Has she ever supported herself entirely or did she just go from parent’s support to yours?
It’s pretty radical, but maybe it may be worth it to let her decide the budget for the next few months. If she’s never had to make financial decisions then she may not understand how hard you work to keep the family finances on track. Also, if she can share in your goals it may be easier for her to prioritize frugality. For instance, we’re saving for a house right now which makes it pretty easy to forgo the newest top at Banana Republic if it sets us back a week.
If nothing else it would change the nature of this power-struggle you two have going on.
FWIW, I would love to have her allowance.
:::Sigh::: :rolleyes: I’ll be the first to admit my experience in these situations is somewhat limited, however I haven’t heard a single situation where there hasn’t been something going on with this “friend.” And I’ve heard of more than a handful.
Susan brings up a good point. Has she EVER had a job? Responsibilities? Or has she gone from being supported by parents to being supported by you?
I give credit for aknowledging your posts might be a bit biased, but to me it sounds like her maturity level is still that of a 23 year old. She feels you’re overbearing because you had to take the reins when she wouldn’t.
My mother was a not-so-willing SAHM since about a year before I was born. She is still divided about it… on one hand, being “Mrs. Hubby” is all she wanted (she never wanted an independent life, for her “independent” is an insult); on the other, it stretched finances and meant she spent a lot of time alone in the house… she, who is by nature a Queen Bee and likes nothing more than being with lots of people. In her case, getting a job just has never happened (she never really put the means for it either, mind you, she can whine all she wants but I was there). She’s been involved in a number of voluntary jobs; currently she isn’t (due to the threat of my grandparents’ age, she may have to run over there any day) but she does “work” a lot better when she has any kind of schedule… on days when she isn’t going to see her chiros, she’ll get out of bed by 10am; on days when she is, she’s out the door by 9:50, goes to 10:00 mass and to the chiro at 11.
In your wife’s case, I think a job may provide
self-respect. She doesn’t depend on you completely any more. Right now, you’re both her husband and her employer.
socialization. Hey, I’m a loner, but even I need to get out of the house and see human faces now and then
a schedule. She can’t stay in bed until 11 if she’s got to be at work by 10.
I think you should give some thought to what’s going to happen with any income she gets before she gets a job; is that additional “her” money or does all the money get pooled and resplit.
My paternals’ money was completely controlled by him; my maternals’ by her (after she realized that he had a hole in his hand). My parents had a solution similar to what you guys are doing: he had an amount that he didn’t have to answer for; she had another amount; what was left in the bank covered a third list of things.
You need to ask. I was making nearly the exact same comments about nearly the exact same thing. As her spouse, you have certain rights to the relationship. This is one of them. (Sting isn’t married to your wife.)
If the house burned down tomorrow, you’d be in the same position 18 months from now in a new house. If you won the lottery, your money issues would go away for a little bit, but would eventually resurface. What you have to do now, is get back to working like a team. That’s the most powerful part of a marriage: Two people working together can do a helluva lot more than one.
Sometimes what’s helped me in my marriage is to picture my life w/out my spouse, down to the details. What changes would I make? How would I live an ordinary day? And then I start doing it - because we tend to think this “other person” is getting in the way of living our life the way we really want to. And it’s not necessarily the case - WE are in charge of our lives.
OTOH, it sounds like your wife’s already making a move that direction, via this male friend. There was a Dear Abby (or somebody) about this just the other day, and the advice was to let the friendship be, but expose it to daylight. You could tell her she’s welcome to bring friends into your home life, at your house, around your kids, with YOU as a friend, too.
I wish I could offer you more insight, because clearly this is paining you. You sound like a really good person. The thing I notice about your posts is that you describe what you say is Objective Reality, when in fact it is YOUR reality. It might not be hers. Finding out what her reality is might help.
I dunno…no one likes to be taken advantage of. It sounds like she’s simply along for the free ride. If she’s improved somewhat, but it’s still as dirty and chaotic as described, then she’s not trying hard enough.
Maybe she’s depressed. Maybe she’s disorganized. Maybe she just doesn’t care. I think she would probably benefit from a couple solo visits to a counselor to get a handle on what’s really going on.
It sounds like she’d resent it, but a schedule of chores might help her out if she’s just overwhelmed. You could start by getting a cleaning crew in just once to get the place under control. Then lay out her day for her. Break it up into 1/2 hour pieces with long breaks in between.
7:00 am - get kids dressed, put those dirty clothes in hamper
7:30 am - Feed kids and rinse dishes, put them in dishwasher
8:00 am - collect school stuff and get kids out the door
8:00 - 10:00 Free time
10:00 - put laundry in washer
10:30 - put laundry in dryer, another load in washer
11:30 - fold laundry and put away, put another load in dryer
12:00 - fold laundry and put away
12:30 - 2:30 - Free time
And so on…
I know it sounds childish, but she’s acting like a child. Your kids need a little more order to their lives. I grew up with some kids whose mom didn’t do any housework (she worked two jobs) and their house was a disaster all the time (complete with toilets that wouldn’t flush). The kids resent her for it to this day (35+ years later).
