My main problem is... i dont quit... ever. I dont know when to give up. I go so hard at everything in life, including relationships. I have an inner desire to "fix" things I guess, and I work non-stop until I get them fixed or I die trying. So I guess that mentality is what has kept me going in my relationship/marraige with my wife. There have been so many ups and downs, but I always try to look for the best and keep working to make things better... when in all honesty, looking back on it I should have cashed my chips in and walked away a long time ago.
I knew she was bi-polar. I knew about a lot of her personal issues which makes her the type of person she is now. There are so many intangible factors in my marraige that if I were to sit here and try to type them all out, i would be typing for days.
In my marraige, I am more like a father figure than a husband. She relies on me so much for damn near every aspect of life. Shes very co-dependent. In our past, i got caught up in the notion that she would comitt suicide if I left her... trust me, she's capable of it. I will get flamed for that one, but regardless I just couldnt really sleep well at night with that on my shoulders. So I've always tried to stick with her and work through things with her to get her to a more stable place in her life. Throughout that entire process, one of the things that kept being brought up was the fact that she never saw us getting married and she felt that I was just leading her on and playing games with her... which couldnt be farther from the truth.
As we continue'd with our relationship, and I continued to try to iron out every problem that we had so that we could move forward, it seemed as of last year that we both were finally in a place where I felt that marraige was a viable option... and somewhere inside me I hoped that once we were married, she would feel secure enough in herself that we would both be able to continue moving foward with our lives together and actually be happy instead of always going back and forth from happy to miserable as hell.
At first, things were wonderfull and I must admit that I LOVE being someones husband. After being with the same woman off and on, and living together 3 seperate times, we both really didnt think it would be any different once we were married. Well I can say that it definitely felt different, but in a good way. I like being a husband... however, in the big picture I just dont see that there is anything that I can do to truly make her happy. The factors that bring her down, and cause her to make me unhappy are all things that I can not control or influence. So now, after a decade of trying I have basically realized that there is no light at the end of the tunell.
As much as I care for her and respect her, i feel that we will truly never be as happy as a married couple should be. However now, I wont file for divorce... for a lot of the same reasons that i never got out of the relationship previously but also because I will refuse to pay alimony after all the stuff I have already been through. It's just a rediculas expectation for someone in my position to have to meet, given the fact that I have done 500 million times more than most any other man would have if they were in my position. I garantee you that 98% of all men would have been out of this thing a long time ago... like I said, i dont know when to "quit". In this aspect im definitely not proud of the fact that I didnt give up on this... because any man in his right mind would look at my situation and call me a fucking idiot for sticking around even half as long as I have.
Oh well... we just moved into a new apartment this weekend so we have a year lease lookin us in the face. Lets see what this next year holds for me...
(i hope this post makes sense and doesnt jump around too much. Im busy as hell at work right now, and i wrote this up in between taking about 20 phone calls heh)