We are in our early 40's. I've known her for 13 years, married for 5, have a daughter, 2. I love my wife, she's sexy and smart and funny, but damn....I guess that's why I am posting this.
We both worked and built careers. We make/made the same annual salary within $1K of each other. I have always been the one to make sure the bills all get paid, the finances are budgeted, the cars get registered, repaired, the taxes are done, batteries are replaced, carpets are cleaned, windows are cleaned, etc... The "back office" ops of a relationship have all been on me. We had a maid twice a month, so she didn't even have to clean the apartment/house. (Anywhere I say in this post that "I bought" means with our combined incomes. To be clear).
When I was younger, I did a lot of adventurous type stuff, and while we were together, we traveled a lot. We have traveled all over but one place we had not gone was Europe and she always asked me to make it happen (which means budget for it). So I did. It was ten years after we met, but we went and spent two weeks driving through Europe seeing all the major places she had always wanted to see. By all accounts, a great trip. The reason it took so long is that once we decided to get married, the goal was first to save for an engagement ring, second to save for the wedding and honeymoon and third to save a down payment for a house. Europe was a luxury once the priorities were paid for. After I got the ring (cash) and paid for our entire wedding and honeymoon (cash) and saved up a reasonable down payment for a house (cash) - THEN I saved up for Europe and we went.
A couple years after Europe, we bought a house (I took care of all the paperwork and budgeting) all she had to do was pick it out (within a max price-which she went over anyway). It's a nice house, I'm not complaining. She bought a lot of furniture to fill it, and decorated it, etc... For Christmas a year later, I bought her a moderately expensive SUV that she always wanted.
As a typical guy, I've never really made any big ticket purchases. I have the same truck I drove since 1991. I have a 12 year old big screen TV. I don't need much. Beer and Kindle books are probably my biggest expenses and beer only in quality (expensive), not quantity.
We then talked about having a baby. I was ambivalent. A kid was interesting to me, not an infant. I could go either way, but she wanted one and I had no reason not to, so we did.
I warned her before she was born, for the first year, I wasn't going to be that interested in the baby. To me, an infant is basically a crying, sleeping, babbling, pooping, drooling organism. There would be no ooooh and awwwww from me. Now my baby is 2 and I love her to death, just like I knew I would once she could engage with me. She is fascinating and the love of my life...NOW. But not before, and I knew it would be that way. Anyway, I got flak for even warning her, let alone that it came to be true, but that's not the point of this post.
So all that said, while she was pregnant I took care of everything (as usual) including during the first year of my daughter...I cooked, laundered, yard work, kept the house up and running and still payed the bills, etc... Her mom was 2 miles down the road so she was able to help my wife out in taking care of the baby at any time. It was hard on my wife. I am not downplaying that. My daughter only slept 15 minutes at a time each hour for all the 24 hours of every day for three months. My wife was a zombie. That was one of the reasons I wanted to make sure that ALL she had to deal with, ever, was the baby. I also don't think she used her mom enough. She would complain about how rough it was, but her mom would only come a few times a week even though she is two miles down the road and retired.
When things settled down, I was put into a position I'm still failing. Time management. Quality Time for me. Q Time with daughter. Q Time with daughter and wife together. Time taking care of daughter so wife has Q Time to herself. When my parents were here for six months - Q Time with dad. Q Time with mom. Q Time with Dad and mom together, Q time with whole family together, AND do all my other responsibilities like work and back office. Needless to say I failed and was accused of not spending enough time with either my daughter, or my wife, or my daughter and wife combined. I spent too much time with Dad, or too much time at work, or too much time on the house, etc...
After my daughter was born, my wife didn't work for six months or so, which was fine. I had savings to cover us and it was good bonding time for both of them with my mother-in-law helping. During this time all my wife and her mom had was the baby, I had everything else. I'm not saying a baby isn't hard, but I am saying I felt like I was doing "my fair share" so all she ever had to concern herself with was the baby. I thought I did a good job. She has said things since then that say that is not true, that I failed to meet expectations. All other problems were mine and I solved all of them, every single time. Grocery shopping, baby gates, baby fencing, fixing washer, ordering diapers, driving them any place they needed to go, I was Johnny on the spot!...etc...
After that, she went back to work for about a year. During that time, her mom had to take care of her dad, so I flew my retired mom out to live with us and my mom basically took care of our daughter for about nine months (until we got home at night) while we worked. My mom also did the laundry, cooked, dishes, cleaned (even though we still had the maid), etc... while my retired Dad took care of the house. It was a nice break for me.
