Lately, I’ve been having these fleeting thoughts about what if I caught covid and didn’t make it. I know the world wouldn’t change much overall. My biggest fear is leaving kiddo behind even though I know my mom and siblings would also miss me. In a way, it’s like I’m living for them. Things just seem so hopeless sometimes. Like not worth living for. I am afraid of self erasing, so I won’t do it myself.

I have no purpose. I’m barely making any money. I owe hella money in student loans and I have no idea how to pay it off. It feels like a damned weight on my neck. It seems that i always have just enough to pay the bills. No plans, not because I think they are unimportant, but I just have no Idea what I want out of life. I don’t know what I want so how am I supposed to pursue it. My personality is blah. I really can’t blame STBXW for wanting to leave. I still think it’s fucked up and hurtful that she cheated, but I don’t blame her for wanting to leave me.

Life just feels like a treadmill of running in the same place and getting nowhere fast. It’s like I don’t have anything to look forward to. I’m just here.

While I am grateful in many many ways……I recognize that I live better than 98% of the population in history before me. I live better than kings and queens did before the 20th century. I live in middle class US in 2021….. clean running water, a soft bed, hot showers, 24 hour access to almost any food that I can imagine, a car to take me long distances, 24/7 internet connectivity, no wars or constant threats of violence, overt racism seems to be a thing of the past, I can afford a night or two on the town on occasion, a decent paying job, a gig job on the side where I can get paid immediately if necessary, access to healthcare and medicine, access to 10000’s of movies and more video games than i could ever play, access to damn near any book I’d want to read or have read to me in my bluetooth headphones. I can be warm in winter and cool in the summer with the press of a button. I have my health and am in the best shape of my life. My son lives with me under the same roof. Everyone that I really love has pretty good health right now. How can I really complain about anything? Relatively speaking, it seems that I am living a pretty good life.

But despite all of this, I feel like a fucking loser at times.

I do lack ambition, but again, I don’t know what I want. Nothing seems important. I’m tired of looking at redpill content because a woman is the last thing that i need to worry about. I can’t afford one even if I did trust one anyway. And what’s the point anyway, even if my fortune was to change, I’d know she was only with me for the money. And they all seem to be harping on …. find your purpose, get rich, and then you can fuck all the women you want. They try to make it seem like women aren’t important, but the purpose of finding a purpose is so you can make money, not worry about women, so that you can attract women….

I just recently learned that a woman’s love is conditional….so there is that…making it about as useful as a spoon for a pizza slice. Ironically, even less reason to give a fuck about financial ‘success’ in order to get/keep her.

Then i look at how all these other people seem to be making all this money….they own multiple investment properties, nice houses, luxury cars, can afford nice trips and international vacations, have purpose drive and ambition. Everyone seems so superficial, but it seems that this materialism and superficiality is what drives the notion of ‘black excellence’. It’s like if you aren’t trying be a boss and make boss moves, you’re useless. If you aren’t striving for MORE and ok with mediocrity, then you’re a loser. (i will say that the outcome of today’s mediocrity is definetely better than yesterday’s excellence)…. still though, I understand that I lack in this area.

Then it also seems that a lot of people happen to stumble into ‘greatness’. I don’t think that I’m any less capable nor intelligent many people who do ‘big’ things. For some reason, it seems like they were just destined to do what they were doing. They happened to be in the right place at the right time to learn that particular skill or make that investment, or take that job which required they learn this skill that helped them move up the ladder. I know people who make way more money than me that don’t appear to be any harder working or smarter than me. I also know people who make less money than me who appear to be brighter and more capable. Some people were strategic about it, but many weren’t. It really seems like a crapshoot at times.

While I don’t frown upon the success of those that I deem as ‘less capable/intelligent/hard working’ for their success. It does irk me how so many tend to look down on people who make less money. It makes people who dick ride them because of their financial success seem superficial and stupid to me. In our community, we have this notion that people with a lot money, no matter how they got it, are somehow superior in every way. Beyond reproof even. And it’s easy to fall for this delusion.

Is this what they call self loathing? Perhaps I am tempting death by imagining me not being here anymore. But I think I’m ready to go.

