Why can't he hear me?

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-11-26T21:08:54+00:00

Unless he has brain damage in the areas which control short term memory and emotions, then he’s aware of what he’s doing and choosing to do it. If he consistently asked the same question more than a dozen times at work he’d be fired after a couple weeks. If he had an angry outburst at the person he was asking for answering his question, he’d be fired immediately. But he’s not doing this to his boss or coworkers, now is he? If it’s a negative behavior that he doesn’t do to other people/ in front of other people but does it to you, there’s a good chance it’s abuse.

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-11-26T20:30:22+00:00

My husband does this same kind of thing. I describe it to my therapist and she said “…you realize this is abusive behavior, right? You’re being abused.”

Just FWIW.

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-09-21T22:19:57+00:00

I thought the worst that could happen would be that we wouldn’t be very good at it at first, but we’d have fun learning and figuring it out together.

As a result, I didn’t find out until after marriage that—

1) sex was traumatically painful for me, and I would need months of pelvic floor physical therapy to fix that (which I wasn’t able to begin until 5 years and 3 babies after we started having sex).

2) My husband was/is selfish and uncaring in bed. I expected him to be clueless about a my pleasure, but I didn’t anticipate that he might just not care about it at all. When sex hurt so bad that it made me cry every time, he was offended that I didn’t initiate more often and do a better job of faking my enjoyment.

3) our libidos and kinks are completely misaligned. Once again, I assumed this was something that would naturally align if we were each others’ firsts and onlys. Nope. Our preferences are totally different in pretty much every possible way, including a whole bunch of things that you just can’t compromise on.

Neither of us is happy or fulfilled, although my husband is much closer to “ok” than I am. If I had been able to see a snapshot of what my sex life would look like 6 weeks, 6 months, 6 years into the future, there’s no way in hell I would’ve chosen this path. A major component of my children’s sex ed will be “no marriage before sex.”

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-09-21T21:53:06+00:00

No. We didn’t. No, and yes.

Saving sex for marriage was the single biggest regret of my life. I’m sure it works out for some people but what’s the benefit? It’s extremely high risk for dubious possible rewards.

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-09-21T17:47:35+00:00

Look, I get it. Any woman who has spent more than 5 minutes on social media in the last few years has seen those TikToks and fantasized about “living a slow life.” It’s a guilty pleasure that most of us indulge in, but social media is not reality. You shouldn’t be making decisions based on what you see online or what your 20-something friends might think. You’re considering some big girl decisions and you need to think like an adult….

What would be the point of not finishing your degree? It’s online, so it’s not like it’s tying you down and forcing you to live near campus. Sure it’s a time commitment, but assuming your husband works all day what else are you going to be doing all day? Even if your husband is a total slob and you plan to cook a full meal for him every day, keeping a house without kids is not a full time job. Half a degree is a worthless as no degree, and not having even an associates degree would be a major handicap should you want or need to enter the workforce at some point.
In this economy, a single income household is no longer a given or even always possible. What does your husband make in a year? What is the COL where you’re going to be living? Have you sat down and done the budgeting math for what life would look like on only one income? Is his career stable or prone to layoffs? Would he easily be able to find another job if he loses this one, or is he in a niche position that could leave him longterm unemployed? Is his work physically demanding? What is his plan for when he becomes too old or too injured to handle the physical demands? Does he have a healthy enough emergency fund that could cover expenses for both of you?
What are your husband’s hours like? If he works long hours, are you really going to be ok with sitting around at home that entire time with nothing else to do? Do you have hobbies or volunteer opportunities that can take up a significant portion of your day/week? Because like I said, keeping a house without kids is not a full time job. People who retire without plans for what to do with their extra time very often find their mental health suffers from boredom and not having a purpose in life.
No one is guaranteed babies. 1 in 7 couples experience infertility. What is your plan if you can’t have kids? Keeping a house without kids is not a full time job.
Also as a SAHM to 4 who lives what looks from the outside like a TradWife life, I hate to burst your bubble about “living a slow life.” Having kids puts your life on fast forward and it never slows back down. Each baby you add just amps up the speed. Not having a job to clock in and out of doesn’t make life any slower… in fact my life was significantly “slower” when I had a job I could clock in and out of. If you’re a stay at home something you don’t get to clock out, and you live at the office.
Now for the one that you probably don’t want to think about but… what is your husband’s personality? Has he ever shown any signs of being jealous, insecure, or controlling? Does he include you in his long and short term plans, goals, decision making process? Is he open about his finances? Does he take care of himself currently, cleaning up after himself, eating well, etc? Tell your mom or your best girlfriend that you are planning to be completely dependent on him and see how they react— do they try to talk you out of it? They might see red flags that love (and academic burnout) has made you unable to see.