My wife and I have spent the past decade – about a third of our marriage – “growing up” and learning how to be mature, giving, loving adults and partners. After reading your posts, I’m betting your counselor will, at some point, tell your wife she has a poor self-image. The over-spending is a symptom of low self-esteem, which probably goes back to childhood. I know, it sounded like psychobabble to me, too, but it described me perfectly.
The good news is that once you both decide that your marriage is worth the effort, you can start to support each other and make the necessary repairs.
Kalhoun, I often agree with you, but not this time. If Belrix wants to take it upon himself to help the kids organize their day (WITH chores) that could be a good thing - somebody needs to get involved, might as well be him. And if they split up and he gets custody, he’d need to do it anyway.
But further infantalizing his wife isn’t going to get it done. He’s already taken control of the money (with the best of intentions, I’m sure) and things are getting worse between them; doing more of the same is not likely to help. He needs to do something different.
We women are usually good talkers (with each other anyway) - I wonder what she’d say if you asked her to write out a description of the problem, in the way you’ve done here. Would she show it to you? Would you show her yours?
Also, the reason I suggested leaving the divorce question aside is that since you’ve got kids, you’re going to be connected with this woman for the rest of your life no matter what you do. If you decide you don’t want to be married, fine, but you STILL need a working relationship.
Well, that’s certainly understandable. I would suggest you stop saying things to yourself like you’re spent, and have done all you can do. This obviously isn’t true; we’re giving you new suggestions here, your counsellor can give you new methods of working together; it sounds like you need a break from working on this, not to give up altogether. Taking a break from working on something isn’t giving up, or saying it’s okay and doesn’t need to be fixed; it just means that you’re emotionally exhausted at the moment, and you need to take a little time before getting back at it.
Get the book I recommended. As far as I’m concerned, she is having an emotional affair, this emotional affair is affecting your marriage as strongly as a sexual one would, you need to ask her to end it, she needs to end it, and you need to work through the aftermath as a couple. The spending and the cleaning are not the important issues here - her taking her emotional needs somewhere else is. Your gut knows what’s going on; it’s time to listen to it.
Can you ask her to tell you how committed she is to working out your problems? That answer might tell you all you need to know.
Belrix, your OP could almost have been written by my husband. Almost, but there are significant differences.
There is much wisdom from the posters upthread who suggest that your wife may be feeling depressed and on the losing end of an imbalance of power. Money is such an easy way to keep score, but it really isn’t the only way, and may not be as useful as time–you both have a 24-hour day, and for anyone who works outside the home, the day is usually divided neatly between ‘work’ and ‘not work.’ The stay at home mom rarely gets that same daily mental or physical break.
All of your reasons for wanting to stay married are good ones, and Fessie’s encouragement to delve a bit deeper into your wife’s perspective is really worth following. Surely her current circumstances are not at all what she expected marriage and family life to be like, and she may be as lost as you in knowing what to do next. And she may be eager to give you her time and attention again if she felt she could get from you an equal measure of time and (positive) attention.
Good on you for caring enough to make changes; I hope things get better soon.
Normally, I’d agree with you. If she simply had too much to do in a day, I’d agree. But if she’s home all day and gets almost nothing accomplished (it sounds like she might do 5% of what’s necessary to run a household) and still has time for friends and shopping, she is acting like an obstinate child. I believe in sharing duties, particularly with child care stuff, but if he takes on more and she still isn’t pulling her weight, then they still aren’t working as a team.
If she could show that she’s truly overwhelmed with the level of household stuff, he absolutely has an obligation to help her out with the homefront duties. But from what he says, she’s not even making an effort to be a partner.
I suspect she is depressed and overwhelmed. The whole thing has gotten away from her. I really think getting someone in to get the house up to snuff would help. It’s really hard to tackle a mess when it’s enormous.
Hilarity, I’ve got to disagree a bit with you on this. The fact that Belrix’s wife is spending time with The Other Guy indicates to me that she is also not willing to give her love and affection to her husband, despite what she thinks she’s not getting from him. The marriage is in trouble, and instead of working on it she’s flitting off to help TOG’s marriage. Her priorities are screwed up.
Belrix, I’m sorry, but you have blinders on. She’s gone from 9p-1a with TOG and you trust that it’s just a friendship? I would test her…ask to meet TOG. If she quibbles, then there’s something going on.
I don’t think your demands are unreasonable. A certain amount of messiness is unavoidable, but not cleaning the kitchen for days is no excuse. I’m glad she’s working on that. But I would guess she’s lazy or depressed.
I would do two things. 1)Make sure she’s not clinicially depressed and 2)Quietly talk to a family law attorney. You need to make sure your back is covered while you work on the marriage. But BOTH of you have to work on it, and her seeing TOG doesn’t sound good.
