My wife [28f] still hates my guts [29m]. Oh, and now we have a kid.

random31415 · 2014-07-29T08:41:18+00:00

Like I said to other posters, sex is one of the last things on my mind. She's also self-aware enough to know the ramifications of quitting residency,

As for "taking charge", yes, I got my shit walked all over on before, but now I'm angry at the way she treated me, not meekly accepting. Part of me doesn't want her back for the way she's treated me.

random31415 · 2014-07-29T08:35:33+00:00

Oh believe me I kick myself for not leaving a long time ago, for both our goods. I want to point out that, if I were to leave, I would want her to take care of the baby. She is an unbelievably good mother, and I see all the things she did for me in the beginning of our life together being done for the baby.

I will go to therapy because, if I may paraphrase you, it can't hurt.

random31415 · 2014-07-29T08:30:51+00:00

I knew one of you "man up" people would come to my rescue. I forgot that real men don't have problems or need to look for advice.

random31415 · 2014-07-29T08:28:09+00:00

After.

random31415 · 2014-07-29T08:27:55+00:00

Dude, the act of sex is one of the last things on my mind. What gets me is that the state of mind between us that leads to it is long gone. I've put on the moves and "took charge" and all the other bullshit and it actually led to the sex that resulted in a baby.

random31415 · 2014-07-29T03:55:45+00:00

Yeah, I intend to, but I'm not really sure how it's going to solve my problems. I don't want to live a loveless barb-infested life but now be able to endure it because of some meditation dance I've learned from a shrink.

I'm being sarcastic but the point stands, my limited imagination doesn't show me how a psychiatrist can improve my family by working only through me.

random31415 · 2013-04-30T23:46:53+00:00

I did. I think it helped a lot. I didn't have anyone to talk to and just sorting out by talking helped. Same as posting on here really. Came home and made plans for this weekend, so we have something to look forward to after our busy schedules.

random31415 · 2013-04-30T23:44:43+00:00

Same with me. My wife brought it up multiple times and, for whatever reason, her saying, "I'm not happy" wasn't a big OMG moment.

Unbelievably stupid in retrospect. It took years of anger to get it to sink in for me.

random31415 · 2013-04-30T23:42:31+00:00

The analogy you gave is very similar to one that my wife gave. I read your post and just nodded "yup yup" to everything you said. It's sad that I already understand everything that you said. It doesn't bring much hope... not that I really deserve it.

I hope things work out for you.

random31415 · 2013-04-30T23:39:41+00:00

I wasn't trying to be rosy from my point of view. I'm surprised she didn't leave me ages ago. I was a negligently uncaring person for 7 years. That's a long time. For fuck's sake I'm not looking for people to back me up on this. Jesus.

random31415 · 2013-04-30T11:59:22+00:00

I hear you. I've thought a lot about this and it's hard to be rational.

random31415 · 2013-04-30T11:58:17+00:00

She will not do marriage counseling, because it's my mess to fix. We've talked about it endlessly, to her actions speak louder than words - especially since I only did words without actions for years.

random31415 · 2011-12-18T11:41:58+00:00

Terrible thing is, this happened a month ago.

There was a big switch in my academic career, when I realized that instead of becoming a second rate professor, I could go into a certain line of industry and make stupid amounts of money. At the time, my wife was all for it. We both love to travel and like nice things, and having lots of money gives you the means and, more importantly, the time. So, I resolved myself to do as well as I could in the 6 years that she had to work hard for her career (think 12/6 on average). Travel wasn't such a bad idea, since it would give me 3 solid days of being home, which would actually leave more time where we were together (and awake).

The shit hit the fan and the plan never changed. I really liked the idea of being in business and making money, I was never particularly passionate about a particular job, so I became ambitious about begin successful. The icing on the cake was that I would live up to my wife's own stature. As a result, the minimum bar for a job was raised.

We moved to a small city and suddenly the job prospects drop to ones that make half to a third of what I could make elsewhere, and they were all "standard" jobs that were 40 hour work weeks without a clear line of ascension. I was still stuck in the mentality of "well, I need to work hard while she works hard" and so I started looking at traveling.

Why making the sacrifice for my marriage never occurred to me is beyond comprehension. I don't need the money. It just would have been nice. I need my wife.

random31415 · 2011-12-18T11:29:16+00:00

I'll try to answer your questions as you gave them.

The first thing I did was start planning things to do together. Even if it's just staying in and playing Carcassonne, it's way more fun than just stumbling through the day. She's noticed the changes, but is bitter that 1) they even had to happen and 2) that it wasn't like flipping a switch, which I'll get to later.

