I am beyond exhausted from awful toxic attitudes at work and home, and I'm afraid I'm going to make decisions I'll regret just to feel positive again. How can I work on fixing this?

I'm having to use a throwaway here because obviously I do not want to mix this in with my regular account.

The quick summary of my situation is that I'm 42, and I'm exhausted and burned out and looking for anything to give me some relief. I'm burning the candle at all ends .. at work, at home, in my personal life, with my wife, with my kid, with everything. And I feel like I'm almost at my breaking point and I'm either accidentally or purposefully about to make a bad decision.

I'll start with work. I have what should be a great job, and typically is. I work for a great place and earn good money. But my boss is an egotistical maniac. A lot of my time at work is either working around his ego and maniacal energy, avoiding him, or cleaning up his messes. He's obviously close to retirement as he's clearly checked out and is just using the office to make himself feel great about himself at the moment. I did look into some other roles, but everything else would have been a downgrade or some way or I'd have just been trading one type of office drama out for another. I'm just waiting my toxic boss out because I'll be in his seat and have all of the comfort and increased salary when that time comes along. But for now I guess my fate is simply to live at his call and just hope I can stay invisible enough to not be the target of his toxic attitudes.

At home things aren't much better. My wife has told me that she's going through a variety of menopause now and frankly she's become someone I don't recognize at times. I'd say a third of the time she's the great person I've been married to close to two decades now, but the rest of the time she's this person who I have to walk on eggshells around, who is just flatly rude to me much of the time, and seems to always be looking to pick a fight. I know a lot of what's going on for her is out of her control, and I do give her credit that she has admitted to it and is slowly working on it and taking some medication. I'm just happy for the portion of time I do get with the woman I know and love.

Also, I love my early-teen daughter to death but some days I feel like she's going to be the death of me. She's picked up on some of her mom's bad habits and has kind of gotten antagonistic as of late, often with her mom's encouragement. I get yelled at to buy her things, and get a general awful attitude out of her. Which to be honest really sucks because I'm dealing with hormonal attitudes from women on both ends of that particular spectrum. I never feel good enough for either of them and feel like I'm running myself ragged just trying to feel appreciated.

Tons of other things are going on too, but I don't want to sound whiney. Just a lot of things that other guys my age are dealing with. Having all your buddies disappear, never having time for yourself, always feeling like you're someone else's servant 24/7. It's just a lot.

I have been working with a therapist on finding any positivity in my life or finding time for myself, and while they've had great advice, I've just not had any luck. All hours of my day are me just being yelled at by someone, never having time to even sit down to read, and just losing myself in all of it.

This is the part where I fear where all this is pushing me. In a few weeks I have a work trip for about a week where I'll be in a town where a lot of dumb things are possible and I could make a lot of mistakes in the pursuit of just being selfish and trying to soothe my nerves. And frankly to be honest, enlisting the services of a professional to be treated like a king and have a glimpse of missing intimacy has been one thing on my mind.

But I don't really know if I want to go there, or to any other less awful option either. Everything I can think of involves some level of selfishness that I may regret later.

Can anyone else give me any advice on what I can do? I don't think I am getting out of my situation at work or home anytime soon and while I can do a tiny bit here and there every now and then for myself, it seems like I can do nothing else but take my metaphorical beatings most of the time.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I can do with all this?

Posted Feb 16, 2026, 8:36 PM UTC

12
Loading comments…