u/silkenmeowmeow

I’m 44F and my husband is 45M. We’ve been married for three years and together for eight.
Here’s where our conflict begins. A few years ago, his car started breaking down and he wanted to get a new one. He was going to grad school to get his master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy, and he only makes a little bit of money because completing his hours as a trainee therapist is basically a 40-hour-a-week job. He makes a little income from seeing clients, but it’s just enough to cover gas and a few things.

When he decided to go to school to become a therapist, I understood that I would be paying 100% of our bills, and I was okay with it. Because in a relationship, sometimes you need to buckle up and make an investment in your partner, especially when you believe in the outcome of their hard work.

He’s a fantastic student, graduated at the top of his class, and we’re rolling into year two of getting all the necessary hours and requirements to become a therapist.

When his car started breaking down, I said I could help cover 1/2 of his car payment because I knew he couldn’t have a regular job. I agreed to pay half, which I was okay with. But I didn’t realize he would want a brand-new car.

He did his research and found the perfect car. It was brand new and cost around $50,000. I was surprised that he wasn’t going to buy a used car, and I brought it up many times. I told him, “I think you should buy a used car because the payments will be lower, and you’re not going to be making much money for like three years.”
But he pushed me, and I gave in. Now he has the car of his dreams.

That car makes him so happy. He’s had beater cars his whole life and grew up poor. He takes immaculate care of it and cleans it three times a week. He has fun with it and takes it to the track for little race days every once in a while. It’s his hobby, it makes him happy, and I totally support that.

But here’s where the problem comes in: When I’m in the car with him, he drives like a maniac.
He gets mad at cars that won’t move out of the way when he’s in the fast lane and they’re driving slower than him. He gets really pissed off, drives extremely close to their bumper, and then whips his car around them. Usually, he’ll mutter some profanity under his breath about them being stupid or “retarded” or something like that.
He tailgates, weaves in and out of traffic, and seems incredibly irritated and short the entire time. Other drivers honk at him because, in my opinion, his driving is unsafe. There needs to be more space between cars.

But he says the other people are driving unsafely because they aren’t following the rules. He says the passing lane is only for fast cars, and if they’re driving at or under the speed limit, they need to move over. When they don’t move, he becomes incredibly angry and starts driving irrationally, in my opinion.

We’ve been to therapy. Of course, I’m paying for all this therapy now, and I’m honestly starting to feel resentful because our therapist is $250 an hour, and that adds up.

The therapist has only helped us in one way. We created a rating system where I tell him how scared I feel from 1 to 10, with 10 meaning I want to get out of the car. This has been a little helpful because he understands how I’m feeling, but it still doesn’t change the way he drives.

We just went on an anniversary trip, and on the way home, he was swerving extremely close to other cars on a two-lane freeway. The center divider was super close to the road, so there was almost no space on either side. There were tons of big rigs, and he was weaving in and out of traffic. People were honking their horns at him.
At one point, I told him, “This is an eight. I’m really scared.” But he continued to drive just as badly afterward.

It took me a few days to understand how I felt about it. This morning, I woke up feeling really defeated. I’ve invested all this money into therapy, and it’s not working. I want to go on trips with him, but it seems like I will have to be the only person who drives. Maybe that’s our only solution. I honestly don’t know what else to do.

This morning, I brought up the idea of going back to therapy specifically for this issue and also having his driving assessed by a professional driving instructor. He said he would be open to therapy, but he said no to the driving assessment.
And by the way, he has been fired from both Lyft and Uber. But he still thinks it’s everyone else’s problem and not his.

For some backstory, he doesn’t use any substances and he doesn’t drink alcohol. He’s a recovering alcoholic and goes to AA. I’ve gone to Al-Anon, and what I’ve learned is that I need to be accountable for myself. I don’t try to control how he drives when I’m not in the car, and I don’t tell him he can’t go to the track. This is only about how he drives when I’m in the car with him.

My mom, dad, his mom, and aunt have all ridden with him, and every one of them felt terrified. He just will not receive that information. He thinks it’s everyone else’s problem. He thinks we’re shitting on his fun, that we don’t trust him, and that we’re trying to make him the bad guy. He gets extremely defensive.

I feel like I’m pretty good at communication. On a rating scale, I’d probably give myself a B or maybe a B+ when it comes to nonviolent communication and letting people know how I feel. But this is a huge trigger for him.

When I brought it up this morning, of course, it didn’t go well and the conversation spiraled out. He’s willing to go back to therapy, but he isn’t willing to have his driving professionally assessed.
I’m looking for support on how to handle this. Am I wrong to refuse to ride with him unless his driving changes? Do I just accept that if we go anywhere together, I need to be the one who drives? I love going places with my husband, but I don’t feel safe in the car with him anymore, and I don’t know how to get through to someone who believes every other driver is the problem.

