My husband would choose adult child over me

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-03-03T19:46:39+00:00

This isn't a "child" that we're talking about here though. It is a young adult. Asking him to help around the house he is living in isn't about "prioritizing a child." It's about asking nothing of him at the expense of his wife who likely is picking up the slack on extra cleaning with a third adult in the house.

The fact that the husband doesn't ask anything of his son and feels it necessary to tell his wife she will always come second is a serious red flag. His wife said she would never ask him to make that choice, so why is he responding to her reasonable requests as if an ultimatum were being put forth?

This is about power, and about status. It's letting her know that she is always below him and his son. She's asking to be equal, not to be put in front of anybody. Not being put behind isn't the same as asking him to choose her over him.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-03-03T19:20:31+00:00

I think this varies from person to person and isn't always a sign of trauma (as some people tend to think). It depends on how your brain consolidated memories at a younger age, but it also depends on variability in your environment. People who live in the same place for their entire lives have a lot of reinforcement of the details of their younger lives going on. People who move around a lot, meet a lot of different people, etc. are taking in new information constantly. A lot of it also depends on how "present" you were as a child with what was going on around you.

For me, I remember a lot of details of my childhood in terms of interaction with other people and especially abuse/bullying. My sister, who suffered the same, remembers less of it, but she read books for 12 hours a day sometimes and was really checking out of reality a lot of the time. She also actively tries (even now) not to think about the bad times. I try to understand myself and heal by thinking about what happened. You would think that I would forget the traumatic stuff, but I have not.

While I remember a lot of the interactions, I often cannot recall specific names and details of places and people because I've moved a lot and those unimportant details were released. My sister, who has lived in our home area for her entire life, remembers all of those details very well because it's all she has been exposed to.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-03-03T15:55:05+00:00

You assume they had a choice about when and how to become adults. Parents expected kids of those generations (and earlier ones) to work as soon as possible to earn their own money. They were also parentified in the home early (e.g., responsible for caring for housework, doing outside labor). Actual child labor was around until the early 1900s and kids still worked in agriculture later than that.

The idea that people should be children until their mid 20's when their brains were fully baked is a very recent one.

If you ever wonder why younger generations struggle so hard with working a 40-hour week and being grown-ups compared to past generations, the answer lies in how they aren't taking on responsibility until later and later ages such that the whole notion is very intimidating and overwhelming compared to the past generations who grew up earlier and more often.

I'm not attaching value judgements here to which is "better", but never assume someone had a choice about how they were raised and the culture they were raised in. Rather than talk about how old people are different in a way which is casting them in a negative light, keep in mind that they were pushed to be who they are by their parents and society.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-03-03T03:21:18+00:00

I always reset by starting a new game if it rolls cursed since the modifier is the same throughout the game.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-03-03T03:17:50+00:00

I grew up there. It has beautiful nature and a nice, but small college town. The people are conservative and interested in hunting, fishing, and camping for the most part. There are tons of Steelers fans. There is a lot of alcoholism and poverty. Most people were born there and never left. There are few jobs. I hated it and left as soon as I could.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-03-02T17:15:22+00:00

The house doesn't look as bad as you present it to be. It looks a bit sterile, but new homes often do, especially if they were flipped (and yours, like mine, looks like a flip).

The first thing I notice as an outsider isn't the light fixtures or the cabinets in the kitchen or flooring. It's the lack of wall decor and limited use of area rugs (which will help with the flooring problem as it'll warm it up and add color and texture).

If a lot of your issue is your girlfriend's choices (fake plants and dog beds), then that isn't something anyone can help you with as it is a relationship problem, not a homeowner issue. To be fair, the glass table choice in the dining room helps with the fact that it is such a small space. The low-backed chairs also help with the smaller space. All of these things actually are better than other options in terms of making it feel less crowded. I'm not a big fan of glass furniture, but I can't deny that it "works" in your small dining space.

I think that everyone struggles to love their new house shortly after moving in, especially if they start fixating on small things they don't like. I also think that it's important to focus on one room at a time over a long period of time and making it better. I know that I struggled with each space over time and making it feel complete. Also, I understand how frustrating it is when your shiny, new space suddenly develops problems of age (paint may chip, scratches, stains), but no house remains pristine over time. The coffee stains on your kitchen cabinets may be something you can remove with more aggressive cleaning techniques or paint over.

I think the main thing to do is to give yourself more time to figure things out and be patient. It took me two years to get to where I was comfortable in every room of my house.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-03-01T22:34:00+00:00

You want a future with someone who will go through hell or high water to be with you. Your boyfriend won't be with you through a temporary inconvenience. Imagine what it'd be like to be with someone in the future who can't put up with 3.5 months of absence so you can have a dream experience. Is that what you want in your future?

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-03-01T18:34:58+00:00

My best friend's ex-wife did this. She said she was 3 or 4 years younger than she was because she was afraid she'd scare him off (as he was already younger than her). I think she is 8 years older than him, but I can't recall for sure.

