Unfortunately, I took the person I once referred to as the "perfect wife", my best friend and biggest ally, and destroyed her. Her accepting nature has been her undoing and she is at the end of her rope. I need help but I really don't know where to turn.
Long story short...25 years ago, I thought I needed to go to college to "measure up". So, I left a blue collar job, joined the military, married her, left the military to go to college and I have pretty much been miserable ever sense. I have been running from one thing to the next to avoid the stresses of the profession I chose and 24 years later, I am still putting her through this. No retirement. No nothing. She is just numb at this point and doing everything she can to endure to the end. I am sure that she would leave me if we could afford it. She really doesn't deserve this but I don't know how to fix it.
She has supported me the whole way. She worked before and after we had kids (who are now 20 and 17 and wonderful). She worked while I was in school so that with the GI Bill and her salary, I could truly be a full-time student and not have to work.
Trouble is...I am a blue collar guy stuck in a white collar world and all the stress that goes with that, she's born the brunt of for what it now 16 years.
I even went so far as to get a commercial driver's license and a job driving a truck but I simply couldn't bear waking up in trucks stops, not to mention doing so for the rest of my life. I am selfish and can not bear to be away from them. I know...I am the needy one and it would help her if I were to leave but that doesn't make her think any more of me when I am home.
The only real way to resolve the problems...all of them, would be for me to get hit by a bus. I would be gone from her, she'd get a fat $1MM check delivered to her and that would get her a good ways down the road. Trouble is, I'm not likely to step out in front of a bus anytime soon and the thought of suicide just makes me want to puke...I am too selfish for anything like that.
What I trying to do now is to get a job with state or federal govt...one that will at least provide her with some sort of retirement later on...longevity is the normal course for the women in her family.
Does any of this make any sense? I am lost.