My personal theory is that you have some sort of obligations to long term acquaintances but you owe nothing to strangers on the trail. It's this feeling of obligation that leads you to resent people over time.
My wife and I have our good moments, are good parents (I think), but day to day is such a struggle. It is constant cycle of me wanting to be left alone and her wanting something or the other from me and getting annoyed that I show reluctance to do it leading to resentment on both sides. Not sure how to fix it or where to turn to for help. I am not an angry person and I don't physically yell or hurt her but she has said that me being reluctant with most things is a form of emotional abuse, which after reading this concerns me and is cause for introspection.
All I wanted my whole life was a happy family with a happy relationship like my parents had. That didn’t happen and now all I want is to be left alone, and it’s like everyone wants something from me but I don’t need or want anything from them. I have a great job now, so the only thing I look forward to each day is hopefully reaching financial independence before I’m 40. At least then I can “buy” some alone time.
I had the exact same wish. I just wanted a happy family like my parents had. I adore my child. Now I just wish we could both get out of this without damaging him too much and I can be left alone.
> her grad school tuition that I had been saving to pay for her
> she has not worked for >90% of our ~10 year marriage
My friend, you are not abusing your wife. She is abusing you. She is also gaslighting you into thinking you are the problem. You're not. And she is using your child to blackmail you emotionally.
> things she has anxiety about doing -- driving the car to new places, walking the dog when it is dark outside
This isn't anxiety, it's laziness. But if you're merely reluctant about the exact same things, she calls it "a form of emotional abuse." Brilliant.
Unfortunately, the way the law is currently applied, there is nothing you can do without violating it.
I was married to a woman who behaved in a similar fashion. Calling me during work days for ridiculous reasons. Never satisfied. Needed constant attention. Took all disagreements as personal attacks. Needy, prickly, never thankful to anyone. In the end we separated as everything in the marriage was one way street in her direction.
Today I regret that I did not leave her more early but tried to rescue the family by letting everything her way.
Looking back she had a Narcistic Personality Disorder (which was meanwhile confirmed by a psychologist).
Get books on narcissism. Try to speak to a professional if you believe she is narcistic. But NPS is (almost) not treatable. So the only solution is to leave if she is narcistic.
Luckily I managed that our kids stayed with me after separation. And for the kids protection, don't leave the kid with her when you leave. (Recommended Reading: "Children of the self absorbed" by Nina Brown).
Why are you still together?
Can you explain what the advantages of the dominant marriages are? Since you mention Islam, I assume you're the dominant one. I'm going to assume your wife is happy in her role. Do you think the female can be the dominant one in a relationship, too, or how is that decided?
The word “dominance” seems to carry a negative connotation in the context of interpersonal relationships. There a lot of historical factors that are the cause of this and it's beyond the scope of this conversation to delve deeply into that.
Nonetheless, as far as Islam is concerned, it is the role of the man to wield the influence/be dominant in his household. This is by virtue of his responsibilities -- his attachment to the Masjid (or “Mosque” in the West), his duty to earn a living for the household and his duty as an educator and paragon of good character, not just in the home but in his community as well.
The word “dominance” may suggest a sense of oppression in modern times. But in the scope of Islam, that husband who is “dominant” in reality eschews all reprehensible conduct that could be associated with the word.
As I mentioned before, yes, in Islam there are expectations on the Muslim wife. But likewise there are expectations (if not more) on the Muslim husband. Again, that Muslim man assumes dominance in the household out of the necessity that is to submit himself both internally and externally to the conduct of the Prophet Muhammad (peace and prayers be upon him).
The advantages of this lie in the husband assuming his natural role as prescribed by Allah and exemplified by the Messenger of Allah (peace and prayers be upon him). If the situation were to be reversed, then this could not be the case. If anything, the man would not just be neglecting his duties as a husband, but as a Muslim as well. If the situation were to be reversed, it would behove the woman to instead leverage this dominance in order to encourage her husband to fulfill the rights he owes to her and to humanity. If he accepts this, then the natural order as described above would inevitably fall into place.
It is strange to assume that two people who are different by their very nature can be “equal”. The sense of equality between a man and a woman can only come about by the fulfillment of the rights that exist between the two of them, which are different but have to be observed reciprocally.
The problem is that we (meaning humanity at large) are totally unaware of the rights that we owe to each other. Not just in the household, but outside of it as well. Worst of all, we are unaware of the rights that are due to our Creator.
May Allah, the One who is Most Gracious, strengthen you and your wife. Ameen.
Sounds like you’re an introvert and need time to recharge from managing a team and you’re burnt out from that.
I think she’d be delighted with an hour a day of full presence, perhaps more on the weekend.
What are you getting out of the relationship at all? Sounds like they should leave and be alone.