Being barely over broke and having a ‘less than stellar’ personality and having no purpose is not a good way to live. I’ve hit the 40 mark and still there is no good. I feel useless. Too jaded to believe in love. Too much responsibility to run away and start over. I can’t stop. It really feels like I’m running full speed on a treadmill that won’t stop. The only way off is to fall and bust my ass.

I say that one of the fastest routes to hell is to start comparing yourself to others. Perhaps I need to start taking my own advice.

I’m banging my head against a brick wall. I don’t know why I try to explain myself to STBXW anymore. Perhaps I’m wrong. We were discussing the future and as usual, she, on one hand says that she’s indecisive about fixing the relationship….(as if I haven’t made it clear that we cannot fix it). And on the other, she says that she doesn’t want to hurt kiddo.

I asked if she thought we could fix things this time instead of telling her that I don’t think it can be fixed. She says that she thinks we could if she wanted to. But she doesn’t want to nor feel motivated. She says that she doesn’t feel motivated about life… to do or be better in the marriage. And that this limbo state we’ve been experiencing makes her feel discouraged.

For the umpteenth time, I reminded her that her cheating, selfishness, and secrecy may have something to do with me not being exactly motivated to try and fix things. She seems to think that it’s ok to leave a marriage and family just because she’s not happy. She doesn’t seem to believe that she’s obligated to our family to at least try to work on it. She went further to actually say that if family is THAT important, then cheating shouldn’t be such a big deal.

I want to pull my ears off and shake them to make sure they’re working correctly. Man, how in the fuck did I think that marrying this chick was a good idea. I think that red pill reasoning resonates with me so much is because she is like the prototypical/stereotypical woman out here. She is one of them. Not all women are like that, or at least I hope not…..of course from here on out, I’m going to be aware of red flags. But still.

I think the reason I speak to her about things like this is because I am truly trying to gain an understanding of where she’s coming from. I don’t respect her reasoning. It’s selfish and it’s the reason why marriages fail at such a high rate. It’s one reason why there are so many single family households today. it’s the reason why men really should not marry a woman. I wish that there could be an objective third party listening in on these conversations.

I’m so perplexed at her apparent hypocrisy and lack of self awareness of it. On one hand, she’s all about family values….BUT it appears that that values are only important when she’s happy. She appeals to the fact that tons of people get divorced and have split households. Then she has the unmitigated audacity to say that I’m trying to make her feel guilty about her position. Like umm…ma’am…..you should. You broke your household for selfish reasons without trying to fix it. You betrayed your husband without letting him know you were having issues. You continued to lie and cheat throughout the relationship instead of communicating your needs.

What is the point of marriage if you can just leave it without working on it because you’re not ‘feeling it’. Then add insult to injury, choose to ignore it by having affair after affair. As if not paying attention to the relationship will somehow fix it. As if investing in a new relationship outside of your husband will somehow magically cause you to feel motivated to invest energy into your marriage. And on top of all of the lies, betrayals and exposed secrets, that somehow, I’m supposed to try to woo her or charm her back into a relationship. Those dudes who tell her that “I’m slipping” when it comes to her weren’t cheated nor betrayed by her. And even if they know the situation, they’d be a damned fool to try and win a woman back after all of that. I don’t know if she believes them when they tell her things like that, but knowing her….who knows?

I’ve been done with her. As I told her, I believe that you should do everything you can do to fix your marriage before leaving it. Obviously in cases of repeated infidelity or abuse, you should leave it asap. Otherwise, you are obligated, not just to your family, but your spouse to give an honest go at trying to fix it before doing something so drastic as to break it apart.

And this is where we fundamentally disagree. She doesn’t believe that this is nor should be the case. It’s like her ‘feelings’ override her principles and that makes her unreliable, fickle, and ultimately selfish. But perhaps it is aligned with her personal principle of self over everything else….or at least over marriage/family.

That said, I realize that it’s counterproductive to have this conversation with her. When I explain my principles to her on the matter, it would seem that I’m trying to convince her to stay. Honestly though, I’d rather her come to her own conclusions on the matter.

To me, it seems that her conclusions are toxic overall to the growth and development of a successful marriage. This isn’t unsurprising because we’re here because of her toxic/ selfish view on marriage/ vows/ and family values. It’s hard not to take it personally because as I told her, it seems that our family wasn’t even worth her trying to work on things.

