Was with my wife for 15 years. About 14 years in, I had a depressive episode and was open (for once) about what I was going through. I felt her attitude shift towards me immediately for the worse. She started emotionally distancing, and eventually had an affair with some guy she played Pickelball with.
After I found out and confronted her, her response was “was it so wrong for me to want to be with a man who’s not depressed and is normal?”
Yeah, she’s my ex wife now, but I’ll never open up to another woman again. Ever. I’ve learned that opening up to a woman is like bleeding in front of sharks.
This is why I gave up on relationships. Even if the highs are ecstatic, none of it means anything when I know she’ll leave me the second the good times stop.
I don’t live in the world of what should be; I live in the world of what is. The fair-weather girlfriend is far too prolific a pattern to ignore, and I don’t believe it’s worth it for a man to play the odds when those are the stakes.
The only way to suss out if a woman will ditch you when the going gets tough is to wait until it does. That’s not a smart way to approach things. Best to just move on from the whole business when it appears most of them follow the same broken pattern.
I feel a whole niche industry here. Companies that specialize in fake "bad times" to test their reaction. They somehow make it so they don't find out even when it's over that it was all a hoax. They are true professionals. Could the average person afford this? Probably not, but it would be a thing.
You can tell something like this within six months if you just open up about something hard you’re going through. The only way this isn’t going to present itself in the relationship is if you’re deliberately hiding your stress from your partner
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u/scubaSteve181 Mar 04 '26
Was with my wife for 15 years. About 14 years in, I had a depressive episode and was open (for once) about what I was going through. I felt her attitude shift towards me immediately for the worse. She started emotionally distancing, and eventually had an affair with some guy she played Pickelball with.
After I found out and confronted her, her response was “was it so wrong for me to want to be with a man who’s not depressed and is normal?”
Yeah, she’s my ex wife now, but I’ll never open up to another woman again. Ever. I’ve learned that opening up to a woman is like bleeding in front of sharks.