I grew up around a lot of instability.

My parents experienced deep trauma in their own lives, and because of that they turned heavily toward religion for safety, structure, and meaning. Their belief system revolved around heaven, hell, salvation, punishment, the end of the world, the Antichrist, and the idea that at some point everything would collapse and only the righteous would be saved.

For them, that belief system helped them survive. For me, it became the foundation of perfectionism.

As a child, I genuinely wanted to be good. I wanted to listen to my heart, help people, and do the right thing. But underneath that was fear. Fear that if I messed up, something bad would happen. Fear that love, safety, and belonging were conditional.

During periods when my parents struggled financially, emotionally, and mentally, I stepped into a leadership role with my younger siblings. I became responsible far too young. I felt like I had to protect everyone.

But nobody teaches a child how to carry that kind of responsibility.

Sometimes I was patient and loving.
Sometimes I was overwhelmed, angry, and frustrated.
Sometimes I acted more like a stressed-out adult than a child because that’s essentially what I had become.

And one of the saddest parts of my life is that this created deep strain in some of my sibling relationships. One of my siblings still carries a lot of anger toward me, and honestly, I understand why. She deserved better. We all did.

I grieve for her.
And I grieve for myself too.

I didn’t really get to be a kid.
I didn’t play enough.
I didn’t relax enough.
I was too busy trying to hold everything together.

At the same time, I can also see that those experiences shaped me into an incredibly capable person. I know how to lead. I know how to care for people. I know how to survive hard things.

But survival came with a cost.

In third grade, I remember internalizing this idea that if I couldn’t do something perfectly, I shouldn’t even try. That mindset followed me for years. In school, in relationships, in motherhood, in life.

I became terrified of rejection.
Terrified of failure.
Terrified of being “bad.”
Fearful of looking stupid.

Perfectionism became my strategy for safety.

At 18, something inside me rebelled against it. I started surrounding myself with artists and musicians who seemed freer than I was. They weren’t obsessing over punishment or salvation. They seemed relaxed in their humanity, and I desperately wanted that.

So I pulled away from religion for a while.

But perfectionism doesn’t disappear just because you leave a belief system. It changes forms.

In my twenties and early thirties, I became obsessed with being a perfect wife and a perfect mother. I thought if I could just do everything right, then nobody would leave me, and I wouldn’t hurt my daughter the way I had been hurt.

At the same time, I was spiraling into fear about the world itself. Economic collapse. Famine. End-times thinking. Conspiracy videos. Constant anxiety. Fear of being raided by the police for our weed farm growing.

Eventually, the pressure of trying to hold everything together became unbearable.

And every time I reached my limit, the pendulum would swing the other direction. I would rebel. I would self-destruct a little. Drinking. Drugs. Chaos. Anything to escape the crushing pressure of perfectionism.

Because perfectionism is exhausting.

It disconnects you from life.
It disconnects you from joy.
It disconnects you from yourself.

Then came the pandemic, and every buried fear resurfaced again. Control. Collapse. The end of the world. I spiraled hard. My business shut down. My nervous system was fried. I was terrified.

Now I’m 44.

My body is changing.
I wake up sweating some nights with hot flashes.
Sometimes I feel like my entire identity is dissolving and reforming at the same time, like I’m melting inside a cocoon.

And honestly?
I think I finally understand something.

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life trying to be perfect so I can earn love or safety.

I don’t believe my worth is tied to perfection anymore.

I think my parents were good parents sometimes and harmful parents sometimes.
I think I was a good mother sometimes and a struggling mother sometimes.
I’ve been loving and selfish.
Wise and reactive.
Grounded and chaotic.

That’s called being human.

And I no longer believe I need to punish myself for being one.

I work in skincare, and one of the things that bothers me most about the beauty industry is how much fear and manipulation is woven into it. So much of it teaches women that aging is failure. That wrinkles are defects. That beauty is something to chase instead of something to embody.

I don’t want to contribute to that anymore.

What interests me now is vitality.

Alive skin.
Connected skin.
Supported skin.
A face that still looks like you.

I believe our imperfections are part of our beauty. I think our lines, our texture, our softness, our evolution all tell the story of being alive.

I’m not interested in becoming flawless.
I’m interested in becoming real.

And maybe that’s what my whole life has been teaching me.

Not how to be perfect.
But how to let go.

How to soften.
How to receive.
How to enjoy being alive without constantly trying to earn my right to exist.

I still struggle with all of this.
I still catch myself slipping into fear and perfectionism.

But I also know I don’t want other women to stay trapped there for as long as I did.

If sharing my story helps even one person loosen their grip on shame, fear, perfectionism, or self-hatred, then every hard thing I’ve lived through becomes meaningful.

That’s the life I want now.

A life of beauty.
A life of service.
A life of pleasure.
A life of vitality.

Not perfection.