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female
age
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anonymous
writes: How do you know what is wrecking your life,if it's not you? Who is able to tell you, what did you do wrong, or why is you life full of problems, if it doesn't depend on you?. I mean, some problems are easy, like you made bad choices, like drugs drinking cheating etc, and than you will have the consequences.But what if its much more complex. Like it is your kid you, who is making bad choices, or your husband, but you are the victim? I 'm making good choices, eating well, exercising, taking care of myself, caring for others,and more. I don't have any really bad habits, or addiction, but my children do. And they are causing huge pain to me and for my husband. My husband is a good man, but he is a workaholic. He wasn't very involved father, but I don't believe, that is why my kids have drug problems. I don't why , because they never saw any bad example. There are way worst dad's than him. He is kind and gentle, but never a strong influence on them. He never had any problems with drugs, but he seem to be addicted to work.So I have no joy in my life, yet seemingly it is not my fault. So what can I do, if others are wrecking your life, but you are way to close to them to leave them. It is much harder, than when you really know what to improve to make your life better. So what can I do in a situation like that?
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (3 November 2011): first off, you're never "too close to leave." People have walked out on 30-year marriages or longer (it's happened in my family), cut off contact with children and parents and other family. If you need to leave because staying is too painful, you CAN leave. This doesn't mean that everyone else will be OK with it and will support you in leaving, in fact there will be consequences for leaving people. But there's clearly consequences for NOT leaving as well and you're experiencing it right now. So in the end you have to decide what is worse in the long run.
I'm not suggesting that people abandon their families flippantly - I can't think anyone would want to to do that if they were in a good and happy family. If they're in a toxic family situation though, that's something else. Staying put doesn't in and of itself make a better choice.
And when I say 'leaving' it doesn't have to be literally physically leaving, it could just mean cutting back some of your personal investment in the other person or people. Like pulling back, becoming less involved in their life so as to distance yourself from their negative effects. it could mean simply saying "no" to them from now on. It could mean re-defining the relationship (such as no longer being married to someone even if you continue to share child-rearing duties together).
you don't say how old your kids are. If they're grown up, or will be very soon, then they should be responsible for their own lives and it's not your responsibility to fix their problems. of course you can't help but be upset because you love them but you need to detach from things that are out of your control so you don't get dragged down.
Your husband needs to learn that there's more to marriage than working to provide a paycheck and then living in his own world. If that's all he ever wanted, he didn't need to get married to you he could just mail over a check once a month to support the kids while living as a single man on his own since that's what he's essentially doing anyway. or you could try and change your view of marriage and reframe it to be a purely utilitarian contract between two people to keep the cash flow coming in for mutual survival. If you can lower your expectations for your marriage this way, then you won't feel so disappointed in it. (it may or may not be a good idea to lower your expectations, just that it's one way to cope with unhappiness while nothing on the outside changes)
"So I have no joy in my life, yet seemingly it is not my fault. "
It's not your fault that your kids chose to do drugs. It may or may not be your fault that your husband is so distant from you. But, it IS your fault if you sit and do nothing and consequently remain unhappy indefinitely. you know the situation for what it is: your kids are being self destructive, and your husband is detached. What can you do ahout this? How about some ideas:
1. join a support group for families of addiction sufferers. the moral support you get from other people going through the same thing as you can be a huge comfort and relief and lighten your mind a bit.
2. Talk to your husband about your unhappiness with the marriage and decide together what to do, whether you will do marriage counseling, or separate, or what. But decide for yourself that you will not continue this marriage exactly the way it is because that's making you miserable. Something has to change, one way or the other. you don't have to make any decision now, but just start the conversations going so that things can change.
3. Get counseling for yourself. Some times having someone to talk to who will understand, will make you feel better.
You have to get out of the victim mindset because it makes you powerless to do anything on your own. Yes you didn't create these bad situations, but just because you didn't create it doesn't mean you should accept it either.
A
female
reader, chocoholicforever  +, writes (3 November 2011):
hi, first of all I'm sorry to hear that you're having so much distress in your life right now.
It's true that it may not be your fault at all, you did nothing wrong and it is other's bad decisions and life choices that are hurting you. Unfortunately this does happen. Things can happen that cause us much pain and distress through no fault of our own (such as accidents, illnesses, bad economy, other misfortunes). Other people that you're involved with and emotionally invested in, can also make your life difficult because you can't control other people and some times they make bad choices that also impact you.
