, and how I'm going to get my belongings out of the house when she's gone so I can do it in peace. It'll all happen on the same day.
I'm so seriously fed up with "it's all your fault" when everything she blames me for are decisions SHE made about HER life without asking me what I thought. She quit her full time job one day to stay home with the kids, cutting $50k out of our household income without so much as talking to me about it. That was 17 years ago. I've been the sole bread winner for 17 years. She blames me for her decision to stay home and be "stuck with the kids" and then again for my working so hard to keep a roof over our heads and food in our mouths.
She's the one that shit $50k down the crapper and put all the financial burden on me! That's my frigging fault?
Batshit crazy I tell ya. All of 'em.
Word of advice. If and BEFORE you decide to make tracks, get “stuff”. All documents. Financial, household, legal etc. I even took all the appliance manuals and warranty docs. Your lawyer will appreciate not having to hound her legal reps for the stuff and it will cost her $ to get copies of the stuff. Put it in a safe, undisclosed place. I even took boxes of family pictures before I made the move. Once you initiate the action you cannot legally remove any of those things and if you leave she ends up controlling everything in the house. Plan ahead.
“She quit her full time job one day to stay home with the kids, cutting $50k out of our household income without so much as talking to me about it.”
That is absolutely unacceptable. Your spouse is also your business partner. Doing something like that with out sitting down and planning for it is financially reckless, and if I might say so...CRAZY!
I have discovered over the years that women have an uncanny ability to forever arrive at the determination that everything indeed is all our fault.
Try this one: one girl I had been seeing for some time and been living together with for a bit started with the all-your-fault habit and began making a constant refrain of it. One morning, after she had been out late with some friends I arose when she was in the shower and on the way to the kitchen noticed a small slip of paper on the couch and half-hidden between two cushions. Reading it and bypassing the first part, it ended with a handprinted sentence that read: “Remember, sit on a happy face!”
When confronted with this slip of paper after she exited the shower, was she embarrassed that she had been caught cheating? Worried that I would think less of her? Uncertain of how I might respond or frightened that I would break up with her?
No. She instantly stated that I was to blame for digging through her purse like some manner of untrustworthy street-thief, and went on a long-winded excoriation of evil intents proven by the fact that I would go through her purse, then proceeded to tell all our friends about how untrustworthy I was because I had gone through her purse.
Right. Too bloody right that it was not at all about how she had been caught, it was rather about that she now knew I was unworthy of her trust because I had gone digging about her purse.
I know this is not a comparison compared to your experience, but I thought you might appreciate the laugh.
Cheers.
“...I’ve been the sole bread winner for 17 years.”
If she has no income the court will put alimony on you to the level which ‘sustains her existing lifestyle’. I don’t know about other states but in FL alimony is for life. And they don’t care when you no longer have income, you still have to pay. As one FReeper put it it is indeed slavery.