In Spring 2003 (junior year of college), I began dating the woman who became my wife from Fall 2005 until January 2017. Other than concerns noted here, in many ways our marriage was like the romanticized 1950s household, particularly during the first five years. I was the primary breadwinner, she was primarily the homemaker. She worked part time and completed a master’s degree. When we discussed important matters, she deferred to my direction. We bought, repaired together and rented His and Hers real estate projects. She aspired to be the ideal Proverbs 31 wife. She valued meekness and self-reliance; while I find these traits admirable, their abundance lead to less clear communication than I desire.
Two days after our wedding, en route to her last day of work in her old town, her car was rear-ended; she suffered significant whiplash that misaligned her neck/spine. After several months of being mostly bed-ridden, she consented to chiropractics and was mostly physically healed within two weeks. However neither of us fully recovered from the psychological impact. She never was her bubbly self again and I became overly protective. Several months after her neck recovered, still in our first year of marriage, I injured her tailbone throwing her onto the bed. Despite medical inquiry, the nature of the injury was never ascertained; the harm, blame, and guilt remained a reminder throughout our relationship. In response, I started treating her as fragile and I believe that this is when I developed a savior complex. I only started significantly unpacking and releasing the savior complex from my psyche after filing for divorce.
She had other unverified and undiagnosed health concerns that plagued her throughout our marriage; she declined the medical testing I thought appropriate to determine the problem. From the medical consulting and testing results she did get, I guessed her ailments were psychosomatic, and my belief that her ailments were both real and could have a psychological basis was understandably perceived by her as invalidating her experience.
She was always eagerly sexually available for me, provided I was gentle (so her tailbone was protected) and the sex was PiV missionary or cowgirl. She was willing to accommodate in other ways, however accommodation was undesirable and emotionally distant for me. Despite a quantitative sexual abundance, I felt qualitatively sexually repressed. I likely would have accepted that quiet desperation if I had transparency, emotional security in our relationship, and confidence that plans we made would be followed.
In 2010 we started marriage counseling, and after a month stopped seeing our first and then second therapist at her request. I believe this was because she was uncomfortable that the therapist was hinting at advice that she did not want to implement. After she purchased two houses, one being particularly problematic, without consulting me, I explained that I would only stay married and accept her independent financial decisions if we financially divorced. I should have decided then to end the relationship, but in hopes of saving our marriage for five years I allowed it to become more like best friends with benefits. In Spring 2011 we signed a Post-Nuptial Agreement, in Fall 2013 we filed for divorce, and in January 2017, we finally officially divorced. My drive for psychological knowledge, romantic relationship dominance and transparent authority based relationships increased substantially after filing for divorce.
We had a reverse honeymoon to bittersweetly celebrate the end of divorce stress. We remain good acquaintances. She remarried in 2018 and we speak roughly quarterly.