When your “duty” becomes your prison
For years, I believed I was simply being a good husband. I believed in the vow: in sickness and in health. When things felt heavy, I did what I was trained to do as a man and a father: I stepped up. I worked harder. I solved problems. This was the blueprint my parents modeled over 49 years of marriage, and it was the sermon I heard in church.
But there is a dark side to being a “problem-solver” in a toxic relationship. You don’t realize that while you are busy building bridges, the person on the other side is systematically dismantling them.
The myth of the “Burnout”
My wife didn’t work outside the home, yet she was perpetually exhausted. There were constant, vague complaints: headaches, fatigue, a “burnout” that lasted for years. Because I loved her, I took over.
I worked a full-time job, then came home to do the cleaning, the laundry, the gardening, and the maintenance. I managed the calendars and the dentist appointments. I drove the kids to scouting, soccer, and their swimming lessons.
While I moved from one task to the next, Sarah spent her days on Netflix and Candy Crush. When I asked for help, there were promises that were never kept, and excuses that were never her fault. If a task failed, it was the children’s fault, or the medicine’s fault, but never hers.
Weaponizing the children
The most painful part of this “fog” was how it affected my view of my children. Sarah was convinced they both had autism. She pushed for testing, painting a picture for psychologists that was far more extreme than reality.
I see now that she needed them to be perceived as helpless. By medicalizing normal behaviors and chasing extreme diagnoses, she created a reality where she was the only one who could “manage” them. It made her feel indispensable. If the children were “broken,” she became the hero.
She managed to secure diagnoses even when standardized tests didn’t support them. For years, I was led to believe our family’s stress was the result of our children’s “special needs.” In reality, the children weren’t the problem. Their behavior was a reflection of the toxic environment fueled by their mother’s need for control.
When the body breaks
I carried this load until I couldn’t. I remember the day my body finally gave out. It started with hyperventilation: a terrifying loss of control. My father had to drive me to the doctor.
When the GP asked about my stress levels, I looked at my career. I told him work wasn’t that bad. I was so deeply manipulated that I couldn’t see the truth: the source of my collapse was behind my own front door. It would take two more years to fully understand what was happening to me, but that was the first warning shot.
The trap of “in good times and bad”
Whenever I felt the rising tide of anger while folding laundry on a day off, I suppressed it. I told myself this was what a man does. And Sarah was always there to remind me of our vows. She used my integrity against me.
If you are reading this and you feel like you are “over-functioning” to keep your family afloat, ask yourself: Am I solving problems, or am I enabling a cycle of abuse? You cannot fix a relationship where the other person is committed to being the victim. I spent twenty years trying. In the end, it didn’t save the marriage – it only nearly destroyed me.
Eight months of air
I have been away from Sarah for eight months now, and the children spend a significant portion of their time here with me. Since they’ve been with me regularly and away from their mother’s influence, I have seen them blossom tremendously. They are happier, more adventurous, and there is very little trace of the “baggage” I was told they carried.
Of course, the divorce is hard on them. They will always carry the emotional scars of what happened over the last few years. But man, I am so glad I made the choice to give them back their autonomy, at least for part of the time. I am no longer just a problem-solver; I am a father again. And they are finally allowed to just be children.