I am burnt out from emotionally supporting my husband. Should I leave him?
Feeling Emotionally Drained by My Husband's Needs—Is It Time to Go?
The Dilemma of Staying vs. Leaving
I am burnt out from emotionally - I find myself torn between two powerful impulses: the desire to remain with my husband after two decades together, and the overwhelming exhaustion that comes from constantly supporting him. He came to us as a refugee, arrived with limited English skills, and hails from a cultural background quite different from my own. On top of that, he has not yet received treatment for both ADHD and PTSD. After considerable encouragement, he finally consented to attend couples counseling, though we have now worked through two different therapists without finding the resolution we hoped for.
If I were to choose separation, I recognize that my social network—friends and family—would rally around me far more readily than they would for him. He never selected the suffering he has carried and continues to bear. His pain appears to outweigh my own in magnitude. Choosing to leave would only intensify that burden for him. I often reflect on the familiar advice to place your own oxygen mask on first before assisting others, yet prioritizing my own wellbeing still feels like an act of selfishness and perhaps even moral failure, given the advantages I hold over him.
Eleanor's Perspective on Compassionate Selfishness
Eleanor offers a thoughtful response to this complex situation. She begins by addressing a common misconception:
If you want to leave, the fact that leaving would hurt him is not a reason to stay instead. It does not do anyone a kindness to stay in a relationship when we would privately prefer permission to leave.
She identifies two distinct questions at the heart of this dilemma. The first concerns whether you owe him care and kindness. The answer, she suggests, is clearly yes—particularly given your shared twenty-year history. However, a separate question emerges: must you remain in the relationship to honor that obligation?
Many people assume the answer is affirmative. We stay because we believe departing would be cruel. Convinced that life would be unbearable without us, we convince ourselves that leaving would inflict too great a wound upon a good person we once loved deeply. But Eleanor points out an important truth: if you already desire to leave, remaining does not constitute kindness either.
The Danger of Staying Out of Pity
When you only stay because you feel forbidden from placing your needs before his, the resulting relationship loses its equality. The "care" and "kindness" you offer by staying may not reflect genuine partnership at all. Pity, Eleanor notes, can become a form of patronization. Your partner may believe they exist within the same relationship that began with mutual love and desire, unaware that they have somehow become an emotional ward. They believe you are committed and in love, when in reality you are proposing to share your future simply because you fear leaving.
Leaving might hurt him terribly in the short term. But not all things that hurt us are bad for us. More importantly, not all ways of sparing people pain are ways of doing what's good for them.
Separation as Potential Liberation
He might feel completely untethered. He might experience abandonment, loneliness, and rejection. Yet separation could also serve as a cold-water shock that ultimately proves beneficial. It might encourage him to develop his own networks of support—ones that belong entirely to him. Perhaps when pain becomes acute, without the comforting analgesic of a close romantic bond, nothing prevents him from addressing the very sources of his suffering.
Just as you can envision a brighter existence outside this relationship, better versions of life may await him as well. Versions where his past suffering does not become the adhesive that holds his relationships together.
The essential point remains: if you already believe that leaving would serve you best, then you do not truly face a choice between prioritizing your needs or his. Those priorities might actually align. Doing right by yourself and doing right by him may not be mutually exclusive after all.
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