MGTOW is the hospital. My head is pretty fucked up right now and I'm writing this post to bring my thoughts in order. Warning: the post has NAWALT. Feel free to skip, I'll be fine :)

I'm reading stoics, and one of their lessons is to face the trauma and get over it. It's not a solution to look away and pretend the trauma doesn't exist. I can find you the exact quote later. My definition of trauma: Anything that happened more than half a year ago, but is still painful to think about.

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I broke up with my wife about half a year ago, but we've been living in different rooms of the same house all this time. She attended some courses to get trained in a new profession and is now looking for a job. Finding a job is hard and will take time.

After the breakup it's been fantastic. Doing whatever stuff I want, whenever I want it. Changed a bunch of my habits. I've gone to new places and enjoyed myself more than hardly ever before.

Why I'm writing this post is the realization that I'm still badly hurt. I expected the time to heal the wounds, that I'll be calm, relaxed and will be able to think back to the marriage without pain or anger. Fuck no. My head is a huge fucking mess.

My wife and I don't hate each other, we haven't tried to hurt each other since the breakup and I've been slightly helping with the studies, writing CV and so on. We could occasionally even share the food we cooked with one another. She's great at cooking, and when I need help, it's actually fun to spend half an hour together doing something in the kitchen. Makes me remember why I married her in the first place.

My goal is to behave towards her in such a manner that a 90-year-old-me-from-the-future is proud. She has no job and nowhere to go. That's not my fault, but dumping her like that would be inhuman. I'm helping her reach a point of stability from where she can sustain herself. That's my way of trying to make the world a better place, your opinion may differ.

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  • I'm terribly sad to see her pack her stuff. She wants to go to her mother country for a couple of months to get a break after training 60-80h a week for many weeks, see her friends, etc. As part of packing, she found lots of photos of young us together, enjoying our time together, laughing and being happy.
  • I thought that half a year is enough for my anger to calm down, and angry thoughts to go away. However, they are as fresh as newly-cut wounds. Even when she is not around, random angry thoughts appear in my head.
  • After many years of a great marriage that eventually turned into an average marriage that turned into a miserable marriage, it's hard for me to remember the bright moments. The saddest angriest thoughts are always the first to come to mind. To find any happy thoughts I actually need to look at the photos of happy us together or some other artifacts that the memories are attached to. There were plenty of bright moments. For example, on our first anniversary, I gave her nothing, but she gifted me a PlayStation 3.
  • The little things that I've never thought much about, come to the surface and make me sad/angry/resentful. Let's consider this example: *many* years ago I suggested to go hiking to X together. She responded that it'll probably be crowded at X. I said OK, dropped the topic, we didn't go hiking anywhere. At the time I haven't thought much about this episode, just moved on. But it stuck in my head, like many other similar cases. I realize I had so much choice back then: go alone, explain how that's not a problem at all, suggest a different place, but I've been consistently making the worst choice of doing nothing and growing resentment.
  • My single biggest regret is that she and I wasted an opportunity to have a great life together. We had so much time. Instead of being awesome to each other and having a great time all the time, we've been hurting each other with little things over the years, and let the existing wounds get deeper. Instead of growing together, we've been closing and isolating from each other. Eventually I started fantasizing about her disappearing and me just doing whatever I want.
  • She says that after the breakup she wants sex with me more than during the marriage. She says it's because she no longer has anything to worry about, that she used to be afraid of looking stupid or something. For me it's the opposite. I've always suffered from the lack of sex, but over the years approaching her became increasingly intimidating and I gave up. Since the breakup, whenever she's around, all my muscles are as tense as concrete, I'm fully alert, and I'm ready for anything terrible to happen. I have no clue why I perceive her as a threat.
  • In the first half of marriage I was very involved in making decisions about the car, the apartment, the furniture. I could actually have a conversation about which desk is best and what to do with the old desk. In the second half of marriage I completely gave up on that. I'm living in a house that doesn't feel mine at all. Now one of my biggest desires is getting an apartment all to myself. It's probably overcompensation speaking in me, but I will get my own apartment very soon.
  • It's clear that the relationship as it was has ended. Neither of us were happy in the last few years. What is not clear is whether there is something new to be built. I keep thinking that if I was brave enough to face the conflicts on the spot, instead of letting them linger, the relationship would still be going great. Because of this thought, I suspect that there is a chance to build something new with her. But I have no clue how to even start doing that. Given that I'm going to move to a 1-person apartment, I'm limiting the opportunities to re-unite. She goes to the motherland and unclear when/if she can find a job in the country I live in. The chances of re-uniting are unrealistically small, but I still can't just let it go.

Sorry for the long post. I'll probably need to talk to a specialist.