Dear Carly,

you’re very welcome. I’ve taken a look at your previous thread, where you shared about your husband’s family and how unsupportive and mean they were. Back then, you and your husband were a team – it was the two of you against his family. His mother and sister tried everything to stop him from marrying you, but it appears he wouldn’t budge – you still ended up getting married. So before the wedding, it seems he was your hero, and then after the wedding he completely changed and became cold and mean.

You said:

He’s the kind of fake person who molds himself into what you want him to be just so he can check off freaky goal boxes like “have a house” and “get a wife.”

So could it be that he married you out of spite to his mother and sister? To prove he can do it? You say they were mocking him while you were still dating:

they always gave these little jabs at him, or only told stories that would make him look bad.

His mom started cornering him and screaming at him, calling him in the middle of the night to ask whether he ever thinks Ill want to have sex with him, if he thinks he’ll be my hero,

It seems he did behave like your hero back then:

he conformed to everything he thought I wanted him to be. Going out of his way to be helpful and kind to others, and pretending to be a thoughtful hard worker, and to like the same media I like. He seemed like a perfectly wonderful person up until the point I married him.

But it wasn’t because he loved you, it seems, but because he needed to prove that he can be successful. Perhaps he was mocked that he’d never get a wife, or be materially successful (e.g. have a house of his own), and you served to prove the opposite?

After you got married, “He stopped trying to help others and became lazy too, always whining about money and jobs.’

So after you got married, he became his true self, or rather, his more honest self: lazy, self-centered, not really wanting to work and be successful in his career, perhaps not even interested in material success (or perhaps relying on you to provide it, so he can keep a façade of success towards his family)?

Anyway, he seems like trouble and best is to divorce him, even if your parents believe it’s a “failure”. Much bigger failure would be to stay married to him, even have children together, and then get stuck with him for a really long time…

I love your plan – to get a better job (rooting for you, you’re definitely able to do it!) and be able to pay for the divorce and live separately from him.

Your mother’s support for women’s rights is indeed strange, if she also believes you should tolerate even physical violence, because men are simply like that? Then why didn’t she marry such a guy, instead of a softy who agrees with everything she says? Or perhaps she supports women’s rights in theory, but not her own daughter’s rights?