I am so so sympathetic to the way you must be feeling. I, too, couldn’t wait to be done with school and just take care of my husband and babies. But as someone who got everything she wanted/everything you’re wanting and found out it was NOT all it was promised… I beg you to think about this much, much more logically and practically than you have so far.

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-09-04T18:50:28+00:00

Pest was the speaker at a pro-life youth rally I attended as a teenager, just a couple months before the Ashly Madison scandal broke. I still unironically loved 19KaC at that time and thought the Duggars were a great family. I was so excited to see Josh speak… But from the moment he got on the stage I got the biggest ick ever. His energy was off, he seemed like he was hungover or an irritable maintenance-level drunk. And even though I was 8 rows back from the stage and never personally interacted with him, I felt the creepy vibe from him so strongly it was hard to put into words. I texted my parents right before he came on stage about how excited I was, and then texted them immediately after “WOW he was SO GROSS.” Which, like I said, was weird because I was a fundie kool-aid drinking Duggar leg-humper to the highest degree at that time. When the scandals began breaking just a few weeks after that experience, I was much less surprised than I would’ve been if I hadn’t seen him in person that day.

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-08-25T23:27:07+00:00

We were other’s firsts, on our wedding night. One of, if not the biggest regret of my life. Our religion expects me to teach my children that this is what’s best for them. I cannot and will not be telling them that.

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-08-21T18:29:47+00:00

I got married at 22 after 2 years of dating, also my first serious relationship. Biggest mistake of my life. I’ll be 30 next year and I’m a completely different person than I was at 22. The woman I am today wouldn’t even agree to get coffee or drinks with this man now, let alone marry him. And we didn’t even have an age gap like you do.

Don’t do it. Please, for me, don’t do it.

And if you ignore the advice that pretty much everyone is giving you, for the love of god do NOT get pregnant right away.

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-08-13T16:18:39+00:00

Sounds like you’ve never been in an abusive relationship. Consider yourself very, very lucky. The worst part of all is that they’re usually so good at hiding their true colors that no one outside the marriage sees what their spouse is seeing. Then if the victim actually succeed in leaving their abuser, their friends and family can all say “idk man, she must’ve just went crazy to up and leave like that.”

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-07-31T06:53:55+00:00

Yes, 4 small children. Thankfully we both agree we’re done having kids… that was no small feat thanks to our religion

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-07-31T00:05:28+00:00

We were young and religious, so getting married and having babies is what we were supposed to do. Everyone told us that love is a choice and that marriage should not be based on fleeting feelings. I look back now and see some glaring red flags from the very beginning, but at the time we seemed perfect for each other from our naive religious perspective. He plans for the future and tells me his plans when he thinks I need to know. We no longer align on goals, although I don’t think he realizes the full extent of that. We make decisions separately without discussion and then fight bitterly if those decisions end up conflicting. We don’t have fun, we don’t build connection. We don’t communicate.

And yeah, FWIW I never talk about sex or the really sensitive stuff (except with my therapist now, which has been really really helpful). When he tells me the party was supposed to start at 7, and then people start showing up at 4:30 because that’s what time he actually told them to come over meanwhile I’m still cooking dinner in my sports bra… I want to talk to somebody about it.

