to think that keeping other people happy is more important and making yourself happy?

[ApricotSkies]

Nothing 'wrong' with my marriage, on paper. Two lovely young DC, nice house, we both have jobs that are unchallenging and pay okay. DP loves me, no abuse, no affairs. But I die inside a little every day at the thought of staying in this relationship.

Obviously the stock response is that you have to make yourself happy, you only have one life etc. But I am only one person. I can carry on making DP, DCx2, families x2 happy at the expense of my life, or I can blow all of their worlds apart. Why not just sacrifice myself to make all those other people happy?

Or,put another way, how could leaving make me happy knowing that hurt it would cause?

(I know the other stock answer is 'you can't keep others happy if you're not happy yourself', but I'm a fairly good actor - or at least, no one seems to have noticed for the last few years... )

Sigh. *than making yourself happy.

What is it that you would be leaving for? How would you be happy by blowing their worlds apart? Sometimes better the devil you know.

I felt really sad for you reading this. Maybe it would be helpful to relook at what you have and that it isn't the situation making you unhappy but how you view it.

Do you think CBT could help?
Have a look at mood gym - google it.

Hope things improve for you

Everyone gets periods of 'there must be more to life than this', the daily grind and drudgery of juggling work and a family will always fall on those with broad shoulders.

I don't think general discontentment and malaise is a valid reason to end a marriage. You don't have the right to self indulgently break up your childrens home and presumably demand to be the RP and effectively remove a day-to-day father from their lives. (you = generally).

I'm sure one of the right on hippy crew will be along with a lot of sunny blurb about rights and self fulfilment and much encouragement for you to LTB and find your inner self. In my experience, people who run away from responsibility to 'find themselves' have one massive problem - they take themselves with them - the problem is within as is the solution

But what is actually wrong? Too much emotional support for others? DH working long hours? financial? too much extended family input? too many after school activities to juggle?

A lot of people will be along later and will advise you to leave your marriage: seems to be the MN way.

But i have to say that i agree with you to some extent about wrecking others lives.

Why are you unhappy? In what way do you think that leaving would make you happier? Have you even spoken to your DH about this? If he's a good man, he will surely want to help you and work with you to improve your marriage.

I wouldn't want you to leave your marriage and realise too late that life 'out there' is not actually that great and that you threw away a good marriage.

OP, could you give more info about why you're unhappy in the relationship?

I went through about 6 months where I felt exactly as you describe, I could barely even look at my dh... But I did the acting thing very effectively so I know it's possible... Then a couple of things happened where I really needed his support and he totally surprised me with his strength and calmness and I realised how lucky I was.... I'm not sure what was happening during that 6 months, but I'm pretty sure it was me, not him... And I'm glad I hung in there.

Obviously that's just me, but it would help to know more about your situation before offering any advice.

It sounds like you have all the right ingredients - maybe you just need to mix things up a little?

Are you doing anything for you? You don't have to leave a marriage in order to do things that you want to do.

It sounds like you may have lost a little of who you are along the marriage /kids road, now you need to take some time for you.

Can you aim/train for a more challenging job? That's the bit that sounds most unsatisfying in your post. Why the focus on the marriage as the cause of your discontent? Finding another, better relationship is going to be the hardest thing, especially after going through a big break-up. But there's lots of other ways to find fulfilment for yourself, ways which are much easier to negotiate within a supportive marriage than as a single parent/in a new relationship. What is it you'd really like to do - beyond being single/with someone else? What is your passion?

You say there's nothing wrong with your marriage 'on paper'. What do you think is wrong with it that others don't see from the outside? All your OP says is that you're unhappy, it doesn't say why. It could be that you're in a damaging relationship that you are better off out of, or it could be that you are depressed and seeking change and see leaving your DH as the obvious option to make big changes in your life.

If you are unhappy then you need to look at changing that otherwise it will have a negative impact on those around you.

Have you spoken to your husband about how you are feeling? Perhaps think of a few things which would make you happier and work to make those changes - it doesn't need to be as massive as leaving the relationship though.

Good luck!

Then I don't think you are at the bottom. There's something salvageable there still. If you're wondering there's no 'need'. Once the need to leave/do something else is bad enough you could.

It's not 'stay and be miserable' or 'leave and destroy everything.'

There is also 'change what I can within the marriage.'

Figure out what's wrong and what you can do to make it better.

Perhaps you're suffering from mild depression? Also spare a thought for the idea that no one is 'happy' all the time. Life is about being content most of the time, with episodes of happiness, sadness etc. Only mad people are happy all the time!

You don't have to find happiness and satisfaction through your family. Some people do, but it's not the only route in the world. Perhaps you need to change your focus. Have you talked to your dh about the way you feel?

OK, I find that I have to say this: go to the GP. Is this depression? If it is, it's treatable. Don't let depression drag you down and destroy your faith in a perfectly good relationship.

YABU to think that your happiness is not important.

If there is no way for you to be happy within the marriage, then you should leave.

But have you even tried to change things? Or have you simply accepted that you will be unhappy?

I agree with Tee - there is more than imply "leave" vs "stay with everything as it is".

Fortyplus talks a lot of sense. Definitely worth looking at your life and relationship, seeing what can be worked on, and go to the GP if it may be depression. But not being happy doesn't necessarily mean there's anything particularly wrong. Discontent is part of the human condition. It can get us down or it can make us strive.

