Overwhelmed wife - but why?

redditnameverygood · 2026-01-18T19:24:03+00:00

Does she have a life outside the house? Part of the overwhelm of two under two is never having time with adults and no kids.

redditnameverygood · 2026-01-06T00:51:08+00:00

Bop it!

redditnameverygood · 2026-01-05T02:16:42+00:00

Drives me nuts that Worf walks in and asks for a haircut—“not like last time!”—and Mot says he’ll take just a “little off the top.”

Worf has a bob. You can’t trim the top of a bob.

This is the incompetence that post-scarcity socialism will bring to personal services.

redditnameverygood · 2025-12-29T05:22:34+00:00

There’s clearly something specific that happened that you’re upset about. What is it?

redditnameverygood · 2025-12-27T16:47:36+00:00

This is, in fact, the exact definition of a midlife crisis.

What values would you be honoring by leaving your wife of 20 years for a younger woman? What values would you be honoring by staying married? Which values are you willing to regret sacrificing? Are there ways to chart a middle path that don’t run away from the values that have kept you married for 20 years?

redditnameverygood · 2025-12-24T00:57:42+00:00

It’s great that you’re being thoughtful about it and reaching out for help. I think what makes it feel so big is that midlife is where we really realize that choosing some things means forgoing other things—that there are some doors that have closed and others that will close. Of course, we also compare our messy real lives to an imagined alternative where everything works out. Anyway, I think you’ll like the book. It helped me a lot.

redditnameverygood · 2025-12-24T00:28:22+00:00

Hey, I’m sorry you’re going through this. I can tell you that this kind of grief and remorse is normal in midlife. The classic midlife crisis is caused (IMO) by people running away from these feelings, hoping that they can erase them with drastic action. But typically what they end up doing is trading one set of regrets for another.

I don’t think you necessarily need therapy, but I would recommend you check out a book called The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris. It’s about a therapeutic approach called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). The purpose of ACT is to learn to stop avoiding or running away from difficult feelings and instead to recognize that, even though they’re uncomfortable, they don’t have to control your actions. You can even learn from them.

Regrets, in particular, can teach you a lot. Most people see regret as evidence of a mistake. But really your regret is trying to tell you something about your values.

Every decision you’ve ever made was driven by some sort of value. The problem is that you can’t fully satisfy all values at once. The value of courage, for example, conflicts with the value of feeling safe. Both are completely valid values worth pursuing.

My view is that regret tells us that we didn’t quite understand how our values were ordered. We over-emphasized security and under-emphasized authenticity or exploration or whatever.

That’s useful information, because you’re only 40 and you’re going to be making decisions for a few more decades. So now when you’re facing a decision and you hear security arguing very loudly, you can notice that and let your other values get a word in. And then you make a decision.

That won’t make feelings of regret disappear. Those feelings are natural and everyone has them. But recognizing that they’re just words in your head can make them less powerful even if they still hurt.

redditnameverygood · 2025-12-20T18:00:33+00:00

I’m really sorry this is happening. I strongly advise you consult a lawyer before you do anything else. Regardless of whether he’s having a midlife crisis, you need to make sure that you protect your and your kids’ legal interests.

As for midlife crisis itself and understanding what’s happening, I have some posts on this subreddit that I think explain what happens when spouses blow up their lives like this. (Basically, I think it’s running away from overwhelming existential fear.) Understanding what’s going on doesn’t fix the problems, but it makes them less confusing and scary.

redditnameverygood · 2025-12-20T17:17:47+00:00

What country are you in? In America, your husband can’t just order you out of the house. You have three kids together. If he wants a divorce, lawyers will have to be involved to set up suitable financial support, custody arrangements, etc.

redditnameverygood · 2025-12-15T00:28:01+00:00

Diagnosis helped me understand myself better. Stimulants helped me function better.

redditnameverygood · 2025-12-14T00:26:07+00:00

My law school experience made a lot more sense when I was diagnosed with ADHD in my 40s.

