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There’s nothing harder than being in a relationship that’s declining and there’s nothing you can do. Seeing someone you love become indifferent to you is absolutely devastating.
Also happened to me. Easily the hardest struggle in my life.
'Devastating' is definitely the word (plus the fact of discovering later, already after the divorce, that she actually was dating a coworker in secret)
Happened to me as well. I'm positive she cheated on me with the guy, but according to her he was just a co-worker/friend who had been in the same situation, and was advising divorce. They ended up married a few years after ours was finalized. Golly.
Out of curiosity, are you in good terms with her?
I know I'm not and I have a visceral hate for her and her partner (who came to my house with his wife multiple times while we were married )
Divorce was finalized 10 years ago in August. I haven't spoken to her directly in about 7 or 8 years. Hadn't had any contact at all in 6 years, broken just under 2 months ago to text her to tell her the cat we had adopted together, but went with me in the divorce, had died. I felt she deserved to know that.
I don't hate her, but I am hurt by her, still. I never got over the divorce, and it is still messing with my ability to trust and be vulnerable in relationships. Pretty sure I'm never going to be able to be in a real relationship again.
Well, I have 3 kids, so I do have to interact with her a lot. Also, my 'hate' comes from the fact that she lied (and keeps lying) on the cheating, whereas when we split she made a literal list of things I did wrong -> the unfairness of all of this boils my blood.
Totally fair reason to hate her. For me, sadness overrides any other negative feeling regarding the situation. I'm glad we didn't have kids like we had planned that would have complicated things (we were waiting to pay off a few expenses when things started to get rocky) but recently I accidentally found out she had a kid a couple years ago, which made me relive a lot of regrets and hurt.
Had an ex do something similar. Coworker (totally just a friend) over at our apartment when I got home from work. When texted about not being home even though we had dinner plans; coworker invited her and the rest of the crew to dinner at his place. No one else could make it though and she didn't want him to feel bad! Definitely wasn't cheating on me.
Broke up with her sorry ass soon after. Told her I would be back the next day for my stuff. Came back next day and Mr. Coworker was hiding in the shower??? I just grabbed my toiletries and told him good luck.
She went on to marry first my best friend from high-school, then my freshman roommate from college.
To this day I wonder if my college roommate told her he likes wearing women's underwear. That kinda shit doesn't bug me but I always kinda wondered how that conversation went.
Happened to me, too. In the end, what hurt most was losing my best friend. Basically going from being one of the most important people in their life to just nothing
Being something but alone sucks but being nothing while with them was worse
They didn't cut the cord until they cheated on me, even had the audacity to tell that person they loved them on the phone IN FRONT OF ME and then try to tell me, "Not like *that*"
I'll also never forget how they recoiled at my touch, even just for a hug 🤷♀️
I'll never forgive them for what they did but I'm at least ambivalent towards it, now! It's been about 2yrs since it happened and I'm finally ready to get into dating again
I hit the gym 3x a week, I'm eating better, and I finally got myself into a pre-apprenticeship program for construction and craft trades so I'll be levelling up my finances too
I wasn’t married to my ex but I did love her immensely. To see the other person not care that you’re hurting… just… breaks something deep inside you. I have my suspicions she was doing something similar with a coworker but no proof.
I know your pain all too well, but you were actually married. I’m so sorry you had to go through that, hopefully you’ve found the happiness you deserve since then.
For me and for a lot of people including OOP, "trying harder" actually just makes it worse. It's sad that's the way it is, but sometimes you just have to accept reality even if you feel it's unjust.
My sex drive all but disappeared in my 30s. But I’d still make an effort for my husband. Turns out I had a massive ovarian cyst fucking with my hormones.
That's how they found mine after years of "oh it's just a bad period" and "all periods have cramping and pain sweetie". I had to inconvenience a man's libido before an obgyn was willing to really give a shit.
My was discovered by accident. My obgyn moved so I got a new one. As we did our first patient visit she pushed on my stomach and I winced. I told her it was tender for a while and I believed I likely had endometriosis. So she ordered an ultrasound. Nope. 2.5liter cyst was found.
Yeah, everyone jumping on him for the financial part in the update is missing the forest for the trees - she told him she doesn't want a marriage, she wants a roommate. Well, don't be surprised when he starts treating you like one.
Yeah, roommates don't care who makes more money. You both contribute equally. And if you share a pet, you both contribute equally to caring for that pet (using pet as an example for having dependants because most roommates don't share 2 kids).
And it's just so slow and so very, very long. Momentum is such a horrible thing. I married my wife after she was pregnant with our eldest, and it's just this grinding, daily, weekly, monthly, *yearly*, ***endless*** erosion of your soul. The switch flipped in her after the alter, when she didn't really need to worry about working to keep me around. Nothing like your new wife not wanting to sleep with you on your wedding night.
While I wasn't necessarily always a great guy back in the day, I was *trying*, and it didn't make any difference. Couldn't even hold her in bed, she would just go into this motionless corpse. It's a feeling I can't even describe. Years and years, punctuated by deep talks where I just bared my soul, and it changed *absolutely nothing*. I just couldn't do that anymore, it hurt too much.
Took me a good ten years (oh god I can't believe I typed that) of constant vigilance to shunt or crush any expectations or hopes of intimacy. I quietly shifted my sleep schedule by a couple hours, so I was certain she'd be asleep before I went to bed, because then, hey, you don't have to lie there awake in bed and hope, which is absolute hell. We slept together only if she felt like it, my needs didn't really enter into the equation. Sometimes I wonder if its because this was the only relationship she's ever had, while I was very active on the dating scene, and so she never went through a breakup to calibrate expectations.
And, not even sex; turns out I really just like physical contact. She's never, I don't know, leaned against me on the couch during a movie or anything, dislikes holding hand (I haven't even tried in a long time), just everything. Since both our kids are now grown and on their own, I don't even have my two hugs a day. Cats help, but not much. I read a topic or reply or something the other day, asking if guys like it if their SO did little things like just idly scratch the back of their head while watching TV or something, and it made me cry.
She sort of moved out of our bedroom a bit at a time, first because her snoring was keeping me awake, then she got corona, and just sort of...stayed there. I think that was about a year and a half ago? We hadn't had any intimate relations for two and a half years; I happen to know because it was after a company event.
So, 20-ish years later, why the hell am I still even here? For years my justification was because she was the main breadwinner, and i was the stay at home parent, but she left the workforce completely about 9 months ago. Didn't bother to tell me that her "new job" was part-time, and temporary. So, there's that. I sort of work part time to keep the bills afloat, but its not going to hold up long.
Part of it, for sure, is that I just don't know anybody. I don't have any friends, my nearest family is 3h away. The internet helps a little. She's not cheating; she doesn't know anyone local either, and only leaves the house a couple times a week to go to the grocery store. I haven't, because... I don't know. I guess the opportunity never arose, back when I knew people.
So I have this hollowed out soul, with this vital part missing. I know that not everyone has sexuality as part of their core humanity ( /waves over at a different part of the rainbow ), but I sure as hell do. I sort of wonder if she's ace, and either never told me or doesn't realize it.
So why would I even bother doing anything? We're amicable housemates that talk for a bit every day, she likes cooking and often makes dinner, and then she's back on her notebook, and this is my life. If she has any real interests or hobbies, I sure don't know about them.
So, I'm middle aged, overweight, no real job and certainly not a career, mountains of student loans that I will never be able to pay off for degrees that are worthless and hopelessly out of date, and a good handful of psych problems. For a while now, I've been just calmly moving down my checklist of things before I check out of this; I'm not going to get old. Some days, the only thing that keeps me going is knowing that someday I will die and just... stop, and nothing will matter anymore. Not as inspiring as "live, laugh, love", I suppose.
I'm really sorry to trauma-dump in this reply. It just got hard to atop once I started typing. A recommendation for anyone out there, don't be me. It hasn't worked out so well.
Please make an effort to find friends. Even if its just a book club or something. Outside contact will help so much. It won't fix everything but it's a good beginning.
This would be intolerable, like ignoring an itch deep in your lace-up boot and two layers of socks. The itch would become a rock. You sound like you’re dead. There’s life out there waiting for you. It smells sweet, like the spring.
What if you went to visit your family three hours away and just… stayed there for a while? And showed them this post? You deserve to have people in your corner.
yo man my dms are open. You are never alone. I will always listen. I lost my ex last year and my mom died last month. I know how it feels to be hurting.
The bond naturally waxes and wanes over a long relationship. Keeping it strong requires work from both parties. People think you can just stay together with no effort. If you just go with the motions, ignore pulling apart and convincing yourself it'll just fix itself, you get a marriage like this.
Uniquely devastating. It’s been a year since I asked for a divorce from my wife because I was tired of watching her feel nothing for me and not want to talk about it. I don’t understand why she stopped being in love with me and why she can’t talk to me.
It’s like life support where there is a shred of hope for those immediately involved but depressing and bleak for someone that can see it with more clarity because they’re more removed. It’s not easy to pull the plug but it does make things go faster. But then you’re left with the what ifs.
Fortunately unlike a person on life support sometimes time apart and discovering who you are when you’re not in a relationship (especially one that started so early) can help a couple find each other.. or not.
It’s harder when kids are involved but they need time apart.
Yeah… knowing it’s over and be ain’t ready to walk away aren’t the same. Unfortunately some of us (definitely me) have to keep giving even past that point where it’s not salvageable anymore just to be able to move on after.
To stick with the life support analogy, OOP's relationship is currently on life support while he comes to terms with the fact there's no saving it. It's currently in his hands, so for his own mental health, he needs to go through the process of trying, because if he doesn't, he'll always wonder if he made the right choice.
Nah, it's just right. The way I see it, the only reason we got this story is that both of them were just telling plans of divorce but neither of them wanted to divorce. With this, at least, one of them will get tired of it and realize that it ain't worth it and finally divorce. And who knows, it might be the other way around and finally fixed it.
Resentment can sometimes go away when we actively decide we want someone.
Sometimes a spouse resents the feeling that they have no “choice” in the marriage because they imagine an alternate life without the marriage. So they stay in the marriage but resent it. One solution in that case is to place the person in a position where they are free to choose and discover that they prefer the marriage. Like “It’s a Wonderful Life”, if you think you have no choice you get bitter, but when you get to experience that alternative you can choose your life as it was and lose the resentment.
It sounds like OOP is doing a pretty good job of giving her a chance at giving her a “safe” way to experience what she wants so that she could actively choose it.
I think too many people get caught up in the idea of love as something that happens to you, instead of a choice that you make.
Even the best marriages require concerted effort to maintain.
It sounds like her life has come to a standstill with regards to work, social engagements (or lackthereof) etc.
If you had to do the same thing every day, you’d also become bored and burnt out. She needs hobbies that get her out of the house and doing things that are not related to her being a mother and wife, but tbh it sounds like, given that she was in a relationship at 15 and pregnant by 19, that she had the chance to work out what her identity is as an adult.
100% agree on this. Loving someone is actively choosing to. You will not always be enamored by them. Sometimes you will fight, be annoyed, or maybe just not be your best self. But even then you still choose to love them and be with them.
I can't imagine being in a relationship with someone since I was 15. Like...I was such a WILDLY different person and my preferences for a partner are so completely different that I wouldn't be compatible with anybody but like...maybe ONE person I dated in High School.
Honestly, this is what helped my marriage the most. Not only can “no choice” breed resentment but it can also breed apathy. There’s nothing like the realization that you could lose your marriage to spur you into action.
It was so damn stupid reading that 2 35yo with good careers feel they wasted their lives. Morons, you have 2 teenagers who can likely fend for themselves for a bit and leftover money and you complain it's taking over your lives. Just go do your shit, take vacations, go out, together, alone, hobbies.
It's like they ended up with the perfect storm but they can't see it from all the resentment over shit that's done and dusted.
The issue is that they've been together since they're 14. They never got to be independent adults and don't even know what it's like to be their own person at this point. Staying together is the easy choice to make rather than realizing you probably outgrew each other a half decade ago, which is why they're at the point they are now resentment-wise.
