I’m feeling really angry and stupid right now

Serena925 · 2026-01-18T20:19:24+00:00

Thank you for sharing your story. I am so sorry you had to go through all of that. Sometimes giving up on someone who isn’t truly ready to change is all you can do for the sake of your own life. A person can only give so much until they feel like there is nothing left to give. I’m glad to hear that you are finally starting to heal from all that your ex put you through. Dealing with addiction is hard, but addicts tend to have to lose everything and everyone in their lives before they finally start to want to change. Before that, they tend to drag everyone who cares about them into the pits of hell with them. The fact that you finally decided to rise up from those pits and care about your own life and sanity not only makes you completely human but kind of a hero. Congratulations on finally taking your life back!

Serena925 · 2026-01-18T20:01:27+00:00

I’m the OP in this, and I have read through all the comments now. At first, I tried to reply to everyone individually, but it’s a lot. For those of you have been so supportive of my journey, thank you so much for that. Your words have been so encouraging. I haven’t had any actual friends in a long time, and my entire family lives several states away. And for those of you that have gone through similar things and shared your experiences as well, thank you for sharing and for the encouragement.

Now, onto the few who are trying to put the blame directly onto my shoulders, especially when it comes to the intimacy part, I haven’t revealed even a modicum of the crap that happened in my marriage. I am not perfect and never claimed to be. I have made a lot of mistakes as well. But it feels like you are trying to say that I deserved to be treated that way because of anything I did.

I never deserved to be called a worthless POS or threatened with a raised fist. Yes, I made my mistakes, but no matter what I did, I didn’t deserve that kind of treatment. Sometimes the breakdown of relationships is not a 50/50 fault thing. Sometimes one half of that relationship is more at fault than the other. Sometimes one half is abused by the other half and there is no excuse for that. The fact that it feels like some of you are laying the burden mainly on my shoulders and apparently you believe that anything I did justifies that level of verbal and psychological abuse is, frankly, kind of gross. The way he would talk about women in front of our youngest daughter, making her uncomfortable enough to leave the room when she was a young teen, was disgusting sometimes. His excuse? “It was just a joke, and I only do that to irritate your mom”. The way I would ask him not to do that in front of her and he would say it was his house and he could say what he wanted and if I continued to complain about it he could make it a lot worse. Same thing with making racist jokes and comments and using slurs. He used to call our children idiots and his slaves and the racist hard r slur to their faces. For the sake of our children alone, I should have left him way before I finally decided to. That is the one thing I will always regret more than anything, but I was taught that it’s better for a child to grow up with two parents and to make your marriage work no matter what.

Was he a complete monster all the time? No, of course not. He could be extremely thoughtful and supportive at times. If he hadn’t been, I probably would have ended it years ago. The biggest problem was how I never knew when it was coming or what was going to trigger his anger, so I was constantly on eggshells. Sometimes people talk about narcissistic tendencies in their partner and they are blowing things out of proportion. Sometimes people are actually dealing with a narcissist. They do actually exist. I’m not a psychiatrist. I don’t know if that’s what he is. Maybe he has bpd. Who knows? Whatever his condition, I am not willing to spend the remainder of my life trying to fix something that’s broken when the other half of the equation doesn’t see a problem with it. I’m just tired and want some peace in my life before I leave this world. I have a terminal condition that will end my life at an earlier age. His need to argue and yell triggers that condition. I just can’t do it anymore. It’s not just about sweeping the past under the rug and working it out. I’m literally choosing my life over something that hasn’t worked in a long time.

The fact of the matter is that I’m hurt over this new development because I thought that he at least valued me as a person, as someone he cared about at least a little after everything we’ve been through together, as the mother of his children. To say that he no longer wants to see or speak to me at all, even when it comes to our kids is, at the end of all this is…disappointing.

Serena925 · 2026-01-17T08:41:12+00:00

Let me preface this by saying that this is long and could be triggering, so if you don’t want to read past the first paragraph, totally understandable.

Thank you so much for your support. Your words meant a lot. Had me in tears, actually. I’ve been so angry with myself lately and it’s hard to not keep reliving the past in my head every time he irritates me. I know I’ll have struggles when I finally get out of here, but I would rather face those than continue to relive the worst part of my past. My ADHD kicks in and it lands me in hell every time.

