Ask Amy:..I got nothin'

[cereta]

Dear Amy: I am brokenhearted. I met my wife many years ago. It was love at first sight. Unfortunately, she had just gotten married. I kept my feelings to myself.

Years passed and I got married, but I never forgot her, and eventually became good friends with her and her husband.

One day I bumped into her and we started talking about our lives. Her life was not good because her husband turned out to be a heavy drinker.

My life wasn't good either because I was married to someone I did not love.

She and I found love, left our spouses, and were so happy for 25 years, married to the loves of our lives.

Everyone goes through some bad times, and about 26 years into our marriage, we did, too. I never cheated on her, but I started taking some anxiety medication that was not good for me.

To this day my wife hasn't forgiven me, and I don't know what to do.

It has been 10 years, and she treats me terribly.

I've tried everything, but I can't get her love back. We have been to counselors and clergy. I write to her every day to tell her how sorry I am, but she won't give in. In fact, she says that my writing to her is harassing, and she wants to be left alone.

She used to love me beyond words, but something just made her snap, and never come back. Without her love, I am a lost soul.

Do you have any suggestions?

-- Lost

Dear Lost: You have conveniently left out any detail of what you might have done that could have contributed to your wife snapping, and although your heartbreak is quite evident, your behavior is not helping.

I agree with your wife that 10 years of you writing to her every day is excessive. When someone asks you to stop doing something, you should stop.

My armchair diagnosis is that this daily letter-writing is your anxiety talking, and my main suggestion is that you pursue counseling and treatment on your own, in order to sort out your feelings and reactions, and to see if you could do things differently. You might not win back your wife's affection, but you would probably feel better with the appropriate treatment.

Comments

[cereta]

On the one hand, the LW has withheld such a very crucial bit of information that it seems impossible to answer without it.

OTOH, there's one thing that seems quite clear: she has asked him to leave her alone, and whatever her reasons are, he should respect that.

[shirou]

Not only did the LW omit an account of how he violated his wife's trust, he also failed to describe their current situation. On one hand, if he's writing to her, it sounds like they live apart, and she has ended the marriage. On the other hand, the LW says they've talked to counselors and clergy. Was that before they separated? Are they still working on their marriage despite being separated? Or are they living together but inharmoniously? I keep coming back to, "She treats me terribly," present tense. Does this terrible treatment consist just of requests to be left alone, or is there more?

But in a way, it's irrelevant. My advice is to break off contact. If the wife has left the LW, then there's no reasonable alternative. However unfair her decision may seem, she has the right to choose with whom she does and does not want to spend her life, and the LW must respect that. If the LW and his wife maintain some degree of voluntary communication (beyond his letter-writing campaign), and--intentionally or not--she is using that contact to torture him, my advice to the LW is to end it for his own peace of mind. He does sound tortured, and after ten years, their marriage is not going to improve. Better to deal with the grief of the lost marriage and move on than continue living in anguish.

[kutsuwamushi]

It sounds like she's better off without him.

His whole attitude makes me so mad. She wants to be left alone, and he won't say why; it's all about his feelings and how much he wants her back. He doesn't respect her decision to leave the relationship.

And then there's the "lost soul" bullshit. I am so fed up with men who can't take care of their own emotional health. Everyone needs support sometimes, but there is support and then there's offloading all of your emotional and social needs onto your wife. It's why the fictional trope of "my wife left me and my life went off the rails" bothers me so much. No, dude, you're not a lost soul because your wife left you; you're sad. You need to take some responsibility for your own wellbeing.

I suspect that "anxiety medicaton that was not good for me" is code for "I became abusive under the combination of anxiety medication and alcohol" but this might just be personal experience talking...

[xenacryst]

Isn't this a tired plot formula by now? "We had a wonderful marriage, $terrible happened, now she hates me and has told me to stop contacting her, but I write or call her every day, and I'm working on my life and getting better. How can I make her love me again, because I'm so tortured?"

Been there, done that, got the restraining order. NEXT.

[lilysea]

I'm wondering if he was verbally or physically abusive to her.

He says he didn't cheat, and for her to have broken things off so abruptly - verbal and/or physical abuse seems the next most probable explanation.