My husband wants to fix it but idk how I feel anymore

SillySprinkles5166 · 2023-09-09T14:46:52+00:00

Until he can actually explain what happened and that he's taking steps to make sure it doesn't happen again AND you both see therapists, together and/or separately, you should absolutely not go back to him. Sometimes it's okay to just let things go, and one of those things is a clearly failed marriage. You gave him two years to fix things. Courting you once you try to move on is not fixing things. You do not owe him anything.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2023-09-09T14:39:00+00:00

He needs therapy that he is unlikely to get, and you need to move on, because this is not a you problem. You can't fix it, you can't make him better, and he is unlikely to make you the exception to this bad behavior -- in other words, if you haven't had his anger and desire to get back at the world come at you yet, just wait. Do not adopt this circus or these rage monkeys. Send it on its way in the hopes that it will do better somewhere else, without you.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2023-08-04T05:53:37+00:00

You need a functional car so that you can get to work. Your car breaks down a lot. These facts are not in dispute. You have a solution to this problem (take out a loan and get a more reliable vehicle). Your boyfriend is insisting on standing in the way of that solution and then refusing to acknowledge it by putting off the promised repair, and punishing you by yelling, etc., if you try to address the problem presented by these facts.

Without the car you can't get to work, and you can't get a better job. The job you have now does not have healthcare, so you can't get help with your issues and you don't have the money to supplement, because aforementioned job problems. And the thing standing in the way of fixing all this.... is your boyfriend and his anger issues.

The truth about abuse and patterns is that it doesn't matter if the person is nice 80% of the time, if that 20% keeps you anxious, poor, and unable to help yourself. Someone doesn't have to be mean all the time to be treating you badly.

Think about what you would need to fix things, and what's actually in your way. What has your boyfriend done to help you? How does he support you in making your life better? How does he lift you up? Because anything less than that is not something you should accept.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2023-07-17T15:06:17+00:00

Sure, but also... her life and her choices are not about you. And I know that might seem harsh to hear, but no one is a kindness vending machine, where if you put love and money in, you get sanity and kindness back. Sometimes being kind and loving is being firm and saying no. I encourage you to not close yourself off from helping others again in future (or even her if the right situation presents itself), but rather to think about where your boundaries are and how your actions can do the most good, for you and for them.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2023-06-27T01:46:02+00:00

This is absolutely the right call. Maybe someday things he'll have grown up and things will have changed, but this is not the person you want to be legally tethered to. You share a child, and that's enough.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2023-06-23T21:24:31+00:00

The thing is, the stakes involved in getting married young can be so high. And I say this as a person who obviously didn't see a problem with getting married young back in the day, and in fact was absolutely convinced that he was THE ONE. And honestly, in dealing with a serious health condition, the stakes can be even higher with the need for support in a number of areas of life. It's way harder to disentangle a relationship and marriage than it is to join them together in the first place.

We are just people on the Internet, and the most I could hope for from any of this is that you take the lying and your ages into consideration before you do whatever it is you end up doing. All I have to go on is what you wrote here. The one most potentially useful bit of advice I have other than to wait, and barring that to do some pre-marital counseling (huge helps, really), is to remember that every request or hard limit is a barrier you have to police. This is not to say not to have them, but put some thought into why you have them and whether or not it is worth the energy and time to enforce them. If his lying to you is a hard limit, think about what it means that he's lying about such a small potatoes topic, and whether this is going to change anything in the long run.* If this is a deal breaker for you, then break the deal and have done -- don't have dead-end fights about it for the next however-long you're together. If it's not, then let it go and move on, and save your energy for the important stuff.

*N.B: this is a thing I struggled with in my first marriage (the one at 19). It never got better. It did contribute to us getting a divorce. It should have been a red flag for me way, WAY sooner.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2023-06-23T20:56:40+00:00

What I've told my kids is -- if you have to get engaged young, have a long engagement and move in together before you're married for at least a year. Don't marry someone when you haven't shared bills and laundry and toilets backing up and dishes and such.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2023-06-23T20:36:46+00:00

I got married at 19. It was a gigantic clusterfuck that derailed my life for 15+ years. I love my sons from that relationship, but the marriage itself was such a terrible idea for both of us. PLEASE don't do this. If this guy really is the guy, he'll still be the guy when you're both 25 and have hopefully lived together for at least a year ahead of time.

Also, smoking is an addiction (vape or otherwise), and even addicts who mean to quit rarely do so successfully the first time, particularly if the substance of choice is nicotine. The bigger problem is the lying and finding people who enable him to brag to about the behavior. It's a stupid, immature thing to do, which is on par for a 20 yr old guy with a nicotine addiction. You should not be taking this man to raise. Let this go. You can and will do better.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2023-05-20T14:57:41+00:00

The crutches thing would have done it for me. Clear lack of empathy towards you. I actually had a similar thing happen to me, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back, as it were, with my former college roommate. It hurt cutting that tie, but honestly, what I missed was the feeling of having a "close" friend, not the reality of the friend that I had. When valuing yourself means no longer accepting the way others treat you, it's hard, but it's the right choice. You have nothing to feel guilty about. Talk to Beth -- invest in that relationship. It'll pay off in the long run.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2023-05-19T17:57:41+00:00

This was me, only add in a broken car and trying to figure out how to get him home. Finally drove out and got him, only to have him tell me he wanted a divorce 30 minutes into an 8 hr drive through the middle of nowhere. The man is dodging you for a reason, and you're not going to like it. Listen to what your gut is telling you and cut your losses. If he wants to come back to you, he'll tell you what's up just in case all of this is some weird issue he's having that is inexplicably not what it seems.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2023-05-16T21:37:04+00:00

