I really fucking hate my life

[MidlifeCrisisHappening]

This is just a rant, really. Whenever I try to tell friends/family in real life, I am always told how I should think and what I should feel and I am just sick of it! I'm sick of being told "it's not that bad" or "i just need to change my view" or "i need to look at the big picture" etc, etc. I just want someone to hear me for once.

I get it. From an outsiders perspective, my life might look "ideal" but it is far, far from it.

I just want to scream from the rooftop how much I hate my dull, boring life.

I hate that I have to wrap my own gifts.
I hate that I have to BUY my own gifts, if I want anything that even slightly resembles what I have asked for.
I hate how my DH is so boring and unmotivated to do anything. He will NEVER do anything I suggest or anything I want to do.
I hate how I have reached middle age and I have nothing to show for it.
I hate how I've worked my arse off for the past 15 years, squirreling away every spare dollar, sacrificed buying things, sacrificed spending any un-necessary money really, to one day have an exit fund and its still NOT ENOUGH.
I hate I am trapped financially.
I hate how my DH is the most selfish, inconsiderate person who is so set and stuck in his ways and has no interest in expanding his horizons.

Thats it. I am just so miserable but everyone expects me to just suck it up and I have had enough.

Just book the stuff you want to do! If he says yeah we'll go to see that film, just book it! You sound very depressed. Maybe things would look brighter if you sought help/medication?

She needs a different life not medication!

It’s very easy to tell other people what to do on an anonymous website. OP has to live with the consequences of whatever decisions she makes in her actual real life.

She's living with the consequences now and doesn't like them!

I hear you OP. Your life is shit. You are a non-player character in someone else’s life ( your husband’s). Sure you are not starving or living on the streets but neither are prisoners. And you sound like you are imprisoned in your husband’s life.

Unless someone has lived long term with someone they essentially don’t exist to, you can’t really imagine the appalling psychological toll it takes.

You sound like you don’t have friends either, perhaps because you have travelled for your husband’s job.

People can say ‘just leave’ but when you have kids you need something to leave to. Asking a mother to drag her kids into poverty, with all the life disadvantages and precariousness that brings, especially when the courts could well award custody to the financially stable father, is hardly a ‘just leave’ situation.

Just wanted to say ‘I hear you’ OP.

Not sure if your kids are independent/ near independence now. Sounds like your Mum is alive, could you live with her and do a refresher course and go back into teaching?

I am not going to tell you to be grateful for what you have or that it’s your hormones making you think your life is shit, your life is shit, because you are living his life, not yours. Your menopausal hormones may be stopping you being so bloody passive about your servitude, but that’s a good thing.

You're not hearing her. Her children are adults.
She's posted that.

We do have 2 DC, but they are older and self sufficient. Thats probably why I have stayed as long as I have and tried to make the "best" of it.

I have a DH who has very particular taste in films, day trips, holidays. I find it frustrating that he doesn't want to do the stuff I want to do, but he has many other good qualities. I spent a few years resenting the fact it's a struggle to get him to go where I want to go, and even thinking of leaving at the worst times, but three things helped. The first was telling him how much it mattered to me and how much resentment it caused. To be honest, that made a minor difference, but it did create a small change and we do now compromise more, especially around holidays. The second was deciding to make an effort with friends, so now I depend on him so much less. I have other people to go out with and even to go on holiday with if I wanted that. My home life is good, but my entertainment needs are met elsewhere a lot of the time. The third thing is just trying to see his point of view. He's not punishing me by not wanting to see films or go places he doesn't want to go, he has limited free time and a strong sense of what he does or doesn't enjoy. It still drives me mad sometimes, it borders on selfishness, BUT it's just part of who he is, and he is funny, kind, loving in so many other ways.

I'm writing this because you sound rather like me at a low point in my life when I was living in a new town and not knowing anyone. I could have left then and blamed my unhappiness entirely on him, but a huge chunk of my problems had to do with having no friends, an unsatisfying job, and a few other issues. I was putting most of the blame on him and expecting him to fix my unhappiness, and not looking at these others factors and sorting out the bits I could fix myself. Only you know if your DH has other qualities you love, and whether it's worth staying for those things. It raises a red flag for me that you're in a new country away from friends and family which must be so damn hard, so be careful you don't mix up all those negatives with the marriage problem. Good luck making your decision.

I get that, but I feel that this website encourages a LTB approach, and it can be irresponsible. Separation and divorce is a massive thing. I don’t regret mine, but I do live with the consequences every day and I don’t love them. I just think posters should tread carefully when telling strangers what to do.

She thought she was entering into a partnership with a man who loves her. She’s quite clear in her posts what she thought this life would look like.

If she had known what she was entering into, what the reality turned out to be, she’d have made different choices.

She already is and loathes her life. Change that life is hardly controversial advice, is it?