At the end of that year my wife decided to quit her job, for justifiable reasons that I agree with. By this time my parents had went back home, so it was just us. With the cut in income, I cancelled the maid and cut way back on a lot of our expenses. So cleaning was also added to my to-do. I thought she would do it since she was home all the time, but it almost never happened. Maybe once a month. I thought a lot of things would happen now that she was home, (like laundry and dinners and clean bathrooms) but nothing really changed.
She talked about starting her own company and working from home. I warned her, to my detriment, that she would not be able to do that unless she committed to dropping my daughter off at her mom's once or twice a week. I know my daughter. She is demanding of attention. It is not possible to get more than 30 minutes to yourself when she is awake, which is from 8am to midnight (and the 30 minutes is because she wants to watch TV). The ONLY way to get anything accomplished at home, would be to drop her off. Nine months later - no new company. I did however, get a heat for the warning even though it came true (because I doubted her ability to do it - which is not true, she can start a company absolutely, she is capable, just not while watching my daughter).
Regarding me time. Until I stopped her, I would be watching a show in my favorite room in the house, eating lunch or dinner and just taking an hour or two to myself. She would walk in with my daughter and my daughter would of course want to play with me. Then my wife would quietly leave for an undetermined amount of time. I would have to stop what I was doing, put down my food, stop my show, and play with my daughter (which I wanted to do, but not RIGHT THEN). Then, anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half later my wife would show back up. She would go take a shower or Facebook or clean something. Basically, anytime I was working on something, my time could be hijacked at any moment. I had to stop that. It was too much for me. It was also making me feel negative towards my daughter as it came across like she was a weapon my wife would bomb me with to teach me a lesson, "How dare you have me-time" sorta thing.
I thought, maybe my wife just wants her own me-time, so let me help with that. So I tried to control that problem by offering to take my daughter in the morning on weekends so my wife can sleep in as long as she wants. I've told her MANY times, "Just tell me when you want a break and I will watch her for as loooooong as you want" just don't bomb me with her. Doesn't matter. She won't take me up on my offer, but then complains about how I am not spending enough time with my daughter, or her, or both or uses her lack of her own "me-time" to remind me of the sacrifices she makes (to my argument of all that I do). I can't win. I offer to give her me time. She doesn't take me up on it (or use her mom right down the street). Then she hits me over the head with her lack of me time.
Anyway, she has not been working for about nine months now, spending all her time with our daughter. They've went out every day (except the hottest) to the park, story time, to her mom's house to play with the kids there, the beach, shopping, places you pay for kids to play at, you name it. My role was still all the back office stuff, laundry, cleaning, cooking at least a few times a week, yard, house, etc... I am also responsible for ordering everything I am asked for from Amazon and researching anything that she thinks we should get for my daughter and then acquiring it.
Every once in awhile she will ask me to give her something to do (because of my complaint about my workload) but in 14 years of knowing her, of the half dozen times I have done that...it has taken so long to get done, if it ever gets done, that I stopped. Case in point, the car needed an oil change last week so I asked her to get it done. She said sure but that I need to find a place, preferably near a mall or something she can take my daughter to while they change the oil. So I had to Google research and print out the coupons and the map for her. Is that really her doing something for me? I could have just done that myself. Why not say instead, "Sure honey, don't worry about it. I'll take care of it." Done. Nope.
About four months into her nine months off, during the summer, I had to travel for work, like I do every year. My choices were to leave her and my daughter at home and do two or three round trips to the east coast (lots of wasted time/money), or bring them with me. I can work out of my parents house there for free and they could come with me to all the places I have to go work (all fun places for kids).
We were tight on money with her not working so I used my points to fly both of them out there. We were there for almost twelve weeks. They went with me to about six locations (my daughter had a blast), spent SO MUCH quality time with my brother, my parents, etc.. My daughter got to travel all over New England and the east coast, go to aquariums and museums and the ocean...
I only had to work solo for about two of those twelve weeks. We also did a few date nights, went water skiing three times with friends, three BBQ's, the museums and aquariums, a train ride, a trip to NYC with my daughter, a handful of bars for happy hour, etc... It was a great trip and I got to complete all my work while still being with my family the whole time and all of the travel expenses that I would incur anyway were covered by my company. I thought win-win-win. Wrong.
Here's why...
