Punishment for my sins?

Several times in the last year, most recently in my post last night, I have described my marriage as a "punishment for my sins." (See also here and here. I use the phrase in another context here.)

But there is another possible explanation for my marriage besides this one. I'm reluctant to explain what I mean, because I find it embarrassing. But surely the time is long past when I should worry about anything like that, right? We're all friends here. Besides, none of you knows who I am in real life.

Once when I was on a date with D, we were discussing my marriage with Wife and she said she got the impression there was a huge element of rescue in my motivation. And I agreed. That was certainly part of it. I discuss that briefly here, where I describe Wife's biography as if it were a fairy tale and write:

In time the Girl met a Boy, and they fell in love.  The Boy had a lot of compassion but no common sense, and he believed that if only he could love the Girl hard enough she would be healed.  Of course he was wrong: no matter what sentimental popular songs will tell you, love by itself isn’t enough.  You have to know what you are doing and you have to know something about the ailment before you can heal anybody of anything.  Think of pneumonia: no amount of love is going to cure the patient, unless the love is helped along by antibiotics.  And likewise with PTSD.  So in the end the Boy failed, fell out of love again, and left the Girl.  But this story is about the Girl and not the Boy.

But it's not just Wife.

I think that one reason (surely not the only reason) I find myself so attracted to broken women is that I want to make things "all better" for them. As if I were Asclepius, and the mere fact of my attention could make everything all better. As if all the happy, pretty, well-adjusted, non-broken girls were going to find mates just fine without me, but the other ones needed my encouragement. As if I were really all that god-damned important. 

Hint: I'm not really that god-damned important. Oh, well.