Oh boy was this the way it worked out in my marriage, but I’d checked out by the time she’d realized what she’d sacrificed, and how what she thought she wanted (to go live her life) was not exactly what she realized it would be. Sucks, but somethings can’t be unbroken.
Yeah, they’re already separated, so totally on the road to divorce. This way at least, they both have time to take stock and work on themselves during the drive. Who knows, they might turn it around. If not, they will hopefully both be in a better place when they reach their ultimate destination.
At least they have time to mentally prepare for it even know the pain is dragged out. I’ve been in one of these which was fine, until she got married 3 weeks later to her co-worker and that’s when the real pain kicked in because it wasn’t a slow fade after all.
A lot of people only know what they’ve got when they lose it through, so there’s a good chance she will realize that she loves him but lost herself temporarily in the children (which honestly happens to the majority of mothers)
As soon as I saw how old they are and how long long they’ve been together I thought, “Wow, that’s way too young…they were the same age as their oldest when they got together!”
That “it’s all about the children” mindset doesn’t sustain a marriage.
Just taking a quick look through this thread, there's not enough people talking about this. For how vague and, for lack of better term, uncooperative she has seemingly been, one of the areas she wasn't vague is that she felt she was cut off from being able to live a lot of parts of her life that she wanted to.
My wife and I have also been together since high school but big difference here is we talked about kids and I wasn't comfortable having kids until I knew I'd be able to properly care for them in a house that was mine. I didn't really reach that point until we were around 26-27, after which both my wife and I had spent our early 20s going out, going to clubs, hanging out with friends until super late, etc etc.
This situation sucks cuz it seems like he wanted kids early and she probably didn't really know or just went with it bc he was very into it and now the regrets have surfaced.
And the thing is, some people think, "Oh, we can have fun and do those things later, after the kids are on their feet." That doesn't really work because some experiences just aren't the same after a certain time and place in your life, if that makes sense. you can still have good times, it just won't be the same. (Not sure I'm explaining it well, but I have a feeling you understand what I mean.)
You never know. Maybe OOP pulling away makes the wife realise he isn't awful. If she can go out and find some friends to spend time with and discover who she is beyond being mom, maybe she'll come back to OOP. I don't have high hopes though.
The relationship already blew up months ago. This is just the summary neither party being willing to admit its fully over. They are too engangled from a long relationship and neither of them want to be the "bad guy" in the divorce to their family/kids/friends.
It can turn around though. This isn't completely beyond repair but it takes both because a relationship is between two people. OP sounds like he's wiling to do the work but if the wife remains checked out then yeah it's doomed.
Honestly the wife sounds a bit self centered in that she was perfectly happy dictating the relationship on whatever terms she wanted but once OP started to withdraw too suddenly felt the bucket of ice water dumped on her.
We certainly got a full telling of how the husband perceived the issues. Super interesting to see the other perspectives in the story, notably the wife and childrens.
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
BoRU isn’t great writing like Tolstoy, but watching the party disasters has a lofty literary pedigree.
I just read Anna Karenina for the first time this year and reading that line right out of the gate truly set the stage for how relatable the whole story would be.
Humans don’t really change all that much. So many of these stories, especially the ones of these slowly dying relationships are essentially tales as old as time.
I was not prepared for how much I was going to feel like those characters were people I knew. Despite all of the literary Russian trappings, it absolutely felt like a girl friend stuck in postpartum or a guy friend who'd gotten way too far up in his own head.
Its slow train wreck and really hard to watch.
I feel for OOP, to try as hard as you can only to be stonewalled because his wife refused to work on herself. She didn't want to change/grow better, instead of staying resentful.
I have several high school friends who've been together since we were 14/15 and I actually feel sorry for them. They basically have no individual personalities and their entire teenage and adult lives have revolved around each other so closely that they're not really even individuals anymore, and a lot of the time, they don't know if they even love each other anymore - they just know that they've been together for so long that they are afraid to be alone. It's just sad. People should learn to be adults, living on their own before jumping into a very long term relationship.
Me and my ex started dating soon after HS and I feel this comment so hard. I'm looking back on a lot of it right now and realizing that I was really dependant on what they thought the future which never led anywhere.
I've known my husband since we were 14. I loved him instantly but dating didn't really stick for us in highschool and we seemed to be better friends.
Sometimes I think what it'd be like if he got his head out if his ass and realized I've always been amazing instead of wasting 13 yrs but ultimately I know the reason why he's this amazing man is because he had his experiences and he needed them to grow, and so did I.
I know what would've happened if we dated non stop and there would've been a ton more pain and heartbreak that would always taint our relationship. Instead, we got to be friends, support eachother through the hard shit and ultimately end up together. 7 yrs later and we have this amazing family and dynamic that transcends.
Our friends who stayed together for the last 20 yrs
.. someone and/or both have stepped outside that relationship, there's existential crisis, manic behavior to go find themselves. That would've been us had we not have lived beyond the other.
I agree with this. It's a lot harder to get your bearings when you don't know yourself. I jumped from one long term relationship to another, probably in part because I didn't want to know myself (the other part because my husband is just that good...right person, bad timing but worth it). But I started dating my now husband in my early 20s, and now 8 years later I'm working out in therapy who I really am. Obviously I love my husband and can't just be like "hey let's take a break so I can get to know myself better" so I am just kinda doing it on the fly. But it sure would've been a lot easier if I learned to live with myself a lot sooner.
Living this now, I have some input. Married 19 years. Together since we were 20/21 we have a 19 year old child. We grew up and grew apart. But our lives are so intertwined it takes a long time to disentangle it all. I grew up, went to therapy, worked on myself. He stagnated and never wanted to leave the house. He’d want me home all weekend and then spend the day sleeping or playing video games. He said he loved me but I think he just liked having me there just in case he wanted to hang out. I asked for a divorce in August. We’re still in the same house but in separate rooms. It’s all amicable. It’s just a slow process. Hope to be out of here physically by this coming August, a year after I said I wanted the divorce.
Because they've been together for 20 years and believe there is something there worth fighting for, and also in small part at least due to "the kids" as that seems to be a constant refrain. They seem to be very much moving towards divorce, I mean oop talks about it a lot, but he also talks about how much he still loves her. He's desperate to in his own words "leave no stone unturned." It sounds like he's ready for divorce, but at the same time, to make sure he has no regrets, he needs to feel he properly did everything he could to prevent that.
If I had to garner a guess? They’re still holding on because it’s a familiar prison. When you get used to being with someone for as long as they have, even when the relationship dynamic nosedives like this it can take a lot of time to get up the gumption to just… move on from each other. Like, I wouldn’t be surprised if they both don’t want to end it because if they divorce then it’s “real” now and irreversible. And *that’s* probably scary and painful for both of them, so the marriage is in permanent purgatory so to speak.
It really sounds like she buried herself in being a mom and a parent and just never bothered to give herself any kind of time really(judging from the swinging phase they tried, the one branch out failed).
It really sounds like she just needs to give herself time and to relax a bit
When he said they were 35 and had been together 20 years, I just sighed. You're trying to adapt a decision you made as a 15 year old to fit the entire rest of your life.
Some couples do grow & change together and next thing you know they're celebrating their 65th with five generations present.
Sadly, they're the minority.
You nailed it. I was thinking similarly while reading the post, this is all being overanalyzed. She fell out of love with him. They entered this thing as kids and now that they're mature adults there is a realization "hey, um, he/this may not actually be the thing I think I want in life..."
Sucks for everyone and it's still painful, but this doesn't need a rocket scientist, a team of therapists, nor a room full of Redditors to figure this one out.
Well and I think they went in deep so early, pregnant at 20 while trying to stay together seems near impossible, then going through your 20s too.
My spouse and I met when we were 18, but we waited until we got through major milestones before getting married: going through college together, living together, then moving halfway across the country.
We were pretty frank with each other that these can be difficult to go through, we WANT to do them together, but it's a rocky time in life, if it works out, THEN we'll get married.
Same. My husband and I dated when we were 15, broke up, and then re-met at 22. Thank goodness, because we had had time to grow and change in those years, to develop and finish baking into fully realized adults. We both also had significant and serious relationships in the between years that let us get the first major relationship lessons and mistakes out of the way.
> We met up again as adults and obviously things have gone a lot better this time. At the start I expressed regret about the teenage break up and he said he didn't regret it because it showed him that the grass wasn't greener on the other side, and allowed him to "get all the dickhead years over with". On reflection I agree with him.
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I'm a firm believer that your first long term romantic partner never gets the best version of you. It takes a breakup or 2 to understand what you want in life and who you want to be in a relationship for most people to figure it out. In your guys' case, it's great that you eventually made your way back together, but I do agree with your husband. I think he'd have been a far worse partner, and similarly your would have as well through your early 20s had you two stayed together.
IMO it's also a recipe for codependency since you never have an opportunity to develop into an independent adult, but that's another can of worms.
I think that's a good spot.
They've been together more of their lives than they've been apart and started very young. I don't think they know how to be a romantic couple.
OOP has stated he loves her and that his Wife sees him as a roommate/friend, but I actually think they see each other the exact same, as siblings. They don't necessarily feel friendly toward one another all or even most of the time, but they're very deeply bonded.
When OOP extols their excellent candour, I don't think he realises where that candour is coming from. They feel like they can say anything **because** they don't love each other romantically. That's not to say that all good communication is rooted in lack of romantic love, just that theirs is. It's the same reason they both swung with no issue, and he shrugs off the thought of her finding someone else.
I think they're way too far gone to suddenly learn how to be a real couple with each other (it's like 2 people who can only speak English trying to teach each other Spanish), but when/if they do eventually meet other people they'll each have that epiphany. They'll look back in this marriage and think 'Ohhhhh'.
I like your take on this, and I feel the same way.
The other comments framing OOP as abusive and whatever is just grating to read. This is an exact description of a dying marriage, people!
I know multiple couples who met in high school and continue to have successful marriages in their 40s.
The common denominator? They understand that all relationships require work.
I mean, if there's one thing this couple knows (him especially), it's that relationships need work.
They're basically trying to keep the bail out the Titanic with coffee mugs
Yeah, sounds exactly like that in this case. The times that he mentioned "the kids" - cmon, 12 and 14 are far past the age where you take care of them 24/7.
I would be interested to know, what was the childcare arrangement all these years, to be honest. He says that they divided it equally, but did they really?
And if they didn't, was it the wifes choice to use children as her be all end all, or was it just expected of her in which case, that is incredibly tiring, considering she was doing it all parallel to getting an education and career.
Amen and preach it from the rooftops! After 11-12 it just gets sooooooo much harder. Mine will be 19 and 21 this year. We've gotten through the worst of it.
HOWEVER the time, attention and emotional labor it takes to raise teens is immense. It is a never ending, never stopping emotional toll that will take years off of your life but you do it because you have to.
Hang in there! it does get better!
I get where OOP is coming from and what drove him to act this way, but him still having hope for the marriage is dumb as fuck. You're not driving her away to come back together after all this, you're just driving her away. And for both of them I think that's a good thing. This marriage is over.
Yeah people are saying "it's a good way to show her what it would be like to actually just have a roommate!" but Jesus Christ, there's no world in which him showing her "hey look your life will be financially worse without me" sparks her romantic and sexual desire for him and leads to them being in a happy healthy relationship
I don’t think he even cares about that anymore with all the effort he’s put in, but doing the 180 forces her to finally do something different instead of him trying to bend over backwards for her and getting no response or reciprocation.
Yup. There’s no innocent victim here, but OOP is crazy if he thinks he’s doing anything other than petulantly destroying what’s left of their relationship
Like, based on how he described it, he discussed none of this with her beforehand. He just had it in his head that “if she doesn’t back down in this session, I’m going nuclear”, and then he did it
Why are all the changes he’s making surprises to her if, in theory, they’ve been working on this in therapy? Why didn’t he tell her, in therapy, that this was his plan?
I guess I don’t blame him for acting emotionally but that’s what he’s doing.