I don't make friends easily. I don't like most people. Recently, there was one guy who is as adventurous as I once was, shares my religious and political beliefs and we got to know each other at work. My wife and I have taken trips with him and his wife twice. Over the past year (outside of the three months we were not here), as we got more comfortable with each other, he and I did the following: two trips to a casino up the street to watch an MMA PPV fight, so about four hours for each of two evenings, I helped him pickup a car he bought in Oregon (long weekend), another trip to watch an MMA fight (brought my Dad as well when he was visiting), two BBQ's at my house (big party) and my wife was there, went camping in the desert (long weekend), did a mountain bike trip (weekend), met for a beer twice (once with my wife's brother). All this over a 12 month period.
Before she quit her job and we were flush, my new friend had organized a shark diving trip in Mexico that I signed up for back in February. It was about $2,500. All paid in advance. My wife knew all about it from the moment I signed up for it. After that trip, when she quit her job, I stopped planning any trips at all because i need to save money - so this shark trip was the last "event" he and I had planned on the calendar.
The day before the trip, in fact the NIGHT before the trip (typical girl tactic from my experience), my wife decided to discuss how I am spending too much time with this guy. This led to a gigantic argument. Since I could not resolve the argument within the 12 hours she gave me, I had to cancel on my new friend, who had to go without me. I couldn't imagine spending five days out at sea and enjoying myself knowing my wife was pissed off at me. I have not heard from my new friend since - and I don't blame him. I am sure he went and had fun, but still....that was not cool.
It took two more days to sort it out, but there were two issues; one is that she doesn't like that I am going to all these places with him when "I didn't do that with her." Which is not true, we collect magnets from everywhere we go and I have a magnet board the size of a refrigerator door covered solid in magnets. We've gone EVERYWHERE together. All over America, Europe, South America. We've done zip lining and white water rafting and backpacking the Grand Canyon, partied in Rio and week-long leaf peeping in New England...
I still want to do all these things with her, but she can't go until my daughter is older. When she is older, we will go again. I don't see the problem. Also, in the past 14 years, I have never had a friend outside of my wife. Seriously. She's been it. I am still doing what I can with her considering my daughter. I bring both of them on long weekend family trips to have fun, on average, once every other month (we are on a limited budget now as it is). We do "happy hour" and "date night" at least once or twice a month as well. She told me she can't leave my daughter overnight anywhere, so I haven't planned any overnight trips just me and her - but apparently in this current argument she said that has changed - even though she never told me.
Is this jealousy? Probably. But WTF? I had to blow up a bucket list trip and eat $2,500 to mea culpa a non-issue because of her jealousy? I don't get it. Am I wrong? Am I wrong to be unhappy and not feel resolved about it?
When she got mad that I canceled the trip and said that I was going to blame her for that I said, "Would you go on a five day trip if our daughter was sick?" She said, "No." So I said, "Well I can't go on a five day trip when my family is sick. I can't sit there and have fun knowing my marriage and my family are sick back at home."
During these wonderful discussions, she admitted she was jealous, but said I am suddenly doing all this fun stuff when I didn't before (lie, the magnet board proves it, which I mentioned), and accused me of possibly being gay (absolutely not).
Why gay? First, because I found a guy friend after not having any for a long time and second, because I stopped having sex with her. I'm just not attracted to her now because I feel like a freaking employee. All I do is pay bills, fix the house, drive the car for them, place orders online, wash dishes, etc...Since our daughter was born, she has not slept back in our own bed. She moved into our daughters room making promises, about every 60 days, like clockwork, that she would "put her in her own bed soon." It's been 1.5 years now. Instead, they moved into the master bedroom where I was sleeping and I got kicked out, so I sleep in the basement now. So yeah. I don't feel like she has any interest in me to begin with, and I feel like an employee. Having sex would be like another bullet on my resume of services provided.
Sure I found a friend at a bad time. But really? Am I doing too much with him? I don't think so. Is it costing my family time with me? I don't think so. So what else can it be but jealousy? And that SUCKS.
She also said that a man has to grow up after he has a kid and pay attention to his family at least until the children are older and he can't act like he used to (again, that I am spending too much time with my new friend - but look at what we've done. Is that REALLY that much?). Then she told me it took ten years for me to get her to Europe (so now I feel like I failed on the Europe trip because I took too long) even though I was trying to do the right thing and save cash for ring, wedding, honeymoon, house.
It all got smoothed over in the end including makeup sex without any real resolution and with her telling me she loves me so much and yada yada yada but this morning I found myself sitting in a chair (in the basement) staring at the wall for a long, long time.
I feel like it's only okay because she got what she wanted. She made me bleed out the sacrifice of a goat (my trip) on the altar of our relationship to show that I wanted to "fix" something. So was that really a resolution or just a way point until the next sacrifice has to be made?