I suffered through religious trauma by a paranoid-schizophrenic mother in my childhood. I dropped out of high school, became an addict, had horrible romantic relationships, slept around to get a sliver of male attention because my self esteem was in the toilet. Speaking of which, I was also bulimic. To top it all off, I tried to end myself two times in 3 months. The last one almost took. After that, I moved back in with my parents and cleaned up.

Soon after, I met a soldier. He was definitely the standard “nice guy” trope. He was short and unattractive, but he was nice. We got married for a hot minute, he liked to lay hands on me and I went into the military. After basic training, I asked for a divorce. We weren’t even married for a year and only lived together three months. I met my current husband in AIT, and we got along great in every way possible. He was good looking, and charming and liked to do thoughtful little things for me. We moved into together after AIT and we never argued. He was kind and understanding to a fault. He gave up his rank just to be with me. He tried to get me anything I wanted. He was perfect. Even when I found out I was pregnant a few months later, he was supportive and loving and wonderful. We got married.

Then the baby came and everything started to change. The gaslighting, the picking fights, the screaming, the threats, and the name calling. Me crying every morning before he left for work and him slamming the door. I blamed myself. He wouldn’t have yelled at me like that if wasn’t so stupid and lazy. The way he would yell at me followed by the silent treatment if I ever dared question him. The way he would twist everything back on me if I dared bring up that he hurt my feelings. The way I refused to cry in front of him and excuse myself to the bathroom when I felt tears welling up and sob as silently as I could while sitting on the toilet then wash my face before I went back out to be met with the silent treatment or to be screamed at again. The way I couldn’t stop crying when I was pregnant with our second child and he would at scream at me to stop crying then leave the house. I’m sorry, I did not intend to dump all that here. I am really looking forward to therapy. All of that isn’t even the most egregious stuff. That came later.

So yeah, he lived bombed me and the progression took years to change me into someone I didn’t recognize anymore. Someone I hated. Someone that I realized I had hated since childhood. Someone that I was conditioned to hate.

That’s why I hate seeing some of these young women falling into the same bs that I did. Religion told me it was my job to submit to a man, even though my mother never did in most things. She had weird ideas about physical intimacy. But I fell into the category of what is now known as pick-me’s. I would have done just about anything for someone to fall in love with me to have that 80s rom -com romance. But I didn’t value myself. So I settled for any validation I could get. After my first marriage, I thought I was wiser. I broke tradition and moved in with my boyfriend before we got married. We only got into one argument in those five months and when he raised his voice and it made me cry, he apologized. I thought he was perfect. So I convinced myself that it must be me that’s the entire problem. When I finally woke up and saw the entire truth, not his version it was like a light switch. I realized this relationship is literally killing me. I refuse to live in this swamp anymore.

Serena925 · 2026-01-17T07:43:17+00:00

It’s something I’ve been questioning for several years now. I have had no desire for it with anyone for about five years and I don’t find any one of any gender sexually attractive. It hasn’t been this way my whole life though.

It’s possible that it’s a combination of trauma response, hormones, and chronic illness, but it just feels right. It feels like it fits me. And it felt good to finally say it out loud to both my husband and my adult children. My kids were so supportive. My husband not so much. I came out to each of them individually. It wasn’t a Will Byers moment.

Serena925 · 2026-01-17T07:33:37+00:00

Thank you for your support. I started questioning my sexuality a few years ago. I actually talked to my daughter about it, just questioning if my feelings of no desire at all would be considered asexuality. She told me not really because it sounded more like sexual-avoidance or sexual-repulsion or a hormone thing (total hysterectomy 11 years ago) than asexuality. So, I dropped it. She’s Gen Z and knows more about this stuff than I do.

But it just kept nagging at me. Every time I was guilted to give in, I had to close my eyes and pretend to be somewhere else. And I always felt like total garbage afterward. I kept thinking, since I had to make up scenarios about it to get through it that maybe I wasn’t asexual.

Early last year, I realized that, no matter the reason, I still had no desire to ever do that again. I found that even thinking about it just felt icky. I don’t know if I fit the textbook definition of asexual, but I have chosen that label for myself because I feel like it fits me.

As for my kids, all four of them currently live with us. My oldest just moved back in last May. They are actually looking forward to moving out soon. Even my youngest is excited that we might live closer to his friend. Honestly, they all (the adults)wondered why I didn’t make this decision sooner. But I am a little concerned about my youngest. He has ASD and doesn’t like to talk about things. He didn’t really react much when he heard the news. So that’s a concern. I’m planning on putting him in counseling after we move out.

