If you discovered that your spouse intentionally lied to you about how debilitating their chronic illness is in order to get you to marry them, would you want a divorce?
This 30-year-old man has spent the last four years with his 28-year-old wife, whom he married a year and a half ago. Before he said, “I do,” they went out all the time and were involved in a variety of different activities.
They attended sporting events and concerts, traveled, visited orchards, and went hiking. He and his wife had goals and dreams that aligned. Everything was incredible.
His wife did reveal to him that she was diagnosed with endometrosis, but that she was managing it, so he didn’t have to be concerned about her health. He believed what his wife said, and they got married.
“All of a sudden, her pain was incredibly intense. She had to stop basically everything we did together. We had our honeymoon booked to go to a nice lake house for a week, and the entire week was spent in the house, with me taking care of her,” he explained.
“We got back, she went to the doctor, and they recommended surgery. She had it, [the] doctor said it was all taken care of, and that there was no more endo. Her endo caused nerve damage that causes her constant pain.”
“In the past 18 months, I have done everything for her. I do all of the cooking, cleaning, household chores, manage money, work full-time, [and make] sure she gets to her appointments on time. Literally everything.”
He pays for her car and health insurance as well. He’s stressed out having to manage so much for his wife, but he does everything in his power to help her without expecting anything in exchange for that.
He began going to a therapist, who said couples counseling could be a great way for them to reconnect, as he’s beginning to feel like his wife is a patient and he’s just her caretaker.
He did suggest couples counseling to his wife, who freaked out on him. She insisted that they did not need therapy and called their love a ‘fairytale.’ She argued that only couples who are headed for a divorce should get therapy.
After his wife stopped melting down, he was able to speak to her further. His wife admitted in that conversation that she essentially catfished him. He asked her to clarify, and she confessed that she was in excruciating pain while they were dating, but she didn’t tell him.
“Her pain level was always at like a 5 or 6, and she just pushed through in order for me to love her. She said that once we got married, she had health insurance and could get the surgery and medical help she needed,” he added.
“She was able to quit her job and stay at home to ‘heal.’ She said that she loves me more than anything, and she tries to show me how much she loves me (she does try to show her love for me often, and I know she loves me).”
“She said that I am her biggest support and that she needs me to help her. She said that she thought I would love her too much now to leave her. We took vows, and I can’t leave a sick wife.”
He thanked his wife for her honesty, went off to bed, and didn’t say anything further than that. He’s since been contemplating his wife’s words, and he has come to see that their marriage has been built upon a lie.
She literally lied to him about how bad her chronic illness is in order to get him to the altar. This is just an enormous lie, in his opinion.
While he loves his wife and doesn’t really want to leave her, if she had been truthful from the start, he would not have gotten married to her, so he feels deceived and stuck.
“It feels like she married me to get the help she needed, and that was all that mattered. I keep thinking that if she was able to lie to me about something like this, what else could she lie to me about? What other secrets does she have that she hasn’t told me?” he wondered.
“How can we build a future when it’s all built on lies? I keep thinking about all of the things I want to do in life that we had planned to do together, and now we can’t do any of them.”
“I feel like such [a jerk] for wanting to leave her, but I also feel like getting lied to by her to get married isn’t great. It feels like I am stuck; do I choose to stay and be the good husband and give up my life at 30 to take care of her (no kids, no traveling, no [romance], no adventures, just work, come home, cook, clean, watch TV, hold her hand, go to bed), or be the bad guy and leave her to go live life that I want to live?”
He and his wife used to discuss living their lives to the maximum and getting to experience it all, but that’s no longer going to happen here.
This life he pictured has disappeared before him, and he’s thinking of filing for divorce.
I believe his wife is attempting to say that she had so much love for him that she was able to push through all of her pain, but that’s not possible anymore, and endometriosis is a condition that grows worse over time.
Well, if he has any desire to save his marriage, he needs to tell his wife that he is on the brink of filing for divorce, so they have to go to marriage counseling.
He also needs to ask her to step up and do more around the house, as building her whole identity on being sick isn’t healthy, and he’s clearly burnt out.
I understand why he is shaken up, because his wife did not tell him the whole truth, and she robbed him of his ability to make an informed decision about what his future will look like.
I also don’t blame him if her lie is enough for him to walk away. That’s really not something he should be judged for, because being a caretaker to a spouse is an enormous ask.
What do you think he should do?
You can read the original post below.
Sign up for Chip Chick’s newsletter and get stories like this delivered to your inbox.
By Bre Avery Zacharski
Hi, I'm Bre, Chip Chick's CEO! I have a degree in Textile/Surface Design from The Fashion Institute of Technology, and... More about Bre Avery Zacharski