I was listening to this podcast yesterday and the guy was saying that men, when we do things out of love for a woman, we sorta think it's like putting money in the bank. In other words, there may come a time in the future when we might make an error, or maybe go a little too far with something, or you know..be human...and we can "cash in" on all that good faith and hard work and effort we've made. If we forget to pick up milk, or got the wrong size diapers - all will be forgiven with a kiss and a smile in lieu of all the other things we get right.
That our girl will say, "Well, he's been really good to me and he tries really hard so I'm not going to get on him about this or that." But it doesn't work like that with most women. The guy on the podcast said he would do all this stuff thinking he was building credit with her and that she really loved him for it, then he would forget to do something or pickup something and it was like hell unleashed. I sorta feel like that. I am an employee and all of this work I do is totally irrelevant. It earns me nothing. I am only as good as Janet Jackson once said, "what have you done for me lately." If I make ONE mistake, or go outside the margins (margins defined by her and not communicated to me) then I will pay. Or make a sacrifice.
Her job is to take care of our daughter. Mine is EVERYTHING ELSE, but, all of that does not equal the value of her job. That is my take away. That is what I stare at the wall and think about.
I can take care of all the bills and legal stuff and back office ops for 14 years, I can do the bulk of the laundry and the house fixing and resolve all the problems, do my share of the cooking, file all the taxes, water all the plants, hunt down and kill the rats in the backyard, and kill all the yucky spiders, but when I finally find a buddy to hang out with, and do, what I think, is not that much in an entire year, AND make sure we have enough family time by flying them with me for work and spending all that time with them and making sure they go to like a half dozen amusement parks while I work spending my nights and weekends with just them...that that would have value. That maybe she would say, "He doesn't make friends easily, and sure this friend came at not the best time, but it's okay. I'll just talk to him about it and we'll come to an agreement." But I don't get that. I get a bomb drop.
There is no slack. It was the last trip scheduled. We had JUST gotten back from three months all together on the east coast. And she bombed it.
Remaining caveat. Her dad invited us on two cruises since we got back from the east coast trip in early September, with my daughter. It's mid-October right now. He gave us about a two week notice both times. Two, 4-(work) day cruises. I declined both. I encouraged them to go, and she did with my daughter. First, I declined because I already had 2 trips scheduled on the calendar (both mentioned earlier in my list with my friend) that I had taken vacation time from work 8 months ago, so I could not take too much time off too close together, plus I had JUST gotten back and work had piled up unrelated to what I was working on on the east cost. Third, her dad goes on cruises CONSTANTLY, we can jump on any cruise on any given month - at some better time in the near future. But she flamed me on not going on either cruise during this argument. I was again, failing to spend time with them. Second, beyond the vacation time, to be honest, I was looking forward to the time alone. No clea ning. No house fixing. Freedom. Just movies with guns and explosions and lots of beer and popcorn. I needed the break from everyone. EVERYONE.
Also, about a month ago, my wife did bring up that my friend and I had too many trips planned. I agreed with her. I said, "These are the last two trips. I have nothing left planned, and honestly, I can't keep up with this guy, so I am going to scale it back a bit after this last trip." I thought that was enough. Clearly it was not. I still got a bomb drop the day before the trip. Then she said the only reason I stopped the trips was because of money, which is part true, but also true is that I really cannot keep up with him. He travels all the time, it's not reasonable for me to keep up. It was our first year knowing each other, I wanted to "be that guy" that could keep up with him, as a measure of good faith in the establishment of our friendship. I just wanted to be a good friend. It's been a year. Its more than I can handle, so I was already going to adjust it and we are established enough now, I think it would be fine.
I was speaking in complete honesty that I would be cutting back on these trips and in fact, already turned down two for next year. Considering the list for the past year, I figured if I cut that in half, that would be good, but honestly, I still don't think the trips I DID SCHEDULE were all that much and I thought this conversation a month ago was enough - but nope. I still had to sacrifice my last trip on the altar of our marriage and she waited until 12 hours before departure to push the red button DESPITE having had this conversation a month prior.
So...what am I? Am I unreasonable? Am I spending too much time with my new friend? Am I allowed to have friends during the first "x" years of having a child? Am I not spending enough time with my family? Am I doing something else wrong I am not even smart enough to see? What is the problem with this picture? Sometimes I feel like I just need to man up, be a cowboy, pull my hat down and "git 'er done" as they say. Other times, I feel like this is not anywhere how its supposed to be.
