The last eight years of my marriage was pretty bleak. Not abusive, not dreadful, just bleak. AH had time and compassion for everyone but me. I think he had an affair, I'm not sure. It doesn't matter, now. he's passed away. He was calling other women [while drunk] when I wasn't home. One of them was a 21-year-old - she still lived with her parents, and it really freaked her and her parents out. Me too, when a third party told me about it.
While he would call all kinds of people while I was at work, when I got home and wanted to speak with him about anything, he would say something like,"Make it quick, I have things to do." He wasn't able to hold a job, he wasn't doing anything around the house. What was he doing? Your guess is as good as mine. I spent a few years alternately bitter and sad about his treatment of me, his death, and the man I married who disappeared over the years.
The very day I decided I should start packing, I came home and he told me he had lung cancer. His prognosis was about two years, I doubted he'd quit smoking, so I put aside plans to leave. Keeping appointments, driving to have the porta-cath put in, all the stuff that goes with a cancer diagnosis, all that was on me. I did it for him because we were married, because who he was *right then* wasn't the whole story of who he was and our life together.
He never thanked me. He never apologized. We didn't have closure, whatever the heck that is. We never had the chance. Six weeks after he told me he was ill, he had a pulmonary embolism and died.
I don't know about your spiritual/religious beliefs, and maybe it doesn't really matter. I guess the point is, none of us are perfect. I made mistakes (not going to detail them here - I'm pretty ashamed of some of the things I said or did). I did the best I could, and my personal best varies from day to day. Building on that, I decided (yup, it was a choice) to believe that AH did the best he could, too. It wasn't always great, or even good. But it was the best he could do, under the circumstances.