to say there has got to be more to life than this ?

[whattocallmyselfeh]

I'm married, 2 DC, financially secure, lovely house, several holidays a year (pre covid!), I work mon-fri. So why do I feel so unfulfilled, bored and lonely ?

Once everything is back to (the new) normal I can go where ever I want in the world for holidays (within reason). I have holidays with girl friends every year, me and my friends have lots of evenings out (when permitted under covid). Post covid we have SPA week-ends, eves out and holidays planned.

But ... nothing interests me anymore, nothing seems fun. I don't know why I feel like this. I sit here typing this in my big and clean, tidy house which I should be grateful for, but I couldn't give a toss about the house. I feel like I'm waiting for something, if that makes sense. But I don't know what I'm waiting for. Maybe this is the effect of lockdown and being stuck in the house. I really don't know.

7 years ago I was pregnant with second child, lovely DH and nice house, both had good jobs blah blah.

He died suddenly just before DD2 was born. I would have chopped my own limbs off to have my old slightly mundane yet perfect life back.

7 years on kids are both healthy and doing well, house completely refurbed and extended, great new well paid flexible job and DP moved in last year and kids love him. Everything I wanted back in the dark early days of widowhood, although still hugely miss DH.

Am I happy? Nope! I'm bored, feeling ungrateful and thinking this can't be it. I have no excuse for feeling this way as life as taught me to be grateful with one of the hardest lessons possible and I still can't do it!

You're not alone OP

@WaterBottle123 This is so interesting. Maybe some of us just have this personality. Sorry for your loss. Well done with just getting in with it. Not everyone could

[quote whattocallmyselfeh]@Neap - I guess what I'm saying is that I should feel grateful/appreciative for my easy going life - lovely house, secure job and worked throughout the pandemic from home on full pay and so did DH, financially secure, work (office and home) and school are all within a 5 min car commute of each other, I chose to only work school hours but my salary is as much as a full timer earns in other sectors. Lots of fabulous holidays. I have some element of being house proud, like I assume most people do, because who chooses to live in a dirty messy house. When we brought the house it was gutted and then re-designed by us to accommodate us and work for the space we needed.

But its still not enough - I am still chasing the happiness and the 'what next'. You asked what interests me in life - nothing.

I really don't know what a fulfilling life for me would look like :-([/quote]
But you feeling eternally grateful for your ‘easygoing’ life would be like those of us who are not, and have never been, in chronic pain continually being delighted and grateful at not being in chronic pain. Your life as it is clearly doesn’t suit you, even though you think it should, because it’s a conventionally ‘nice life’. You think you should be happy because it’s the kind of life most people are supposed to aspire to.

For contrast, I’m currently earning very little, l am living in primitive conditions in a house we bought late last year which will take several years’ work to be comfortable (at the moment, even to get into the house involves crossing deep trenches on plank bridges, and the place is grubby from us and workmen trekking in mud), we moved countries just before the first lockdown and haven’t really had a chance to get to know anyone here, the job I moved countries for no longer exists, I’ve had two surgeries in 2021 and may need a further major surgery — but I can honestly say I’m interested in and engaged with my life. I’m interested (obsessively) in the book I’m writing, and I’m interested in what’s going to happen next in my life.

Take up exercise and get an endorphin boost and do some gardening to get fresh air and vitamin d

You're experiencing hedonic adaptation OP.

Try looking up telic Vs atelic goals

Also this John Stuart Mill is quite good I think:

"Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way. The enjoyments of life (such was now my theory) are sufficient to make it a pleasant thing, when they are taken en passant, without being made a principal object. Once make them so, and they are immediately felt to be insufficient. They will not bear a scrutinizing examination. Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life. Let your self-consciousness, your scrutiny, your self-interrogation, exhaust themselves on that; and if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe, without dwelling on it or thinking about it, without either forestalling it in imagination, or putting it to flight by fatal questioning"

There’s a wonderful podcast called The Art of Happiness by a professor at Harvard who studies happiness. It’s fascinating but also really useful- would really recommend it to you OP.

The simple answer is there’s more to life than the size of your house or the fancy holidays you go on. What you’re describing is very shallow. You need to dig deeper. What’s really important to you?

So many people are just trying to keep up with the Jones’s & impress others. Read Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now.

We’re a year into a pandemic when you are almost certainly fed up with the same four walls, holidays aren’t easy to book, life is dull and the opening up still feels a long way away.

This isn’t to say there’s not something bigger going on but life is bloody dull right now.