I feel a little better. Have a good evening.
We both worked and built careers. We make/made the same annual salary within $1K of each other. I have always been the one to make sure the bills all get paid, the finances are budgeted, the cars get registered, repaired, the taxes are done, batteries are replaced, carpets are cleaned, windows are cleaned, etc... The "back office" ops of a relationship have all been on me. We had a maid twice a month, so she didn't even have to clean the apartment/house. (Anywhere I say in this post that "I bought" means with our combined incomes. To be clear).
When I was younger, I did a lot of adventurous type stuff, and while we were together, we traveled a lot. We have traveled all over but one place we had not gone was Europe and she always asked me to make it happen (which means budget for it). So I did. It was ten years after we met, but we went and spent two weeks driving through Europe seeing all the major places she had always wanted to see. By all accounts, a great trip. The reason it took so long is that once we decided to get married, the goal was first to save for an engagement ring, second to save for the wedding and honeymoon and third to save a down payment for a house. Europe was a luxury once the priorities were paid for. After I got the ring (cash) and paid for our entire wedding and honeymoon (cash) and saved up a reasonable down payment for a house (cash) - THEN I saved up for Europe and we went.
A couple years after Europe, we bought a house (I took care of all the paperwork and budgeting) all she had to do was pick it out (within a max price-which she went over anyway). It's a nice house, I'm not complaining. She bought a lot of furniture to fill it, and decorated it, etc... For Christmas a year later, I bought her a moderately expensive SUV that she always wanted.
As a typical guy, I've never really made any big ticket purchases. I have the same truck I drove since 1991. I have a 12 year old big screen TV. I don't need much. Beer and Kindle books are probably my biggest expenses and beer only in quality (expensive), not quantity.
We then talked about having a baby. I was ambivalent. A kid was interesting to me, not an infant. I could go either way, but she wanted one and I had no reason not to, so we did.
I warned her before she was born, for the first year, I wasn't going to be that interested in the baby. To me, an infant is basically a crying, sleeping, babbling, pooping, drooling organism. There would be no ooooh and awwwww from me. Now my baby is 2 and I love her to death, just like I knew I would once she could engage with me. She is fascinating and the love of my life...NOW. But not before, and I knew it would be that way. Anyway, I got flak for even warning her, let alone that it came to be true, but that's not the point of this post.
So all that said, while she was pregnant I took care of everything (as usual) including during the first year of my daughter...I cooked, laundered, yard work, kept the house up and running and still payed the bills, etc... Her mom was 2 miles down the road so she was able to help my wife out in taking care of the baby at any time. It was hard on my wife. I am not downplaying that. My daughter only slept 15 minutes at a time each hour for all the 24 hours of every day for three months. My wife was a zombie. That was one of the reasons I wanted to make sure that ALL she had to deal with, ever, was the baby. I also don't think she used her mom enough. She would complain about how rough it was, but her mom would only come a few times a week even though she is two miles down the road and retired.
When things settled down, I was put into a position I'm still failing. Time management. Quality Time for me. Q Time with daughter. Q Time with daughter and wife together. Time taking care of daughter so wife has Q Time to herself. When my parents were here for six months - Q Time with dad. Q Time with mom. Q Time with Dad and mom together, Q time with whole family together, AND do all my other responsibilities like work and back office. Needless to say I failed and was accused of not spending enough time with either my daughter, or my wife, or my daughter and wife combined. I spent too much time with Dad, or too much time at work, or too much time on the house, etc...
After my daughter was born, my wife didn't work for six months or so, which was fine. I had savings to cover us and it was good bonding time for both of them with my mother-in-law helping. During this time all my wife and her mom had was the baby, I had everything else. I'm not saying a baby isn't hard, but I am saying I felt like I was doing "my fair share" so all she ever had to concern herself with was the baby. I thought I did a good job. She has said things since then that say that is not true, that I failed to meet expectations. All other problems were mine and I solved all of them, every single time. Grocery shopping, baby gates, baby fencing, fixing washer, ordering diapers, driving them any place they needed to go, I was Johnny on the spot!...etc...
After that, she went back to work for about a year. During that time, her mom had to take care of her dad, so I flew my retired mom out to live with us and my mom basically took care of our daughter for about nine months (until we got home at night) while we worked. My mom also did the laundry, cooked, dishes, cleaned (even though we still had the maid), etc... while my retired Dad took care of the house. It was a nice break for me.