Ime MNers only advise leaving the relationship if it seems to them that there is something obviously and very wrong with it that can't be fixed, like an abusive husband. And then the motivation for the advice is not only concern for the poster but also the consideration that living with domestic violence and/or emotional abuse or infidelity is damaging and potentially dangerous for the children. Often the LTB scenarios are ones where you can see as an outsider that if the woman doesn't do something about separating the children from her partner, then SS will once they find out about it.

The reason there are so many of these threads on MN is that so many of the posters come here with very serious problems. That does not mean that the advice would be the same if the problems were different.

(I think it likely that you would find that more stitching is carried out by doctors in A&E than by GP surgeries or school nurses, but that is because they see fewer wounds that can be dealt with by a sticking plaster).

You haven't really given us much information about what is wrong in your relationship, OP.

Is it something that is likely to affect the children?

Is it something unfixable or something that might be fixed?

Is it something that is only related to the relationship between your dh and yourself, or might it be about how you feel about your life in general?

People have been agreeing with me a lot lately...oh the pressure...

Sorry to add to it, tee, but you're spot on.

apricot, I'm not in the least suggesting you leave, but I think you need to consider more possibilities are in play than those you're focussing on. It is perfectly possible that your children would cope if you did find you had to split up, maybe even come to realize life is better with a happy mum. It is also possible you'd leave and not be any happier. It's really hard to know someone else's marriage, but I think it's quite easy to think if you're not happy in any situation, leaving it will automatically make you happier, and it won't necessarily.

When you say you're a good actor, I'm assuming you've not discussed this with your DP. Is it possible to do that? You must be feeling very lonely.

I have been married for 28 years and during that period i have had times when i thought 'is that all there is'. This was mostly during the small children phase. It feels like you give everything to them and get little back. I used to dream of a small cottage with one bedroom just for me to do as a i please!

I would advise looking at what you can do to make yourself happy out with the family; not laving them but things just for you. I did an OU degree then trained as a SW when my youngest was very small and it was what i needed to make myself feel like me again. It also helped me feel much more positive towards my family.

My DD are aged 15 and 21 now and life is great.

I think that there is a culture that says we should be feeling happy and fulfilled all the time but this is never the case. You are in the doldrums right now and only you can make the changes to make yourself happy.

I think clear-sightedness here will come from abandoning the martyr complex which forms your first principle. Your OP seems to me to be crying out to have someone passionately insist to you that your happiness matters, possibly so that you can argue with it, at least internally. You even set up and knock down arguments in the OP itself.

I suppose we can all rally round to tell you that your happiness matters (most people's does on a broad enough scale, after all), but (a) it's a waste of our time if you're just going to embrace the familiar thought pattern and (b) we don't know you, we're not you, and really only you can decide that your path in life is important to you.

No, obviously you couldn't achieve perfect happiness knowing you'd hurt your family. But then you were never going to achieve perfect happiness just by leaving anyway, because no-one ever does. What you would achieve would be a different balance of things that were good and things that were bad.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, it just means you should be realistic about the outcome. And "realistic" here is not a synonym for "bitter and cynical"; it does not mean "Oh, well someone on the internet says things would be just as bad on balance so I'll stay." It means what it means. Maybe you know the particular balance you would achieve by leaving would be better.

Why does it have to be one or the other? Why can't you have the odd 'me time' and ignore everyone else's happiness for an hour, a day, or a couple of weeks?
Talk to your DP, explain how you are feeling.

Some people need to be away from everyday to enjoy themselves. How would you feel if you went on holiday alone? Take a week or two to be totally selfish - would that do it?

"I want human emotion, human contact. I want to feel loved. I want to know someone wants to be with me just because it makes them happy, and for me to be happy around them."

Don't your DCs give you any of that?

Not saying they should be all and everything to you and that your DP shouldn't also bring you love and happiness, but it sounds again like you are being all-or-nothing about this - picturing yourself as totally lacking in contact/happiness, when the reality sounds less dramatic, more normal, and maybe just not exciting enough when you see it stretching ahead. It sounds like a matter of perspective and like you're determined to see it as a situation that will lead to either leaving or sacrificing yourself.

Again I'd say you should address the work situation. What you've basically just said is the old 'money/lifestyle more important than personal fulfilment' - seriously, and you wonder why you feel empty?? You're sleepingwalking into mediocrity. Fuck big houses and cleaners and the like. This is your life! What do you want to do with it? It makes zero sense to me to prioritise the material side, when all that will be in jeopardy anyway if you divorce. Then you'll be screwed in terms of having to stay in your job and keep earning more for decades to come.

That post does paint things slightly differently. Originally you said your DP loved you (and didn't say whether or not you loved her); now you are suggesting there isn't much love and happiness between you at all. Is this fair? Are you miserable/bored around each other? Or is it more just that life is busy and you tick along together (or might she be seeing it like that, at any rate)? Is there someone else in the picture? Are you and DP physically affectionate and how is the sex life? Sorry to x-question you, you don't have to answer, just use them as prompts for your own thinking.

I agree reviewing your career sounds like a great idea; you sound very pressured and there is potential for resentment to stew between the two of you if you feel your DP wouldn't tolerate loss of lifestyle. But just by the by I would caution against taking any "follow your passion" advice too literally and chucking it all in to teach dogs to ski or whatever. Been there, done that and it's just as naive as expecting a marriage to be constant hearts and flowers IMO. Work satisfaction IME comes from having challenges you can achieve, having autonomy and feeling valued, and feeling like your work makes a difference, rather than "doing what you love" as such.