So, while this experience has been horrific and I still am in shock, my husband and I have done a lot of soul searching. He does not have PTSD, but he has had emotional abuse and he has written a letter to me (he is a writer) just to get his thoughts out. he explains that he is over generous to his whole family, but especially to me, because he thinks it will keep me by his side. He has very low self esteem and can have depression as a result of constantly having a feeling of low self worth. He is beating himself up in the letter. I wrote a letter back and am going to post it here, because i have gotten a lot of support here, and because, I don't know I am still thinking through this extremely life changing, devastating situation.
Here it is:
First of all you did not ruin your marriage. You have pain and codependency issues which are things that can be healed. What is saving this is that you are willing to do the hard work. You also just are not great at managing money, which is something that you just need to learn. Similar to learning how to cook, not being great and then just researching it and getting there. it is not exactly fun to learn, so you have to tolerate learning how to budget, managing money. You have to start to tolerate difficult feelings and not avoid or procrastinate. Just tolerate. Therapy will really help your extreme generosity. This weakness is what I love about you, but you hurt me greatly. I am happy that you can clearly see that. I hope you have come clean about everything.
You have very low self esteem. You have a wound inside of you that is causing your depression. You think you do not deserve girlfriends when you are actually very handsome. You think you are 'buying' love through generosity, when at the same time your personality and who you are is what makes a woman want to be with you. Genuinely generosity, healthy generosity, and care for others is good, but you don't have to keep doing it to win me over or to get me to stay. Just try saying no, try being just a little bit selfish for yourself sometimes, and see what happens. Do I go? Do I stay? I'd probably stay. Boundaries feel good and they feel secure. Your father rejected you over and over and your mother made you feel like you could never focus on your self. So your terrible self esteem-or the wound from your father not loving you combined with the selfless giving means that you are a selfless giver in order to secure love, but you are always pining, because you need to address the emotional abuse of your father not loving you. Your creativity and just who you are is enough. Your heart and soul. That is what I love. You are not a monster. You made a mistake, a very big mistake. Several big mistakes. But as Oprah says, "When you know better, you do better."
We both have trauma wounds inside, we were both rejected by our parents, and it is through looking at difficult emotions and being willing to sit with it and to sit with shame and depression and self hate that we can grow wise and even stronger in our marriage and we can be good parents to our beautiful children.
