I just can't keep going to work every day
When I joined FAANG five years ago and started living in the Western world, it felt all dreams came true. I felt valued. I felt like I finally can become a worthy human being. For the first time in my life I was excited about building my own future.
Then the shit happened (the details at the end of the post). You just need to believe that I was trying to be good person. I was trying to do what my moral compass suggested, I tried to help somebody else while sacrificing my needs and dreams, and it turned out to be a catastrophe.
Fast forward three years. I'm getting more and more resentful over these years. I am becoming angry and envious person - not who I wanted to be. I've been destroying my mental and physical health, as well as career and personal life opportunities. I am pretty confident I will never be able to fix this.
So if you see me coasting, it isn't because I had some evil plan to get hired and then relax. I really wish I could perform and be as enthusiastic as I was 5 years ago. It just it seems meaningless to me now. Besides, it is really hard to focus on work when 90% of the time I'm thinking about my regrets.
Sorry about this mess. I have been seeing a therapist for three years, but they just won't understand and nothing ever changes, except getting worse. I am hoping people here could understand me somewhat.
TC 200k, somehow kept getting mostly GE/EE over these years, but it seems I can no longer pull it off.
Thanks for reading.
P.S. - I'm not obsessed with TC and I don't think people should be measured by it, it just seems to me it is a culture of Blind to include it, so I'm playing by the rules.
P.P.S. - here are the details of what I mentioned as "the shit". I didn't really enjoy life before moving to US and starting to work. I had disfunctional family, and probably low EQ and some mild form of autism, and some other circumstances. So I wasn't able to form friendships or participate in social activities. Apparently in Bay Area it was easier to become valued, and compensate for the lack of other qualities. I did put my effort to improve in what I was lacking. Even though I enjoyed work, I had put special effort to meet people, to travel, to pick up hobbies, to get balanced interests, to make friends. I was making tremendous progress with every month, and felt like I could fix everything and become a normal person and catch up on all I missed in youth. And then I tried dating, and met someone. She was much less skillful, less smart. She didn't have visa, didn't have those opportunities that I had (her goddamn TC was $20k), I couldn't hold an interesting conversation with her, her spelling mistakes made me cringe; but she treated me nicely, and loved much. So I felt really grateful, and guilty and sorry for her and wanted to help somehow. Unfortunately the only thing she wanted was to marry me. This would be a disaster as I hoped I could marry one of those educated equal women that the western world has, and only after I catch up on the sex life and am ready to settle. However I knew I couldn't just leave her behind and proceed building my happy life. I couldn't abandon the weak. So I had to put a lot of self-persuasion, and make myself marry her. To make sure I don't change my mind later, I had to destroy all of my other opportunities, i.e. abandon all life outside of coding, so I ruin all of my newly acquired feeling of self-worth. I had to make sure she is my only remaining close person, so I never leave her. I had to give up all ambitions. I had to destroy the very thing that made me succeed: my intelligence and passion for tech. To top it off, I still feel that I'm in a position of power imbalance with her, so I can't let myself be sexually active with her, since I won't know if she really wants to be with me, or pretends in order to make a family, or (now) does it out of compassion what I've become. By doing this I brought myself into a deep shit, which I can't get out, and it would be crazy to ask her to help. I just wanted to learn how relationships work, why did that have to happen? Even if I get out of it by some miracle, I'd be in my early thirties, when it will be too late to race to fix anything. That is not even to speak what'd happen to her being without skills and 30 years old.
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Reading your post, sounds like you put way too much importance on your work. Aways remember that no matter how nice a manager is to you or how awesome the three free meals a day are or how everyone is so focused on making impact, the company will not hesitate to lay you off whether for the right or for the wrong reasons. Never be loyal to a company. You are working first and foremost to get paid and to maximize learning and networking. Separate work from life, deliver efficiently but don't go over and beyond hour-wise.
Lastly, never get emotionally invested in those silly ratings. The feedback can be important and you should apply them to better yourself, but no one on their deathbed is going to regret that one cycle 40 years ago where they got a GE instead of an RE.
Hope you get better, like others have suggested a vacation / sabbatical might help.