@dreamingbohemianeamin - def not happy with DH. I put up with the marriage for the sake of finances and the kids (plse no one flame me for this, I want this thread to be about finding happiness and not morals etc). There's no abuse, no excessive drinking/gambling or cheating by DH. I just no longer fancy him or want sex with him. He looks like a tramp, he is no longer the type of bloke I would choose/go for. For me, there is nothing there any more and he is just companionship because if left - and tore the kids world upside down - then there is no guarantee that I would find anymore one else (and I would want to), I would be quite poor with just my salary, DH would be the nastiest he possibly could to me and I don't know if I could cope with that, he wouldn't have the kids on purpose/out of spite so I couldn't go out/away with my friends, we would have to sell the house and the kids would be devastated as its their home, the kids wouldn't have the same lifestyle they have now. There is no arguing between me and DH, we just do our own thing and happen to share a house.

I like to run and go to the gym - when it's open. I don't want to give back to society/the world/volunteer (sorry if that makes me a bad person, just being honest). I have no interest in anything - there is usually no time as I am running around doing home/life admin for everyone or I'm working. I hold the whole house together, I do it all.

I find almost nothing makes me happy. I am so vey unhappy.

What do you like to do other than go out and go on holiday? Do you like to read or exercise or do any hobby?

OP you seem quite goal oriented. I was like that - my career made up a huge part of my identity so after I’d passed uni, postgrad, reached the top of my field, I was bit horrified as to what was next. Every day felt the same without having a goal to achieve.

Humans get more out of chasing goals than reaching them sometimes. I did a bit a reading on it and it helped me understand/overcome.

Find something that you just enjoying doing. Why not try one new thing a week for the rest of the year? An instrument, a language, a dance class. Find your niche that you can just enjoy doing that doesn’t have an expiry.

I know the thread isn’t about relationships and your reasons for staying are valid, but it might be having more of an impact on your feelings of unfulfillment than you realise.

But your update makes the whole situation very clear, OP, and appears to have been written by a different person to your original post. Surely it's fairly obvious why you're unhappy? You're miserable in your marriage, you're sharing the house that you think is supposed to make you happy with a man you despise, and whom you believe would do his best to make your life impossible should you divorce him.

You're currently choosing to stay in a situation most people would consider utterly miserable for financial reasons and so as not to disrupt the children's lives -- no wonder you put so much stress on your house and your holidays, because you're sacrificing happiness for their sake.

There is a very obvious reason for you to be unhappy. Why didn't you say so in your OP, where you sound genuinely mystified about the source of your unhappiness? Do you have trouble admitting it to yourself?

I think it is about exploring your inner life, really getting to know yourself and your own desires. Most of modern psychology just addresses the cognitive, surface level stuff and it becomes unfulfilling over time - especially as we age.

The best way I have found to do this is via the work of Carl Jung. There is an insanely brilliant podcast called This Jungian Life which really gets to grips with the wholeness of us humans, and how to get to know your self and your fullness.

I am guessing you are somewhere in middle age and I would recommend starting with this episode, but there are many many more episodes that would be helpful

thisjungianlife.com/episode-112-midlife-crisis-renewal-or-stagnation/

I’ve always been like this, from childhood. Never happy in the present, always striving for change. I do have depression though so I figure it’s just a part of me, unfortunately.

On the plus, I LOVE change. New job, new course, new baby, new house, new car. Very adaptable 🤣

Wow ok, well I think it's no wonder you're not happy! Absolutely not flaming your choice but I think anyone would be unhappy in such a miserable marriage. And if you have no time on top of that, of course it will be hard to really feel inspired or engaged in anything.

So your real question is, how can I find happiness while staying in a terrible marriage? There are a lot of women here in the same situation who maybe can advise, I don't know.

It sounds like you are in a catch-22 situation. You rely a lot on a nice lifestyle, holidays and going out to help you cope with an unhappy marriage, but then you can't imagine giving all that up and so you stay trapped in an unhappy marriage.

I understand you are worried for your kids but personally I don't think you can find real happiness in such a bad marriage. All you can find are things to paper over the unhappiness but as you see now that's not going to work forever.

@Ovine - I think I would just be as unhappy if I left. The fall out from a separation/the nastiness from DH would be horrific. All my friends and family have said so too. I would struggle financially and be penny pinching every month. I cannot get a mortgage on my own and I cannot afford to rent. I have looked into both options extensively. DH has confirmed he would fight me every bit of the way for 50/50 share of the house/equity even though he earns double my wage and wouldn't struggle to get a mortgage, he is adamant to do his best so that that I would not get a higher share than him.
And once all the issues from a divorce/separation had died down I think I would still be saying 'what now' and chasing that happiness. Going out to pubs with friends and chatting to the same old blokes in these pubs is boring, I have no interest in doing any of that when the pubs open. I long for excitement, adventures and ...... but I'm not sure what that 'and' is.
I have started to think what is the point to life. I mean, what really is the point to all this ? (exc current coivd times).