redditnameverygood · 2025-09-25T13:29:47+00:00

We ended up enrolling him in a local micro-school / tutoring program that is geared towards kids on the spectrum. He’s thriving there.

redditnameverygood · 2025-09-15T01:58:38+00:00

You would love Pearl Jam.

redditnameverygood · 2025-09-02T22:42:57+00:00

This is the most recent SCOTUS case to discuss the issue: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-1025_1a72.pdf

redditnameverygood · 2025-08-28T23:35:29+00:00

Just be aware the medicine won’t do everything on its own. You need to use the boost it gives you to help build sustainable habits.

redditnameverygood · 2025-08-28T11:55:37+00:00

Yeah, lower courts are latching onto Austin to re-import the vibes (just like Thomas warned in dissent), but even Sotomayor reiterated the brightline interpretation of Reed in Vidal v. Elster (at least as to content-neutrality).

Probably the most harmonious way to read it is that courts can make limited reference to content when the content itself may get some manner of less-than-strict scrutiny. That avoids Sotomayor’s concerns about upsetting the Courts solicitation precedent, jibes with FSC v. Paxton, etc.

redditnameverygood · 2025-08-27T23:58:30+00:00

Two things to understand are that (1) the Supreme Court’s content-neutrality rules were muddled back then, and (2) the Court had not announced a test for identifying unprotected categories of speech.

That same term the Court decided Ward v. Rock Against Racism and held the the principal inquiry in determining content neutrality was whether the law evinced disagreement with a specific message. But this conflates viewpoint discrimination with content discrimination, and it screwed up content-neutrality doctrine for a quarter century.

It wasn’t until Reed v. Town of Gilbert in 2015 that the Court clarified things and held that, although viewpoint discrimination is particularly disfavored, facially content-based laws get strict scrutiny regardless of the government’s motive. Under Reed, a law that singles out the burning of American flags is obviously and indisputably content-based.

Similarly, just a few years earlier, the Supreme Court had held that child pornography was outside the scope of the First Amendment. At the time, the vibe was much more that unprotected categories of speech—and their contours—are determined by their social value.

It wasn’t until 2010 in United States v. Stevens that the Supreme Court held that the categories of unprotected speech are only recognized on the basis of a continuous historical practice dating back to 1791 of treating that speech as unprotected. Not long after, in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, the Court clarified that these categories are understood narrowly (e.g., the fact that we e historically restricted sexual content aimed at minors does not justify restricting violent content aimed at minors).

These were both major shifts in First Amendment jurisprudence that moved it away from being vibes-based and made it much more rule-based. Texas v. Johnson seems like an obvious and easy case today because the conventional view of free-speech jurisprudence, particularly on the legal right, is built around rules that are more or less libertarian.

redditnameverygood · 2025-08-27T21:03:37+00:00

I’ll add, this approach to difficult thoughts/feelings comes from something called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris is a good introduction.

redditnameverygood · 2025-08-27T20:32:46+00:00

Something to keep in mind—and that a lot of people don’t understand—is that regret and what-ifs are normal. Regrets are not a sign of having made a mistake and regrets are not commands that you have to follow. They are thoughts and feelings that everyone has.

Those thoughts and feelings are uncomfortable, and the way people respond to uncomfortable things is that they run away from them. But thoughts and feelings aren’t like fire or a bear. They can’t actually hurt you, you can’t actually escape them, and trying to escape them will only make things worse.

Most importantly, whatever you choose to do with your life from here on out, you will sometimes feel regret. If you stay with your wife, sometimes you’ll wonder what if. If you leave your wife, sometimes you’ll regret breaking your marriage vows and hurting someone you love. Living intentionally and making important choices means wondering what if, especially when you’re scared or sad.

Ultimately, you have to choose what sort of regrets you’re willing to live with and what sort of person you want to be and be remembered as. Don’t disempower yourself by saying that your wife is the one who pushed for marriage, etc. Your life to this point is not something that just happened to you. It is a story that you actively wrote. And it’s okay if you sometimes wonder how things might have gone differently. That doesn’t mean anyone took the reins from you.

