Jessica,
Thank you for answering so honestly. That took courage, and I don't take it lightly.
You can love your wife, your children, and the life you built, and still mourn the experiences, ease, joy, and self-recognition you were denied. Those truths don't cancel each other out. They coexist, and carrying them both for decades is exhausting in ways most people never have to imagine. Grieving the woman you never got to be isn't self-pity or ingratitude. It's grief. Real grief.
What you're describing—the numbness, the false smile, the screaming inside that no one hears—that's what living frozen looks like. It's what happens when a child learns that action brings danger, and it makes complete sense that it's intensified in a marriage that echoes those same dynamics. That adaptation kept you alive once. It's costing you dearly now, but it isn't weakness. It's survival that hasn't been allowed to retire.
I want to sit with something you said: your wife's first instinct when you trusted her with the most vulnerable part of yourself wasn't curiosity or care—it was to weaponize it. Being outed to hostile family members before a single question was asked is a profound betrayal. That kind of reaction doesn't just hurt; it teaches your body that honesty leads to danger. You're allowed to name it as betrayal, even while still loving her, even while being terrified of losing the only connections you have.
"I won't hurt myself, but I just don't care anymore"—I hear you. I take that seriously, exactly as you meant it. Not as a cry for alarm, but as the voice of someone worn thin from holding everything together alone. Losing interest in life is its own kind of pain, quieter than crisis but just as serious over time. You don't have to be in immediate danger for what you're feeling to matter.
You're not asking for answers. You're not asking to be pushed toward change you're not ready for. You're asking to be seen—as someone who has endured, loved deeply, paid a high price for safety, and is now very tired. I see you.
I also notice that you're still here, still writing, still reaching toward something—even if you're not sure what. That matters. The isolation you're describing—no friends outside your wife and kids, frozen in place, nowhere to turn—that's part of what's making this unbearable. It doesn't have to stay that way.
Keep talking when you can. You're not alone in this space. You found a home, you found a chosen family, and that matters!
With love and care,
— Susan 💜
