Ok, I would love some help with one of life's dramas:
I am 40 and my wife is 39 and we just had our second child. So now we have kids of 2 months old and 2 years old.
Since our first child was born, our relationship has gone downhill fast - though we truly love the children and I believe we give them a lot of love. We were high school sweethearts and were married about 10 years before children and had some rough patches along the way - 3 stints in counseling. We never planned to have children as the relationship was very up and down but we had a little miracle 2 years ago and then surprise surprise one more. We were ill-equipped.
Here are the issues:
- My wife is overwhelmed - as I suspect anyone in her position would be - so I give her a lot of slack for that but it is certainly exacerbating the issues. We also just quit after about a year of weekly counseling which only seemed to make things worse
- My wife had a very tough time growing up. She was from a very abusive family with an alcoholic dad and a kowtowing (to him) mother. She experienced a lot of yelling, hitting and has foggy memories of sexual abuse (maybe from him, maybe not). During our courtship, I was the rescuer but somewhere along the line, she came to terms with what happened and has a very superficial relationship with her parents. They talk about how cute the kids are, how great everything is but haven't even touched on the fact that we are on the brink of divorce.
I would say the #1 issue in our marriage is my wife disapproving of how I treat them. I have a visceral reaction to her dad. I hate him for who he is (still an alcoholic) and I know that he is & was abusive. When I am around her family, I pull it together and I am polite but I certainly don't bend over backwards to be overly friendly. If they ask me how work is going I say "fine thanks" and that's it. I don't go to a lot of family gatherings and when I do, I often take a second car and leave early. I really can't stand them (the rest of them have an dynamic of where they just enable the dad and tell him how great he is -I guess that is common in alcoholic families). For me avoiding them is a protection mechanism against blowing up. I've talked about them in depth in my own therapy. My feelings toward them aren't changing but I didn't marry them.
My wife has made it an ultimatum that I need to be more friendly towards them, she won't accept my current stance of "look, I don't begrudge you spending time over there and I'm ok with the kids being there as long as they are never left alone and they never get in a car with him (she's ok with that), but I can't spend much time over there or I'll explode and that isn't gonna help anyone. We are stuck there.
Arguing: I can't ask my wife for any behavior modification without it turning into a super defensive outburst - at which she often screams and swears at me, she smashed our wedding picture into a lot of pieces this year. The behavior is unacceptable by any measure. She retorts by saying that my words are what drives her to it and if I didn't talk to her in that tone I wouldn't have to worry about her reaction.
Yesterday she left a knife in a very dangerous place for one of the kids and since my requests are usually attacked about the tone I used "it is not what you said, it's how you said it" I sent her a text with a picture of the knife, explained that I was worried about the kids and asked her to be more careful. She wrote back that she was surprised that I would bring that up without thanking her for nursing our youngest child all day and that all I am is negative.
Her behavior for me is indefensible on any level - baby or not.
So here I am. I don't think there is a chance her behavior ever improves. It may be good for a few days but when something upsets her it all comes out and I worry about the kids being in an environment of blowups and bickering.
-I hate the idea of the kids growing up divorced
- I do love a lot of her positive qualities: beautiful, smart, funny, caring
- I really hate the idea of a roller coaster life, for me, the kids and her (it was always a roller coaster but the blowups started to bother me a lot worse when they happened in front of the kis and all of the bickering too)
- My life is going by fast. I'm very unhappy in the marriage, relatively good looking and still in a position to find another mate.
What to do?
I am 40 and my wife is 39 and we just had our second child. So now we have kids of 2 months old and 2 years old.
Since our first child was born, our relationship has gone downhill fast - though we truly love the children and I believe we give them a lot of love. We were high school sweethearts and were married about 10 years before children and had some rough patches along the way - 3 stints in counseling. We never planned to have children as the relationship was very up and down but we had a little miracle 2 years ago and then surprise surprise one more. We were ill-equipped.
Here are the issues:
- My wife is overwhelmed - as I suspect anyone in her position would be - so I give her a lot of slack for that but it is certainly exacerbating the issues. We also just quit after about a year of weekly counseling which only seemed to make things worse
- My wife had a very tough time growing up. She was from a very abusive family with an alcoholic dad and a kowtowing (to him) mother. She experienced a lot of yelling, hitting and has foggy memories of sexual abuse (maybe from him, maybe not). During our courtship, I was the rescuer but somewhere along the line, she came to terms with what happened and has a very superficial relationship with her parents. They talk about how cute the kids are, how great everything is but haven't even touched on the fact that we are on the brink of divorce.
I would say the #1 issue in our marriage is my wife disapproving of how I treat them. I have a visceral reaction to her dad. I hate him for who he is (still an alcoholic) and I know that he is & was abusive. When I am around her family, I pull it together and I am polite but I certainly don't bend over backwards to be overly friendly. If they ask me how work is going I say "fine thanks" and that's it. I don't go to a lot of family gatherings and when I do, I often take a second car and leave early. I really can't stand them (the rest of them have an dynamic of where they just enable the dad and tell him how great he is -I guess that is common in alcoholic families). For me avoiding them is a protection mechanism against blowing up. I've talked about them in depth in my own therapy. My feelings toward them aren't changing but I didn't marry them.
My wife has made it an ultimatum that I need to be more friendly towards them, she won't accept my current stance of "look, I don't begrudge you spending time over there and I'm ok with the kids being there as long as they are never left alone and they never get in a car with him (she's ok with that), but I can't spend much time over there or I'll explode and that isn't gonna help anyone. We are stuck there.
Arguing: I can't ask my wife for any behavior modification without it turning into a super defensive outburst - at which she often screams and swears at me, she smashed our wedding picture into a lot of pieces this year. The behavior is unacceptable by any measure. She retorts by saying that my words are what drives her to it and if I didn't talk to her in that tone I wouldn't have to worry about her reaction.
Yesterday she left a knife in a very dangerous place for one of the kids and since my requests are usually attacked about the tone I used "it is not what you said, it's how you said it" I sent her a text with a picture of the knife, explained that I was worried about the kids and asked her to be more careful. She wrote back that she was surprised that I would bring that up without thanking her for nursing our youngest child all day and that all I am is negative.
Her behavior for me is indefensible on any level - baby or not.
So here I am. I don't think there is a chance her behavior ever improves. It may be good for a few days but when something upsets her it all comes out and I worry about the kids being in an environment of blowups and bickering.
-I hate the idea of the kids growing up divorced
- I do love a lot of her positive qualities: beautiful, smart, funny, caring
- I really hate the idea of a roller coaster life, for me, the kids and her (it was always a roller coaster but the blowups started to bother me a lot worse when they happened in front of the kis and all of the bickering too)
- My life is going by fast. I'm very unhappy in the marriage, relatively good looking and still in a position to find another mate.
What to do?
Put the internet to work for you.
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