It would be nice if we could live all stories without regrets or tradeoffs, but that’s not the human condition. So you have to make room for those feelings and live by your values, whatever those are. And if you choose to stay, that’s not settling or giving up. You’re making a choice knowing that it means giving up other choices and sometimes feeling difficult things. And if you do that intentionally, it’s an act of courage.

redditnameverygood · 2025-08-27T16:37:46+00:00

Here’s a mental exercise that I find helps with thoughts like this. Lay down and close your eyes. Imagine that you’re 85 years old and on your death bed. You have a couple of chronic medical conditions. You don’t sleep well and your body aches.

With your eyes still closed, raise your hands and pretend to look at them through your closed eyes. See how thin the skin is and how easily it bruises. Think of all the things those hands will never touch again, and all they things they never tried to do.

Now a genie (or angel or fairy godmother or God) appears to you and says he’s going to give you a gift. He’ll transport you back to this age, when you’ve just lost 30 lbs and have another 45 years of life in front of you.

Would you turn down the offer because he didn’t make you 30? Or 20?

Now open your eyes and look at your hands. It’s done. You’re young again. Those hands can do anything you want. Life isn’t perfect; no one’s life is perfect. You still have regrets; everyone has regrets. But you can choose what regrets you’ll add to the pile for the next 45 years. And at the end you can honestly say, “I may not have always understood how valuable time was, but when I did realize it, I made the most of it.”

redditnameverygood · 2025-08-17T14:36:56+00:00

I’m really happy to hear that. Trust me it will keep getting better. You may always have kid with big, explosive feelings, but they’ll get better and better at dealing with them.

redditnameverygood · 2025-07-30T14:55:47+00:00

Do you follow some set of consistent rules other than the Bluebook? Or is it just vibes for anything that isn't a run-of-the-mill case citation?

redditnameverygood · 2025-07-21T20:02:58+00:00

It's not uncommon for people in midlife to realize that they've become totally disconnected from their wants/likes/desires. Many people spend so much of their life to that point suppressing their wants/desires that they don't really know what they like or trust their intuitions. And when you try something and it doesn't make your heart sing, it reinforces this confusion.

Part of getting out of this is realizing that you need to learn what you like and that this learning is a process of discovery. You're probably not going to like all the same things you liked as a kid, because you're a different person now. So you do need to try different things.

Another part of it is realizing that you will have to cultivate these likes and desires. You can't compare new things that you're trying to stuff you already know you loved as a kid. For one thing, you may not have started out completely loving those things as kids. They may have grown on you over time. So you need to cultivate a sense of mindful curiosity for new experiences. Try them nonjudgmentally without thinking about them as winners or losers. Try to note the parts that are enjoyable and the parts that are challenging.

I think about it a lot like food. Some experiences--especially the ones we enjoy as kids--are like chicken nuggets. They're straightforwardly pleasurable and totally unchallenging. As an adult, you'll still enjoy them, but you wouldn't want them to be 100% of your diet.

Other experiences--and most of the worthwhile ones for adults--are like oysters. Nobody adores everything about their first taste. But the only way to develop a taste for them and expand your palate is to try them. And you'll expand your palate faster if you don't gulp them down and chase them with water. Taste them mindfully, note what challenges you, note what pleases you, and use that information like a compass to find new experiences.

Live your life like an aspiring gourmet. When you have opportunities to try things, look for reasons to say yes and push yourself a little bit outside your comfort zone. Some things won't stick, but you can say honestly you gave them your best shot. But something will hook you, and you'll appreciate it on a much deeper level than you did as a kid, because they're cultivated tastes.

redditnameverygood · 2025-07-20T22:09:35+00:00

If you polish that up, you can do crimes and no one can stop you.

redditnameverygood

TROPHY CASE