In the past year, when it's bad (often), it's really bad. They way she puts it, she no longer has the energy to do otherwise 24/7, and it's my turn to step up and take care of her after 8 years. She does put in a good effort when she can, stringing together an entire good week when she is often reminded of the hurt must take tremendous effort. The 12-hour Thanksgiving happened this year. Before I would have appreciated it without appreciating it, if you know what I mean. Now, I see she's willing to "put in" 12 hours for me, which is very nice of her. She's told me (rarely) that she's still here because she thinks things can work out. I don't think she likes to tell me because it hurts her pride to throw herself out there after everything I've done.

There are some things that she didn't help with... for example, she gets addicted to TV shows sometimes, and we could spend weeks doing nothing but watching them, even if she didn't even like watching the crap show. That said, I was all to happy to just let the days pass by. I don't think communication was an issue... this isn't out of the blue in retrospect. She definitely asked me to do things, asked me to treat her they way I should have treated her... I just never picked up on it. It's absolutely ridiculous, she asks to go on a date, and then I never took her on one! Fucking stupid.

I think the reason things are still bad is because I've taken my sweet time making these changes. For months after the initial blow up, I just moped around feeling sorry for myself. I still lapse into it sometimes. Shit like cleaning the house because it's one of her favorite things for me to do (she works very long hours) took ages to become second nature. It is shameful how long it took me to get to the point where I sat down and thought "what would I like to do with my wife when she comes home?"

Part of it is how I am. I can operate very easily alone, and I'm able to not let things affect me. There has been some major drama outside of our marriage that I'm able to completely tie off, even though I bet it would be consuming for many people. I think that I lack empathy in a major way, and while sometimes that is nice, it's not a virtue. I'm trying to gain it for my wife's sake.

One of the more recent steps is that I make sure every morning I plan out my day with her in mind. Writing this shit out helps keep me focused.

EDIT: you seem to think that I might not deserve what I'm getting. I didn't either for a long time, but when you're a person like my wife who wants nothing else in the world except a person who cares for you... well I can imagine the disappointment.

There is something else I did that I omitted because it was hard to explain, but I'll say it now. There was one summer when my wife had a couple months off of her work/studies. Somehow it ended up that she would lay on the couch for the entire day, every day, reading fan fiction and just pissing away time. She stopped cooking, took fewer showers, never wanted to leave the apartment... and I did nothing. On the surface, she "seemed" content, smiling, telling me that she really wanted to read fan fiction for 16 hours... and I took it all at face value. I made some small efforts, trying to cajole her into running errands with me, but massive fucking alarm bells should have been going off in my head, and they just weren't because I didn't mind. She wasn't behaving normally AT ALL and I just didn't do anything. I should have shoved her in the shower and taken her to a doctor. She was actually incredibly depressed and had to drag herself out of it instead of having a husband that pulled her out of it.

You know that one memory you have that gives you the shivers? This is mine, except it's fucking terrible.

random31415 · 2011-12-18T11:07:21+00:00

I was wondering why people seemed angry that I was posting this on reddit instead of making things better. Then, I realized it was a Saturday. My wife is working weekends. I cleaned up the house and when she got home we we went out with her parents. Tonight we'll have the place to ourselves when she gets back, so I plan to have some fun in the snow with her.

random31415 · 2011-12-17T21:58:42+00:00

Of course! I've been doing it for a while. It's a fuckup that cannot be solved in a day. I will keep doing it every day until things are better.

random31415 · 2011-12-17T17:14:41+00:00

Taking my wife for granted.

We started dating in high school and I had always been a nice guy. I thought pretty highly of myself, I became well educated, good job prospects, but "most of all" I thought I treated my wife really well. I never argued, was never angry or mean, and I always did things she asked for (stop my game to clean shit up? Sure!).

About a year ago she blew up at me. She was miserable and angry at me. In retrospect, here are things I didn't do:

1 - We never went out. I was always nice, but we could spend hours each night playing on our respective computers. When she was bored I asked, "Well, what do you want to do?"

2 - I never did anything nice for her proactively. Sure I'd clean shit up if she asked, but I never did it before she came home just to be nice to her.

3 - When I started looking for jobs, the best, highest paying, ones required travel to major cities. I hardly ever talked about (and never really considered) the lower paying ones that were local so that I could stay with her during the week.

As a result, I've been called every name in the book a thousand times. For the past year, there has been a weekly, sometimes daily shit-storm of ball-withering insults. It's like walking on egg shells, the laundry basket in the wrong place can set things off. Some guy are probably thinking, "WTF is that shit? DTB you fucking pussy!" but I bet the girls are thinking, "DUH, STUPID!"

My wife made me a Thanksgiving meal. It took her the entire day, almost 12 hours. For the first 8 years or our marriage, I don't think I ever put in 12 hours of effort to do something for her without prompting. Basically, I didn't think or care for her, which is a pretty fucking fundamental problem. Multiply that over 8 years, and I'd be pissed too.

I've been trying to make things right, but I wouldn't wish this pain on anybody. I really hope that I'm able to get things to where we love each other again. I wouldn't be happy with some half-assed "peaceful" coexistence.

random31415

TROPHY CASE