What was your part?

whoopyboy69 · 2026-05-10T19:11:30+00:00

I lied about watching porn for years. Everytime she’d find out I’d lie. Repeated that for a few years then she left me. Rip

Fit-Plenty8777 · 2026-05-10T05:07:56+00:00

My part was spending years trying to keep the house calm because I grew up needing the house to be calm to feel safe. I called it being a good husband. It was. I shrunk to keep her steady. Stopped asking for things I needed. Covered the parts of me she didn't like. Told myself that was love. By the end I didn't know who I was outside of who she needed me to be. The work now is staying the same person whether the room is calm or not. Asking for what I need without bracing for the response. Letting people not like me without rearranging myself to fix it. You named the box. The shrinking one. Most of us lived in it and called it marriage.

Sine_Habitus · 2026-05-08T21:05:55+00:00

I love you brother and I just want to say that if I met a doormat, that I would build them up to be their own person. I wouldn't use that for myself.

I'm in a similar spot. I'm going to be more vocal about my needs in the future, but honestly in my relationship I was vocal about my needs and she just did not want to attend to them. She would much rather tell me that my problems were my own fault, that her problems were my own fault, and take advantage of my desire to fix problems and take blame to keep the peace rather than to give me (in my opinion) basic comfort. She was a stay at home mom who would cook one meal for me (which I would eat alone after feeding our son) and act like that was the most care that she could give me.

I get your sentiment and I'm always going to work on myself and I always have been working on myself. But also sometimes the divorce "isn't your fault". Being a people pleaser is a good thing to recognize, but people pleasing only ends in divorce when your partner chooses to have it end in divorce. It isn't like she was saying "you're too much of a people pleaser" and then you refused to work on it.

Sometimes things are just COMPLETELY OUTSIDE OF YOUR CONTROL and you just have to accept it. Trying to figure out what you could have done differently is just the ego wanting to feel safe. You don't need to work on avoiding harm, you need to work on letting harm come and continuing forward (or something like that is my assumption).

Lots of love and I know you're coming from a great place. I'm only tearing your argument down because I was in your same place.

Turbulent-Falcon1554 · 2026-05-08T19:41:05+00:00

I was a habitual people pleaser with no boundaries. She had (and still has) deep abandonment and avoidance issues. Those behaviors created a toxic spiral where I learned it felt safer to just bury my feelings because they wouldn't be validated anyway. Instead of putting my foot down, I just did everything for her because it was easier than dealing with the excuses and fights and eventually I enabled her to be helpless and regress into a child herself. I gradually built resentment over time until a small issue would finally set me off and I'd explode on her and our kids.

I had no understanding of any of these things while in the relationship. It took two years and counting of therapy to understand.

I know now that I grew up trying to keep the peace and make everyone happy and carried that childhood trauma into my adult relationships.

Comfortable-Angle660 · 2026-05-08T19:30:48+00:00

Ok, yes, we understand that you were a doormat, but you need to realize she noticed this and intentionally manipulated you.

wrxtasy846 · 2026-05-08T15:06:28+00:00

Married 13 years, now divorced. I didn’t see our relationship the way I do now. After a while, I was blind to what was really happening. My contribution was that I allowed her to have control over my life. I chose again and again to take the easy, more comfortable stance for me, which was to keep quiet and not question her choices. I didn’t set or hold boundaries, I didn’t hold her accountable. I went along with thinking I needed to do better to be treated better. In the end, she needed me to be the problem, so I basically agreed I was a problem. I had become a numb, shell of the person I was before. She created me; but I did nothing to stop her.

LaCathedrale · 2026-05-08T14:46:32+00:00

Three things:

I helped to create a paradigm where I ended up emotionally parenting her - I was always rational, calm, etc. and always strove hard to make any point I made understood. This eroded her ability to self-regulate and she effectively regressed into an adolescent shouting and stamping her feet. It didn't start like that, but over time I became overly reasonable which pushed her to be ever more unreasonable.
Linked to the above, I never just said 'no' - I always had to see things from all perspectives, I always gave everyone the benefit of the doubt, and I tolerated way more than I should have just put my foot down and said 'No, that is not the way'.
Like many men, after many years and handling two children under three I let myself go - I was careless with grooming, I put on the pounds, and I was so worn out I didn't really take any time to date her. The feeling was mutual until she decided to glam up and look elsewhere, by which point it was too late.

ProofConnect6521 · 2026-05-08T14:34:40+00:00

Married too quickly. Didn’t heal from the first divorce. I told her too much was too vulnerable. I also made myself walk on eggshells around her.

mdh5326 · 2026-05-08T13:31:44+00:00

I got into a relationship with someone right after they got out of a long-term relationship, for one.

Two: she was the ex of a friend of mine. Actually, she introduced me to her 'partner' and he and I became friends.

Three: I made her my therapist.

Those are the bigger ones for me.

Title	What was your part?
Author	vervii
Upvotes	9
Comments	23
Date	May 8, 2026 1:25 PM UTC (2 months ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/Divorce_Men
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/Divorce_Men/comments/1t77waa/what_was_your_part/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/Divorce_Men/what-was-your-part.1579898 https://theredarchive.com/post/1579898

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