That strikes me as fine if both people are happy with the arrangement, but if kids are in the picture or one of the partners is unhappy with this arrangement I don't know if it will work.
What you’re describing sounds like a personality disorder of some sort. Identifying such may help surface strategies for lessening those feelings. Disclaimer: not a mental health professional, but have had a couple in my personal life.
It is indeed fairly common. I'm affected (thankfully not strongly these days) by bipolar behaviour. I try to present a more average me as the mask.
> in order to fit in into the wider society and be able to achieve one's goals.
It can be more selfless than that. In work life it is about fitting in (or at least not standing out in an inconvenient way) but in personal life it is more that I don't people to worry overly. I have things well managed, I know I can push through, I know it will pass, there is no need to cause stress in others.
> However having it 'on' is apparently taxing
During a bad patch, the extra concentration adds up over time if you find yourself having to work at it for a while. I don't have many prolonged bad patches, I imagine it can get exponentially harder for those more severely affected than me. It is why a lot of people experiencing mental health issues retreat away from interaction even if they are not otherwise particularly introverted.
I had a significant personality change after a psychotic break and most people don’t think I’ve changed. I know I have.
The way I think and care about people has changed. I no longer care what people think about me. At the same time, I have a depth of compassion and empathy I couldn’t have had before.
I have no obligation to anyone. This lets me choose to care about someone without getting unnecessarily attracted. As a result, I can share my love and support freely without worrying about people taking advantage of me. I have no guilt showing people the door.
As a result of this, my motivations have changed. To use a metaphor, I see myself as a light in a dark world. My goal is to make everyone’s day a little better. I’m not some kind of savior, though I have saved lives. I’m just a “good person” trying to do “good things”.
My interests have changed in odd ways. I’d never have written erotica but sex is far more interesting to me now. This isn’t a result of me being repressed. I’ve always been asexual and been hypersexual since I was nine. But now I’m deeply exploring sexuality in my writing.
The last one is both odd and the most fundamental to my being. Just take it at face value.
I had a deep, spiritual connection with wolves from six years old until my break. That connection was a core part of me and without it, I wouldn’t have known who I was.
That connection is gone and I really don’t care about it. As far as I’m concerned, it was delusional thinking.
I no longer have the spirituality that was such a part of me. There is only the rational world now. (Side note: My faith in God had always been rational, not emotional or spiritual.)
If I had to guess, I think sexuality took the place of spiritually in my brain.
It’s quite possible I haven’t changed as much as I think, but the world inside my head is so vastly different, I can’t understand the person I was before.
If they do notice, they chalk it up to maturity.
I was 32 when this all happened.
That just sounds like standard introvert, though.
The hiker in the article, on the other hand, seems to be off-the-deep-end introvert.
I also assume you can be an introvert who has some spectrum and type of mental illness, sexual and gender classification they choose, past exploitation and/or violence committed against you, etc.
I just think it is interesting b/c the person underneath the shell is different person to person and I think we lump very granular groups into large piles for ease of discussion and use.
I think he wanted a mental health, possibly a moral/spiritual awakening but he was toward the end or had completed the hike and was facing reality that there was a mental issue or past event in his life that he could not get past. Maybe just going back to the "real world" was just to much if it had to be in his own skin with his past.
This is why the masks ar pretty much always super charming and likeable. If you're acting anyway, might as well act like someone that's super likeable. Pretty much how you max out a player in some game.
When I first meet people Im more than happy to share, give of myself, etc. Usually I will either feel that gestures are not reciprocated, or taken for granted, so I pull back. Ive wondered if I feel like Im expecting too much of my generosity and I think Ive been guilty of that before. At this point though I think I have reflected enough and changed to where this is not the case.
Long term- I feel like being social requires me to "be on" which is exhausting to me. I would rather only see people when I can be decent company so I end up seeing people much less than more socially adept folks...
I've had this problem in many contexts. Some of it stems from childhood circumstances, but it's also that I often read people better than they seemingly know themselves, i.e., noticing anger that they don't think they have. This can cause a lot of stress.
However, you do have to learn how to avoid taking on other people's emotional burdens.
I used to always try to please others. My dysfunctional family liked it that way. It made their life easier. That was one of the last quirks to go. It was only after being forced into being assertive to defend my kids, I've realized that it is ok to stand up for yourself. Life's been much better since, surprisingly, most people appreciate assertiveness. And being assertive is not nearly as exhausting as being nice.
It was a long journey, started with therapy 25 years ago.
People like this do not behave abusively towards their loved ones all the time, it's pretty on-and-off. The loved one is typically a dependent or avoidant. They remain in the relationship because they need the positive affirmations, and healthy people do not want to be with a dependent or avoidant. So, no choice but to suffer the negativity also.
