"WHY does she maneuver you to say you'll stay??"

Lara asked:

"I just don't get it. WHY does she maneuver you to say you'll stay?? Why does she want you there? She certainly doesn't TREAT you like she wants you there, so why not just let you move on? Does she just get off on being manipulative?"

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I want to make sure that you are all aware of the following basic premises and starting conditions to my relationship with Mrs_C:

1) I dated a LOT. I was fully sexually active during my dating years.
2) I had no intention of marrying anyone when we met.
3) I had no real desire to have children (they are now the light of my existence).
4) On our second date I was sitting across from her sipping some wine and suddenly the thought raced across my brain "This is the mother of my children"
5) As I sat there pondering the improbability of the thought I had just had, this overwhelming yawning chasm of anguish at having to spend even a moment apart from this woman hit me. I waited over two years of dating to see if the feeling would go away - it didn't until just before Christmas 2004. It just vanished. I woke up one morning, and for the first time in some 17 years, the first thought on my mind wasn't wanting to make love to and hold Mrs_C.

Here's where I get really brutally honest:

I am not sure Mrs_C really loved me from the start. I have never been sure why she said she married me in the first place.

On good days I like to think she loved me.

On bad days I like to think that I am a pretty darn reasonable (more than reasonable) person and generally likeable guy, and that no-one else would put up with her shit, so I seemed a good choice...

I know that she cares for me - but is it really love in the passionate crying out sense? I don't think so.

I have had the following suspicions since we got married:

1) I was the only guy she had ever dated that would put up with her shit
2) I was so completely pleasant, benign, courteous, and friendly that she couldn't assign me to the same shithole all other men belong to (in her mind)...
3) She convinced herself that she loved me because I didn't frighten or upset her that way that all other men (except her father), frighten and piss her off.
4) Mrs_C was just looking for an appropriate party to have children with.

The above may sound weird, so it requires some other background:

- Mrs_C suffered abuse as a child
- She is attracted to men, but has a permanent hostility and distrust for men in general (with good reason, I have to add - she's been treated pretty shitty by a lot of men - not just in relationships, but professionally as well).

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More as I think about the answer to Lara's questions.