25th May 2008
Question
This is my third marriage and I'm thinking about just giving up. This is the marriage when I actually tried one hundred percent to care about everything that my husband feels. This is the marriage where I tried really really hard to make him happy. But no matter what I do he's not happy.
He is so jealous I can't even live my own life without him calling all the shots. He was jealous of the people I met through work and made me quit. I nearly had a nervous breakdown, but he didn't care. He just got angry when I said I needed to go to work before I went completely crazy. But I couldn't handle the depression so I did go back to work.
Every time we get into an argument, he throws things into my face that he knows would crush me, like telling me that my kids don't love me, that they think I'm a drunk. I have not even thought about another man, let alone been near one, since I got married, but I get accused of it every day. He is even jealous of the internet.
What am I doing wrong? All I want is to live in peace with my husband and children. I moved abroad many years ago, so have no family nearby, and no really close friends. It's got so bad that he won't even have sex with me anymore.
Answer
Ah but that's the whole point. You're not doing anything wrong, in any specific sense. Your whole project is wrong. You're trying to make someone happy. That's not possible. Nobody can make anybody else happy. It is not within our gift to give.
You could offer your husband heaven and it wouldn't make him happy. It's a universal emotional law, applicable to everyone. Happiness is something we make - or fail to make - for ourselves.
Hard to accept isn't it? Here you are, having spent your whole life based on a false premise, forced to face the fact that you can never succeed. Welcome to the club! We're all in the same boat, to a greater or lesser degree. And by the way, I'm deliberately saying your whole life, since I doubt that your desire to bestow happiness only began with this marriage. You just tried harder this time, were more conscious in your decision, attempted to see your project through with greater determination than before.
Your husband hasn't got happier. He's got nastier. The more you try to be the person you think he wants, the fiercer he becomes. That's because you're both colluding in a fundamentally false belief. He thinks control will console him. In allowing such control, you support this fallacy. So he moves from curtailing your behaviour to attempts at breaking your spirit.
No level of control over someone else is ever enough. Even killing you wouldn't solve anything for your husband. His demons lie within. His battle is with himself. He's just wasting energy, squandering precious time, endangering his marriage. And you're encouraging him to see things the wrong way by desiring to please, trying to conform, feeling hurt by his failure to be happy. Do you understand that?
I think you should talk to an addiction counsellor - not about alcohol, but about your deep desire to rescue your husband from his own unhappiness. Co-dependency is the buzz word. And no, I'm not blaming you, just calling on you to take personal responsibility - for everyone's sake.