You can still fix it. You are 30 big deal. I'm 30, my TC is $100k and I'm not in FAANG and I'm changing my life situation as I speak (in NYC for interview now).
You should really upgrade her to your level. I try not to be a socioeconomic dick. Some people are where they are because they because of environment constraints and lack of opportunities. You can change that for the better.
If I see a woman who is 'beneath' I ask why. Some people never achieve anything because they are slackers and losers, I don't want them. Others never achieve anything because of factors beyond their control, but have the potential. Having potential is important too, I can and will work with that.
However I don't see how I can bring her up/upgrade. It feels she is just not as intelligent as me or other people I know and enjoy conversations with. It doesn't make her a bad person, but it makes me feel disbalance. It means unless I downgrade myself, I will be always tempted to be with somebody rather than her.
If I take her traveling, she wouldn't want to do so in a jungle in a camp, she wouldn't want to climb a mountain. Instead she would want to rest on a beach in an all-inclusive hotel. She wouldn't want to sign up for some Coursera courses, instead she would rather watch some soap opera. In three years she learned language to a level worse than I had after 6 months lining abroad. She doesn't seem to have an intellectual potential. It is just not exciting, not motivating to be with her, and I'm saying it not as a way to hurt, but with compassion, as I know very well what it is to be a person that nobody wants to be with.
The only thing she can provide is care and kindness. It was valuable to me back then, but I knew if I grow and become more confident, I wouldn't value it as much and would prefere more challenging partner. So the only way to ensure that I still _need_ her care and kindness was to become a needy person, the one that has no one else but her.
I know this is all messed up, but I'm just hoping me and you are similar enough in mentality and background, that you can understand how I could've made that decision.
Furthermore, even if she was a perfect match, I would still feel tempted to try more things, since she was my first relationship, and it was pretty high in my plans to "catch up" on sexual life. However if I percieved her as equal, perhaps I'd be more comfortable to ask her to try things, and also would be comfortable leaving if I see the need.
1) Marriage is fucking hard, and it takes lots of work and commitment from both sides to make it a viable relationship. "Love" and attraction ebb and flow, as does emotional intimacy.
2) For a marriage to work, there has to be a baseline of respect. You have to like the person, and see their potential and essential goodness. You also need to recognize that they are a flawed person just like you, and figuring it out as you go along.
3) Realize that you have no control over who that person is, or who they want to become and that if they become the person you think they should be, they will resent you for it.
4) Accept the fact that you have a lot less control over your life than you think you do. You do have control over how you react to things that happen, just not what happens.
5) You have to be on the same page with your spouse on the big things - kids, lifestyle, goals, etc - or at least be willing to negotiate and make the trade-offs required to make a life work together.
6) You have to meet your partner where they're at. You have to have compassion. That's different than pitty, and its different than empathy. When you have empathy, you meet the person as an equal, but you're detached from their outcome. You can't have a healthy relationship based on pity, pity is about how their struggle makes you feel - its a selfish instinct. With compassion, you are suffering with them, working together, you are winning or losing as a team. Compassion is hard.
You're taking a lot of responsibility for outcomes you don't control, and you're making excuses for choices you do have control over. The language you use to describe the choices you made seem to convey you were "forced" into a marriage out of a sense of duty, that you had to destroy everything you love and become a martyr to some sense of doing the "right" or "honorable" thing for this poor wretch who you felt obligated to save but was not and will never be your equal. You married her because she made you feel loved, and treated you kindly, but now you resent her for preventing you from becoming the person you aspire to be or the living the life you want to lead.
Now you feel stuck because you would feel bad/look bad for marrying this woman and then abandoning her because you've created this great life for her.
I'm going to point out something. You never actually got to the point where you described how she feels about the relationship. What are her goals? What are her expectations from the marriage? Is she happy? Does she have regrets? Have you asked her? Many of your observations come across as self-centered. That's not a good place to start with a decision about a relationship.
You have choices. They are hard choices that will have consequences both for you (financially, and likely with your social circles back home) and for your wife. If you come from a more traditional culture (from say India) the stigma of divorce can be catastrophic, especially for women. If you eventually decide to make that decision, you're going to need to accept those consequences.