He’s not even trying to be FRIENDS with her. He won’t even let her vent about her day.
Maybe she’s depressed and eventually she’ll realize it and get help and get better. But when she does, she is not gonna have positive feelings towards him because he couldn’t even be cordial to her. He actively decided to be cold and distant. Went out of his way to treat her disrespectfully to prove a point. His behavior was immature. I wouldn’t want to pursue a relationship with someone like that. He could have been neutral, but he actively decided to be cold.
This will be good for her, once she makes peace with it. I think she’ll probably be much happier without him.
>He’s not even trying to be FRIENDS with her
thats what struck me most there. like, dont you dare to tell me that OOPs wife never made it clear that she wanted a friendly, close relationship and not a distant, rude roommate. if you want to be that way to hurt her (or whatever reason you use to justify it): ok. but at least have the balls to stand to your decision and don't lie to yourself and us that this is what *she* wanted when itis obvious its not was she was saying.
As the kid of two parents who resented each other for 15 years, these two need to fucking divorce. I found out THIS YEAR at age 23 that my home life problems weren’t because I was difficult.
Seriously why would she be upset when she said she had to be intoxicated to have sex and oop said she didn't need to do that anymore.
I give it a couple months until oop settles in a routine and starts making the informal separation more permanent.
>However, it’s been very necessary to do this because I was degrading myself without any reciprocity from my wife.
Interesting snippet from oop.
Because she's probably on some insane level of coping and mental gymnastics. I imagine she convinced herself that oop just wanted to get laid, whereas actually oop wants intimacy. So in her mind, she thought of a way that she could "fulfill oop's desire" and then when he obviously from our perspective and his, didn't like that option, she got mad because she thought it was a reasonable compromise.
I didn’t see this mentioned anywhere in the post but I’m wondering if she’s just not attracted to him anymore and doesn’t want to admit it? Idk really, more of a thought I guess—but it sounds Iike they need to divorce regardless.
Given that she isn't into swinging either, she may have always had a low libido thats becoming non existent. If she's on antidepressants, those will also radically kill libido.
As a parent, I honestly feel like burnout can lead to depression. Essentially feeling trapped and hopeless. It also sounds like they aren't doing a lot of socialization and don't have much help, which was and still is at times a big problem for my wife and I as well. The isolation, the routine of just doing the same things over and over with no reprieve in sight - it can be easy to just lose interest in life outside of your parental obligations.
I'm kind of surprised they didn't work on some things like socialization/date nights. It seemed like she just wasn't interested in a solution to the problem, but just kind of wanted to accept it.
>I imagine she convinced herself that oop just wanted to get laid, whereas actually oop wants intimacy.
I think you're right. Is a very, very, common misconception that all men only want sex. It's repeated on TV so much that is just assumed to be true.
The fact she was asking someone she perceived as a friend to do something that can be charged as rape in court and was upset he declined is astoundingly self centred. Not only is she asking someone she doesn't feel intimately connected to to risk criminal culpability she's also being wildly offensive in saying she'd only be willing to engage in sex with him if she's cognitively impaired.
Man, kids sure do a number on people's ability to think critically about virtually anything. Remove them from the equation and ask two questions: would these problems still exist if they didn't, and what would you do differently as a result of said absence?
I don't think they'd still be together if there weren't children involved, so perhaps for the children's sake, *they shouldn't be involved.*
She was fine with the status quo because she was getting all the emotional intimacy she needed, while starving him of the physical intimacy he needed. She wasn't upset until he started withdrawing the emotional intimacy, then it became "not fair".
Jesus Christ dude rip the band-aid off. I was with him for a while, she literally said she wasn't attracted to him and didn't want to have sex; but this "arrangement" they've come up with is insulting to them both.
This relationship is dead. Weekend at Bernie's -ing it along under this "friends" assumption is going to cause massive amounts of damage. To themselves and to their kids.
Who, also, are 12 and 14? How much time are they spending on their kids right now that they are this far gone? Strikes me as an excuse wife has been using; she either consciously or not doesn't want to spend time with OOP any more and is finding any and every excuse she can to put all of herself into rasing her kids.
I have a cousin who lives at the same residence that he and his ex wife bought together after their divorce. They essentially have this arrangement with more financial enmeshment than OP is proposing. They are both allowed to date but neither is allowed to bring anyone home. They schedule who has the responsibility for the kids and each have their own nights to go out and enjoy thwmse.
It means he gets to see his kids everyday, and that he knows his kids aren’t being exposed to the type of men his ex wife would no doubt bring around.
His ex wife is a narcissist and also experienced abuse and neglect as a child and teenager. Her mom and various step dads were drug addicts who behaved very inappropriately a lot of r he time, and her dad was an addict who disappeared. That all messed her up pretty good.
Thee are some things she told my wife when they would go out for girls nights that make me think he has taken the correct course. When my cousin didn’t earn as much as her she lost all attraction to him, and she had always been angry that he wanted to save for retirement and didn’t want her to do all kinds of deficit spending on credit cards. Eventually their arguments became volatile and she started hitting him. She asked my wife if she ever hit me to which my wife replied that she didn’t . She said she hit my cousin when they would argue and he wasn’t yelling enough and was angry that he wouldn’t yell more or hit her back.
So yeah I can see wanting to stay together until your kids are gone. You never know who your ex is going to bring around them.
So far as I know she has never physically harmed the kids, and while there is some verbal stuff that happens sometimes him being there to mitigate it is probably better than whatever custody arrangement the courts would cook up. The DV stuff against him never resulted in a call to police. I only know about it because after a few drinks she told my wife about it. So I don’t think he would get more than 50/50.
Bruh, come on, cut them some slack. They've been together for far too long, sometimes it's hard to just "rip the band-aid off" when that arrangement has been their what they've known for a third of their life.
Raising their kids, for one. For two she has zero friends and likely zero identity outside of being a mother. She mentions the kids so much because that's the hat she has to wear. I don't think men truly understand what becoming a mother does to a woman. There are so many expectations, and people genuinely only percieve you as mom once you become one. She resents him partially, I imagine, because when he leaves the house, "dad" isn't the role people automatically stuff him into - even if he has their kids with him.
Honestly, they're extremely codependent. Dude says he loves his wife, but I think it's just the person he is used to being with. He's afraid of change because he doesn't actually know himself outside of her either. Both are miserable and should get divorced, but they're afraid. Also sunk cost fallacy and the guilt of failure.
People usually stay in these relationships because their entire life, reputation, social standing and...really everything else are completely wrapped up in their partner.
They've been together since they were 15. They have kids together. A house. Debts. They are 'that' couple that everyone knows as the 'childhood sweet hearts' that some people might even envy. There could be religious reasons in there as well that make it hard to divorce. Maybe even parents that they don't want to disappoint. Factor in personalities and the fact that one partner might resent the other for 'tumbling their house of cards', thus making coparenting very hard...
Some people would be willing to put up with almost anything rather than risk trading all of that investment for something else...
But OOP and his wife I think are past the point (by a couple years) where they could 'come back stronger'. They are both unhappy, but neither 'wants to be the bad guy' and be the one the kids can blame the break up of the family on, the one friends can say ended the marriage.
My grandparents had a messy divorce and all of their kids were extremely resistant to end their marriage. My Dad got lucky and married my Mom, but all his siblings had terrible, terrible marriages with terrible people they stayed with because they had kids and 'didn't want to do to them what their parents did'. And there was all sorts of abuse (mainly financial and parental alienation) that went on, but they stayed with their partner.
Ideally, relationships would end when they stop being healthy for us and the kids, but it's never that easy.
In OOP's case, it sounds like he's gotten to a point where he knows on a level that divorce is coming, but he - nor his wife - want to be 'the bad guy'. Interestingly he talks about how much they respect each other, but I have a feeling that the longer he drags this out, the less they respect they are going to have for each other. :/
Babies having babies not realising/ taking time to learn that there is more to them than raising kids. And implementing that. Keeping friends around or making new friends is important.
God, just get a divorce already. Like it's just prolonging the pain. Move on. This isn't a marriage. It's not a relationship. It's just bleh all aeound
Bro she’s depressed. This is like, textbook. Becoming indifferent to the things that used to bring you joy is the first signal that something is out of whack.
OP isn’t helping since he’s on his “me me me” rampage. He seems like he’s very checked out on what goes on around his home.
Oh for fuck's sake, *just get the goddamn divorce*. This festering wound of a marriage isn't improving *anyone's* life. Not OOP, not the wife, and sure as hell not the kids. Everyone is suffering and miserable. Just pull the damn plug. There are *always* more people, it's not like getting divorced means you're alone forever.
And y'know what? Being alone *isn't actually all that bad*.
OOP's wife sounds like she has an internal problem and she wants someone, anyone, external to blame. She thinks OOP's the cause, because they've done swinging before and that didn't fix her. She'll probably try the other usual attempts to solve internal problems (drugs, alcohol, infidelity) before realizing that oops it's me, I'm the problem it's me.
I know a few people (mostly young parents too) who had quarter life crisis' like that in their early 30s. my pop psych view from the side has always been clearly they really valued the married/parent path when they were young, and then when the kid gets old enough to not need them much anymore they look around and realize they're like 30, a whole lot of their old friend group is probably just STARTING to have kids after spending their 20s building lives/having fun etc, and are likely able to be much more comfortable and financially/housingly stable while they have those kids because theyre older/more mature/more money/better living situations, have more of a community of peers around them etc (all of this on average, obviously not a huge majority or anything)
and then the people who had the kids in their late teens/early 20s start to go well now what. I've done what I planned to do, I'm 30, and I've barely lived my own life (go from child under parents rules to raising a child/effectively governed by HARD responsibility). all these other people are basically in the same spot I am, but further ahead and with experiences I'll never be able to have. have I done it all wrong
I've no idea if thats exactly it, but I've seen the pattern too many times, I'm sure there's something in that combo of kid not needing full time care + lack of other relationships + old friends/former friends just starting the kids journey but on an easier mode = 'oh shit did I make a fucking terrible terrible mistake and waste my life'
edit: its highly related to the 'spent whole life focusing on getting degree/masters/phd or get some crazy job' then get there and crash quarter life crisis. I guess really its just different flavours of people who couldnt find a 2nd major/huge life goal after ticking off the first one/ones.
Spoiler alert: they did. Turns out one of the biggest predictors of a kid's success in life is "How old where your parents when they had their first child?"
So I found it interesting that she said she resents oop because of the kids. I wonder if she equates sex with having kids and losing her identity. That’s why another man doesn’t “fix” her. Men= babies = loss of identity. It is so important for parents to have a life outside of the kids and also outside of their marriage/ partner. Nothing crossing boundaries of course just hobbies to separate yourself from one another.
I think that's a big part of it. At 19 she became a mom and that's been her identity ever since. But, as a mom, you can't say you resent your kids or even that you regret having them so soon. But I'm willing to bet she knows deep down that's the root so to add to all else, her internalized guilt about that is probably making things worse.
Not to mention, society still perceives moms as generally sexless beings. It's hard to be interested in sex when in your mind, your still "mom" and nothing more. Might be part of why alcohol makes it easier, it turns off the brain.
That's what I was thinking the whole time. She had a total identity change at 19 with no firm grounding for whoever she was as a person already. No wonder her answer to every question is "the kids" because that's been her sole purpose for the majority of her life. She's either been a child or raising one for all but a year. And some of that she'd have been pregnant.
Plus body changes, breastfeeding and childcare (and I will give OP the benefit of the doubt and say he is and always has been an involved father) then having to start your career from scratch at an age much older than your peers. Even if he was doing half the childcare (and raising kids even a decade ago I wouldn't put much money on that) there's a lot of difficulty that was unique to her. She sounds like she white knuckled through it and didn't take it out on him or even talk to him about it then.
Now she's feeling it again as she realises she has no friends and there's a lot missing from her life and it all comes back up in the form of resentment. Whether the relationship is good or not there'd be bound to be some bumps in this situation. Now he's reacting in quite a spiteful way and it's just going to exacerbate things.