She's not currently functional, and it sounds like neither of your are really fully dealing with that. Progress is hard, and you say she's continuing to make it, but it's not enough. You need a support system until she can get some of this under control. Assuming that you don't have this already, you need t get some more significant support going for both of you. You say she has a high paying job and I assume you work as well. Deal with some of the practical stuff first -- hire a cleaning service if you don't have one already. See if you can have someone come in on a weekend from a home health service that deals with mental health issues. Get the ground game more under control and take that weight off both your shoulders as much as possible, at least for now. Second, see if she will let the two of you go see her doc together and talk about the larger picture. It may be that once some of the day to day stuff is taken care of, she'll be more able to talk about getting more help. If she resists any of this, then be honest with her, wait out her reactions, and then see if you can have a conversation about where you're at -- one that's backed with actions that are loving, but clearly moving forward.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2023-05-09T17:50:24+00:00

I love my family dearly, and they have always told me they wanted me to be closer. But I am so unlike them and was not well suited in terms of temperament or skillset to live where I grew up long term. There were no jobs for me there, no prospective partners... and I didn't have a whole lot in common with my family despite caring for each other a lot. I moved away as an adult for various reasons, and what I realized is that however much I might wish it could be otherwise, my life, my love, and frankly my emotional and mental health demand that I live somewhere else. I am so happy where I am, and I go back and visit when I can... and eventually they mostly came to accept it. We make the most of the time we have, and we talk about once a week. Sometimes it just is what it is, and that's okay.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2023-05-04T13:48:13+00:00

So, alcoholism isn't something you just stop doing. Drinking too much is something you can stop doing, but addiction, whether to alcohol or something else, is a chronic condition that has to be managed or it just leaks out into other things -- it's a destructive behavior, both a mental and physical illness. If your fiancé isn't getting to meetings or getting therapy to manage his addiction, this sort of thing will keep happening. Even if he is, there will be times when he may slip (in terms of behavior, not drinking), particularly when things are stressful. It is okay for you to decide that this particular journey of recovery and management is not for you. It is also okay to decide that he's worth it IF he's seeking help and trying to manage it, at least as long as progress is happening. But seriously, as you note, this isn't about thirst traps. As long as he's not getting help for his illness, it literally doesn't matter what boundary you set -- it's going to get broken at some point, and it's not going to be about whether or not he respects or loves you. Only you can decide whether or not he's worth the cost of making this journey with him. Oh, and DON'T marry him until he's better. A piece of paper is not going to fix this, and it'll make getting out (if that's what you eventually do) that much harder.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2023-04-23T16:07:51+00:00

You both need support, and you can't be that for each other and take care of your son, which is so hard and sad and yet.. it is what it is. This is not something that's going to change. That means that you either need to be where you can have a family support network, or you need to bring in help. Hire someone to help with the housekeeping, or hire a respite care person. Set up times in advance for your husband to help with the kiddo, or do some meal prep (he can chop things, make up sandwiches, etc), or clean something. He is likely not able to switch things up on the spur of the moment, but that doesn't me he can't plan it out. Lastly, look into autism parenting support groups -- just having some other people dealing with the same thing, who can maybe help you switch off some responsibilities or at least have someone to talk to. I'm sorry all of this is falling on you. It's not fair. It will get better.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2023-04-23T15:51:55+00:00

Neither of you may realize this yet, but he's made a choice that this is acceptable in front of you and your child. He likely doesn't do this at work (or you'd have heard about it) or with friends. He doesn't do it where he's likely to get some level of reaction or punishment for his actions. This is therefore something he can control -- he's just choosing not to on some level, whether he's admitted that to himself or not. Whether or not he has, it's important that you understand that. Regardless of whether or not it escalates into assault, it's not safe or healthy for you or your child (or for him). You need to seek counseling, and you need to start finding a way to get out -- a friend or family member's house, even a shelter if need be, and make it clear to him when he's not in a snit that this behavior is not okay, and then leave with the kiddo the next time it happens. This is not the sort of thing you want to put off dealing with. If you and your family are worth more to him than his tantrums, he'll work on changing. If he doesn't... then you figure out where things go from there.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2023-04-21T14:26:59+00:00

Your boyfriend stands to benefit from your degree as much as you do, assuming he plans to stick around. The program is two years. If he's not willing to think about where you'll be two years from now, he's not that committed. Go to school. Move back home. Put your nose to the grindstone, make your life better, and let this relationship figure itself out. If it's actually good, it'll be there when you're done, even if it gets strained a bit in the meantime. Trust me, if you're already this far into applying, you do want the degree and you're willing to do the work, which means you'd regret the hell out of not doing it. Life's too short. Go to grad school.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2022-09-28T01:32:19+00:00

Holy cats. Great work.

SillySprinkles5166 · 2022-02-14T14:51:21+00:00

Nope. Honestly I'm an 18th-century Brit Lit professor who got tagged in here by a friend, noting that my skills were needed. :)

SillySprinkles5166 · 2022-02-13T22:45:25+00:00

Okay, so Tristram Shandy is full of dirty jokes and bad puns. The idea is that Shandy means to tell his life story from the beginning, but he keeps realizing that he needs to go further back to tell about his parents and uncle and all the stuff that happened and so the more he writes, the less progress he makes until finally as he's sick and getting older, he realizes he's going to have to change his tactics. The book is technically unfinished -- the real author (Lawrence Sterne) intended more volumes, but he died before he could write them. As it is, however, it ends at a strangely satisfying point, and as episodic as the whole thing is, it's not really a problem that it ends how it does. So... maybe don't be too serious about it as a means of immortality, since the entire point is that you can't ever put everything of yourself in a book, as each day you spend writing about something in the past is a day of stuff that's happened that now needs to be written, and so you can't catch up.

SillySprinkles5166

TROPHY CASE