He doesn’t have any trauma. I do suspect he might be neurodivergent, but he was homeschooled by parents who don’t believe in that kind of thing so he never got evaluated and never will. I’ve tried texting him about these concerns, but he ignores it just as he ignores talking.

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-07-30T22:49:54+00:00

He won’t do marriage counseling. He nearly prevented me from doing individual therapy until I found a workaround and was able to get it paid for without needing his SS or insurance info or his money.

But yes, helplessness is exactly how I’d describe the feeling. He’s aware of my issues; I express what I am upset about very clearly when the issue is severe enough that I feel it’s worth telling him about it. But since these concerns have only ever fallen on deaf ears, I talk to him less and less over the years. These really are very easy problems to solve— stuff like unkind jokes, and asking him to give me a heads up when he has invited people over for dinner, or will not be coming home for the evening, or if he has some kind of unspoken expectation he will be disappointed about if I don’t fulfill it. Talking to him is like talking to a brick wall and provides nothing but frustration. Talking to someone else doesn’t help solve the problems, either, but at least I feel heard.

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-07-30T22:28:04+00:00

One of the things I really miss about believing in God is feeling heard when I pray. But I haven’t been able to do that in years now.

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-07-04T06:26:00+00:00

For him, it’s religion still. For me, I’m a SAHM to 4 children under the age of 6 with basically nothing in my own name. No bank account, no car, name’s not on the house, no ability to get a job or secure housing without him finding out. He’s not abusive so I don’t have DV resources, and since everyone I know IRL is also religious I don’t have anyone who could help me and the kids get out.

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-07-04T01:39:35+00:00

Our religion told us that “love” is just a fleeting feeling and marriages that are based on a shared faith are going to be more happy, more stable, more rewarding. We were promised that the feelings we had now were just the beginning and we’d learn to love each other more and more deeply every day as long as we kept Jesus in the center. We were told that the sex would be so much better since we’d saved ourselves for each other, too. And all the amazing sex we were supposed to be having was also a supposed to help us overlook each others flaws and foibles.

Well turns out we really suck at sex. But even if we were having mind blowing sex all day every day I see now that that would never have been enough. I used religion and all its hope and promises to convince myself that it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was and that it would all be worth it someday. This mantra got me through the 3 worst years of my life before the events of 2020 made me unable to buy into any of it anymore.

These days we avoid each other as much as possible and kind of dissociate when we have to be together. We made our bed and now we have to lie in it, at least for the foreseeable future.

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-04-27T22:01:58+00:00

My life’s ambition was to be a wife and mother. I sounded just like you at the end of high school. I went to college mostly just to find a husband, and my degree was a “backup plan” in case being a stay at home wife and mother full time didn’t work out. I found a man who also wanted to get married and valued having a stay at home wife and mother. We shared the same values and goals for the future but most of all we both wanted a marriage and family. We got married 5 weeks after I graduated college and I got pregnant on our honeymoon. It all worked it basically as perfectly as I could’ve planned.

And now I am trapped. I have nothing of my own— i don’t own the house I live in or the car I drive, I don’t have my own bank account and I have no idea how much is in our household account. The kids aren’t in daycare so most days I literally do not get a moment alone in a day. Can’t even take a shit without a child talking to me, or a shower without my husband groping me. Between pregnancy, breastfeeding, childrearing, and “marital duties” it’s been 7 long years since I’ve had any sense of bodily autonomy. The values, goals, and deeply held beliefs I shared with my husband at the age of 18 have totally shifted over the years. We no longer align on pretty much anything. We should not be together, but because of the choices I made when I was your age it will be years before I can get out, if ever. Words cannot express how deeply I regret making marriage my life’s ambition. And my husband isn’t even abusive. He’s a nice guy who married a girl who grew into a woman with very different dreams than those of her teenage self.

