Women

I have had a significant number of intimate relationships with women over the course of my life. Over time, all of the serious ones have devolved into abusive and evil situations where I am treated very badly by the woman I am with.

I am starting to wonder if the problem is in fact me and not the women.

I have a tendency to not want to fight with the lady I am with, so rather than fight, I accept garbage from her when she's angry. Over time, this results in her thinking she can be rude, mean, or harsh to me whenever she wants and not expect any response. That causes her opinion of me to sink lower and change her view of me into something secondary and subservient.

The problem here is that I am buying into these situations and allowing it to happen. I put most of the blame for that upon myself. I have heard it said that it is better to be the person who bought the Brooklyn Bridge than to be the person that sold it - but after the second or third time that you buy the Brooklyn Bridge (but this time it came with a deed and title insurance and everything!) it becomes your fault, not theirs.

It is because of this that I find myself wondering why I continue to allow myself to become intimate with women.

Currently, I am in the middle of a relationship that is collapsing. My wife cannot or will not bring herself to see the good aspects of my personality. She only sees the things she hates about me. She is consistently rude to me and tears me down with every chance she gets. I don't fight with her about it because I don't want to tear into her in front of the kids, but I fear that they will get the idea that this is how one treats one's spouse.

I do good things in my life. I'm supportive of her mother. I like her family. I used to buy her flowers a couple of times a week and used to bring her cards about once a month. I used to send her love notes via email. I adopted her three great nieces and welcomed them into my home after I got a vasectomy because I didn't want children (I have since changed my mind - the girls are fantastic and I want about ten kids now). I earn good money. I worked two jobs for a while, running my own business (full time) and working full time in an effort to make it so she could be a stay-at-home mom.

I stopped doing many of the things above for good reasons that I will not go into, but suffice it to say they're good reasons.

I am not so much mystified about why she acts the way that she does...she's selfish and only sees her perspective on things. What surprises is me is that I never see things like this coming after it has gone too far.

What has happened to this world where human beings act like this on a regular basis?

She has her own side of the story too and she has her reasons for being angry. I don't see her reasons for behaving hatefully to me.

-Bart