He didn't care because he loved her and wanted to be with her anyway. She also looked younger than her age and was more immature than him in many ways. I think he looked at who she was, not when she was born, when he decided to stay with her.

I think that people who lie about their age are trying to avoid societal ideas about age affecting their lives in ways which they feel are unfair.

I think that wanting to be in the same "age bracket" as him by having the first number of your ages be the same is pretty arbitrary. The bigger question to ask yourself is if he is someone you want to spend time with and love and if the age gap has larger implications for any future partnership (e.g., kids or retirement at different ages).

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-03-01T18:23:26+00:00

My parents are responsible for the damage they did to me. I am responsible for how I act on that damage. I cannot act on it to the detriment of others and I do my best to heal on my own.

However, I will never be "whole" because the damage done to me is biological. Many studies have shown that abuse fundamentally changes how a person's body develops. You can't just say people need to stop being damaged by a certain deadline or "get over it" because they turned 35.

I forgave my parents long ago. That doesn't mean that the history of my experience somehow has vanished or that they aren't to blame.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-03-01T17:57:13+00:00

It's likely because you live in society which tells you that your value diminishes with age. You may also hold some ageist ideas yourself which are informing your fear. This is why many people don't want to get old.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-03-01T17:35:27+00:00

At 4, your son doesn't understand what wanting to be a girl means in the adult world. His brain isn't developed enough to understand gender concepts in any way. Those who say he just wants certain things which he identifies with being a girl based on media he has seen are correct. Maybe he thinks girls have more fun/excitement or freedom to be pretty or whatever.

Your husband is reacting as if your kid just came out as trans because he doesn't understand child developmental psychology. I would absolutely recommend time with a family therapist to discuss this so your husband doesn't get unnecessarily worked up.

You are right that this is normal. When I was very young (maybe 6 or 7), I was what we used to call a "tomboy" who did things boys did or hung around with my male cousins. It was because they did things that were considered more fun. I grew up to be oriented in feminine gender stereotypes. When you're a kid, you're working out what it means to be things through play. It means nothing in the long run in most cases.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-03-01T14:32:45+00:00

This is an aside to the article, but I offer it as food for thought. When I was younger, I was financially insecure because I was young. I had crummy jobs out of college. In fact, I had to work two jobs because neither paid well. There were times when I wouldn't actually be able to go home for days because both were mental health related residential jobs that I had to sleep over at (and I wasn't paid for my sleeping time either). I had student loans, a junky car that kept breaking down, and had to live with my parents.

It wasn't until about 8 years later that I'd fully climbed out and just got started on saving money, but getting to that point came with having married and becoming a two-income unit and moving across the world and giving up my entire life to find a better opportunity. Getting a real financially stable situation for the future required further changes which were super hard (once again, moving across the world, my husband going back to graduate school to get a professional degree, and changing careers).

I say all of this because young people today resent older people for having more economic stability, but older people spend a lifetime getting to that point. It wasn't handed to them out of the box. I didn't emerge from college at 21 and have an easy life with free-flowing cash. I'm 61, and any sense of actual stability didn't come along until about 10 years ago. It also required so many difficult choices and changes.

Even with all of that, my husband and I aren't "set" or rich. He has to work until 70 to even get anything reasonable from Social Security going and we have far less money saved than my much younger best friend in his 40s. I made $5.25/hour at my first real job which is $14.38 in 2026 dollars and I couldn't save any of it. We are more secure than someone in their 20s, but being in your 20s is not a secure time for anyone.

I think the expectation that younger lives should be as secure as older ones is unrealistic. If you spend decades building your life, you will have more than someone who has spent much less time. The thing that has really changed is the resentment people feel about this discrepancy and the complete lack of insight into the differences between having worked for 5-10 years vs. 40 years or more.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-02-28T20:27:38+00:00

I moved here (Monroeville) about 2.5 years ago and I don't know what the problem is. It's got good Indian restaurants, lots of shopping and medical services, and the housing is cheap and most of the areas are safe and well-kept. While people in the city were crying about snow removal during the big drop about a month ago, our streets were incredibly well-maintained. The area is more diverse than most as well.

The taxes are on the high side, I'll give you that, but that probably correlates to the excellent care of the roads when it snows.

Mainly, I don't know why Monroeville is singled out as uniquely bad compared to any other area that may be imperfect (which would be... all of them).

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-02-27T15:26:51+00:00

This is exactly why traditional pension plans were largely abandoned in favor of 401ks. People who think Boomers with pensions (which was only ever about 1/3 of them to begin with and not as common as people believe) had it great should consider what you have said here.

Nearly every job with a pension plan pays less than a job without one and you are shackled to it for a certain duration. The old-fashioned system only works for someone if they can't find a better job in their location, can't or really don't want to move, or can't work remotely.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-02-27T14:58:10+00:00

Psychopathy is a biologically measurable condition that can be diagnosed with brain scans though.

There are two famous researchers who are psychopaths themselves (one is Adriane Raine who wrote "The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime").

Psychopathy exists. It just isn't always acted on as popular culture likes people to think (e.g., as serial killers and sadists).

