I am a piece of garbage.
I have to be.
From November of 2018 until just a few weeks ago, I couldn’t get up the stairs inside my house.
Other than half of March, all of April and half of August I have been in the hospital. I have a difficult time caring for myself due to five back surgeries that I have had since May.
I am obese, though I lost 100 lbs. plus since August of 2018.
In February/March of 2018, my wife and I had been having communication problems. She was angry that I was slowing down and not doing much after work. She also had become more accepting of her own sexuality, both her bisexuality and her desire to swing.
She decided to hide these things from me because she thought it would hurt me to find out. She would go to parties 1-3 times a weekend. She finally confessed that she was going to sex parties but “only playing with women.” Which was a lie.
She talked about wanting to have a bdsm relationship. Silly me, I thought she meant with me. So I start learning about the culture to help mend our fences. Then I get sick. Then I find out she had been with guys the whole.time. I also find out that she doesn’t want me to have a bdsm relationship with her. “I don’t think of you in that way.”
I have met some of her friends from the scene. They seem nice enough but they knew this whole time she was lying to me.
I can’t help but feel like they have been laughing at me behind my back.
I feel like I did before I met her. Alone. isolated. Unimportant.
Now here’s the thing: I love her. And, despite it all, I know she loves me. She takes care of me. Helps clean me up. Helps put on my bandage on my back. Cooks for me. Drives me wherever. We even make love from time to time.
Tonight is the first night we have slept together in 10 months. In the meantime, she has had someone in bed with her every night.
When I tell her how I am feeling down about things, she gets upset and either overly blames herself or gets angry because she thinks I am trying to make her feel guilty. She often threatens to leave me. Says “you would be happier without me.”
I would be lost without her, but part of me wonders if this is her semi-subconscious trying to get herself an escape route.
I’m no better, by the way. I have threatened leaving (not seriously). Even worse I have threatened suicide.
That is an especially harmful thing to say to my wife because her father killed himself 5 years ago and her half brother did the same a year later.
I feel lost. I feel like everything I was was destroyed. By her lies. By my illness. By my obesity. By my inner doubts. My whole world has been razed to the ground.
Now, my worry is that you are going to read this and judge her harshly. Please don’t. This is why I can’t even talk about this stuff with a counselor. I don’t want to tear her down. I love her, even after being betrayed. I am not perfect and I know I have done things that have hurt her. But we have been through too much together to just end it.
I just feel like I want to die. Not kill myself. I don’t want to hurt others that way. I just feel like I would rather wither and die.
Like the garbage I am.