It’s ironic that she thinks that she isn’t progressing in life as quickly as she can because of me. She won’t say this outright, but pretty much says that she doesn’t feel motivated to “do better” in this relationship. Her mentality is self defeating. She again asked why stay in a relationship when you know that you cannot be happy. When asked how she knew that it would always be that way, she went back and said…”well, it’s been four years and I still feel the same.” …. see where I’m going with this?

I hate talking to her alone and I don’t know why I do. Seriously, am I missing something. I mean, when asked if she sees my point whether she agrees or not, she says that she does….even going so far as to mirror it back to me. When I explain how her point of view is troublesome for a marriage or relationships in general, she simply defaults back to HER happiness as the cause and effect of her actions.

She did, however acknowledge that she is selfish and doesn’t communicate well. But somehow, she won’t go far enough to say that it’s mostly her fault that we’re here. I literally asked….”so how did we get here”…. and she said… “i don’t know, that’s a good question”….

So fuck it man. I don’t know if I’m missing it, or if she’s being intentionally obtuse, or perhaps, she’s just dumb. She isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. I’m not either, but it really does seem that she is very emotionally immature. The things she says in these conversations still blow my mind sometimes (and not in a good way) At her age of 40+, i don’t know if she’s capable of the self reflection necessary for a marriage. Not for me anyway. I rarely think people are stupid….but I can’t lie, I’m starting to look at her like people who said that Donald Trump was a good man/Christian. Like you may like him as a president or possibly a person….but to say he’s an example of a good man/christian….that’s a little too gotdamned far.

It’s my fault and I should have vetted her out better before I married her. There were many red flags that I can see now in hindsight. I thought those differences were superficial and unimportant, but now I see that they really should have been deal breakers when considering who to marry and have a child with.

From superficial conversations, to the selfishness she exhibited many times when it came to what I wanted. From her unwillingness to go out of her way to do things inconvenient for me to the way she never had any original ideas. She was physically my type, cute, and quirky. But we didn’t share many common interests…. she didn’t have any hobbies, outside of work and school….but i didn’t think this would be an issue. Until I realized that I alone have to keep her entertained. I should have seen that everytime something serious came up, she tried to make jokes out of it instead of addressing it. I should have taken her lack of empathy for certain people as a red flag. Nonetheless at the time, it didn’t seem too alarming.

I swear she wasn’t that bad when I met her, but something changed in her. I can’t put my finger on it, but she’s not the woman I married. It’s like something is off with her and I can’t quite explain it. People can change and somewhere something snapped in her. She’s not who she was or who I thought she was. In my mind, I’ve been more than fair to her. I just cannot see how she’s just ok with doing what she’s doing or being like that.

So I need to divorce and pretty much carry the whole thing on my shoulders or she’ll keep us in this limbo until someone else takes up the mantle and do it for us. I’m not going to get the cooperation I need to proceed.

She has agreed to go the uncontested route which will save us a ton in divorce fees. But unfortunately, we can’t get that process started until she figures out where she wants to establish residence. She’s a traveling nurse and is currently debating renewing her contract up there or moving back here.

I hate it here

Spoke with stbxw this morning and she apologized for the affair even though she maintains she did it because she was ‘unhappy’. She did say that there were no excuses however that no excuses was followed by a … but….

Either way, she says that she still feels the same way. She doesn’t want to be married even though she claims she isn’t seeing anyone. That’s fair. I don’t really care. I can’t take her back anyway. We are both in a state of where we don’t feel motivated to work on the marriage.

She says that I need to change. ‘Read’ get a better paying job or try to make more money. ‘Ambition’ is what she calls it. I’m assuming that this is the reason she doesn’t want to work on the marraige. She ended up saying that if I wanted to work on things “You’d think you’d be more motivated to make those changes, if not for me, but for yourself.” In a way, maybe it is a good thing that I’m not super rich or financially wealthy right now. She’d only be with me for the money and I’d never know it unless I befell hard times.

I had to remind her that I do work full time (10 hour days no less), drive ride share part time, and am working on a small business while taking care of kiddo (basically by myself) and having to deal with all this b.s. from an emotional pov. Either way, her assumptions are completely off bases.

