Imagine being made to feel crazy for over 30 years.  Imagine being angry and resentful and blaming yourself and being ashamed and guilty because you are angry and confused.  Imagine you are a person who MUST feel love inside yourself or go nuts!  Imagine you spread your love around your kids, your home, your neighborhood, your work and your husband.  Imagine doing it over and over and over.  Imagine your husband of over 30 years says to you, "What did you EVER do for me? and looks at you like he could kill you when you point out to him that he needs to step up his contribution to home life?  Imagine being promised, then dismissed over and over. Imagine that one day you wake up and don't know if ANYTHING you know or believe or perceive is right or wrong because the way you have approached your marriage has so totally NOT worked out and you have been living on hope and faith and trust in yourself to MAKE things work out?  Imagine that you realize you have been a fool and have been sold a bill of goods that was never there.  My DH is a SALESMAN to the core.  I realize now that every word he has said to me has been to manipulate and tiptoe his way around doing the least he can get away with...that it has been more important to him to WIN at the private games he is playing in his head than to be a respectful part of a family team.  I realize that it is his way of feeling in control of himself because he is not able to plan, prioritize, organize, share, play on a team or commit.  He can only WIN the moment's argument.  He is proud of his "imp-hood" as though it makes him feel young and zippy.  I had been bestowing on him the attributes of someone I wanted him to be in hopes that my positive thinking, work and support would make him be the person I wanted him to be.  I look at him and think, "Why do you NOT want love in your life?  What is filling your insides up that you are willing to be so empty of emotion and feeling?"  How can you smile impishly while we are doing so poorly? Why does it feel like you are "acting" rather than being here in the present?  What am I dealing with?    I can only guess that he had ADD all his life and he MUST put coping methods of distraction, machismo, over-rationalization to the point of being unrealistic, "I don't care" attitude, and all the coping skills people use to cope.  Our lives are out of control financially and emotionally. I have also been coping immaturely - hoping against hope that things are different than they really are.  But, is that what life is....finding ways to cope in the struggle of life?  I would just like to be coping WITH someone rather than feeling like he is coping AGAINST me. It is the loneliness that is the most painful.  so why am I driving him further away with my demands, my "lines drawn in the sand - boundaries"?  I agree with another poster on this site.  I would like to have a chance to see how I operate with a different person...would I be the same resentful, angry jumble of nerves? Is it my fault I am not coping better?  I feel like I am going crazy and I remember that I once was the most sane, comfortable with myself, likable, fun person I knew.  He is probably wondering where I went too.  He does not maintain his possessions.  I have become someone he does not love because he neglects his things (and me) and lets them (and me) rust (just like all his hoarded, rusty junk) and then moves on to garnering OTHER new things for himself.  I am just an old used up work horse to him. When things got difficult, instead of working together with me, he turned his back on me over and over and denied, distracted and did NOTHING! Thanks, I am just journaling to get this out of me and help to accept how much denial I was doing for so long.