Dear Elsa,
I’m only 34. After I got married, my husband changed. He is a gambling addict with severe depression, and his sex drive is nil. I’m torn between remaining a dutiful wife or letting go of our marriage of 3 years. Even with counseling, our home isn’t a pleasant place and I’m battling fearfulness of failure & loss.
Why can’t I leave my marriage? I can’t figure out if it’s out of loyalty, fear, spiritual reasons or emotional problems. I’m really trying to understand if it’s me AND him (it’s my 2nd marriage) or just him. Will it ever get any better or should I painfully leave him in my past?
If I do this, I’m VERY FEARFUL of another emotional mess down the road. Thank you for ANY advice as I will seriously think on it.
Second Marriage
Dear Marriage,
Well, you sound perfectly miserable. I’m sure I would be same if I were married to a depressed man who threw our money away, while leaving me to shrivel up and die on the vine in the bed.
As to whose fault it is… well obviously, you have a very difficult partner here. However it was you who picked him. And why is that? You may as well stay until you can figure this out and with that I can probably help.
You have a multiple indications of a difficult love life in your chart and I don’t say that to depress you. If anything it should validate you, because it’s not like its news, right? You know this. So here’s my advice:
Forget about his gambling problem, his sex problem and his depression. These are all his problems to solve. Instead, try to focus on your own problems, which are easily as severe and debilitating as his.
Things like the fact you are crippled and paralyzed with fear. Fear that this is all you will ever have. Fear this is all you deserve. Fear of being judged. Fear of moving forward to quickly. Fear of not moving quickly enough. Fear of what people you know will think. Fear of what people you don’t know…people who you haven’t even met yet, will think in the future if they find out you are twice divorced.
You can resolve this stuff and you can thrive. I know this for sure because I am a fear-based person too and I was in a situation like yours once.
I was married for all of about 2 months when it became very apparent I had made a big mistake. And I thought like you. What am I going to do? Stay three years and make it look good on paper?
But then one night my husband came home from work. He’d seen a bumper sticker on his way home from work. “I’m going to get you one,” he said.
The bumper sticker?
“Men Are Assholes And I Married Their King”
“Oh really?” I said. I filed for divorce a week later which meant I had an eight week marriage, give or take.
That was about 20 years ago and you know what? Big deal. If anyone wants proof of my audacity, well there it is. If anyone wonders if I am going to be married to an asshole… well obviously I’m not. And it was embarrassing, I’ll admit. But it beat the hell out of wasting three years with that guy, you know? Never mind wasting, 30.
Good luck.
holy moly, I literally own the tee shirt.
(the bumper sticking saying, I mean… it says All men are assholes and I married their king)
Elsa said, “…well obviously, you have a very difficult partner here. However it was you who picked him.”
If you can get to the bottom of this and learn whatever lessons are here to learn, that’s where you get free. By finding out what brought you here, you can address it and won’t find yourself unconsciously recreating the same issues with another partner.
Good luck! 🙂
wow! What wisdom.
Brilliant!! I love this. A breath of fresh air. Elsa, thank you for posting with such clarity.
A very good assessment of the situation, and excellent advice to forget the problems of the husband. They sound too deep-seated for resolution any time soon!
I’m interested Second Marriage says her husband ‘changed’ after they married. This does often happen of course, but it may be that this lady was in so much of a hurry to be partnered – married even – that she blinded herself to realities what does Neptune do in her chart I wonder…
She may also have thought she could change things in the man she didn’t like, a fantasy in which so many of us indulge. Sometimes (as in my case) we can demand change BEFORE the marriage, and get it; but sooner or later deep-seated problems are almost certain to reappear. This is where a chart reading for a prospective partner before marriage can no doubt help in deciding whether such compulsions are ‘terminal’!
Amen on all of this Second Marriage. It’s taken me 2 marriages and 43 years to discover why I picked who I picked. Get on the stick woman, get a consult with Elsa. She’s turned my life around, as have so many of the bloggers here. You’ve come to the right place. Fear can be neutralized by knowing what you are dealing with in yourself. I’m living proof. God be with you.
I too realized after 6 months that I made a mistake, but stayed married for another 9 years stubbornly trying to make it work.
The longer you stay, the greater the risk of you having a child with this man and having to deal with him FOREVER. He will be there at your kid’s HS graduation, his college graduation, the birth of your grandchild, your grandchild’s HS and College graduations, forcing you to revisit the failure periodically.
Well said, Trish. 🙂