J
jc4751
Guest
My wife and I have been married several years now, but I’m finding it increasingly difficult to see a future for our marriage. She is very lazy – will do very little of the housework, maybe taking care of getting the kids dressed or giving them baths, or cooking once a week, but she doesn’t even want to do this much a lot of the time. I do most everything else around the house – cooking, laundry, house maintenance, mowing the grass, grocery shopping, most of the cleaning, dropping off the kids, picking up the kids, you name it, I more than likely do it. When she comes home from work, she sits on the couch and plays on Facebook or some other site for hours, until it’s bedtime. Lately, she has been increasingly involved with stuff at our parish, to the point where she is meeting there two to three times a week, or more, with this program and that program. This burns me, because why should she spend all her time and energy on the parish and almost none at home? I could understand it if she was single, or even if we were married and had no children, but her responsibility is to her family, first and foremost. Yet, she lives under this weird delusion that the household would fall apart without her efforts (she has literally said this to me).
We’ve fought some over this before. I’ve tried to get her to do more around the house, and she might for a little while after a fight, but she goes back to pretty much just being a slug. Worse, she won’t even do stuff for herself – she had our young daughter plug in her laptop cord the other day because she didn’t want to get up and do it! Tonight, she started giving me grief about not giving our son his bath early, so she didn’t have to do both of them. This was after I cooked tonight, did some laundry, the usual stuff, and she sat down to start writing up something for one of the programs she’s part of (which could have waited until the kids were in bed). I finally snapped and said “I guess your church program is more important than taking care of your kids.” After this, she verbally tore into me, calling me a mother------ in front of our kids, the biggest jerk and worst person she’d ever met, and so on.
There are also issues with the way she acts towards me and I have brought this up with her before. To wit, she is downright rude to me a lot of the time – for example, she will talk on the phone for 45 minutes in the car if it’s just our family, but if I call her when she’s in the car with someone else, I’ll get maybe thirty seconds because “she doesn’t want to be rude to the people she is with.” She tries to be controlling and bossy with me around other people, to the point where it seems like it becomes a power trip with her to make me do things, especially things she could do herself – basically playing “big (wo)man” around her friends and family. If I refuse, she gets nasty about things with me for a while.
I don’t really know what the point of our marriage is, anymore. I can accept “dying to self” all day long – I work a difficult job and make a decent living, and am happy to sacrifice for my family. I don’t need love, and I don’t need self-esteem. I just don’t know what I’m doing here at this point. I’ve “gamed out” separation in my head – I don’t need a lot to live on and could probably get by on maybe 1/5 of what I make, if even that much, giving the rest to my wife and children. I am concerned about the future of our children, but don’t really know how much good it is going to do them to have them grow up and see how my wife acts, especially toward me and toward her responsibilities.
I think tonight was the breaking point for our marriage – I pretty much expect her to ask for a separation tomorrow, if not a divorce (she has done so in the past, but I have always played peacemaker). I really don’t even know what to think about things at this point, at all, but only know I’m tired of this cycle. I don’t even feel upset by this point, don’t feel much at all. I mean, I’m not a saint by any means, but I’m just at a loss by this point to even know what to feel or do.
We’ve fought some over this before. I’ve tried to get her to do more around the house, and she might for a little while after a fight, but she goes back to pretty much just being a slug. Worse, she won’t even do stuff for herself – she had our young daughter plug in her laptop cord the other day because she didn’t want to get up and do it! Tonight, she started giving me grief about not giving our son his bath early, so she didn’t have to do both of them. This was after I cooked tonight, did some laundry, the usual stuff, and she sat down to start writing up something for one of the programs she’s part of (which could have waited until the kids were in bed). I finally snapped and said “I guess your church program is more important than taking care of your kids.” After this, she verbally tore into me, calling me a mother------ in front of our kids, the biggest jerk and worst person she’d ever met, and so on.
There are also issues with the way she acts towards me and I have brought this up with her before. To wit, she is downright rude to me a lot of the time – for example, she will talk on the phone for 45 minutes in the car if it’s just our family, but if I call her when she’s in the car with someone else, I’ll get maybe thirty seconds because “she doesn’t want to be rude to the people she is with.” She tries to be controlling and bossy with me around other people, to the point where it seems like it becomes a power trip with her to make me do things, especially things she could do herself – basically playing “big (wo)man” around her friends and family. If I refuse, she gets nasty about things with me for a while.
I don’t really know what the point of our marriage is, anymore. I can accept “dying to self” all day long – I work a difficult job and make a decent living, and am happy to sacrifice for my family. I don’t need love, and I don’t need self-esteem. I just don’t know what I’m doing here at this point. I’ve “gamed out” separation in my head – I don’t need a lot to live on and could probably get by on maybe 1/5 of what I make, if even that much, giving the rest to my wife and children. I am concerned about the future of our children, but don’t really know how much good it is going to do them to have them grow up and see how my wife acts, especially toward me and toward her responsibilities.
I think tonight was the breaking point for our marriage – I pretty much expect her to ask for a separation tomorrow, if not a divorce (she has done so in the past, but I have always played peacemaker). I really don’t even know what to think about things at this point, at all, but only know I’m tired of this cycle. I don’t even feel upset by this point, don’t feel much at all. I mean, I’m not a saint by any means, but I’m just at a loss by this point to even know what to feel or do.
You are in my prayers.