Losing your sense of self in response to criticism is one mark of a man who’s been failed by his upbringing. Mistakes aren’t flaws if you learn from them, and so an identity can only become fragile if it is too brittle to endure change.
Same! It’s 100% effective for me. Never had it not work
I know I sure would.
Questioning and reevaluating is good, but context matters. No choice exists in a place apart from its surrounding context. That means that sometimes you have to recognize when the context is such that perfect becomes the enemy of good.
Not being able to do that is a huge flaw, and it’s a vulnerability that the wealthy are happily helping Republicans exploit right now.
Yeah. It’s a genuinely pathetic trait for Democratic voters. Republicans think it’s hilarious and weak, and they’re correct. It is. It makes Democratic voters incredibly easy to troll and manipulate with rumor mills such as this thread.
It sounds like your wife is in deep grief. MS is torment, and she might be processing that grief for the rest of her life. She may not have space for a romance at all. That may never change. Sometimes, MS doesn’t let you get “back to normal”.
It is deeply crucial that you get everyone to counseling now, and not just individually but in spouse and group sessions. As much as you can afford. You have already started a new dynamic and grieving your old one is natural. But you can still support each other and it’s important to do the work and figure out what that looks like.
Partnerships can be loving and supportive and caring and not romantic. Sometimes it’s a phase that comes back to romance, sometimes not. But you need to be ready to relearn a lot of things and that starts with counseling.
Edit: And oh my gosh, I should have led with this - I’m so sorry y’all are going through this. It’s incredibly hard and I hope you get the help you need.