I’m probably considered suicidal.
I’ve considered it many times over the last few years. I’ve considered it almost daily over the last 2 months.
Bear with me, I’m going to try to explain it.
Maybe I’m unique, maybe I’m typical. I have no idea.
I’ve always tried to fulfill expectations others have for me. Perhaps I lack proper boundaries.
But because others expectations for me form my standards, I’ve never really lived my own life. I married the women that pursued me, agreed to divorce when they grew bored of me.
They grew bored of me for many reasons. Partly because I’m easy to push around. Partly because I’m somewhat passive toward life. Partly because I’m a little scatterbrained. All these things make women feel like I cannot protect them, even though I’m a good provider.
My current wife is the only one I have actually loved.
She is from a foreign country, and believes in what most people would consider 50s stereotypes:
She flies off the handle, and expects me to not overreact or be hurt. She expects me to take care of everything, to be in charge. She expects me to shrug off insults, difficulties, setbacks, and never have the need to complain or vent.
We had many misunderstandings at first before I understood her.
Some of those misunderstandings resulted in me doing what she said instead of what she really wanted.
One situation was she constantly vented resentment towards my ex-wife’s meddling and towards the existence of my kids from that previous marriage. She had her reasons. But when I tried to fulfill her demands (which were just ventings, but I didn’t understand that at the time), we ended up losing my kids in a lawsuit (my mistakes just opened the door for the custody lawsuit, I lost them due to maternal bias in the courts). That has only allowed my ex-wife to torment us even more.
We are having difficulty having children of our own.
I recently realized many mistakes I’ve made in my career (for many of the same reasons I’ve had problems in life and marriage) may mean I won’t get promoted. I most likely will, but there is a chance I won’t. If I get promoted to the next level, I can retire at a bare minimum of my wife’s demands for comfort. Even if I get promoted, it is 90% likely to be my last promotion.
My wife loves me…but she also hates me.
She hates me because we don’t have children, and because I failed to protect the family from my ex-, and can do nothing to stop my ex- from tormenting us now, and because we don’t have the money/comfort a 41-year-old man should have (in part because much of my money went to my ex- and now goes for child support: fully 1/5th of my take-home pay).
She vents about once every 2 weeks.
I feel like a failure. I cannot seem to resist her opinion. I have no space to vent my frustrations, fears, anger. I know when she is just venting, but sometimes it still hurts.
I had considered suicide in the past, but always told myself that if I hung on, it had to get better. I’ve been telling myself that for 12 years now. Sometimes I wonder why I bothered to hold on. Life isn’t better than 12 years ago, it is far, far worse. I see little hope of it getting better, because the deck is stacked against me in the courts with my ex-wife. My current wife’s temper will not improve.
I know that many of my problems come genetically from my mom. I can see that she is just as scatterbrained, just as clueless about life, just as sensitive and emotional. But being a woman, she found a steady man who indulges her weaknesses. My resentment is increased because being a man, there is no woman who will indulge my weaknesses and let me just take care of the parts of life I am good at. In fact, my wife expects me to indulge her weaknesses and deal with life, even though I am far less suited to it than her.
I feel doomed to failure. I have tried extremely hard to improve myself over the last 3 years, and have succeeded somewhat…but I’m still forgetful, scatterbrained, and it is probably too late for me to resurrect my career.
At this point, I think all it will take is one more failure before I give up. If I don’t get promoted, I will kill myself. If this attempt at inseminated pregnancy fails, I will kill myself. I’ve given up on anything more than fleeting happiness and ever being satisfied with myself long ago. But I can live for fulfilling my responsibilities and making my wife happy. But if I can’t do that, why should I even be here?
The only reason I haven’t killed myself yet, and the only thing that would make me hesitate even in the face of one of the failures above is that I think it would really hurt my wife. Right or wrong, I will not hurt her if I can avoid it. Unless my continued living brings her more pain than if I just died? I haven’t answered that for myself yet.
But no one should criticize my wife in this, nor tell me to leave her to “find myself” or anything like that.
I can point to the things she has done that have hurt me or affected me, but I also know that if I were half the man I should be, if I actually met the minimum of what the entire damn world expects a man to be, she would be satisfied, happy, and secure.
But I’m not.
I should have been an artist. I should have been a rock star (I have the talent, but derailed the attempt out of a sense of responsibility…long story), something where I made enough money to hire the people to take care of the daily grind of life. I’m too emotional, too sensitive, too scatterbrained.
That is what I think is behind all the white male suicides:
White males are blamed for almost everything. They are told “do this and you will be successful”, and when they sacrifice and work and endure pain to succeed, they are told it is only because they are a white male, who will be successful just by waking up and going to work, unlike all those women and/or minorities who have to actually work for what they get. Then when they succeed, they are vilified for being greedy white males who are ruining the world by greed and corruption and laziness. They are assumed to be racist, sexist, insensitive to women’s needs, afraid of commitment, lazy, immature, etc. No matter what they achieve, they are expected to achieve more. Everything that goes wrong in their woman’s life is their fault. Everything that goes wrong in any woman’s or any minority’s life is their fault.
Some measure up, sure. Some don’t face those levels of pressure. These are the ones who don’t commit suicide. But some feel like frauds, wondering when they just won’t be good enough, and all the shit that has been said about them by feminists and news media and ex-girlfriends, etc, will now be proven true…or at least believed to be true.
They have children, and their wives satisfaction in the marriage (meaning: love for their husband) plunges and never regains pre-children levels. But if they refuse to have children, they are vilified, or their woman may leave them for another man, or their woman may lie/cheat/deceive/cheat to get the child that will pretty much ruin the love in the relationship.
And when they finally retire and can be at home, their wife resents the disruption of her routine, wishes he’d never have retired, and can’t wait for him to drop dead so she can enjoy life again, spending the money he saved from decades of work.
Yeah, that’s cynical. But do some research, and those sort of wifely attitudes are not all that uncommon.
Is it any wonder that at some point, the men wonder: is it worth it?
The good news (for me, for now), is that I had a good talk with my wife last night. I cannot let her know the depth of my despair, because then I would not be doing a good job as her protector. But I know that doing a good job as her protector absolutely means that I cannot seek any help.
Oh, yeah: if I actually go seek help for my depression and despair, I will guarantee I won’t get promoted, because someone so emotional as to consider suicide isn’t reliable enough to trust with increased rank and responsibility. Ditto if I attempt suicide and fail.
Maybe my scatterbrainedness is unique. I don’t think the rest of it is.
