In your columns, I read about women writing about terrible men, but never saw myself... until just recently.
Married for almost 19 years, I left after learning from a therapist of my partner’s negative personality traits, despite her having otherwise been a remarkable woman.
Ever since, I’ve been searching dating sites but always realize that a new woman I met wasn’t ideal.

I met pleasant, smart women, some with anger-management issues, or control freaks or living too far apart, etc.  I was meeting/getting to know one woman after another. I know I also disappointed a few.
I never had more than one woman at a time, until now. I'm considered a great catch, athletic, educated, kind, friendly, curious and creative.

What to do?  One woman’s bright, nice, rich, with physical issues; the other is trim, active, creative, but with health problems.
I have to choose. Not easy.

Aftermath from Abuse

If it isn’t easy to choose, you don’t have the right woman in sight. That’s evident because you walk away from even a single imperfection.

A physical problem or health issue may be possible to remedy. But you have to care about someone emotionally.

Also, you’ve been swimming in a sea of varied dating site choices, rather than focusing on a woman’s character/empathy/warmth and mutual feelings.

You’re not a “terrible man” because of your preferences... but you do sound limited in ability to deeply engage with someone, i.e., judging each on a single factor.

Your original therapist might remind you that you’ve long outgrown the hurtful factors in your marriage. Time to cleanse bad memories and give potential dates/partners a fair chance at sharing what you have in common, and what you’re willing to work on with someone you actually care about.

My husband is neurotic and insecure. He worries constantly about his health despite having no serious illness.

After six years together, he’s become increasingly secretive, taking longer to return home from his office, with no explanation.

When he wasn’t coming home until 10pm, I drove to his office building, waited outside the parking exit, and followed him. He drove to an apartment building and stayed there one hour. I called him and said I needed an explanation right away, or he could stay there indefinitely.

He returned, and said he’d thought that I was “the one pulling away,” because I’d accepted one extra responsibility in my job. I was stunned that he’d be so childish as to seek the “safety net of another woman” (his description). That clinched it. I was finished babysitting and reassuring a grown man.

I don’t miss him. But I can’t help wondering what drives a person who’s actually intelligent from a knowledge perspective, and has both job and financial security, to be so mistrusting and anxious about people close to him.

He’s been divorced twice before (his choice both times), and has always had trust issues even regarding his own two sisters, and his mother.

In the end, he didn’t stay with the person he was seeing in that apartment. Instead, he went online and eventually married someone else. Your thoughts on this?

Insecure Husband

If a relationship can’t build reliable trust over six years together, then at least one member of the couple is unable/unwilling to raise early concerns, and seek answers directly.

The result of that purposeful denial can only be distrust, which is his self-induced drug of “gotcha” that this man must repeatedly seek, to prove his self-worth.

Your leaving him was inevitable.

Dear Readers “Today’s special coincidence of two of the world’s major religious holidays occurring on the same day, of Good Friday and the Eve of Passover, is meaningful for much of the world’s Judeo-Christian population.

“Over centuries, religion has been, sometimes, a guiding support of faith and family cohesion, and at others, a divisive club to drive one group apart from another.

“As I write today, well ahead for publication on this date, much of the world is still focused on the war in Ukraine. This terrible killing-field struggle televised in real time, is about power over people who want to retain their right to live democratically, in peace, which have often been the alternative choices among religions.

“Those of us living in Canada’s remarkably diverse population are lucky to be free to celebrate our own faiths and practices and encouraged to respect those of others... I wish meaningful observances to all.”