It's clear that this man developed a personality disorder as the result of suffering abuse as a child.
I don't think the causality is clear at all. If he treated his parents the way he treated his girlfriends then his childhood would have been rough no matter how loving they were.
If he behaves like he did in the article: polite at first but increasingly hostile the longer the relationship lasted then he must have been a hellish teenager to wrangle. One part of the article mentions that his anger at his father may have been the result of putting him in an institution.
I'd say that is pretty hard to tell from the hearsay and all these are just speculations, which are okay. We're learning more from these conversations anyway.
I agree that my assumption was based on hearsay. Fundamentally, I don't believe that children who are loved and protected by their primary caregivers shoot themselves in the stomach in an attempt to die.
It is possible to have a who child goes off the rails in a very nurturing and a generally normal family. I've seen cases where one of the many siblings gets to become a sociopath and the family never understands why and they continue to be normal and consistently try to get their sibling back on track. It is clear that abuse in the family doesn't always play a role. But quite often it does and while mental health has a hereditary component, a bad environment only makes things worse.
I recommend Ramsay's movie 'We need to talk about Kevin' to make an idea of how wrong it could go. Surely, it is a movie but it's not too far from reality.
( Fortunately for her, the friends who attempted to console him pretty soon noticed how violent he got when he talked about her. When he threw a glass at the wall at a friend's apartment, she started getting a lot of apologies. )
It's almost an adaptive behavior. If they were violent to strangers, they wouldn't have long term acquaintances.
I just finished listening to a podcast called My Year in Mensa, which centers around an unmoderated Mensa facebook group, and the author's interactions with them. As you can imagine from an unmoderated community, it sucks and a lot of people say shitty things there.
A common refrain the author heard from people defending the group is "They're the nicest people in real life!", which may absolutely be the case, but publicly, they are presenting abusive versions of themselves.
Gordon Ramsay perhaps?
All the yelling and vitriol is kind of a spliced-down highlights reel, is the impression I've gotten, the stuff that makes for good tv. It's there and it's real, but it's a smaller part of a guy who's generally nice and genuinely cares about the people on his shows.
Good suggestion though.
So when you're around them, you know you can let out your bad side to some extent. You don't know that with random strangers.
wrt your "personal theory" (sense of obligation leads to resentment), that's too simplistic, but for the sake of argument, let's say you are on the right track, here's how to improve your understanding of personality disorders: all people feel the resentment of obligations to those close to them. That part is actually the normal part. The question is, why doesn't the person with this disorder (we are hypothesizing) feel the other positive parts of a close relationship that help a better adjusted person feel in balance, and then take the normal resentment of obligations in stride.
Its the idea that the more you learn about people and have to be around them, you start to judge them and then realize they aren't like you, so you push them away and crater relationships on purpose so you can be alone and unencumbered by other people's problems. It sounds to me like he did just that. Easier to have short-term relationships and human contact when you need it, but not long enough where you start to get bitter about having to continue being around people you don't like.
He created a world that seemed to fit his personality better than what he had been doing most of his life. It must have been beneficial in some way if he continued doing it for so long.
You definitely get the sense that he just wanted to be alone at times. Hard to do that when you're in a long term relationships because you have to adjust to some else's schedule. Easier when your acquaintances are short-term.
1) If you are weird, then you have mismatched expectations about relationships (and other social obligations) than majority society. Not providing something that is expected would be 'neglect', while expecting something that is not provided would be 'entitlement'. Social rules with strangers or casual acquaintances are much simpler.
2) Being in some kind of deep relationship means emotional stakes are higher. Perceived violations due to (1) causes higher emotional damage if they are from someone near than someone distant.
I've known people closely people like that, there's a selfishness to their lack of acknowledgement of others' needs and wants, but it's more of a drive to do that than a reaction to their existence; if and when they have nobody else to hollow out with their negativity and neglect, they'll turn it on themselves, and over time there will be just less and less of themselves.
Notwithstanding that they can be charming on a superficial level.
There's lots of ways people can have that pattern of being a completely different beast to strangers than to intimate partners in a bad way. Say on the other end the ones that make their whole world about you, but that specially means that every single bad feeling of theirs will be offloaded or straight up blamed on you.
With long term acquaintances, you start to notice imperfections. If you have a low self-esteem, you could develop this peronality where you are constantly judging others, and trying to control and make them perfect, because they are part of your life.
This could have been caused by constant criticism received during childhood, or abusive parents who were themselves perfectionist in treating you, and didn't show enough acceptance, pride and love.
Its either that or he truly hated my mother, my brother, and myself.
Sorry to spell it out, and I don’t expect any sympathy for it, but the pattern was man/woman.