My marriage is a prison

[yevgueney]

I have been married for 4 years to a wife who is co-dependent and spiritually and emotionally strangling me. I married her because at the time I was 19 and I was having problems with my mother (living there, had a curfew of 3 pm, sexual abuse, etc) and the only way to get out was to get married. I realize 4 years later that I made a huge mistake. My wife said if I left her she would kill herself. This made me feel obligated to stay. I care about her but I cannot keep living like this. I have to constantly text her when I get to work, school, when I get home, etc. I have tried to talk to her about it but every time I try to say I want out, she uses my deceased father as a guilt trip (She will say "Your father wouldn't want you to do that to me") I have tried to be patient, am currently in counseling for my own sanity, and I have asked my wife to go to counseling but she doesn't see a problem in our marriage. I am out of options. I need help on what to do. In my heart I have made my decision, but I don't know how to go about starting the process of how to tell my wife I am done.

[dougsan]

Tough position you find yourself in but one that is too common, sadly. My mother, who was a drunk and sexual abuser always talked that way when I would try to get her to confront her drinking or abuse of me. Dear old dad, also a drunk, loved mum and could see no problems.

When I had pulled my mother out one hotel room too many, where she had gone to meet some guy but was so drunk couldn't remember where she was, I talked to my mother's priest (waste of time). I talked to her doctor (waste of time). I talked to an AA rep. Success. The advice he gave me, I give you, your spouse either has to be committed to a psychiatric facility or you have to walk away. No other choices.

After talking to the AA rep. I contacted a psychiatric facility that specialized in abusers, and they explained my mother would have to commit herself, she couldn't be committed against her will unless she harmed herself or someone else. So, I took my parents out for lunch and got them both drunk. Thus inebriated, my mother signed herself in. While she was a patient I visited her EVERY DAY. The docs made me promise I'd do this when they agreed to my get her drunk scheme. After 90 days, and a lot of electric shock therapy my mother was a new person, not 100% but someone I wanted to be with (this is the woman who sexually assaulted me for years and from whom I ran away when I was 15). She died a year later. My father never forgave me for "...putting his wife in that hospital..." But screw him. It was the correct thing to do.

I very much wanted to walk away, as I had 9 years earlier, but I couldn't let anyone, let alone my mother, continue on the path of destruction she was on. During the working to bring my mother back I often thought of quitting. It was a mountain of work. But she was a fellow human being and my mother. She deserved my efforts.