Many women today find themselves in unhappy marriages.
Surprisingly they do not know what to do about it.
Many of these women grew up in a time when the man provided the income and they stayed home to run the house.
While running a home requires infinitely many managerial and other specialized skills, most of those women think they have no marketable skills to offer an employer.
After all baking cookies or cleaning the bathroom would not be much of a job in a corporate office! Given that limited self-image they see no way to take care of themselves if they leave the marriage.
So they stay in very unhappy situations, feeling stuck with no alternative.
The stress of living with what they see as no hope for a different future takes its toll.
Many of them suffer from depression as well as physical maladies.
Yet there is something they can do.
Commiserating with other women in the same situation is not the optimal solution.
People with too much time on their hands tend to fall into and stay stuck paying all their attention to themselves.
They focus on all that is wrong and missing from their lives.
Here is the catch 22, whatever you focus on expands.
So when you constantly remind yourself of how unhappy you are, how lonely and maybe even how useless and unfulfilled you feel, all those sensations become magnified and more intense.
What can you do to stop feeling so awful all the time - other than leave the unhappy situation? Think about it.
You spend your time thinking about you and how bad you feel.
Sure, you may be taking care of your spouse and his needs and maybe you are caring for an aging parent.
Maybe you help your kids or friend with whatever they need.
However, no matter what you do for others, you feel gypped and probably resentful--if you are truthful with yourself.
When is it your time to be the center of your life? When is it your turn to do what you want to do each day? Doing what you want to for yourself is not selfish.
Asking others to do what you want them to do for your benefit alone is selfish.
Taking care of you is paramount.
Look at it this way...
What if something happens to you? What if you get seriously hurt or ill and can no longer take care of the world? What happens to everybody else? What happens is they take care of themselves.
So why can't they take care of themselves now, today?