Before you do that, I would strongly recommend working with a couples counselor with your wife. They can help bridge communication and identify issues that you each need to work on as a couple and individually. There's no shame in that, no one has any idea how to be married, you learn how to do it as a couple. If you came from a dysfunctional family, that's going to require work. You may ultimately decide together that it's a bad situation and to cut bait, but I would recommend making the effort for no other reason than to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. Even if you divorce and then find that woman who is truly equal, you will likely repeat the same patterns that got you where you are now unless you work to disrupt the pattern.
Taking a sabbatical, travel, hobbies, friends, etc may make you feel better in the short term, but will only end up distracting you from the issues of communication, intimacy and forming healthy relationships you're struggling with now.
I sincerely wish you luck.
I'm not that stupid, I understand marriage is a pretty lousy way to help a person. I was asking her many times in the beginning how I can help her. I wanted this relationship to be a place where after say one year being together we separate but help each other grow and proceed with our lives on a next level. However she wasn't able to get that point (that we need to aim for finite relationship that will leave both of us net poisitive, for positive sum game). Somehow she was really happy with me, and was getting extremely upset when I said that maybe we are not the best match because of such and such reasons. I didn't really know how to help her, as in my mind the most useful resource is brain, and I couldn't donate her a piece of mine. I offered her money to make her life better, but she was offended and kept saying that she just wants to be with me forever and she has never met such kind and caring person as me, and everything will be fine. I can't for the love of God understand why instead of asking a question "are we
good match?" she was just saying "everything will be amazing" and crying if I was pointing out that we were not compatible. I mean shouldn't she have been happy that I pointed out potential issues rather sooner than later?
You mentioned that I don't talk about how she feels in this relationship. There is a reason to that. At first, she was just extremely happy, and I could not really understand why. I didn't ask her about goals in relationship back then, since I didn't want to give hope for long term relationship. Later, when I realized I have to get into this for her, it was just too painful for me to ask. It is incredibly interesting to ask people things because you are curious what the answer will be. If the answer is not what you like, it is OK, since you just got more information. However if you know you already are with a partner until the end of your days, you'd dread asking questions. What if her response is not what you would want your partner to respond? Oh, too late, you still have to like it as this is your partner. That means you just have to pretend that you didn't hear that in order to protect yourself from disappointment and from pity to her. You have to not ask. When she tells about her successes, you have to try and forget that, just to make sure you don't start shouting that her "successes" are fucking embarassment.
All in all, she seemed to be happy at first, and now it is confusing what she feels. She is still an optimistic person, but she desperately wants a child, and is stressed due to how I feel towards her. Sometimes when I complain she suggests we divorce, to which I point out that it is too late and I already burned all my bridges and _now_ I can't be without her.
I honestly just wanted to have a series of equal relationships where partners don't try to be with each other until the end of the life, but rather know it is temporary, but still care about each other and honestly let each other grow. In those relationships I thought I would be putting so much effort into learning how to listen to partner, how to understand them, how to have empathy and all that stuff. I really love learning, so I'd put a lot of effort and would be grateful those partners for learning opportunity, and would want to help them to grow as well. However it really demotivates to do any self-development if you know you won't be free to apply you learned skills with someone else.
I.e. how would you feel if you were told that you will work at one specific team in one company for the rest of your life? Would you even want to grow? Why would you grow if your scope and TC is not going to increase ever? The point of growing is to become better so you become worhier and can work/meet with more interesting and exciting people. If you grow, but your projects remain the same and your TC remains the same, it hardly makes any sense.
P.S. - we did try couple therapy, without much success
P.P.S. - she is luckily not from India, and to be fair she says she'll be fine if we divorce, and I do believe she will be fine in her country financially (rich family). My compassion (or pity) is rather for her being not very valuable as a person - she won't build anything great, she doesn't have crazy exciting ideas, she isn't inspiring, recruiters won't go after her, countries won't give her visa for her merit, and I can only imagine how hard it is to be like her (though she says she will do just fine, and even gets offended by my pity).