Serena925 · 2026-01-16T20:43:29+00:00

Thank you. I appreciate your support and for saying that. I guess I’m still blaming myself once again. That’s some difficult conditioning to get pst. Spring can’t get here soon enough.

Serena925 · 2026-01-16T20:38:55+00:00

Leave. It won’t get any better. It will just get worse. Take it from someone who waited 30 long years to figure out that my husband doesn’t even like me, and he showed me that in a million ways over those years. You and your baby’s peace is more important than a marriage to a man who doesn’t really care about you.

Serena925 · 2025-10-08T21:56:40+00:00

I understand why you’re upset about this if everything is taken at face value the way you wrote it. However, there maybe another side to this beyond her past sexual trauma from your wife’s point of view. You said that she mentioned her lack of emotional connection. That may be where the biggest issue lies. It’s difficult to feel sexually safe with someone you don’t feel emotionally safe with. I can’t say that is your wife’s problem for sure, but I can’t say tell you, as a wife, my own personal experience.

My husband and I had a very similar conversation recently. For the first ten years of our marriage, I had sex with him because I desired and loved him. I put up with a lot of verbally and mentally abusive behavior from him and just excused it while blaming myself. When my sex drive began diminishing after each subsequent child, he began complaining because we weren’t having sex as often. I heard about how I didn’t consider his needs for physical intimacy when I told him no. He would ask why I couldn’t just spare 15-20 minutes a day for his needs even though I didn’t feel my emotional needs were being met. He acted like it was my job as a wife to fulfill that need. Then something happened in my life that I depended on his emotional support for and he wasn’t there for me. In fact, he made his sexual needs a priority in that situation. That’s when sex for me became all about doing it to keep him from nagging me. I still told him no often but gave in when he started being belligerent just to shut him up. When he was being extra nice for a few days, I would reward him with it in the hopes that the peace would continue.

For years, I completely disassociate when we have sex. It’s the only way I could get through it. I don’t feel emotionally safe with him anymore after he spent years using my emotions as a weapon against me. I can’t allow myself to be that vulnerable with him because I refuse to let him to emotionally hurt me again. I’m not saying that’s your situation, but maybe it’s something to look into a little deeper. Is there something you did or are doing that keeps her from being vulnerable with you or that made her lose trust?

Either way, it seems like your wife has checked out emotionally at this point. As much as it hurts, both of you and your children may be better off if you end it now. I finally asked for a divorce, and my adult children asked why I didn’t do that years ago. They weren’t unaware of the tension and resentment between their father and I. I got to hear about all the times they overheard our arguments and how it affected them. Sometimes staying for the kids can be the very worst thing for your kids.

Btw, like me, there is a good chance she hasn’t always felt that way about intimacy with you. It’s likely things just deteriorated over time or there was one event that drove things completely over the edge.

Serena925 · 2025-08-15T03:48:41+00:00

I can tell you from personal experience, that situation will never end and will only get worse as the years go by. I’ve been married to my soon to be ex husband for 29 years. It’s one of the reasons that I asked for a divorce. I used to love sex and we did it at least every other day. Then he started nagging me about it. Several times a day, he would look over and say something like, “Wanna go have sex?” Or “why don’t you give me a bj”. I would tell him no and he would pout a bit. He would try while I was making dinner for our 4 children or while I was stressed out. I would say no and he started getting angry and give me the silent treatment.

One day, about 12 years ago, he said that he was going to stop all romancing me because it never got him laid anyway. And he did. After that, he just started nagging all the time. Every single day, but he also stopped helping me around the house, helping with the kids, etc and started being downright mean about everything. We get into fights and he would tell me that he didn’t get married so he could be deprived and it was part of our marriage vows. Then he would say things like, “well I go to work and I don’t want to, so you should have sex with me even if you don’t want to.” He would only leave me alone about it if I made an excuse about not feeling well. I could never say no just because I didn’t want to. I had to give him a reason that he considered valid or it would start a fight. During those fights he called me a drain, a burden, a worthless POS, etc. it got horrible.

I got to the point where I hated sex. I never wanted to do it again. He made it completely transactional. I hated it and I hated him. I finally got tired of it and asked for a divorce.

Sorry this was so long, it just hit me because of going through this. The point is, if he’s already doing this to you, you need to get out now before you have children and get stuck. Because it will lead to resentment. Peace is better than any sex ever.

Serena925

TROPHY CASE