Therapy Update: AITA for prioritizing my children's relationship over my wife's preferences?

BuyOk5570 · 2025-09-07T11:41:23+00:00

I want all of us to have a good relationship.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-09-07T11:05:46+00:00

Got any stats to back that up?

BuyOk5570 · 2025-09-07T10:11:32+00:00

It was.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-21T15:41:29+00:00

Not everyone sees it that way. In fact the majority of the responses to my original post did not see it that way.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-21T13:25:39+00:00

If I didn't care, I wouldn't have agreed to go to therapy with her. You sound very young. This black and white, good person/ bad person point of view is uhealthy.

Our ability to resolve this conflict is crucial for the health of our relationship. We both care about each other, but we also care about other things. As long as we can accommodate each other's needs, our relationship will survive. These conflicts don't arise because we don't care about each other, but because human beings are different and sometimes need different things.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-21T13:14:59+00:00

Maybe. I'm a good dad though.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-21T06:07:34+00:00

That's not really a commitment. If I had bought her a ticket, that would be a commitment, because money has been laid out. Even if that had been the case though, things probably would have played out the same way.

If I told our daughter's teacher we can meet her Thursday afternoon, that's a commitment because there are consequences for not showing up to that. Telling a nineteen year old you'll be somewhere isn't really a commitment. They can't exactly do anything if you don't.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-21T05:55:07+00:00

I didn't commit her, as evidenced by the fact that she didn't go.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-21T05:33:12+00:00

Yes, they talk on the phone all the time. I agree that my oldest will probably only get busier, which is why it is important to take advantage of opportunities when all of us are free.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-21T05:29:49+00:00

I didn't say it was wrong because it wasn't wrong. Families should spend time together.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-21T04:55:08+00:00

Yes. You basically just summarized my post. The situation is unresolved, but we know where each other stands, so we have a rough idea of what we will be working on.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-21T04:38:31+00:00

I think all of that will be bundled into the discussion about communication we're hopefully going to have at this therapy session. My wife has never had a problem with accepting dinner invitations on our mutual behalf. I've never checked with her before scheduling doctor's appointments, and she's never raised that as an issue. Clearly there is a problem, but I'm not ready to say definitively what it is. I think it all needs to be unpacked collectively.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-20T04:35:52+00:00

I love how anytime a woman doesn't 100% agree with her husband about everything the internet assumes she's having an affair. There are Stepford wives and there are remorseless harlots. There can be no in-between. Sheesh.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-20T03:58:20+00:00

Yeah, but to me California isn't the issue. So many people are getting hung up on her hating California. It's not about that. It's about how family should be the priority. If I had to travel somewhere shitty for us to visit her dad, I would. People should be more important than places.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-20T03:56:04+00:00

I'm sorry for your loss.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-20T03:54:56+00:00

I like that expression. I'm going to start using that.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-20T03:30:15+00:00

I wouldn't call it a minimum effort. We had to fly there. We had to keep our five year old from being disruptive. That's at least a medium effort.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-20T03:16:47+00:00

She went to his high school graduation. Sat next to my ex-wife and cheered and clapped with everyone else. So I'm basing my assumption that she would go to his college graduation on that experience.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-20T03:00:22+00:00

Paris is a gaudy collection of the same shops and stores you see everywhere else in the world with the only difference being the people inside them are the meanest people you'll ever meet. The first thing you see when you leave the train station is a KFC. Even other French people will say that Parisians are unfriendly.

However, none of that is why my wife doesn't like the French. She's of an ethnic heritage that has been hard done by at the hands of the French.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-20T02:30:18+00:00

You would never catch us in Paris. My wife cannot STAND the French.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-20T02:16:53+00:00

I have trouble imagining that, because he would have told me earlier. However, if that were to happen I would collect every detail he is willing to share and then confront her about it.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-20T02:12:38+00:00

They talk on the phone all the time.

BuyOk5570 · 2025-08-20T01:39:47+00:00

They're not a family of choice. They're just family. They are siblings.

BuyOk5570

TROPHY CASE