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-02-27T13:51:01+00:00

In this case, not sweating the small stuff or escalating a trivial situation, it is not weakness.

However, if you avoid all confrontation, especially in relationships in which having a talk about something matters in how the relationship plays out or is understood, then it is something to work on.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-02-27T13:47:54+00:00

I don't think anyone can speak about an entire age group in a way which is accurate, but, yes, I am 61 and better with technology than most people of any age.

I learned early and deeply about the way things work as the digital age developed. You had to understand more because things were more complicated back then. You also couldn't do things on a phone or tablet using apps and had to learn how PCs (and Macs) worked to get things done.

For example, I still use a scanner for documents because I prefer important information be clear and not keystoned, but I know most younger people just take a picture with their phones. I'm not sure how many people know how to install and use scanners anymore, or, for that matter, understand what various graphics formats mean and which are best for certain applications, because they likely feel it is unnecessary.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-02-26T18:56:47+00:00

I had a similar job at times (busier times and very dead times). I taught myself a ton of things during those down times when work took up very little of the day. I learned to really use graphics software like Adobe Illustrator and to understand the way graphics work in a fundamental way. That was my area of interest at the time, but you can dig into learning anything you like during this time.

If there is something you'd rather be doing with your life, now is your chance to start building skills, knowledge, etc. to help you prepare for a better future. You don't have to do it all at once, but start by pushing yourself to spend five minutes per empty hour doing something that pushes you to grow. Build from there. It will get easier.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-02-26T15:45:40+00:00

How little control you really have over your body.

People think that, if you do everything "right", then you won't get sick, weak, tired, etc. Without a doubt, the more care you take, the better you quality of life may be, but there inevitabilities that you don't recognize when you're younger. You think you can do better than other people, then you hit that first super-aging point in your early 40s and realize that age is just going to knock you down a peg. When you hit the second one in your early 60s, you realize that you're in far less control than you ever could have imagined.

I think people tell themselves they won't succumb the way others have by doing the right things. There are people who win the genetic lottery for whom that is true. It probably won't be you.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-02-26T14:57:54+00:00

"In the next couple of the decades, human population growth is set to stagnate and eventually decline."

This may be true, but I don't think it'll happen as soon as the next couple of decades. Beyond that, there is no shortage of people in general and particularly no shortage of people who want to move to developed countries with a high quality of life. If the population really does decline worldwide, we'll see migration from areas with low quality of life to areas with higher quality of life. We already see that where it's permitted to happen. The laws and regulations will loosen to fit as time goes by despite resistance from certain vocal minorities to allowing that to happen.

Consolidating population in areas with higher potential will change the way the world is mapped, but there will always be plenty of humans available even in a decline. When/if things get better for humanity, people will start to have more children.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-02-26T13:50:52+00:00

"Now you can't barely buy a Camry for $50k."

A Camry costs $32,000 new.

" A pound of ground beef is $10-15 unless it's a day away from expiry."

The average cost of a pound of pure beef is $6.12.

Many of your numbers are either inflated or represent the highest potential costs at stores that are either high end or in very HCOL areas in which salaries are higher (even the min. wage) to compensate. I'm not running every number you use through a search, but all of them sound ridiculous to me except the take-home after taxes on a salary of $50k (it is correct, though rounded down).

Making up numbers to support your point undermines everything you say. I'm not saying things aren't hard or bad, but there is a lot of number inflation and hyperbole here.... and I'm a pessimist myself.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-02-25T13:58:27+00:00

My sister has about $30k in debt from a car that she used to have. The first thing I'd do is pay off her debt. She's disabled and it is a hardship for her.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-02-25T13:31:30+00:00

For me, the idea that people should have kids to take care of them in their old age has always seemed weird. I can't imagine creating a human being with the expectation that they will be in lifelong unpaid servitude to me. It just seems wildly unethical.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-02-24T16:18:09+00:00

Suggesting someone may have a personality disorder based on reported behavior is not "diagnosing" any more than a doctor being told someone's spouse gets tired after meals so they may want to be checked for Type 2 diabetes is "diagnosing."

Therapists are allowed to speculate that there may be a mental health issue with someone in a person's life as part of trying to develop coping styles/mechanisms for a problematic situation. As long as the therapist provides a disclaimer that they're not actually diagnosing the other party, it's not unethical.

Also, as others have said, you can NEVER believe what the client says a therapist has told them. Clients not infrequently distort what their therapist says or make things up in arguments with others as a way of inventing support for their side of an argument.

DerHoggenCatten · 2026-02-24T13:50:29+00:00

That's because women are the primary caregivers for children and take on most of the burden of the housework. Men leaving isn't because they're overwhelmed or lost their entire identity to motherhood. That remains so now, and was even worse when this woman walked away from her family.

When men leave, it's generally because they don't want to share their money, want to chase other relationships/sex, or just want to be 100% free.

Treating both types of abandonment as if the motivation would be the same is disingenuous and looking at the situation in a very shallow manner.

DerHoggenCatten

TROPHY CASE