Re: Why Do I Stay?
Dear Lorelai, I've been asking THAT SAME questions of myself for 22 years. I wrote a long explanation of why I stayed, then erased it. Try being brutally honest with yourself. I thought the same things, am I just too lazy or scared to move on? Lazy, no. Scared yes. This is our comfort zone, we know what to expect and how to deal with it. The unknown is scary. Am I scared to make a bad decision? Yes. I've been attacked verbally so many times, I USED to question my ability to do anything right. But I still don't want to regret a decision I make in haste. (After a another verbal attack) when I'm upset. All I can say to offer support is, ask yourself if you are better off with him, or without. I don't know if you have children, that makes it much harder to answer. There are so many variables. Your children, your age, your financial situation. Brutally honest for me: I stay now because this situation is not always that intolerable for me, I'll will be 50 this year, and although I think I probably could find another partner, why would I want to, everyone has a wart of somesort, and I absolutely do not want to be broke. How's that for honest. At first, I hated to admit that to myself, makes me sound like a conniving golddigger, which I am not. I worked much harder than he did to get to where we are (in my eyes anyway), and went to extreme lengths to give my children the best environment I could in spite of living with an AH, so I don't have any guilt about saying that. So, anyway, everyones circumstances are different. Just keep trying to figure it out, without being to hard on yourself, just very honest. I actually want to say to you, if you are young and childless, then leave and start over, but that isn't offering support for you, that's just looking back on my own life. I admire everyone of the people on this website for their support, and I cannot tell you how good it has been for me. Every answer I've received gives me more things to think about, so I'll bet it will for you too. Good luck with a hard, hard question.