At the end of that year my wife decided to quit her job, for justifiable reasons that I agree with. By this time my parents had went back home, so it was just us. With the cut in income, I cancelled the maid and cut way back on a lot of our expenses. So cleaning was also added to my to-do. I thought she would do it since she was home all the time, but it almost never happened. Maybe once a month. I thought a lot of things would happen now that she was home, (like laundry and dinners and clean bathrooms) but nothing really changed.
She talked about starting her own company and working from home. I warned her, to my detriment, that she would not be able to do that unless she committed to dropping my daughter off at her mom's once or twice a week. I know my daughter. She is demanding of attention. It is not possible to get more than 30 minutes to yourself when she is awake, which is from 8am to midnight (and the 30 minutes is because she wants to watch TV). The ONLY way to get anything accomplished at home, would be to drop her off. Nine months later - no new company. I did however, get a heat for the warning even though it came true (because I doubted her ability to do it - which is not true, she can start a company absolutely, she is capable, just not while watching my daughter).
Regarding me time. Until I stopped her, I would be watching a show in my favorite room in the house, eating lunch or dinner and just taking an hour or two to myself. She would walk in with my daughter and my daughter would of course want to play with me. Then my wife would quietly leave for an undetermined amount of time. I would have to stop what I was doing, put down my food, stop my show, and play with my daughter (which I wanted to do, but not RIGHT THEN). Then, anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half later my wife would show back up. She would go take a shower or Facebook or clean something. Basically, anytime I was working on something, my time could be hijacked at any moment. I had to stop that. It was too much for me. It was also making me feel negative towards my daughter as it came across like she was a weapon my wife would bomb me with to teach me a lesson, "How dare you have me-time" sorta thing.
I thought, maybe my wife just wants her own me-time, so let me help with that. So I tried to control that problem by offering to take my daughter in the morning on weekends so my wife can sleep in as long as she wants. I've told her MANY times, "Just tell me when you want a break and I will watch her for as loooooong as you want" just don't bomb me with her. Doesn't matter. She won't take me up on my offer, but then complains about how I am not spending enough time with my daughter, or her, or both or uses her lack of her own "me-time" to remind me of the sacrifices she makes (to my argument of all that I do). I can't win. I offer to give her me time. She doesn't take me up on it (or use her mom right down the street). Then she hits me over the head with her lack of me time.
Anyway, she has not been working for about nine months now, spending all her time with our daughter. They've went out every day (except the hottest) to the park, story time, to her mom's house to play with the kids there, the beach, shopping, places you pay for kids to play at, you name it. My role was still all the back office stuff, laundry, cleaning, cooking at least a few times a week, yard, house, etc... I am also responsible for ordering everything I am asked for from Amazon and researching anything that she thinks we should get for my daughter and then acquiring it.
Every once in awhile she will ask me to give her something to do (because of my complaint about my workload) but in 14 years of knowing her, of the half dozen times I have done that...it has taken so long to get done, if it ever gets done, that I stopped. Case in point, the car needed an oil change last week so I asked her to get it done. She said sure but that I need to find a place, preferably near a mall or something she can take my daughter to while they change the oil. So I had to Google research and print out the coupons and the map for her. Is that really her doing something for me? I could have just done that myself. Why not say instead, "Sure honey, don't worry about it. I'll take care of it." Done. Nope.
About four months into her nine months off, during the summer, I had to travel for work, like I do every year. My choices were to leave her and my daughter at home and do two or three round trips to the east coast (lots of wasted time/money), or bring them with me. I can work out of my parents house there for free and they could come with me to all the places I have to go work (all fun places for kids).
We were tight on money with her not working so I used my points to fly both of them out there. We were there for almost twelve weeks. They went with me to about six locations (my daughter had a blast), spent SO MUCH quality time with my brother, my parents, etc.. My daughter got to travel all over New England and the east coast, go to aquariums and museums and the ocean...
I only had to work solo for about two of those twelve weeks. We also did a few date nights, went water skiing three times with friends, three BBQ's, the museums and aquariums, a train ride, a trip to NYC with my daughter, a handful of bars for happy hour, etc... It was a great trip and I got to complete all my work while still being with my family the whole time and all of the travel expenses that I would incur anyway were covered by my company. I thought win-win-win. Wrong.
Here's why...