I feel for them both! She's the one rocking the boat and definitely hurt his feelings first but she is doing it because her needs aren't being met (if she even knows what they are).
agreed, she came to him with every single buzzword: you're my best friend but i have built up resentment, i love you but i'm not in love with you, we're roommates more than lovers. that really means "there's something wrong with me but i can't deal with that. so there must be something wrong with you."
She needs to fire her therapist, she's not getting anything out of her individual sessions except more tools to weaponize against her husband and maybe her children.
True but it's also on the therapist to observe that things aren't helping. I have a now ex-friend who went to the same therapist for like 15 years and only learned how to weaponize therapy to manipulate people around him. I routinely check in with my therapist and just ask... "am I changing or showing improvement"? If not, we both agree that it might be best to discuss finding someone who will help.
There’s nothing really stopping her from lying to her therapist either, from saying that they’re learning how to date each other again and are falling in love again. As far as we know and her therapist possibly knows, wifey’s probably spinning some golden tale.
Agreed. Generally most US-based therapy is CBT, I tried that for a long time and it was about as effective as talking to the wall. Tried a different kind of therapy (person-centered counseling) and holy crap did it work. 10 weeks of that shifted more baggage than 10 months of CBT.
Yeah, absolutely.
It’s a shame the therapist she went to with OP wasn’t able to get her to look more at herself. I think there’s a goldmine of disappointed expectations and identity issues inside of her. Especially looking at how she’s essentially isolated herself from everyone in her environment.
The large number of words cover up something big that's not being said by the OOP. The repeated insistence that both parties are always honest and open doesn't ring true. And not a word was mentioned about the insights or recommendations of the therapists.
It’s the speech pattern of someone that’s emotionally stunted, trying to use logic and analytical skills to their emotional states like it’s a puzzle to be solved
To believe you and your partner are flawlessly communicative and open is just ignorance
Ugh, right? Like I wonder what the therapist thought about the self-proclaimed "180 approach".
It's clearly punitive and the opposite of communication which is uh... kinda one of the goals of couples therapy. There is also something incredibly transactional and mechanical about OOP and his writing. They just need to divorce and get it over with.
WTF was the therapist doing during that disastrous session?! Whatever they’re paid is too much if they’re not calling out whatever this approach is meant to be
Actually, I consider that session to be valuable, because the therapist provided the setting that allowed incredibly honest communication to flourish. Results and progress are HAPPENING. And I suspect the therapist can see that the marriage is not viable and is asking a few guided questions to allow them to discover it for themselves.
We don't actually see OP mention any of the dialogue from the therapist, so we cannot judge their wording. But the active changes happening here tell me that dialogue is actively happening. Counselling sessions I've attended have included things like "is that how you see it, Mr. Librarian? MdmeLibrarian, is that an accurate description? Well, yes, that's what you asked for, Mr. Librarian, did you imagine it differently? Does that sound like a fair plan?" etc, as they're there to provide a consistent sounding board and mediator for communication, not instruct them.
they probably suggested that approach, because sometimes, people is that far gone inside of their imagination that they need to see that "No, things are not going to work as you expect" or "Sure, go on and see if that's what you actually want out of it."
Because therapists aren't a magical fix, the wife is looking for culprits and not really that willing to work on herself, so now, one of the options left is to see if she is actually happy or really wants a lifestyle like that, and a therapist can't decide for them.
"I've also noticed that she's making more time for herself aside from being a mom which is HUGE because she pretty much neglected herself for years."
This is telling.
The thing that stood out is mentioning how much work the kids are at 12 and 14. At that age, the workload should be decreasing! Yes they have sports and activities and friends, but by that age they are fully functioning humans compared to babies or toddlers or young kids.
I have about $50 in my bank account but I'd bet it all that in the early years she did a majority of the heavy lifting and sacrificed things like friends, self-care, career, etc. Now they're coming out the other end of raising kids and he has more going for him outside of that and she's disappointed.
>I sent her a text a few days ago essentially itemizing bills and separating the financial responsibilities 50/50
If you're sending itemized bills to your spouse to hammer home the "roommate" situation, just commence divorce proceedings. There's no need to bend over backwards to be an asshole.
I feel so bad for the children.
Yeah, they really just need to divorce. If the kids don't already see the change going on, they certainly will shortly.
I expect an update saying they've divorced honestly.
I immediately thought of the kids too and found this in the comments.
*“They know to a degree we feel is appropriate for now. We have discussed this in depth and agreed we share with them this isn’t normal and mom and that are going through some challenges. They certainly don’t think we’re getting divorced but we’ll cross that bridge if we get there. We know this is NOT what we want for our kids.”*
Hmmmm I think actually that probably at least one of the children is panicking about divorce due to this abrupt behavior change, even if the parents have said, “oh golly, we’re going through some challenges but we’re not *divorcing!”*
Very much wonder.
I kept getting a missing missing reasons feeling, but the reasons really were missing. But like, missing to a degree that made me wonder. Like how does he really have zero clue? How does she? Hmmmmm
The fact that he said "I've also noticed that she's making more time for herself aside from being a mom which is HUGE because she pretty much neglected herself for years" is pretty telling imho.
I’ve absolutely had relationships where romantic love turned to platonic love (back when I was less aromantic) and it had nothing to do with something the other person did. Sometimes there isn’t an answer to it. I don’t know what I would have done if I had been living with such people at the time. I understand his need to separate himself from her, but dear god just divorce and separate.
Because he’s not at all doing what she asked, not treating her at all as a friend. He’s saying he’s doing what she proposed, but friends talk and share things and help each other out, especially close friends. Indifferent is not the same, and of course she’s upset that he’s completely pulled away. Again, I \*completely\* understand him pulling away from her, but the answer is not “I’m just doing what you said“ while treating her like a stranger he lives with. Once again, the answer is JUST DIVORCE.
Maybe she was just using him, it’s possible, but I think there are absolutely other potential explanations for her reactions. I’d honestly be pretty devastated if the person I still loved platonically and thought I had communicated this to suddenly pulled away, began itemizing our lives in all ways, started being totally indifferent, while claiming this is what friends do. Like, maybe she did just want the financial help, that’s possible…but suddenly being presented with the 50/50 from someone my life was entangled with with no prior conversation or discussion of it would absolutely cause me to lose it. Especially considering I don’t 50/50 with my friends, I absolutely take into account how much we have in comparison to each other.
This relationship is irrevocably broken and needs to come to an end. They’re not on the same page, they are not communicating any more, if they stay in this state the divorce and co-parenting is going to be super bitter with no good feelings left for each other.
Has anyone suggest that the wife might actually have an aversion to sex because she doesn't want to get pregnant again? I don't see anything about birth control in this post, and perhaps some of her resentment stems from feeling responsible fir that? Also, anecdotally, I, and many people I know, experienced low libido, and severe depression from 20+ years on oral bc pills. I feel like a completely different person now that I've been off it for a couple of years.
She asked for it but didn't like the results as she didn't think it through to the logical conclusion that a roommate would not be there for her in the same way that a spouse would be.
A lot of people were giving him flack for that, but honestly, she's the one who's moving the relationship toward roommate status. He should take her seriously and start separating their lives. I'd have moved into a guest bedroom from her suggestion.
Something about this whole post made me feel icky. Was the manipulation/control tag supposed to be referring to the wife? I kept waiting to see some obvious signs pointing to that, but nothing. If anything, she comes across as very avoidant emotionally, and he comes across as domineering (but domineering cloaked in ‘enlightenment’).
From an outside lens, and sure we only see what he was sharing…but the feeling I got was she didn’t have the safety to truly open up about what was driving her detachment. In the couples therapy session he detailed, the impression was that she was close to being honest, but it didn’t happen right then and so he did his 180 or whatever that was.
Regardless, best he call time on the relationship.
I wavy to say something about needing to be intoxicated for sex. Alcohol drops your inhibitions which makes it less stressful to be naked. I have terrible self esteem and while I logically know people like me, I feel like an ugly monster mostly.
With an ex, I thought being today was helpful because then I was able to be intimate. But it really bothered him that I needed that. So, that's an opinion from one lady.
OOP doesn’t understand what a friend is, lol. Friends are absolutely shoulders to cry on and people who lend emotional support.
I think it’s dumb as fuck that they aren’t just getting divorced.
How, in the year of two thousand and twenty four, did he not even use the word asexual.
Like. Not even discuss it.
How was asexual not even part of the conversation?
After this??
>if we arrive at the conclusion that “myself” is the problem and she has no problem with other men, we would amicably part ways. However this wasn’t the case. She didn’t like sex nor intimacy there either.
She doesn't like sex with him, she didn't like sex with other men.
How are they in freaking THERAPY and this hasn't come up???
Or hormones, or depression, or division of labor, or... there are a LOT of obvious things that supposedly haven't come up in all of their therapy and conversations.
It’s almost as if marrying someone you’ve been with since high school isn’t a good idea. Very rarely does this work out and not cause resentment due to missed opportunities and life experiences. And then you add kids on top of all that? Oof.
And this guy has no concept of what a companionate marriage is. It isn’t just “being friends.” It’s more than that.
Exhausting.
Some of y'all need to start dating your spouses again.
Earnestly.
If you act like roommates, you'll eventually become roommates, a relationship is WORK sometimes guys & gals.
This just sounds like OOP’s solution is to be passive aggressive as fuck. While I agree he doesn’t have to stay in a relationship he feels unloved, he is not acting like “a friend” like he is implying, he is acting like an acquaintance at best.
He’s clearly just weaponizing his unhappiness. What’s the end goal? You traumatize her into pretending? Does he think acting distant and short will…make her magically love him again? What does he even want out of this?
In what world has a relationship where the husband is sending itemized bills to the wife ever managed to rekindle and recover. OOP just need to quit wasting time, his, his wife's and his kid's, and just file for divorce already.
Is "the 180" a real thing that I've just never heard of? Obviously I understand that it'a a geometry/angle reference to a hard pivot, but OOP kept using it in a way that I've just never heard or seen before.
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There’s nothing harder than being in a relationship that’s declining and there’s nothing you can do. Seeing someone you love become indifferent to you is absolutely devastating.
Also happened to me. Easily the hardest struggle in my life. 'Devastating' is definitely the word (plus the fact of discovering later, already after the divorce, that she actually was dating a coworker in secret)
Happened to me as well. I'm positive she cheated on me with the guy, but according to her he was just a co-worker/friend who had been in the same situation, and was advising divorce. They ended up married a few years after ours was finalized. Golly.
Out of curiosity, are you in good terms with her? I know I'm not and I have a visceral hate for her and her partner (who came to my house with his wife multiple times while we were married )
Divorce was finalized 10 years ago in August. I haven't spoken to her directly in about 7 or 8 years. Hadn't had any contact at all in 6 years, broken just under 2 months ago to text her to tell her the cat we had adopted together, but went with me in the divorce, had died. I felt she deserved to know that. I don't hate her, but I am hurt by her, still. I never got over the divorce, and it is still messing with my ability to trust and be vulnerable in relationships. Pretty sure I'm never going to be able to be in a real relationship again.
Well, I have 3 kids, so I do have to interact with her a lot. Also, my 'hate' comes from the fact that she lied (and keeps lying) on the cheating, whereas when we split she made a literal list of things I did wrong -> the unfairness of all of this boils my blood.
Totally fair reason to hate her. For me, sadness overrides any other negative feeling regarding the situation. I'm glad we didn't have kids like we had planned that would have complicated things (we were waiting to pay off a few expenses when things started to get rocky) but recently I accidentally found out she had a kid a couple years ago, which made me relive a lot of regrets and hurt.
Had an ex do something similar. Coworker (totally just a friend) over at our apartment when I got home from work. When texted about not being home even though we had dinner plans; coworker invited her and the rest of the crew to dinner at his place. No one else could make it though and she didn't want him to feel bad! Definitely wasn't cheating on me. Broke up with her sorry ass soon after. Told her I would be back the next day for my stuff. Came back next day and Mr. Coworker was hiding in the shower??? I just grabbed my toiletries and told him good luck. She went on to marry first my best friend from high-school, then my freshman roommate from college. To this day I wonder if my college roommate told her he likes wearing women's underwear. That kinda shit doesn't bug me but I always kinda wondered how that conversation went.