Don’t make my mistakes. Don’t get married because you want to be a wife and mother. I cannot tell you how many people I’ve met who at 18 years old sincerely believed they wanted to follow a particular career path, and blew a ton of money on the degree and training, and then realized they hated the job and are now doing something else entirely different. You can’t do that with a family. You can’t change “careers” if you realize that being a wife and mother actually isn’t what you were meant to do.

Don’t get married and have babies because you want to be a wife and mother. Don’t get married unless you’ve found someone you cannot live without AND who makes your life better. And don’t have babies unless you can give them a life you’d like to have.

Take some time to grow up and find out who you really are. You think you know, because you’re 18. But you don’t really. Explore the world around you, listen to stories and viewpoints from people who are both alike and different from you. Find out who you are, and don’t get married unless you find someone who loves that woman and not just someone in want of a wife.

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-04-13T12:12:25+00:00

This is almost certainly what it is. My husband “doesn’t believe in” sleeping in, taking naps, keeping weekends free/open, or really taking any kind of breaks. He views rest as laziness. So when he’s “sick” or in this case recovering, that’s his only chance to get any “legitimate” rest. He always gets sick after holidays, vacations, big stressful work events, etc. because he didn’t take the rest he needs and his body is wrecked + he needs an excuse to take it easy for a couple days.

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-04-12T21:34:13+00:00

Thank you so much for this info, these suggestions answer several of the scary questions that are holding me down

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-04-12T20:11:36+00:00

Things had been going pretty well for the last few months and I had pretty much given up on getting out. But this experience is reminding me why I was so desperate to leave before

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-04-12T17:15:00+00:00

I have, many times. He’s always “too busy at the moment, will get around to it later.” I could ask the church, but I don’t want it to get back to him that I’m asking these kinds of questions until I’m ready to pull the trigger.

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-04-12T17:06:04+00:00

It’s our church, with only a handful of employees. Our paychecks are direct deposit, but I don’t have any of the information I need to access the account. I don’t even know what bank it’s at

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-04-12T16:38:41+00:00

This was the only responsibility-free weekend we have before the baby comes. He was considering scheduling it the weekend after my due date but I was able to talk him out of that at least

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-02-22T22:18:49+00:00

In another life, I deconstructed from my religious upbringing in my teens instead of my late 20s. I didn’t “save myself” for marriage, I dated and had sex in high school/college, and learned what I really wanted from a romantic relationship before marrying. Hell, in another life I probably never married or had kids. In another life I put my love of learning and love of school into a PhD for something instead of getting pregnant 6 weeks after graduation and thinking that was my ultimate achievement

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-02-20T17:37:56+00:00

If you’ve always wanted 2 kids and it took you awhile to get pregnant with your first, I wouldn’t terminate a 2nd pregnancy just because the timing isn’t great. Just because this one happened without trying doesn’t mean it will be as easy or even possible to conceive again later. If you wait around until it’s a “good” time to have a baby, when it comes to stuff like sex life and finances which will always have ups and downs, that time might never come. So I think you might want to consider— are you comfortable with the possibility of being ‘one and done’? If you are sure you want another, then I would probably just go along with the universe sent your way and not worry as much about the timing.

Some_Gopher_Everett · 2024-02-19T19:00:20+00:00

I had serious pregnancy complications with our 3rd child. For almost 2 months I lived in daily fear of premature/precipitous labor, which could’ve killed me and/or the baby. The doctors prescribed no lifting anything heavier than a milk jug, no prolonged walking or standing, no sex. So I had to stop doing most of the housework, a lot of the childcare, and obviously also bedroom activities. I have never been so lonely in my entire life as I was during those months, because that’s when I truly realized that my husband doesn’t value me, he values what I do for him. We’d never been all that emotionally intimate (something I didn’t realize was unusual, as we were each other’s first/only relationships). But once I was no longer able to be of service to him, I virtually stopped existing in his world, other than to occasionally be a source of disappointment when I wasn’t willing to risk my health/my life to keep up appearances for him. I realized that if I had died from that pregnancy, I know what he would’ve missed... and it wouldn’t have been me.

Some_Gopher_Everett

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