It's literally in the OP, she doesn't have an exit fund saved yet.

Oh come on! She entered into it decades ago, and has has ample time to make different choices.

The move is recent. She knew exactly what he was like when she made that choice and did it anyway... for the experience of living abroad.

We all have to take responsibility for our own choices

I am hearing her. Older and self sufficient could mean adults or it could mean 14/ 15 year old teens who stay in their bedrooms. That’s why I said to OP that I wasn’t sure what age her kids were.

Unlike you, I didn’t want to base my post on assumptions I was reading into the text.

Learn to say no. Sorry OP but it really does start there. Tell him you don't want to do whatever he wants. Tell him what you would Iike to do. If he ignores you, repeat. Realistically, you need to get the funds to leave. I haven't read all your replies, but do you work? If not, get a job, save money to leave. I always worked just so no man could control all aspects of my life.
You do have options, you just need to find them.

Once you have given up your career and you have young kids you also have a responsibility to them. It’s not that hard to see why women like OP stay.

And other than giving you your own sense of superiority, I’m not really sure what you think is constructive about your backward looking, blame orientated approach.

You're coming across maybe unintentionally of being patronising. And, ironically, telling other 'strangers' what to do or think.

I am pretty sure that everyone here who has suggested she leaves her H has given it thought.

I certainly have, as there is nothing she's posted so far that gives me hope of this relationship lasting or making her happier.

Except her children aren't children any more. And at almost 50, she has the chance to turn her life around.

We do have 2 DC, but they are older and self sufficient. Thats probably why I have stayed as long as I have and tried to make the "best" of it.

Self-sufficient to me, is likely to mean to be working considering OP is almost 50.

You have a very condescending and 'superior' way of posting @Iheaaaryou
Which is quite ironic as you keep lambasting others for what they post.😂

Your dh is awful.

Tell him that he sold you a lie, you are really unhappy living there with him and you want to go home.

Why do so many men think they don't need to invest anything into their relationship and don't even see their wives as human beings who have the right to be happy too?

You could go back home and live apart or end the relationship. Or can you get a job so that you might make some friends to do stuff with? If you don’t leave, you need to put your foot down and stop agreeing to do things you don’t want to, as he basically isn’t listening to you. Tell him that enough is enough.

I've seen this happen quite often.

When your children see you putting up with shit, they start to believe (wrongly or rightly) that you have no respect for self; and that leads to them losing respect for you.

The result now will likely be you keep your home and in addition to the 40 years you've wasted, lose your relationship with your children.

Who knows, maybe without the millstone of this relationship you may even find the will and vivacity to improve your career.

You are sacrificing a whole lot for a miserable 'home'. Is the house worth this much?

I will never if I lice to be 1,000 years old understand why women make themselves adult dependents.

Because they don’t think of it as dependency when they’re making plans. Having children - his job pays more than mine, I’ll just be working to pay childcare, it makes sense to go part time. Another child comes along and it makes sense to stop working for a while. Then he gets a “big” job and it makes sense to move 100s of miles… before you know it you’re out of the work force, isolated from friends and family with no independent source of income and no discernible skills for employment. And importantly, no confidence in your ability to make big decisions and support yourself.

No one makes those decisions thinking it might go tits up, and if you suggest they should give some consideration to what they’ll do if it does you’re a doom monger. And women really should have an eye to how dependent they become when making “family” decisions.

Exactly. ‘To you’ it says. In other words, there’s ambiguity. Which I accommodated in my reply.

I’m not sorry, or chastised, that the person who wrote ‘you are not hearing OP’ has a negative experience of me disagreeing with her.

In fact, I found your throwing around insults, a childlike, and fruitless, attempt to wound. One that appears to be a character trait with you as I see you’ve done it to other posters too.

This is a chat forum. People will express their own thought in their own words and sometimes this will not be to your liking.

When I was the OP’s age (late 40s) my two youngest children were at primary school!

@MidlifeCrisisHappening I totally get it. The being dismissed and then judged for getting out of a marriage to an absolutely selfish piece of work. The effect on your mental health of living someone else's life (his) instead of your own, particularly if they hold the purse strings is immense. It never changes because why would it? They're happy, they don't care if you're not.

I think the best way to deal with this, other than leaving, which you must do when you can, is to detach from other people's opinions. You don't need their validation. It's a frustration you don't need.

They don't live your life, they don't understand. From the outside it might look great, perfect even, particularly if you're married to a high earner. But they don't have the constant drip, drip, drip of being ignored and disrespected and forced to play sidekick to the main player.

To this day I'm the bad guy for leaving Mr Nice Guy. Even the 'friend' that attended court with me for the two years of hell he put me through has turned round and judged me for getting a good settlement.

F**k em all. Mine hasn't bothered with his own child for over ten years. Not Mr Nice Guy after all.