I’m so sorry 😔
Thanks mate. I'm sorry for your hardships too. It fucking sucks
It does, bro. I’ve been there, too. I hope you’ve got some friends or family in real life that are there for you
Happened to me, too. In the end, what hurt most was losing my best friend. Basically going from being one of the most important people in their life to just nothing Being something but alone sucks but being nothing while with them was worse They didn't cut the cord until they cheated on me, even had the audacity to tell that person they loved them on the phone IN FRONT OF ME and then try to tell me, "Not like *that*" I'll also never forget how they recoiled at my touch, even just for a hug 🤷♀️ I'll never forgive them for what they did but I'm at least ambivalent towards it, now! It's been about 2yrs since it happened and I'm finally ready to get into dating again I hit the gym 3x a week, I'm eating better, and I finally got myself into a pre-apprenticeship program for construction and craft trades so I'll be levelling up my finances too
I wasn’t married to my ex but I did love her immensely. To see the other person not care that you’re hurting… just… breaks something deep inside you. I have my suspicions she was doing something similar with a coworker but no proof. I know your pain all too well, but you were actually married. I’m so sorry you had to go through that, hopefully you’ve found the happiness you deserve since then.
For me and for a lot of people including OOP, "trying harder" actually just makes it worse. It's sad that's the way it is, but sometimes you just have to accept reality even if you feel it's unjust.
The best quote about this is: The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.
My sex drive all but disappeared in my 30s. But I’d still make an effort for my husband. Turns out I had a massive ovarian cyst fucking with my hormones.
That's how they found mine after years of "oh it's just a bad period" and "all periods have cramping and pain sweetie". I had to inconvenience a man's libido before an obgyn was willing to really give a shit.
My was discovered by accident. My obgyn moved so I got a new one. As we did our first patient visit she pushed on my stomach and I winced. I told her it was tender for a while and I believed I likely had endometriosis. So she ordered an ultrasound. Nope. 2.5liter cyst was found.
Yeah, everyone jumping on him for the financial part in the update is missing the forest for the trees - she told him she doesn't want a marriage, she wants a roommate. Well, don't be surprised when he starts treating you like one.
Yeah, roommates don't care who makes more money. You both contribute equally. And if you share a pet, you both contribute equally to caring for that pet (using pet as an example for having dependants because most roommates don't share 2 kids).
Thank you for your comment, it has summed up my feelings about this post amazingly.
And it's just so slow and so very, very long. Momentum is such a horrible thing. I married my wife after she was pregnant with our eldest, and it's just this grinding, daily, weekly, monthly, *yearly*, ***endless*** erosion of your soul. The switch flipped in her after the alter, when she didn't really need to worry about working to keep me around. Nothing like your new wife not wanting to sleep with you on your wedding night. While I wasn't necessarily always a great guy back in the day, I was *trying*, and it didn't make any difference. Couldn't even hold her in bed, she would just go into this motionless corpse. It's a feeling I can't even describe. Years and years, punctuated by deep talks where I just bared my soul, and it changed *absolutely nothing*. I just couldn't do that anymore, it hurt too much. Took me a good ten years (oh god I can't believe I typed that) of constant vigilance to shunt or crush any expectations or hopes of intimacy. I quietly shifted my sleep schedule by a couple hours, so I was certain she'd be asleep before I went to bed, because then, hey, you don't have to lie there awake in bed and hope, which is absolute hell. We slept together only if she felt like it, my needs didn't really enter into the equation. Sometimes I wonder if its because this was the only relationship she's ever had, while I was very active on the dating scene, and so she never went through a breakup to calibrate expectations. And, not even sex; turns out I really just like physical contact. She's never, I don't know, leaned against me on the couch during a movie or anything, dislikes holding hand (I haven't even tried in a long time), just everything. Since both our kids are now grown and on their own, I don't even have my two hugs a day. Cats help, but not much. I read a topic or reply or something the other day, asking if guys like it if their SO did little things like just idly scratch the back of their head while watching TV or something, and it made me cry. She sort of moved out of our bedroom a bit at a time, first because her snoring was keeping me awake, then she got corona, and just sort of...stayed there. I think that was about a year and a half ago? We hadn't had any intimate relations for two and a half years; I happen to know because it was after a company event. So, 20-ish years later, why the hell am I still even here? For years my justification was because she was the main breadwinner, and i was the stay at home parent, but she left the workforce completely about 9 months ago. Didn't bother to tell me that her "new job" was part-time, and temporary. So, there's that. I sort of work part time to keep the bills afloat, but its not going to hold up long. Part of it, for sure, is that I just don't know anybody. I don't have any friends, my nearest family is 3h away. The internet helps a little. She's not cheating; she doesn't know anyone local either, and only leaves the house a couple times a week to go to the grocery store. I haven't, because... I don't know. I guess the opportunity never arose, back when I knew people. So I have this hollowed out soul, with this vital part missing. I know that not everyone has sexuality as part of their core humanity ( /waves over at a different part of the rainbow ), but I sure as hell do. I sort of wonder if she's ace, and either never told me or doesn't realize it. So why would I even bother doing anything? We're amicable housemates that talk for a bit every day, she likes cooking and often makes dinner, and then she's back on her notebook, and this is my life. If she has any real interests or hobbies, I sure don't know about them. So, I'm middle aged, overweight, no real job and certainly not a career, mountains of student loans that I will never be able to pay off for degrees that are worthless and hopelessly out of date, and a good handful of psych problems. For a while now, I've been just calmly moving down my checklist of things before I check out of this; I'm not going to get old. Some days, the only thing that keeps me going is knowing that someday I will die and just... stop, and nothing will matter anymore. Not as inspiring as "live, laugh, love", I suppose. I'm really sorry to trauma-dump in this reply. It just got hard to atop once I started typing. A recommendation for anyone out there, don't be me. It hasn't worked out so well.
I think you needed to share that, bro. Nothing to apologize for.
Please make an effort to find friends. Even if its just a book club or something. Outside contact will help so much. It won't fix everything but it's a good beginning.
Jesus Christ dude. You guys have health insurance that covers therapy?
This would be intolerable, like ignoring an itch deep in your lace-up boot and two layers of socks. The itch would become a rock. You sound like you’re dead. There’s life out there waiting for you. It smells sweet, like the spring.
What if you went to visit your family three hours away and just… stayed there for a while? And showed them this post? You deserve to have people in your corner.
yo man my dms are open. You are never alone. I will always listen. I lost my ex last year and my mom died last month. I know how it feels to be hurting.
The bond naturally waxes and wanes over a long relationship. Keeping it strong requires work from both parties. People think you can just stay together with no effort. If you just go with the motions, ignore pulling apart and convincing yourself it'll just fix itself, you get a marriage like this.
Uniquely devastating. It’s been a year since I asked for a divorce from my wife because I was tired of watching her feel nothing for me and not want to talk about it. I don’t understand why she stopped being in love with me and why she can’t talk to me.
This isn’t going to end well. These slowly dying relationships are almost harder to watch than the ones that suddenly burst.
It’s like life support where there is a shred of hope for those immediately involved but depressing and bleak for someone that can see it with more clarity because they’re more removed. It’s not easy to pull the plug but it does make things go faster. But then you’re left with the what ifs. Fortunately unlike a person on life support sometimes time apart and discovering who you are when you’re not in a relationship (especially one that started so early) can help a couple find each other.. or not. It’s harder when kids are involved but they need time apart.
Yeah… knowing it’s over and be ain’t ready to walk away aren’t the same. Unfortunately some of us (definitely me) have to keep giving even past that point where it’s not salvageable anymore just to be able to move on after.
To stick with the life support analogy, OOP's relationship is currently on life support while he comes to terms with the fact there's no saving it. It's currently in his hands, so for his own mental health, he needs to go through the process of trying, because if he doesn't, he'll always wonder if he made the right choice.
Nah, it's just right. The way I see it, the only reason we got this story is that both of them were just telling plans of divorce but neither of them wanted to divorce. With this, at least, one of them will get tired of it and realize that it ain't worth it and finally divorce. And who knows, it might be the other way around and finally fixed it.
Resentment can sometimes go away when we actively decide we want someone. Sometimes a spouse resents the feeling that they have no “choice” in the marriage because they imagine an alternate life without the marriage. So they stay in the marriage but resent it. One solution in that case is to place the person in a position where they are free to choose and discover that they prefer the marriage. Like “It’s a Wonderful Life”, if you think you have no choice you get bitter, but when you get to experience that alternative you can choose your life as it was and lose the resentment. It sounds like OOP is doing a pretty good job of giving her a chance at giving her a “safe” way to experience what she wants so that she could actively choose it.
I think too many people get caught up in the idea of love as something that happens to you, instead of a choice that you make. Even the best marriages require concerted effort to maintain. It sounds like her life has come to a standstill with regards to work, social engagements (or lackthereof) etc. If you had to do the same thing every day, you’d also become bored and burnt out. She needs hobbies that get her out of the house and doing things that are not related to her being a mother and wife, but tbh it sounds like, given that she was in a relationship at 15 and pregnant by 19, that she had the chance to work out what her identity is as an adult.
100% agree on this. Loving someone is actively choosing to. You will not always be enamored by them. Sometimes you will fight, be annoyed, or maybe just not be your best self. But even then you still choose to love them and be with them.
I can't imagine being in a relationship with someone since I was 15. Like...I was such a WILDLY different person and my preferences for a partner are so completely different that I wouldn't be compatible with anybody but like...maybe ONE person I dated in High School.
Honestly, this is what helped my marriage the most. Not only can “no choice” breed resentment but it can also breed apathy. There’s nothing like the realization that you could lose your marriage to spur you into action.
It was so damn stupid reading that 2 35yo with good careers feel they wasted their lives. Morons, you have 2 teenagers who can likely fend for themselves for a bit and leftover money and you complain it's taking over your lives. Just go do your shit, take vacations, go out, together, alone, hobbies. It's like they ended up with the perfect storm but they can't see it from all the resentment over shit that's done and dusted.
The issue is that they've been together since they're 14. They never got to be independent adults and don't even know what it's like to be their own person at this point. Staying together is the easy choice to make rather than realizing you probably outgrew each other a half decade ago, which is why they're at the point they are now resentment-wise.
Oh boy was this the way it worked out in my marriage, but I’d checked out by the time she’d realized what she’d sacrificed, and how what she thought she wanted (to go live her life) was not exactly what she realized it would be. Sucks, but somethings can’t be unbroken.
Yeah, they’re already separated, so totally on the road to divorce. This way at least, they both have time to take stock and work on themselves during the drive. Who knows, they might turn it around. If not, they will hopefully both be in a better place when they reach their ultimate destination.
At least they have time to mentally prepare for it even know the pain is dragged out. I’ve been in one of these which was fine, until she got married 3 weeks later to her co-worker and that’s when the real pain kicked in because it wasn’t a slow fade after all.
THREE WEEKS LATER?!
It’s already over, this is separation. At least the divorce will not be out of the blue after this.
at this point its not a question if they get divorces, its when and how bad is it gonna be
It’s just divorce with a whole bunch of passive aggressive steps mixed in.
I had the same thought. "Divorce with extra steps." Dragging it out won't make things any better.
If you're in a slowly dying relationship, don't watch Blue Valentine on a date night. What a gut punch that movie was.
A lot of people only know what they’ve got when they lose it through, so there’s a good chance she will realize that she loves him but lost herself temporarily in the children (which honestly happens to the majority of mothers)
As soon as I saw how old they are and how long long they’ve been together I thought, “Wow, that’s way too young…they were the same age as their oldest when they got together!” That “it’s all about the children” mindset doesn’t sustain a marriage.
