“In Sickness and in Health” -- When Being the Caregiver to a Sick Wife Is the Final Straw

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Fill out the form, and if your story or question is a good one, I will create a video out of it for the whole world to see, or, you know, for a few thousand to see on YouTube. So if you could help out and take a moment and click down below if you're watching this on YouTube and click on the like, click on the subscribe, leave a comment, that will help me out a great deal. All right, with that out of the way, this is coming from Sick and Tired, the guy calls himself. The subject line is In Sickness and in Health. He says, I've seen comments on your page. I assume he means the Facebook page. I'm very popular on Facebook. He says, I've seen the comments on your page that husbands who don't stand by their sick wives are simply a-holes. As the husband of a sick wife, I feel that it's a lot more complex than that. In hindsight, my wife has been slowly withdrawing from our marriage for over a decade, even before she became very unwell. I work full-time and I bring in 3/4 of the household income. Over the course of 10+ years, I have gradually taken on all of the cooking, the cleaning, the washing, and most of the significant child rearing. There, there is no initiation of romance or sex from her. And to be honest, I have given up on trying as both rejection and duty sex are demoralizing. I feel like I've become a carer. And after a burnout episode that is slowly killing me, it's difficult to untangle what is her psychological disconnection from our marriage, or as a result, or what is a result of her legitimate health issues. Basically, if she wasn't sick, I'd likely have left her years ago because of her lack of contribution to our relationship. No one can carry a marriage alone. My friends, and he says parentheses, and even my adult-aged daughters tell me that I should leave her regardless. When I vowed in sickness and in health, it did— I didn't think that I'd be sacrificing my own health for hers. Any advice welcome. Well, sickness— or sick and tired, rather. Um, that's a good one, and it's one that I hear pretty often. Um, there is some semblance of this from a lot of guys, which is our marriage has always been very dysfunctional— is the term I often use— very broken, or a term that everyone for whatever reason hates to use, very toxic, poisonous. You know, it's objectively bad no matter how you look at it, and, uh, A lot of the men that I talk to that I've mentioned very often are very anxious in nature. And so they will do anything and everything that they can to try and fix the relationship. I know this is just foreign to a lot of you women out there, but yes, these men exist. They will push for counseling. They will like, "Wife, look, I got this book from the library. Let's read it together." And the wife will say no to counseling, no to book, no to the podcast, no to the YouTube channel, no to the, you know, you know, 127th sit-down, you know, talk on the couch in the living room. The wife is just sick and tired of hearing it. She just wants to live her life and be left alone. She is the quintessential classic avoidant partner. And yes, most of the time, statistically, the man is the avoidant partner. But for the men I talk to, the roles are reversed, and it's the woman that's like, "Get away," and it's the man that's pursuing. He's the anxious preoccupied partner. And it sounds like you have dealt with potentially some semblance of that dynamic between you and the wife to the point where it got to be very mismatched and very unbalanced in the, I guess you could say, the logistical upkeep of the relationship, the home in particular. It sounds like you're doing all the domestic duties over the course of, you say, over the course of 10+ years. You've taken on all the cooking, the cleaning, the washing, the child rearing, and everything else. Which points to, um, dude, what's going on with your wife? Any, you know, sane therapist would look at your wife and say, are you okay? Are you depressed? Is there something physically going on with you that prevents you from doing this? Well, fast forward to now, and yes, it sounds like she does have a serious illness. You did not say what that illness is. I'm not trying to belittle her illness or say that it's all up in her head or whatever, you know. I have no idea because you didn't say exactly what that was. Maybe she's cancer or who knows, right? But there is a subset of people, and I'm not saying this belongs or this applies to you, but maybe it does and maybe, you know, a light bulb comes on for you. But there is a subset of people that I talk to where the wife is chronically anxious, depressed, and as a result has a whole host of issues that are exacerbated by, or arguably brought on by, um, her mental unwellness. You hear a lot of women that