Hi,

I'm Rose. Somehow, I've found myself here through a strange and confusing path.

I'm in my early 30s, married over 2 years. I've long held traditional views, and throughout my 20s, I was always the one fantasizing about marriage and suburbia while my peers were travelling and partying. I've always been a feminine girl, and prefer for men to be dominant, take the lead and look after their ladies.

I'm also an educated professional, with a good income living in one of those urban, educated and 'progressive' cities, despite being conservative myself. All my life, I've struggled with perfectionism and the pitfalls of the overachiever lifestyle. Although I have enjoyed some types of 'success' at times, it has all too often come at a cost to my health or other parts of life.

Although I've done well in things like education, income, career etc, my husband is much more successful than me of course. He's 6 years older than me too. Both of those things feel like the natural order to me, so that's fine.

Throughout my married life, I've been telling myself that I could do it all. That I could both climb the ladder rapidly at work so that I could be intellectually interesting for my husband (that's something he likes) and have my own sense of achievement, and also be an incredible wife.

In reality, I'm just burnt out on both. Right now, I'm just going through the moment where I've completely hit the wall after failing to be able to make it in a career endeavour. What hurts the most is that my husband was disappointed in how this career stuff has taken me away from my role in the home a lot. He says it doesn't matter what I earn or what my job is, and it's clear that he values what I do in the home much more. While pursuing this career step had important emotional meaning for me (it's a long story, but this wasn't just about climbing the ladder for me, there's a bigger personal journey of overcoming obstacles etc.)and he knows the whole story, and was something I had to do to be able to live with myself.

So I come here today carrying a lot of emotion. I still have a job (a demanding career at that), but I've accepted that I need to be devoting more of myself to my home life - that's my role.

I feel lost, confused, broken and depleted, yet also relieved, liberated. I feel like I'm going through a process of surrendering in a way, I guess that's how I'd describe it.

Sorry for the long post. Thanks for reading!

Bye for now =) Rose