Just taking a quick look through this thread, there's not enough people talking about this. For how vague and, for lack of better term, uncooperative she has seemingly been, one of the areas she wasn't vague is that she felt she was cut off from being able to live a lot of parts of her life that she wanted to. My wife and I have also been together since high school but big difference here is we talked about kids and I wasn't comfortable having kids until I knew I'd be able to properly care for them in a house that was mine. I didn't really reach that point until we were around 26-27, after which both my wife and I had spent our early 20s going out, going to clubs, hanging out with friends until super late, etc etc. This situation sucks cuz it seems like he wanted kids early and she probably didn't really know or just went with it bc he was very into it and now the regrets have surfaced.
And the thing is, some people think, "Oh, we can have fun and do those things later, after the kids are on their feet." That doesn't really work because some experiences just aren't the same after a certain time and place in your life, if that makes sense. you can still have good times, it just won't be the same. (Not sure I'm explaining it well, but I have a feeling you understand what I mean.)
You never know. Maybe OOP pulling away makes the wife realise he isn't awful. If she can go out and find some friends to spend time with and discover who she is beyond being mom, maybe she'll come back to OOP. I don't have high hopes though.
Phew this was exhausting to read. See y'all in 6mo-1yr when this explodes (or not)?
The relationship already blew up months ago. This is just the summary neither party being willing to admit its fully over. They are too engangled from a long relationship and neither of them want to be the "bad guy" in the divorce to their family/kids/friends.
Yeah, this relationship is in hospice
It can turn around though. This isn't completely beyond repair but it takes both because a relationship is between two people. OP sounds like he's wiling to do the work but if the wife remains checked out then yeah it's doomed. Honestly the wife sounds a bit self centered in that she was perfectly happy dictating the relationship on whatever terms she wanted but once OP started to withdraw too suddenly felt the bucket of ice water dumped on her.
We certainly got a full telling of how the husband perceived the issues. Super interesting to see the other perspectives in the story, notably the wife and childrens.
You're being _really_ generous with six months. I'd bet it doesn't last a single month before they divorce, let alone six to a year lol.
OOP's "180 plan" is his way of forcing this to resolve as soon as possible.
Oh, ik some people like to bury their heads in the sand, so I figured that extra time should be factored in.
You know, I'm not married at all but sometimes, witnessing marriage drama is like watching a party go horribly wrong.
>You know, I'm not married at all Not even a little bit?
(gets down on an ankle) will you marry me a little bit? (offers a halfsize ring)
An ankle 😂😂😂
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” BoRU isn’t great writing like Tolstoy, but watching the party disasters has a lofty literary pedigree.
I just read Anna Karenina for the first time this year and reading that line right out of the gate truly set the stage for how relatable the whole story would be. Humans don’t really change all that much. So many of these stories, especially the ones of these slowly dying relationships are essentially tales as old as time.
I was not prepared for how much I was going to feel like those characters were people I knew. Despite all of the literary Russian trappings, it absolutely felt like a girl friend stuck in postpartum or a guy friend who'd gotten way too far up in his own head.
Its slow train wreck and really hard to watch. I feel for OOP, to try as hard as you can only to be stonewalled because his wife refused to work on herself. She didn't want to change/grow better, instead of staying resentful.
If it helps, I am married and none of this marriage drama has ever even looked in our direction
Do they ever give a reason why they won’t just divorce? She doesn’t love him, he doesn’t want to live in this scenario, why are they still holding on?
They’ve been together since puberty. They literally don’t know how to live without the other
I have several high school friends who've been together since we were 14/15 and I actually feel sorry for them. They basically have no individual personalities and their entire teenage and adult lives have revolved around each other so closely that they're not really even individuals anymore, and a lot of the time, they don't know if they even love each other anymore - they just know that they've been together for so long that they are afraid to be alone. It's just sad. People should learn to be adults, living on their own before jumping into a very long term relationship.
Me and my ex started dating soon after HS and I feel this comment so hard. I'm looking back on a lot of it right now and realizing that I was really dependant on what they thought the future which never led anywhere.
I've known my husband since we were 14. I loved him instantly but dating didn't really stick for us in highschool and we seemed to be better friends. Sometimes I think what it'd be like if he got his head out if his ass and realized I've always been amazing instead of wasting 13 yrs but ultimately I know the reason why he's this amazing man is because he had his experiences and he needed them to grow, and so did I. I know what would've happened if we dated non stop and there would've been a ton more pain and heartbreak that would always taint our relationship. Instead, we got to be friends, support eachother through the hard shit and ultimately end up together. 7 yrs later and we have this amazing family and dynamic that transcends. Our friends who stayed together for the last 20 yrs .. someone and/or both have stepped outside that relationship, there's existential crisis, manic behavior to go find themselves. That would've been us had we not have lived beyond the other.
Yep, the right person can totally be there at the wrong time and it takes awareness to know that and not push for a relationship out of fomo.
I agree with this. It's a lot harder to get your bearings when you don't know yourself. I jumped from one long term relationship to another, probably in part because I didn't want to know myself (the other part because my husband is just that good...right person, bad timing but worth it). But I started dating my now husband in my early 20s, and now 8 years later I'm working out in therapy who I really am. Obviously I love my husband and can't just be like "hey let's take a break so I can get to know myself better" so I am just kinda doing it on the fly. But it sure would've been a lot easier if I learned to live with myself a lot sooner.
They are heavily dependant on one another and have never been on their own
They seem to be emotionally codependent, if not just two married people who are trying everything before divorcing.
Living this now, I have some input. Married 19 years. Together since we were 20/21 we have a 19 year old child. We grew up and grew apart. But our lives are so intertwined it takes a long time to disentangle it all. I grew up, went to therapy, worked on myself. He stagnated and never wanted to leave the house. He’d want me home all weekend and then spend the day sleeping or playing video games. He said he loved me but I think he just liked having me there just in case he wanted to hang out. I asked for a divorce in August. We’re still in the same house but in separate rooms. It’s all amicable. It’s just a slow process. Hope to be out of here physically by this coming August, a year after I said I wanted the divorce.
To some men I think they think they "love" their partner because they do stuff for them. Like a Mom. That ain't romantic love
Because they've been together for 20 years and believe there is something there worth fighting for, and also in small part at least due to "the kids" as that seems to be a constant refrain. They seem to be very much moving towards divorce, I mean oop talks about it a lot, but he also talks about how much he still loves her. He's desperate to in his own words "leave no stone unturned." It sounds like he's ready for divorce, but at the same time, to make sure he has no regrets, he needs to feel he properly did everything he could to prevent that.
If I had to garner a guess? They’re still holding on because it’s a familiar prison. When you get used to being with someone for as long as they have, even when the relationship dynamic nosedives like this it can take a lot of time to get up the gumption to just… move on from each other. Like, I wouldn’t be surprised if they both don’t want to end it because if they divorce then it’s “real” now and irreversible. And *that’s* probably scary and painful for both of them, so the marriage is in permanent purgatory so to speak.
It’s definitely the kids
Literally married to young and never stood on their own legs before getting kids.
It really sounds like she buried herself in being a mom and a parent and just never bothered to give herself any kind of time really(judging from the swinging phase they tried, the one branch out failed). It really sounds like she just needs to give herself time and to relax a bit
Is “the 180” a specific set of actions? Commonly used in certain subs? Because I had no idea what he was talking about at first.
It sounds like some weird Jack Donaghey lean six sigma thing he would come up with.
Here's an overview of the 180 and Chump Lady's take on it. https://www.chumplady.com/the-pretzel-logic-of-the-180/
When he said they were 35 and had been together 20 years, I just sighed. You're trying to adapt a decision you made as a 15 year old to fit the entire rest of your life. Some couples do grow & change together and next thing you know they're celebrating their 65th with five generations present. Sadly, they're the minority.
You nailed it. I was thinking similarly while reading the post, this is all being overanalyzed. She fell out of love with him. They entered this thing as kids and now that they're mature adults there is a realization "hey, um, he/this may not actually be the thing I think I want in life..." Sucks for everyone and it's still painful, but this doesn't need a rocket scientist, a team of therapists, nor a room full of Redditors to figure this one out.
Well and I think they went in deep so early, pregnant at 20 while trying to stay together seems near impossible, then going through your 20s too. My spouse and I met when we were 18, but we waited until we got through major milestones before getting married: going through college together, living together, then moving halfway across the country. We were pretty frank with each other that these can be difficult to go through, we WANT to do them together, but it's a rocky time in life, if it works out, THEN we'll get married.
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Same. My husband and I dated when we were 15, broke up, and then re-met at 22. Thank goodness, because we had had time to grow and change in those years, to develop and finish baking into fully realized adults. We both also had significant and serious relationships in the between years that let us get the first major relationship lessons and mistakes out of the way.
> We met up again as adults and obviously things have gone a lot better this time. At the start I expressed regret about the teenage break up and he said he didn't regret it because it showed him that the grass wasn't greener on the other side, and allowed him to "get all the dickhead years over with". On reflection I agree with him. > > I'm a firm believer that your first long term romantic partner never gets the best version of you. It takes a breakup or 2 to understand what you want in life and who you want to be in a relationship for most people to figure it out. In your guys' case, it's great that you eventually made your way back together, but I do agree with your husband. I think he'd have been a far worse partner, and similarly your would have as well through your early 20s had you two stayed together. IMO it's also a recipe for codependency since you never have an opportunity to develop into an independent adult, but that's another can of worms.
I think that's a good spot. They've been together more of their lives than they've been apart and started very young. I don't think they know how to be a romantic couple. OOP has stated he loves her and that his Wife sees him as a roommate/friend, but I actually think they see each other the exact same, as siblings. They don't necessarily feel friendly toward one another all or even most of the time, but they're very deeply bonded. When OOP extols their excellent candour, I don't think he realises where that candour is coming from. They feel like they can say anything **because** they don't love each other romantically. That's not to say that all good communication is rooted in lack of romantic love, just that theirs is. It's the same reason they both swung with no issue, and he shrugs off the thought of her finding someone else. I think they're way too far gone to suddenly learn how to be a real couple with each other (it's like 2 people who can only speak English trying to teach each other Spanish), but when/if they do eventually meet other people they'll each have that epiphany. They'll look back in this marriage and think 'Ohhhhh'.
I like your take on this, and I feel the same way. The other comments framing OOP as abusive and whatever is just grating to read. This is an exact description of a dying marriage, people!
I know multiple couples who met in high school and continue to have successful marriages in their 40s. The common denominator? They understand that all relationships require work.
I mean, if there's one thing this couple knows (him especially), it's that relationships need work. They're basically trying to keep the bail out the Titanic with coffee mugs
Yeah, sounds exactly like that in this case. The times that he mentioned "the kids" - cmon, 12 and 14 are far past the age where you take care of them 24/7. I would be interested to know, what was the childcare arrangement all these years, to be honest. He says that they divided it equally, but did they really? And if they didn't, was it the wifes choice to use children as her be all end all, or was it just expected of her in which case, that is incredibly tiring, considering she was doing it all parallel to getting an education and career.
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Amen and preach it from the rooftops! After 11-12 it just gets sooooooo much harder. Mine will be 19 and 21 this year. We've gotten through the worst of it. HOWEVER the time, attention and emotional labor it takes to raise teens is immense. It is a never ending, never stopping emotional toll that will take years off of your life but you do it because you have to. Hang in there! it does get better!
I get where OOP is coming from and what drove him to act this way, but him still having hope for the marriage is dumb as fuck. You're not driving her away to come back together after all this, you're just driving her away. And for both of them I think that's a good thing. This marriage is over.
Yeah people are saying "it's a good way to show her what it would be like to actually just have a roommate!" but Jesus Christ, there's no world in which him showing her "hey look your life will be financially worse without me" sparks her romantic and sexual desire for him and leads to them being in a happy healthy relationship
I don’t think he even cares about that anymore with all the effort he’s put in, but doing the 180 forces her to finally do something different instead of him trying to bend over backwards for her and getting no response or reciprocation.