have autoimmune issues. Autoimmune issues are notorious for being flared or exacerbated or made worse by stress, anxiety, depression, so forth. You'll have some very questionable issues. I'm going down a you know, touchy subject here, fibromyalgia, for example, which can be qualified as extreme pain and lethargy in mostly women. Yes, most of the fibromyalgia patients are women, and it's from an unknown origin. They can't find a cause for it. And one interesting little tidbit is that one of the most effective treatments for something like fibromyalgia are antidepressant medications. Kind of says it all, doesn't it? So we're not belittling the very real pain that they're feeling, the very real issues that they're having. It just may be brought on a great deal by anxiety, depression, and other things. So we need to treat the core issue and potentially that heals other stuff. But I'm digressing here because I have no idea what your issues with your wife is. But it sounds like before that, possible depressive issues on her part. He sounds like a very much a people pleaser, Mr. Nice Guy type. That's like, I'll do it, I'll do it, I'll do it. I'll take on the house. I'll clean this, I'll clean that. I'll bring home 3/4 of the income. I'll just do it all, woman. You just sit there and do nothing. And then she gets sick and her sickness has kind of pushed you over the edge because you're a caregiver. And that is extremely, extremely stressful to anybody. I don't care, man or woman or who you are. And you finally have been whittled down to nothing. And now, possibly as a result of being whittled down to nothing, you've hit your rock bottom and you're looking back in the relationship and you go, you know, this was this way, or some semblance of this, throughout the history of our relationship for the last 10+ years. I'm getting sick of this. Even your loved ones, your adult, you know, children are looking at you going, Dad, you gotta leave this woman, dude. This is no good. You're gonna end up killing yourself. She's bad for you. She's toxic. She's this, and I'm putting words in their mouth, but it sounds like that's what in essence they're saying. Leave this woman. And you're like, I can't. Why? Because you're worried about what all of society will label you as. Yet another dirtbag leaving his wife when things get tough. When in fact, you know the truth. And the truth is, your wife has had issues all this time, This is just a culmination of all of this. This is just basically the straw that breaks the camel's back, so to speak. It's not the illness, it's the illness plus all this other stuff leading up to the illness. Now, am I saying leave that woman? You know, she's bad news. In a way, yeah, potentially. I don't know. I, I'm, I'm not there to see what's going on. I haven't heard her side of the story, let's be honest. But taking what you're saying at face value, it sounds like this woman's got issues. And it's so far along that to think that you're going to go in and just fix these issues, it ain't you, dude. It's her saying, I got a problem. But now she's sick. It makes that damn near impossible. Is there a way that you can leave, save your sanity, and start a healthy relationship potentially with somebody else, or no relationship, whatever it may be, but still help the ex and mother to your children in some way? There's just some way you can still step up and help pay for some care for her or something to that effect, not just leave her and just say You're on your own. But say, I need to leave this relationship for my health, safety, and sanity, but I don't want to leave you, you know, abandoned. So here's some extra help in the form of, you know, arranging for care, or I don't know. But there's got to be some kind of middle ground here, right? But I'm not going to shame you. You are not a monster for feeling this way. Congrats, you're a human being. Anybody would feel the same way. And if they don't admit to it, they're basically lying because they are, uh, trying to paint a picture of themselves that is super positive to the rest of the world. 'Cause they, they worry about what the rest of the world thinks of them. There are some people in this world that being a caregiver and a savior to their troubled, sick partner is very much part of their persona. It's part of who they are. And when the spouse dies, God forbid, they lose that sense of identity. They don't know who they are anymore because they've been this caregiver to this person beyond being a person who is constantly at the edge of breaking down and collapsing as a result of all the stress. When that goes away, they're like, I don't know what to do next. And you don't want to be that guy. I think that's what your family members are telling you. Mom, she's got problems, dude. You're a good man. Take care of yourself. All right, brother, thank you for reaching out. I appreciate it.