I keep talking about the state of my marriage and how I feel like my marriage is a huge contributing factor in my inability to stay on a course of self/life transformation. I have all but accused my husband of causing me to grow fibroids. I do know that my husband did not “cause” me to grow fibroids; but I remain convinced that had I been in a more healthy relationship my condition would not have become quite so severe.
This is probably not the forum for me to go into great detail about my marriage; but a part of the purpose of this blog is for me to try to figure out myself in order to figure out how to successfully transform my life and with any luck become fibroid-free in the process.
My marriage has played a huge role in shaping the last 17 years of my life. I have known this man I call husband since I was 20 going on 21. I have been married to him since I was 26. Although I had been engaged to him for 5 years before we got married, I hadn’t really known him. We’d been in a long distance relationship and had only been in each other’s physical presence twice in the 5 years. Once for two months and the other time for just a handful of days. He was 41 when I married him and I don’t think he had ever really had any responsibilities in his life by then; and he still wasn’t ready for the responsibility of marriage and family. I’ve suffered the consequences of this, among other things, in the worst of ways for most of our marriage.
I married someone I didn’t really know. Today I know without doubt I married someone I would never have married had I been “well”. That is to say, if not for the mental and emotional problems that plagued me and made me vulnerable and desperate, insecure, lacking self-esteem and prone to making bad choices, it is highly unlikely that I would have ended up married to this particular individual or to someone like him. But here I am.
I’m not trying to say my husband is a bad person. He has done bad things but he’s no worse than anyone else as far his basic decency. He and I just don’t have enough in common to justify marriage. We are fundamentally different people. And I’m not convinced we love or even like each other and that’s obviously a huge problem.
Attempting change while everyone around you maintains the status quo
I have previously mentioned that I was separated from my husband for almost 2 years. I had not wanted to get back with him but for practical reasons I felt like I had to and so I did. One of the things we discussed before getting back together was how important it was for me not to get set back to where I had been before our separation. But it wasn’t too long before my lifestyle was back to what it had been.
It is almost impossible, I find, to change your life while everyone around you is determined to maintain the status quo. I believe that one of main reasons I have continued to fail in my attempts at changing my life is that I am remaining in the same environment dealing with the same people who are doing the same things every day. I’m not sure the kind of change I need is possible to achieve without first ending my marriage. I think after 17 years you kind of know that this is it. Especially when you’re dealing with the kinds of differences that exist between myself and my husband, not only in terms of the type of people we are but even basic things like having more than a decade separating our ages.
My husband always talks about growing old together. Just last night he was pleading and running the same lines about how we belong together and we should never part. I know he just says these things while it’s convenient for him; but let another woman come along and his tune will change. He won’t give a second thought to leaving me. So when he gets to talking about working on our marriage I don’t really bother to listen because I know in his mind that means he does nothing. He changes nothing. Working on our marriage for him means that I make all the adjustments and he reaps all the benefit of having a wife who walks around on egg shells every day trying to make the marriage work.
I can’t make my marriage work. I’ve tried. And I can’t achieve the goals I have set for myself while my marriage is in the state that it is. So to me it is very clear that my choices are:
- Leave the marriage
- Give up trying to have a better life and accept the status quo.
But the status quo is making me get sicker and sicker every day. And I don’t have a lot of time left to play with. It’s criminal how much damage I have done to myself and my life by accepting the status quo for so many years. This is my last chance. Either I break the cycle now or I will never break it and my life will have been a complete waste.
It is very difficult sometimes I think for the men in our lives(husbands/sexual partner) to understand exzactly what happens when a woman suffers from Fibroids. I too have been suffering from fibroids since 2006(maybe longer but they where first diagnosed and treated at that date). The pain and bloating that can happen with these tumors is maddening.
It is a scarry thing I think for women to think of a union full of painful relations, or face the reality of a hysterectomy and going thru menopause before our bodies are ready. I think the men in our lives need to realize that we are so much more then our sexual being. And who’s to say that our sex lives might not encompase more then just the physical act of penis and vagina?
The pain that can occour with the fibroids can be excruciating and could put any sane woman off of the act of intercourse. I have read a few of your blogs/posts. and I wonder have you chosen a hysterectomy? or found alternative treatment for your fibroids that works.
The obgyn who treated my fibroids sometimes prescribed Lupron Depot. (it’s an injection) that shrinks the fibroids prior to a surgical procedure I guess if they get very large shrinking them helps in the operating room if they are to take the tumors out. I hope you are ok.
I’m at a crossroads with my own body and the fibroids. I want to end this sick dance I don’t think my husband wants kids but heaven forbid I go without my womb. (stupid man). all I know is somehow we have to end the sick dance wiith the tumors and the doctors and get our lives back.
I hope you have found something that works. this condition stinks.