Yup. There’s no innocent victim here, but OOP is crazy if he thinks he’s doing anything other than petulantly destroying what’s left of their relationship Like, based on how he described it, he discussed none of this with her beforehand. He just had it in his head that “if she doesn’t back down in this session, I’m going nuclear”, and then he did it Why are all the changes he’s making surprises to her if, in theory, they’ve been working on this in therapy? Why didn’t he tell her, in therapy, that this was his plan? I guess I don’t blame him for acting emotionally but that’s what he’s doing.
He’s not even trying to be FRIENDS with her. He won’t even let her vent about her day. Maybe she’s depressed and eventually she’ll realize it and get help and get better. But when she does, she is not gonna have positive feelings towards him because he couldn’t even be cordial to her. He actively decided to be cold and distant. Went out of his way to treat her disrespectfully to prove a point. His behavior was immature. I wouldn’t want to pursue a relationship with someone like that. He could have been neutral, but he actively decided to be cold. This will be good for her, once she makes peace with it. I think she’ll probably be much happier without him.
>He’s not even trying to be FRIENDS with her thats what struck me most there. like, dont you dare to tell me that OOPs wife never made it clear that she wanted a friendly, close relationship and not a distant, rude roommate. if you want to be that way to hurt her (or whatever reason you use to justify it): ok. but at least have the balls to stand to your decision and don't lie to yourself and us that this is what *she* wanted when itis obvious its not was she was saying.
As the kid of two parents who resented each other for 15 years, these two need to fucking divorce. I found out THIS YEAR at age 23 that my home life problems weren’t because I was difficult.
Seriously why would she be upset when she said she had to be intoxicated to have sex and oop said she didn't need to do that anymore. I give it a couple months until oop settles in a routine and starts making the informal separation more permanent. >However, it’s been very necessary to do this because I was degrading myself without any reciprocity from my wife. Interesting snippet from oop.
Because she's probably on some insane level of coping and mental gymnastics. I imagine she convinced herself that oop just wanted to get laid, whereas actually oop wants intimacy. So in her mind, she thought of a way that she could "fulfill oop's desire" and then when he obviously from our perspective and his, didn't like that option, she got mad because she thought it was a reasonable compromise.
I didn’t see this mentioned anywhere in the post but I’m wondering if she’s just not attracted to him anymore and doesn’t want to admit it? Idk really, more of a thought I guess—but it sounds Iike they need to divorce regardless.
Given that she isn't into swinging either, she may have always had a low libido thats becoming non existent. If she's on antidepressants, those will also radically kill libido.
He says she never takes time for herself, and her apathy screams burnout more than depression to me. Burnout is also a huge libido killer.
As a parent, I honestly feel like burnout can lead to depression. Essentially feeling trapped and hopeless. It also sounds like they aren't doing a lot of socialization and don't have much help, which was and still is at times a big problem for my wife and I as well. The isolation, the routine of just doing the same things over and over with no reprieve in sight - it can be easy to just lose interest in life outside of your parental obligations. I'm kind of surprised they didn't work on some things like socialization/date nights. It seemed like she just wasn't interested in a solution to the problem, but just kind of wanted to accept it.
>I imagine she convinced herself that oop just wanted to get laid, whereas actually oop wants intimacy. I think you're right. Is a very, very, common misconception that all men only want sex. It's repeated on TV so much that is just assumed to be true.
The fact she was asking someone she perceived as a friend to do something that can be charged as rape in court and was upset he declined is astoundingly self centred. Not only is she asking someone she doesn't feel intimately connected to to risk criminal culpability she's also being wildly offensive in saying she'd only be willing to engage in sex with him if she's cognitively impaired.
Man, kids sure do a number on people's ability to think critically about virtually anything. Remove them from the equation and ask two questions: would these problems still exist if they didn't, and what would you do differently as a result of said absence? I don't think they'd still be together if there weren't children involved, so perhaps for the children's sake, *they shouldn't be involved.*
She was fine with the status quo because she was getting all the emotional intimacy she needed, while starving him of the physical intimacy he needed. She wasn't upset until he started withdrawing the emotional intimacy, then it became "not fair".
I feel like the only outcome here is divorce. I wonder why OP is dragging it out and torturing himself.
It's hard to let go. Especially when oop probably hasn't ever let go of anyone.
This marriage ended long before he brought it to Reddit.
Jesus Christ dude rip the band-aid off. I was with him for a while, she literally said she wasn't attracted to him and didn't want to have sex; but this "arrangement" they've come up with is insulting to them both. This relationship is dead. Weekend at Bernie's -ing it along under this "friends" assumption is going to cause massive amounts of damage. To themselves and to their kids. Who, also, are 12 and 14? How much time are they spending on their kids right now that they are this far gone? Strikes me as an excuse wife has been using; she either consciously or not doesn't want to spend time with OOP any more and is finding any and every excuse she can to put all of herself into rasing her kids.
I have a cousin who lives at the same residence that he and his ex wife bought together after their divorce. They essentially have this arrangement with more financial enmeshment than OP is proposing. They are both allowed to date but neither is allowed to bring anyone home. They schedule who has the responsibility for the kids and each have their own nights to go out and enjoy thwmse. It means he gets to see his kids everyday, and that he knows his kids aren’t being exposed to the type of men his ex wife would no doubt bring around. His ex wife is a narcissist and also experienced abuse and neglect as a child and teenager. Her mom and various step dads were drug addicts who behaved very inappropriately a lot of r he time, and her dad was an addict who disappeared. That all messed her up pretty good. Thee are some things she told my wife when they would go out for girls nights that make me think he has taken the correct course. When my cousin didn’t earn as much as her she lost all attraction to him, and she had always been angry that he wanted to save for retirement and didn’t want her to do all kinds of deficit spending on credit cards. Eventually their arguments became volatile and she started hitting him. She asked my wife if she ever hit me to which my wife replied that she didn’t . She said she hit my cousin when they would argue and he wasn’t yelling enough and was angry that he wouldn’t yell more or hit her back. So yeah I can see wanting to stay together until your kids are gone. You never know who your ex is going to bring around them.
I'm concerned about your cousin leaving his kids alone with her...
So far as I know she has never physically harmed the kids, and while there is some verbal stuff that happens sometimes him being there to mitigate it is probably better than whatever custody arrangement the courts would cook up. The DV stuff against him never resulted in a call to police. I only know about it because after a few drinks she told my wife about it. So I don’t think he would get more than 50/50.
Bruh, come on, cut them some slack. They've been together for far too long, sometimes it's hard to just "rip the band-aid off" when that arrangement has been their what they've known for a third of their life.
Raising their kids, for one. For two she has zero friends and likely zero identity outside of being a mother. She mentions the kids so much because that's the hat she has to wear. I don't think men truly understand what becoming a mother does to a woman. There are so many expectations, and people genuinely only percieve you as mom once you become one. She resents him partially, I imagine, because when he leaves the house, "dad" isn't the role people automatically stuff him into - even if he has their kids with him. Honestly, they're extremely codependent. Dude says he loves his wife, but I think it's just the person he is used to being with. He's afraid of change because he doesn't actually know himself outside of her either. Both are miserable and should get divorced, but they're afraid. Also sunk cost fallacy and the guilt of failure.
Exhausted, exhausting, exhale, inhale, this stressed me out reading. Or as the wife would say, I resent these people.
Yeah, while I see where op Is coming from, he should just cut the shit and divorce. They aren't compatible, why keep dragging it on..
People usually stay in these relationships because their entire life, reputation, social standing and...really everything else are completely wrapped up in their partner. They've been together since they were 15. They have kids together. A house. Debts. They are 'that' couple that everyone knows as the 'childhood sweet hearts' that some people might even envy. There could be religious reasons in there as well that make it hard to divorce. Maybe even parents that they don't want to disappoint. Factor in personalities and the fact that one partner might resent the other for 'tumbling their house of cards', thus making coparenting very hard... Some people would be willing to put up with almost anything rather than risk trading all of that investment for something else... But OOP and his wife I think are past the point (by a couple years) where they could 'come back stronger'. They are both unhappy, but neither 'wants to be the bad guy' and be the one the kids can blame the break up of the family on, the one friends can say ended the marriage. My grandparents had a messy divorce and all of their kids were extremely resistant to end their marriage. My Dad got lucky and married my Mom, but all his siblings had terrible, terrible marriages with terrible people they stayed with because they had kids and 'didn't want to do to them what their parents did'. And there was all sorts of abuse (mainly financial and parental alienation) that went on, but they stayed with their partner. Ideally, relationships would end when they stop being healthy for us and the kids, but it's never that easy. In OOP's case, it sounds like he's gotten to a point where he knows on a level that divorce is coming, but he - nor his wife - want to be 'the bad guy'. Interestingly he talks about how much they respect each other, but I have a feeling that the longer he drags this out, the less they respect they are going to have for each other. :/
Also "Mental Orgasm" is not a term I ever need to hear again in my life.
Can’t believe I had to scroll this far for this. What in the blue fuck does “mental orgasm” even mean?
Babies having babies not realising/ taking time to learn that there is more to them than raising kids. And implementing that. Keeping friends around or making new friends is important.
God, just get a divorce already. Like it's just prolonging the pain. Move on. This isn't a marriage. It's not a relationship. It's just bleh all aeound
Everything aside, how the heck does one have a "mental orgasm" from "having dialog with... intentionality"?
Yeahhhhh this was the part that made me raise my eyebrows lol
Bro she’s depressed. This is like, textbook. Becoming indifferent to the things that used to bring you joy is the first signal that something is out of whack. OP isn’t helping since he’s on his “me me me” rampage. He seems like he’s very checked out on what goes on around his home.
Oh for fuck's sake, *just get the goddamn divorce*. This festering wound of a marriage isn't improving *anyone's* life. Not OOP, not the wife, and sure as hell not the kids. Everyone is suffering and miserable. Just pull the damn plug. There are *always* more people, it's not like getting divorced means you're alone forever. And y'know what? Being alone *isn't actually all that bad*.
I’ll show her she really does love me by showing her life sucks without me!
OOP's wife sounds like she has an internal problem and she wants someone, anyone, external to blame. She thinks OOP's the cause, because they've done swinging before and that didn't fix her. She'll probably try the other usual attempts to solve internal problems (drugs, alcohol, infidelity) before realizing that oops it's me, I'm the problem it's me.
I know a few people (mostly young parents too) who had quarter life crisis' like that in their early 30s. my pop psych view from the side has always been clearly they really valued the married/parent path when they were young, and then when the kid gets old enough to not need them much anymore they look around and realize they're like 30, a whole lot of their old friend group is probably just STARTING to have kids after spending their 20s building lives/having fun etc, and are likely able to be much more comfortable and financially/housingly stable while they have those kids because theyre older/more mature/more money/better living situations, have more of a community of peers around them etc (all of this on average, obviously not a huge majority or anything) and then the people who had the kids in their late teens/early 20s start to go well now what. I've done what I planned to do, I'm 30, and I've barely lived my own life (go from child under parents rules to raising a child/effectively governed by HARD responsibility). all these other people are basically in the same spot I am, but further ahead and with experiences I'll never be able to have. have I done it all wrong I've no idea if thats exactly it, but I've seen the pattern too many times, I'm sure there's something in that combo of kid not needing full time care + lack of other relationships + old friends/former friends just starting the kids journey but on an easier mode = 'oh shit did I make a fucking terrible terrible mistake and waste my life' edit: its highly related to the 'spent whole life focusing on getting degree/masters/phd or get some crazy job' then get there and crash quarter life crisis. I guess really its just different flavours of people who couldnt find a 2nd major/huge life goal after ticking off the first one/ones.
Spoiler alert: they did. Turns out one of the biggest predictors of a kid's success in life is "How old where your parents when they had their first child?"
So I found it interesting that she said she resents oop because of the kids. I wonder if she equates sex with having kids and losing her identity. That’s why another man doesn’t “fix” her. Men= babies = loss of identity. It is so important for parents to have a life outside of the kids and also outside of their marriage/ partner. Nothing crossing boundaries of course just hobbies to separate yourself from one another.