I don't make friends easily. I don't like most people. Recently, there was one guy who is as adventurous as I once was, shares my religious and political beliefs and we got to know each other at work. My wife and I have taken trips with him and his wife twice. Over the past year (outside of the three months we were not here), as we got more comfortable with each other, he and I did the following: two trips to a casino up the street to watch an MMA PPV fight, so about four hours for each of two evenings, I helped him pickup a car he bought in Oregon (long weekend), another trip to watch an MMA fight (brought my Dad as well when he was visiting), two BBQ's at my house (big party) and my wife was there, went camping in the desert (long weekend), did a mountain bike trip (weekend), met for a beer twice (once with my wife's brother). All this over a 12 month period.
Before she quit her job and we were flush, my new friend had organized a shark diving trip in Mexico that I signed up for back in February. It was about $2,500. All paid in advance. My wife knew all about it from the moment I signed up for it. After that trip, when she quit her job, I stopped planning any trips at all because i need to save money - so this shark trip was the last "event" he and I had planned on the calendar.
The day before the trip, in fact the NIGHT before the trip (typical girl tactic from my experience), my wife decided to discuss how I am spending too much time with this guy. This led to a gigantic argument. Since I could not resolve the argument within the 12 hours she gave me, I had to cancel on my new friend, who had to go without me. I couldn't imagine spending five days out at sea and enjoying myself knowing my wife was pissed off at me. I have not heard from my new friend since - and I don't blame him. I am sure he went and had fun, but still....that was not cool.
It took two more days to sort it out, but there were two issues; one is that she doesn't like that I am going to all these places with him when "I didn't do that with her." Which is not true, we collect magnets from everywhere we go and I have a magnet board the size of a refrigerator door covered solid in magnets. We've gone EVERYWHERE together. All over America, Europe, South America. We've done zip lining and white water rafting and backpacking the Grand Canyon, partied in Rio and week-long leaf peeping in New England...
I still want to do all these things with her, but she can't go until my daughter is older. When she is older, we will go again. I don't see the problem. Also, in the past 14 years, I have never had a friend outside of my wife. Seriously. She's been it. I am still doing what I can with her considering my daughter. I bring both of them on long weekend family trips to have fun, on average, once every other month (we are on a limited budget now as it is). We do "happy hour" and "date night" at least once or twice a month as well. She told me she can't leave my daughter overnight anywhere, so I haven't planned any overnight trips just me and her - but apparently in this current argument she said that has changed - even though she never told me.
Is this jealousy? Probably. But WTF? I had to blow up a bucket list trip and eat $2,500 to mea culpa a non-issue because of her jealousy? I don't get it. Am I wrong? Am I wrong to be unhappy and not feel resolved about it?
When she got mad that I canceled the trip and said that I was going to blame her for that I said, "Would you go on a five day trip if our daughter was sick?" She said, "No." So I said, "Well I can't go on a five day trip when my family is sick. I can't sit there and have fun knowing my marriage and my family are sick back at home."
During these wonderful discussions, she admitted she was jealous, but said I am suddenly doing all this fun stuff when I didn't before (lie, the magnet board proves it, which I mentioned), and accused me of possibly being gay (absolutely not).
Why gay? First, because I found a guy friend after not having any for a long time and second, because I stopped having sex with her. I'm just not attracted to her now because I feel like a freaking employee. All I do is pay bills, fix the house, drive the car for them, place orders online, wash dishes, etc...Since our daughter was born, she has not slept back in our own bed. She moved into our daughters room making promises, about every 60 days, like clockwork, that she would "put her in her own bed soon." It's been 1.5 years now. Instead, they moved into the master bedroom where I was sleeping and I got kicked out, so I sleep in the basement now. So yeah. I don't feel like she has any interest in me to begin with, and I feel like an employee. Having sex would be like another bullet on my resume of services provided.
Sure I found a friend at a bad time. But really? Am I doing too much with him? I don't think so. Is it costing my family time with me? I don't think so. So what else can it be but jealousy? And that SUCKS.
She also said that a man has to grow up after he has a kid and pay attention to his family at least until the children are older and he can't act like he used to (again, that I am spending too much time with my new friend - but look at what we've done. Is that REALLY that much?). Then she told me it took ten years for me to get her to Europe (so now I feel like I failed on the Europe trip because I took too long) even though I was trying to do the right thing and save cash for ring, wedding, honeymoon, house.
It all got smoothed over in the end including makeup sex without any real resolution and with her telling me she loves me so much and yada yada yada but this morning I found myself sitting in a chair (in the basement) staring at the wall for a long, long time.
I feel like it's only okay because she got what she wanted. She made me bleed out the sacrifice of a goat (my trip) on the altar of our relationship to show that I wanted to "fix" something. So was that really a resolution or just a way point until the next sacrifice has to be made?