But even though it may not be your fault that you're in a very unhappy family situation, that doesn't mean that you don't still have options and the power to do things differently. It doesn't mean that only if it was your fault then do you have the right to makes changes in your life for the better. Even if it wasn't your fault, you still can and should do something.
Maybe it would help to stop thinking of this as whose fault is it. Right now it sounds like you may be thinking that only the person who is at fault should be the one to make any changes. Your kid should stop doing drugs. Your husband should stop working so much and put more attention on the family. Then your life will be much happier. Yes it's true that if they did actually do those things, your life would in fact be happier. But they didn't do that. And if you're stuck in this way of thinking then it's giving over control of your life to other people *who don't have to have this degree of control over your emotional well-being*.
Ask yourself, what can YOU do that will make your life happier, that doesn't depend on your kid or your husband changing anything about themselves? For example, what if you developed more friendships so that you will be less lonely despite your husband hardly being at home, and so you will have more emotional support to cope with your distress over your kid's problems.
Another thing to think about is, what if you put aside the concept of "fault" and "blame" and shift instead to the concept of "contribution" to a problem. Yes it may not be your fault that your kid is doing drugs and your husband is never around. But you might have done something that contributed to putting yourself in this situation, since nothing happens in a vacuum. This does NOT mean that you caused this!! It also doesn't mean that you necessarily had the power to stop any of this happening if only you had had a crystal ball and known ahead of time what to do differently.
But through your own reactions, behaviors and choices in response to your kid's and husband's behaviors and choices over the years, you might have contributed to your present sense of distress. For example maybe your husband is a workaholic because he's dissatisfied with the marital relationship. If so, there's two people in a relationship (you and him) so you would have something to do with that, even if it's simply having chosen to marry someone whom you don't fit very well with. that's just an example.
There is a difference between blame/fault, and contribution to a problem. Again, nothing happens in a vacuum so you may have contributed to this situation in some way even though you didn't create it nor did you exacerbate it. But when you're in the blame/fault mindset, you're also imposing a moral judgment on whoever it is to be blamed. This can prevent you from being able to honestly examine and see your own role or contribution, no matter how minor, to your current life situation because it's too painful to do that *IF* you believe that moral failing and thus loss of your self-esteem and self-identity (such as being a good mom or a good wife) is at stake. But if you can shift your focus to one of 'contribution' which is neutral and non-judgmental rather than blame, then you take away the shame and guilt involved so you are more free to a hard look at your own actions and behaviors and attitudes over the years that may have contributed to your current unhappiness, and thereby gain some insight into what you can do now that will change your situation for the better whether or not it involves these other people changing.
Put another way, ultimately you have to take responsibility for your own emotional well-being and choices even if they are responses to situations that happened out of your control. And that can be easier if you look at "contributions" to the present problem rather than whose "fault" it is and who is to blame. when you blame someone (even if they really ARE to blame), you're handing over responsibility for the situation to them which may be very justified but the downside is that it could rob you of your sense of responsibility to yourself and keep you paralyzed in inaction because you're viewing the situation as entirely someone else's doing and thus only they have the power to make your life better just as they made it worse.
(for example, for some people choosing to stay in a bad marriage with a spouse who treats them poorly rather than leaving the marriage, is their own contribution to their present unhappiness even though it wasn't their fault that their spouse was that way and even though they do have other "good" reasons to stay. But the fact would still be that they chose to stay and they are presently unhappy, and it would be useful to at least acknowledge that. Contribution is non-judgemental, it is what it is.)
If you can look more at what personal choices YOU made that may have contributed to your present unhappiness, then you may be able to come up with options that you can implement to make your life better even though it's not your fault that you're in this situation. For example what if you found a way to talk differently to your kid that might at some point change his thinking and lead to him making better choices in his life. What if you worked on your relationship with your husband and maybe that would result in him wanting to be more invested in his home life.
Finally, the concept that you are "way too close to leave them." Your distress may have been building up so much that now the only option you can think of is scenarios that are so drastic that it's unimaginable so you feel even more trapped in despair. Again, shifting mindset from blame to contribution might help you to see your situation in less "emotionally loaded" terms and thereby open your mind up to more solutions, even those that right now seem out of the question. For example, if you are extremely unhappy in your marriage, separation or divorce is an option and some times just acknowledging that can empower you to do things differently which may ironically improve your marriage. When you feel you have no "real" options, then you're stuck with no where to go except into depression. If you can slowly work through your situation in as objective a way as possible, and get to know yourself better and how you got into this situation (again, that doesn't mean you caused it), then you may feel more empowered to identify and follow through with options.
good luck!
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