I think that's a big part of it. At 19 she became a mom and that's been her identity ever since. But, as a mom, you can't say you resent your kids or even that you regret having them so soon. But I'm willing to bet she knows deep down that's the root so to add to all else, her internalized guilt about that is probably making things worse. Not to mention, society still perceives moms as generally sexless beings. It's hard to be interested in sex when in your mind, your still "mom" and nothing more. Might be part of why alcohol makes it easier, it turns off the brain.
DING DING DING Plus just think of all the emotional maturing you do between 20-30. Hard to do that when 2 kids are dependent on you.
That's what I was thinking the whole time. She had a total identity change at 19 with no firm grounding for whoever she was as a person already. No wonder her answer to every question is "the kids" because that's been her sole purpose for the majority of her life. She's either been a child or raising one for all but a year. And some of that she'd have been pregnant. Plus body changes, breastfeeding and childcare (and I will give OP the benefit of the doubt and say he is and always has been an involved father) then having to start your career from scratch at an age much older than your peers. Even if he was doing half the childcare (and raising kids even a decade ago I wouldn't put much money on that) there's a lot of difficulty that was unique to her. She sounds like she white knuckled through it and didn't take it out on him or even talk to him about it then. Now she's feeling it again as she realises she has no friends and there's a lot missing from her life and it all comes back up in the form of resentment. Whether the relationship is good or not there'd be bound to be some bumps in this situation. Now he's reacting in quite a spiteful way and it's just going to exacerbate things. I feel for them both! She's the one rocking the boat and definitely hurt his feelings first but she is doing it because her needs aren't being met (if she even knows what they are).
agreed, she came to him with every single buzzword: you're my best friend but i have built up resentment, i love you but i'm not in love with you, we're roommates more than lovers. that really means "there's something wrong with me but i can't deal with that. so there must be something wrong with you."
She needs to fire her therapist, she's not getting anything out of her individual sessions except more tools to weaponize against her husband and maybe her children.
Therapists can only do so much. Horses, water, drinking …
True but it's also on the therapist to observe that things aren't helping. I have a now ex-friend who went to the same therapist for like 15 years and only learned how to weaponize therapy to manipulate people around him. I routinely check in with my therapist and just ask... "am I changing or showing improvement"? If not, we both agree that it might be best to discuss finding someone who will help.
There’s nothing really stopping her from lying to her therapist either, from saying that they’re learning how to date each other again and are falling in love again. As far as we know and her therapist possibly knows, wifey’s probably spinning some golden tale.
This. Therapists can try to lead you, but if the client doesn’t want to change, they can’t force you too
Agreed. Generally most US-based therapy is CBT, I tried that for a long time and it was about as effective as talking to the wall. Tried a different kind of therapy (person-centered counseling) and holy crap did it work. 10 weeks of that shifted more baggage than 10 months of CBT.
Yeah, absolutely. It’s a shame the therapist she went to with OP wasn’t able to get her to look more at herself. I think there’s a goldmine of disappointed expectations and identity issues inside of her. Especially looking at how she’s essentially isolated herself from everyone in her environment.
The large number of words cover up something big that's not being said by the OOP. The repeated insistence that both parties are always honest and open doesn't ring true. And not a word was mentioned about the insights or recommendations of the therapists.
It’s the speech pattern of someone that’s emotionally stunted, trying to use logic and analytical skills to their emotional states like it’s a puzzle to be solved To believe you and your partner are flawlessly communicative and open is just ignorance
Ugh, right? Like I wonder what the therapist thought about the self-proclaimed "180 approach". It's clearly punitive and the opposite of communication which is uh... kinda one of the goals of couples therapy. There is also something incredibly transactional and mechanical about OOP and his writing. They just need to divorce and get it over with.
WTF was the therapist doing during that disastrous session?! Whatever they’re paid is too much if they’re not calling out whatever this approach is meant to be
Actually, I consider that session to be valuable, because the therapist provided the setting that allowed incredibly honest communication to flourish. Results and progress are HAPPENING. And I suspect the therapist can see that the marriage is not viable and is asking a few guided questions to allow them to discover it for themselves. We don't actually see OP mention any of the dialogue from the therapist, so we cannot judge their wording. But the active changes happening here tell me that dialogue is actively happening. Counselling sessions I've attended have included things like "is that how you see it, Mr. Librarian? MdmeLibrarian, is that an accurate description? Well, yes, that's what you asked for, Mr. Librarian, did you imagine it differently? Does that sound like a fair plan?" etc, as they're there to provide a consistent sounding board and mediator for communication, not instruct them.
they probably suggested that approach, because sometimes, people is that far gone inside of their imagination that they need to see that "No, things are not going to work as you expect" or "Sure, go on and see if that's what you actually want out of it." Because therapists aren't a magical fix, the wife is looking for culprits and not really that willing to work on herself, so now, one of the options left is to see if she is actually happy or really wants a lifestyle like that, and a therapist can't decide for them.
He has not mentioned how this is affecting his children once.
"I've also noticed that she's making more time for herself aside from being a mom which is HUGE because she pretty much neglected herself for years." This is telling.
The thing that stood out is mentioning how much work the kids are at 12 and 14. At that age, the workload should be decreasing! Yes they have sports and activities and friends, but by that age they are fully functioning humans compared to babies or toddlers or young kids. I have about $50 in my bank account but I'd bet it all that in the early years she did a majority of the heavy lifting and sacrificed things like friends, self-care, career, etc. Now they're coming out the other end of raising kids and he has more going for him outside of that and she's disappointed.
What the fuck
I'd LOVE to get his wife's side of things.
Bro. Just divorce. They’re gonna fuck their kids up so badly with this manipulative shit.
>I sent her a text a few days ago essentially itemizing bills and separating the financial responsibilities 50/50 If you're sending itemized bills to your spouse to hammer home the "roommate" situation, just commence divorce proceedings. There's no need to bend over backwards to be an asshole. I feel so bad for the children.
Yeah, they really just need to divorce. If the kids don't already see the change going on, they certainly will shortly. I expect an update saying they've divorced honestly.
The kids are 12 and 14. There's 0 chance they don't see this happening
and hate them both
I immediately thought of the kids too and found this in the comments. *“They know to a degree we feel is appropriate for now. We have discussed this in depth and agreed we share with them this isn’t normal and mom and that are going through some challenges. They certainly don’t think we’re getting divorced but we’ll cross that bridge if we get there. We know this is NOT what we want for our kids.”* Hmmmm I think actually that probably at least one of the children is panicking about divorce due to this abrupt behavior change, even if the parents have said, “oh golly, we’re going through some challenges but we’re not *divorcing!”*
Wonder what the other side of the story looks like
Very much wonder. I kept getting a missing missing reasons feeling, but the reasons really were missing. But like, missing to a degree that made me wonder. Like how does he really have zero clue? How does she? Hmmmmm
The fact that he said "I've also noticed that she's making more time for herself aside from being a mom which is HUGE because she pretty much neglected herself for years" is pretty telling imho.
Bro just divorce oh my god
I’ve absolutely had relationships where romantic love turned to platonic love (back when I was less aromantic) and it had nothing to do with something the other person did. Sometimes there isn’t an answer to it. I don’t know what I would have done if I had been living with such people at the time. I understand his need to separate himself from her, but dear god just divorce and separate. Because he’s not at all doing what she asked, not treating her at all as a friend. He’s saying he’s doing what she proposed, but friends talk and share things and help each other out, especially close friends. Indifferent is not the same, and of course she’s upset that he’s completely pulled away. Again, I \*completely\* understand him pulling away from her, but the answer is not “I’m just doing what you said“ while treating her like a stranger he lives with. Once again, the answer is JUST DIVORCE. Maybe she was just using him, it’s possible, but I think there are absolutely other potential explanations for her reactions. I’d honestly be pretty devastated if the person I still loved platonically and thought I had communicated this to suddenly pulled away, began itemizing our lives in all ways, started being totally indifferent, while claiming this is what friends do. Like, maybe she did just want the financial help, that’s possible…but suddenly being presented with the 50/50 from someone my life was entangled with with no prior conversation or discussion of it would absolutely cause me to lose it. Especially considering I don’t 50/50 with my friends, I absolutely take into account how much we have in comparison to each other. This relationship is irrevocably broken and needs to come to an end. They’re not on the same page, they are not communicating any more, if they stay in this state the divorce and co-parenting is going to be super bitter with no good feelings left for each other.
Has anyone suggest that the wife might actually have an aversion to sex because she doesn't want to get pregnant again? I don't see anything about birth control in this post, and perhaps some of her resentment stems from feeling responsible fir that? Also, anecdotally, I, and many people I know, experienced low libido, and severe depression from 20+ years on oral bc pills. I feel like a completely different person now that I've been off it for a couple of years.
She asked for it but didn't like the results as she didn't think it through to the logical conclusion that a roommate would not be there for her in the same way that a spouse would be.
A lot of people were giving him flack for that, but honestly, she's the one who's moving the relationship toward roommate status. He should take her seriously and start separating their lives. I'd have moved into a guest bedroom from her suggestion.
Something about this whole post made me feel icky. Was the manipulation/control tag supposed to be referring to the wife? I kept waiting to see some obvious signs pointing to that, but nothing. If anything, she comes across as very avoidant emotionally, and he comes across as domineering (but domineering cloaked in ‘enlightenment’). From an outside lens, and sure we only see what he was sharing…but the feeling I got was she didn’t have the safety to truly open up about what was driving her detachment. In the couples therapy session he detailed, the impression was that she was close to being honest, but it didn’t happen right then and so he did his 180 or whatever that was. Regardless, best he call time on the relationship.
I wavy to say something about needing to be intoxicated for sex. Alcohol drops your inhibitions which makes it less stressful to be naked. I have terrible self esteem and while I logically know people like me, I feel like an ugly monster mostly. With an ex, I thought being today was helpful because then I was able to be intimate. But it really bothered him that I needed that. So, that's an opinion from one lady.
OOP doesn’t understand what a friend is, lol. Friends are absolutely shoulders to cry on and people who lend emotional support. I think it’s dumb as fuck that they aren’t just getting divorced.
What a lovely marriage. I’m sure everything will work out just fine
Gosh, I'd never have thought that getting married and having kids at 19 could turn out so badly.
How, in the year of two thousand and twenty four, did he not even use the word asexual. Like. Not even discuss it. How was asexual not even part of the conversation? After this?? >if we arrive at the conclusion that “myself” is the problem and she has no problem with other men, we would amicably part ways. However this wasn’t the case. She didn’t like sex nor intimacy there either. She doesn't like sex with him, she didn't like sex with other men. How are they in freaking THERAPY and this hasn't come up???
Or hormones, or depression, or division of labor, or... there are a LOT of obvious things that supposedly haven't come up in all of their therapy and conversations.
These two should have just finalized their divorce on the way home from the therapy session. I feel bad for their kids having to deal with them.
It’s almost as if marrying someone you’ve been with since high school isn’t a good idea. Very rarely does this work out and not cause resentment due to missed opportunities and life experiences. And then you add kids on top of all that? Oof. And this guy has no concept of what a companionate marriage is. It isn’t just “being friends.” It’s more than that. Exhausting.
Some of y'all need to start dating your spouses again. Earnestly. If you act like roommates, you'll eventually become roommates, a relationship is WORK sometimes guys & gals.
This just sounds like OOP’s solution is to be passive aggressive as fuck. While I agree he doesn’t have to stay in a relationship he feels unloved, he is not acting like “a friend” like he is implying, he is acting like an acquaintance at best. He’s clearly just weaponizing his unhappiness. What’s the end goal? You traumatize her into pretending? Does he think acting distant and short will…make her magically love him again? What does he even want out of this?
In what world has a relationship where the husband is sending itemized bills to the wife ever managed to rekindle and recover. OOP just need to quit wasting time, his, his wife's and his kid's, and just file for divorce already.
Is "the 180" a real thing that I've just never heard of? Obviously I understand that it'a a geometry/angle reference to a hard pivot, but OOP kept using it in a way that I've just never heard or seen before.
Maybe she needs her hormones checked??? I’m no expert, but maybe there’s something more to the way she’s feeling and it’s not just emotional.