I was listening to this podcast yesterday and the guy was saying that men, when we do things out of love for a woman, we sorta think it's like putting money in the bank. In other words, there may come a time in the future when we might make an error, or maybe go a little too far with something, or you know..be human...and we can "cash in" on all that good faith and hard work and effort we've made. If we forget to pick up milk, or got the wrong size diapers - all will be forgiven with a kiss and a smile in lieu of all the other things we get right.
That our girl will say, "Well, he's been really good to me and he tries really hard so I'm not going to get on him about this or that." But it doesn't work like that with most women. The guy on the podcast said he would do all this stuff thinking he was building credit with her and that she really loved him for it, then he would forget to do something or pickup something and it was like hell unleashed. I sorta feel like that. I am an employee and all of this work I do is totally irrelevant. It earns me nothing. I am only as good as Janet Jackson once said, "what have you done for me lately." If I make ONE mistake, or go outside the margins (margins defined by her and not communicated to me) then I will pay. Or make a sacrifice.
Her job is to take care of our daughter. Mine is EVERYTHING ELSE, but, all of that does not equal the value of her job. That is my take away. That is what I stare at the wall and think about.
I can take care of all the bills and legal stuff and back office ops for 14 years, I can do the bulk of the laundry and the house fixing and resolve all the problems, do my share of the cooking, file all the taxes, water all the plants, hunt down and kill the rats in the backyard, and kill all the yucky spiders, but when I finally find a buddy to hang out with, and do, what I think, is not that much in an entire year, AND make sure we have enough family time by flying them with me for work and spending all that time with them and making sure they go to like a half dozen amusement parks while I work spending my nights and weekends with just them...that that would have value. That maybe she would say, "He doesn't make friends easily, and sure this friend came at not the best time, but it's okay. I'll just talk to him about it and we'll come to an agreement." But I don't get that. I get a bomb drop.
There is no slack. It was the last trip scheduled. We had JUST gotten back from three months all together on the east coast. And she bombed it.
Remaining caveat. Her dad invited us on two cruises since we got back from the east coast trip in early September, with my daughter. It's mid-October right now. He gave us about a two week notice both times. Two, 4-(work) day cruises. I declined both. I encouraged them to go, and she did with my daughter. First, I declined because I already had 2 trips scheduled on the calendar (both mentioned earlier in my list with my friend) that I had taken vacation time from work 8 months ago, so I could not take too much time off too close together, plus I had JUST gotten back and work had piled up unrelated to what I was working on on the east cost. Third, her dad goes on cruises CONSTANTLY, we can jump on any cruise on any given month - at some better time in the near future. But she flamed me on not going on either cruise during this argument. I was again, failing to spend time with them. Second, beyond the vacation time, to be honest, I was looking forward to the time alone. No clea ning. No house fixing. Freedom. Just movies with guns and explosions and lots of beer and popcorn. I needed the break from everyone. EVERYONE.
Also, about a month ago, my wife did bring up that my friend and I had too many trips planned. I agreed with her. I said, "These are the last two trips. I have nothing left planned, and honestly, I can't keep up with this guy, so I am going to scale it back a bit after this last trip." I thought that was enough. Clearly it was not. I still got a bomb drop the day before the trip. Then she said the only reason I stopped the trips was because of money, which is part true, but also true is that I really cannot keep up with him. He travels all the time, it's not reasonable for me to keep up. It was our first year knowing each other, I wanted to "be that guy" that could keep up with him, as a measure of good faith in the establishment of our friendship. I just wanted to be a good friend. It's been a year. Its more than I can handle, so I was already going to adjust it and we are established enough now, I think it would be fine.
I was speaking in complete honesty that I would be cutting back on these trips and in fact, already turned down two for next year. Considering the list for the past year, I figured if I cut that in half, that would be good, but honestly, I still don't think the trips I DID SCHEDULE were all that much and I thought this conversation a month ago was enough - but nope. I still had to sacrifice my last trip on the altar of our marriage and she waited until 12 hours before departure to push the red button DESPITE having had this conversation a month prior.
So...what am I? Am I unreasonable? Am I spending too much time with my new friend? Am I allowed to have friends during the first "x" years of having a child? Am I not spending enough time with my family? Am I doing something else wrong I am not even smart enough to see? What is the problem with this picture? Sometimes I feel like I just need to man up, be a cowboy, pull my hat down and "git 'er done" as they say. Other times, I feel like this is not anywhere how its supposed to be.
I feel a little better. Have a good evening.
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