Ivylass: I’d not throw the baby out with the bathwater yet. Let’s suppose she is foolin’ around:
Why, and can it be fixed? If so, it doesn’t solve much to indignantly demand a divorce. She’s escaping an environment and coping as best she can. People screw up. The solution to that is to FIX what she’s escaping. Remove the need to escape and things get easier to manage. She has no escape from the house. TOG is that escape. To solve this, she needs a healthy outlet to get away from the pit she’s living in.
Okay, lets suppose she isn’t fooling around. (there’s a thread on friends of the opposite sex around here somewhere) Indignantly accusing her of infidelity does nothing to solve the problem and just raises another wedge of contention. But the need to escape is still there, perhaps even stronger as now her fidelity is being called to task.
It’s easy for us to armchair quarterback, and it’s easy to live out our past in Belrix’s present situation, but if both people in the OP state they want to work on the marriage, then that has to be assumed so they can move on. If it later turns out that the wife wasn’t aboveboard, then Belrix can move on knowing he did everything he could.
I say this because my wife was doing the exact same thing (disappearing from 6pm to 1am with an entirely different group of people I couldn’t verify) as a way to cope with the losses in her life, and I believe her when she says she’s been faithful. Sounds like it’s a more common reaction to stress/depression than I thought.
Belrix, what sucks about this whole situation is that everything will get worse for you and better for her if you got a divorce, because she would get child support and probably alimony from you to continue living her comfortable non-working lifestyle, and then you would be nearly broke and living in some one-bedroom apartment somewhere. Right now, you decide what to give her; if you were divorced, the state would dictate what you give her, and it will probably be a lot more that you are giving her now. This is exactly what happened with my boyfriend and his ex-wife. So that is something to keep in mind…
Anyway the theme of her perhaps feeling “powerless” has been raised several times. Well, the fact is, he who makes the money is the one with the power. Like it or not money = power. When she chose to be a SAHM, she made a choice to live this way, and to not exercise her ability to make money in the working world. If she wanted to get a job and make money to spend on frivolous stuff, she could do that, but has chosen not to.
This isn’t the 1950s, women have choices, and we need to empower ourselves. She really does sound like a spoiled brat who is still stuck at age 23 (which in my opinion is way to young to get married – which may be while she is acting this way now.)
Also, the cleanliness situation of the house that you described (ie having to put on shoes just to walk around your own house because the floors are so nasty) is absolutely disgusting and completely unacceptable.
I strongly disagree with this statement as a general rule of thumb. You say it’s her decision to stay home, but the fact is he agreed to it. But that’s beside the point. She is still part of the family and in theory has just as much right to the money as he does. Where the whole thing falls apart is that she’s not cooperating and is not being a team player. She’s not holding up her end of the bargain and is living above their means. If she were to rein in the spending and do her job, she would be entitled to whatever allotment of cash is within a healthy budget.
Belrix, look into the books and DVDs by John Gottman, and see if you can find a Gottman-trained therapist. They specialize in pulling marriages back from the brink. You can find a therapist at www.gottman.com, and if they don’t have one in your area, you can do a weekend marathon session with some of their therapists.
Pulled mine back from the brink. Actually, the better analogy would be pulled it out from under the bus. It’s still totally jacked up and both of us just look at each other and wonder why the hell we’d even bother trying to patch things up. But there’s these kids…and neither of us is really interested in anyone else so infidelity isn’t really a threat. In fact, it probably wouldn’t damage what’s left between us at this point. There’s a decent amount of personal respect between us, just no love at all. Al hugs, no kisses, and certainly no sex.
It almost seems fair to say that the only obstruction to a divorce is mutual apathy–it’d just be one more thing for us both to deal with and neither of us care enough about ourselves to put forth the effort in what seems like a pointless exercise.
But you’re denying her responsibility here. If she is fooling around, it’s Belrix’s fault for being an unfeeling cad. If he accuses her when she’s not fooling around, it’s Belrix’s fault for being an unfeeling cad.
If his wife acknowledges there is trouble in the marriage, she needs to work WITH HIM to fix it. Spending time with TOG is time not spent on fixing what’s wrong in the marriage. It’s ignoring/refusing to deal/avoiding the problem. You’re assuming that IF she’s having an affair it’s because she’s not getting something at home. It could also be she’s a selfish bitch who likes to screw around on her husband.
Granted, we’re only getting one side of the story here, but until the wife pipes up, I have go with what Belrix is saying.
If the housecleaning is a major issue in your marriage, why in the world haven’t you hired a cleaning service? It seems obvious to me.
Yes, it’s money out the door, and yes, it should be her job if she’s a stay at home Mom. But sometimes you have to throw that kind of thinking to the wind if the greater good (your marriage) is being hampered by it.
If keeping the house clean will save your marriage, spend the $150/month (or whatever it takes - that’s around what I paid in the Boulder area 5 years ago) and get your house clean. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper than marriage therapy or divorce. And of all the personality defect a person could have, “can’t keep a clean house” is a pretty minor one.