IF i were to suddenly be “ambitious” (got a windfall of money or had a change in financial fortune), what makes her think that I’d be interested in fixing anything with her? I gave the analogy like…..what if she got fat and I never asked her to lose weight even though it was a problem for me. Then instead of telling her how I felt, I cheated, made fun of her with the new chick, and treated her like shit. Then say she lost the weight and started looking good and suddenly, I wanted to reconcile. Would she take me back after all of that.

Her response: “If i loved you enough, I would.”

So that said, it’s obvious we’re two different people. For me, it’s a matter of self respect. If you’re not with me when I’m not at my best (didn’t say at my worst), then you certainly don’t deserve me when I am. Maybe trust and loyalty doesn’t really mean that much to her. It’s almost everything to me.

She says she isn’t motivated to work on the marriage…. Well,I damn sure am not trying to rebuild a damned thing with her unless she put in a LOT of effort and even then that would just be a starting point for me to even consider it.

It’s pretty much over and I’m over it. Loyalty is important to me, transactional love (fuck what they tell you) isn’t what I want out of a marriage. I’m too loyal and love from a genuine place than to give that to someone who bases their loyalty and friendship on such superficial conditions. IF she did prove loyal, then I’d move heaven and earth to make things work for us. But I’m not sacrificing my happiness for someone who isn’t ride or die for me. I’d never allow myself to sacrifice so much for a person like that to benefit.

She can like, wish for, desire, or want whatever she wants out of life. I’m not mad at her for that. My thing is that she actively chooses to abandon/destroy our family in pursuit of those things. As if she was powerless to at least try. As if our family wasn’t worth a little bit of effort.

And she can dress this up as much as she likes and deny all she wants, but IRL, new dick and attention is at the center of all of this. She’ll never admit it, but the reason I say this is because she could given it 6 months of us just trying to see if things would work. She could have stopped dealing with dudes, sat down with me, and talked about how we could at least try to fix things. Her pursuit of traveling, a new job, getting a home, or whatever, could have all been done without any intimacy from any guys.

IMHO, she is pretty much saying that as of now….I’m not good enough for her to even consider keeping our family together. I use family a lot because it means a lot to me. But as much as it means to me, I’m not willing to give up my dignity nor self respect for it. I will say that she is becoming a bit more honest in her communication, so that’s a good thing. She is also a bit more self reflective it seems. But she’s still selfish as all get out imho. She’s an opportunist.

She actually had the nerve to insinuate that “we don’t have sex, we don’t talk, we don’t see eye to eye and it’s been that way for the last 4 years or so….” as if this all happened in a vaccuum. As if her actions haven’t greatly played a role in how our relationship (as in the way we relate to each other) in this. AS if her constant cheating, emotional or physical, lack of remorse, and dedication to secrecy after a huge affair and subsequent cheating has nothing to do with me not being exactly motivated to try and reconcile / fix things between us.

Who the fuck does she think she is anyway? Cleopatra, Queen Alexandria, Zoe Saldana? Then she wants to blame me for lack of sex, when the last 10 times I tried (since before I stopped trying) she turned me down. UGH.

Have sex with her? I couldn’t even look at her when she was here. I’ve just started being able to make eye contact with her again. Maybe she doesn’t realize how disgusting it is to imagine (for me anyway) having sex with her after she’s been doing god know what to god knows who. PLus I know she did it while we were married.

Even if I decided to give in on her next visit. To say that condoms are a must is an understatement. Besides, it really isn’t all that great anymore anyway. The last time i did, it felt like … not good…. at all. There was 0 connection. I’ve felt more intimacy from a prostitute (hey I was young). Not saying she was always bad and she’s probably better with others, but for me, it’s just not good and not worth it.

I know I’m not perfect, but gotdamned. This chick is bozo. Is her head dead? Can she find her mind? Is her brain drained?

So this phone conversation was much needed. Lately, my mind has been playing tricks on me. I’ve been taking being cordial with a small chance we could work on things. Dunno why tho. I guess I”m like that addict who quit smoking crack, but started back walking around the trap house and remembering the old days. I need to stop talking to her and get back to focusing on my future. Without her.