Sounds awful, OP to be honest.
He sounds really nasty and you are intimidated by him. Not surprised you feel unhappy.

How old are the DC? You will have to leave at some point otherwise you'll be miserable for the rest of your life.... that's much worse than having to live life with less money. Even with 50% you would be able to find somewhere to live somewhere and you do have your own salary as well. You're not in a bad position.

My point was really that it's not surprising you're so unhappy, OP -- because you posted as if you had no idea why you felt that way in your original post, but you've since described the source of your unhappiness very clearly. I suppose I'm asking why you didn't put that in your opening post, where you implicitly include being married as a good thing along with your children, nice house, well-paid job etc.

It's not the place of a complete stranger on the internet to suggest you should end your marriage, and you seem to be completely dismissive of that idea, anyway, but I wonder whether you are in denial about how corrosive it is being in an unhappy marriage, or whether it is that you feel the nice house and holidays and nights out should make up for the fact that you're married to someone whose only virtue seems to be that he doesn't physically abuse you, he's not a drinker or a gambler, and he's not unfaithful. Only they clearly don't.

So, I suppose if they don't, and you're determined not to end the marriage, you're left with figuring out something you can do for yourself to make your life as it is more bearable. Also, are your children young? Would you consider leaving once they've left home?

Oh, and I meant to say also that I wonder whether your inability to say what your ideal, fulfilling life would look like is because deep down, that imaginary other life would involve you being no longer married to your husband (among other things), and you're shying away from having to think about that. And I'd suggest the same might be going on when you say you think you'd be just as unhappy if you ended the marriage.

I'm not blaming you in the slightest, OP, and I understand your feelings, but you are very much shying away from even considering the idea that your marriage is the thing that's making you unhappy, therefore the single best thing you could do to make your life better would be to end that marriage. It does sound to me as if other changes hobbies, volunteering, a different career are essentially sticking plasters on a gaping wound.

If you keep doing the same thing you'll get the same result.

If you split up it's not up to your DH how the finances would be split. The law would decide that. I think you might be better off than you think.

I don't think that you grasp that money does not necessarily equal happiness. Yes, it does help but happiness is a mixture of feeling safe, secure, being grateful for what you have and freedom.

I've done lots of different things with varying results. The wrong work environment and wrong relationships drained me. I have had times when I was literally as miserable as sin. In the first instance, you need to identify who you are and what you really want and work towards that. For me, it was being with someone who loved me for who I am, wasn't materialistic, didn't put pressure on me to earn a certain amount, loved animals, enjoyed doing the same thing, etc. Sounds stupid but it wasn't until I met DH that I managed to tick most of those boxes.

You have one life. Don't waste it.

You can't spend the rest of your life like this. At some point you will have to leave or go insane. So you're just putting off the inevitable.

It's very common for women to think they will not be any happier after they leave, and obviously there will be huge issues especially if your husband is such a dick.

But I remember a thread on here years ago where someone in your situation asked women who did leave if they were in fact happier and the vast majority, hundreds of people, said they were. Even if they were poorer, even if they had major issues with their ex, being free of them made it all worth it.

If you're at the point where you're wondering if life is worth it, that's a really bad sign. Would you consider talking to someone about all this?

You really only have one life. Your update puts things in a whole new perspective. There is excitement out there but you need to address your unhappiness with DH first. I left my DH last year as I was in a similar position. I am now in a rented place (although I do own property that is rented out it’s not enough to sell and buy a family-sized home) and I am pretty skint and a single mother to two under 8s, moved towns, moved school, moved to the coast (dh is nearby too) and although DH often makes like difficult and there are indeed challenges it was the best decision I could have made for my own life and happiness.

Do you exercise
Do you spend time outdoors in nature

Without these two elements in my life - I can imagine I may have times of feeling a bit bleurgh

Oh you’re update

You’re in a totally shit marriage
That’s the reason

I can relate to most of this. Including the unhappy marriage with two young DC bit and knowing life would just be a different type of difficult if you left.

Have you ever had periods of fulfillment/happiness? What have they looked like? Are you (or were you in childhood) in any way creative? I've recently found fulfillment in creative pursuits that I'd abandoned when I became interested in boys as a teen! I've gone on to do a masters in the subject and have won some (minor) awards. It's given me a new lease of life, opened up a new community and taken my focus away from shallow, materialistic interests and on to something much more enriching.

Ultimately though I know the marriage is always going to be a source of unhappiness and I will leave when the DC are a little older/more independent when I feel I'll be more able to cope with the demands of being a single parent and the financial pressures that come with that.

Because you are not happy OP it's very simple....