How would you have handled this family drama?

In My Humble Opinion
61

[QUOTE=Dinsdale]
Well, to be fair, realize you are getting just one side of things here - mine.
I’ve posted before about disagreements we’ve had, petty or not.

22 years hasn’t been exactly a smooth road, but I had thought we had agreed upon some tolerable stasis. I’d be kidding if I told you there was any great romance between us. At the very least, we make a better economic unit together than apart, and we are both such opinionated jerks it is hard to imagine many other folks being as willing to put up with either one of us as we have been.

Our youngest is a HS junior. We had spoken about downsizing our home at that time. Perhaps that would be an appropriate time to call it quits.

I think she is worried, tho, because she has primarily stayed at home the past 16 years or so, and is scared of the potential need to go out and get a paying job. She did mention something a couple of weeks back about thinking she might be beginning menopause. Yeah, I’m sure that will clear everything up. And then maybe I’ll get a pony!
[/QUOTE]
Okay, I was going to ask if PMS played a role in this tiff, but since you say this is a possible menopause thing, I can vouch for the fact that it can do really bizarre things to a person’s ability to function in a sane fashion.

She can get a blood test (3 tests, actually) that will tell whether or not The Big “M” has started. If this is the case, I’ve got three words for you: Embrace The Patch. It saved my marriage.

62

[QUOTE=Siege]
A lot of people consider seeing a therapist as a very large step. Do you two have a friend or family member who you both trust who can help you sort this out between you?
[/QUOTE]

They are both contemplating divorce, which is the biggest “step” there is in a marriage. If that isn’t enough to warrant seeing a therapist, what is?

Dragging a friend or family member in to mediate a marriage dispute is a recipe for disaster. And cruel to the friend.

63

Thanks all.

This morning over coffee she saw fit to up and tell me how much she hates me. Over a disagreement we had had over my recent purchase of reading glasses. Just wanted to let me know. And went back to reading the paper. Nice way to start the day! :rolleyes:

We’ve seen counselors individually and together in the past. Gotta admit we’ve had - uh - less than stellar experience. For one thing, it is very hard to find someone who is a good match with you. Or with both of you equally. Especially when both parties consider themselves as intelligent and opinionated as we do.

Another thing is it is REALLY expensive. I know, a divorce is more expensive. But when you are paying $100+ an hour, it can take a couple of grand before you even get to the point where you think the other guy is even up to speed on where you are. And maybe neither of us cares enough to enter into such a pricey, openended effort.

Since the most recent attempt maybe 5 years ago, I thought we were basically just trying to commit to talking about things openly between ourselves, because we felt no one knew us and our situation as well as we did ourselves. And, as proud as we are, we felt that not all that many counsellors were all that much smarter than us.

We’ve had a couple of less than thrilling experiences with counselling in the past. Perhaps we are too opinionated and set in our ways to appreciate what a good counselor can offer. Or maybe we’ve just never met a good counselor. But we’ve seen people who are highly recommended by our humanist UU minister whom we both respect highly, and by friends, and have been unimpressed with them all. Trying to find an objective voice is one thing - we found it much more difficult to find someone we both respect.

I guess we could try it again. But I’m not sure either of us cares enough to go through the effort.

Yeah, 22 years might seem like a whole lot to just throw away. But if the last 10-15 of them have been more contentious than not, the better path might be splitting and seeing what you can salvage. At least that’s the path that looks most appealing to me right now.

64

Wow Dinsdale. What a terrible way to start the year for you. I’m sorry you’re going through all that.

Your story reminds me of my own family’s situation when I started college. So much so that you could have been my own father 20 years ago relaying the situation with “names changed to protect the innocent.” In case your situation is more than superficially the same, maybe my 20 years of perspective can help. If it’s not the same, just ignore what I have to say, but know that I wish you well.

Prior to me heading off to college, my mother and I had a normal relationship with the occasional squabbles and a few drag-out fights, but nothing too severe. Once I went away, that all changed. We fought all the time over stupid, stupid stuff–stuff that was just as trivial as colors on T shirts. We once fought for 2 days over whether or not I wanted a second glass of orange juice. :rolleyes:

Looking back, I can see that a lot of our issues were caused by my normal growing up happening at a very bad time for my mother. Like your wife, my mother was feeling more than a little confused about what she was going to do with herself once we all went to college. She was struggling to redefine herself and feeling incredibly insecure.

Right at that same time, along comes me challenging every single thing my mother had to say. I had been a bit slow to reach my rebellious years and didn’t really go through that in high school. College is when I came into my own and started becoming more of my own person. So I sort of went from someone who trusted that everything my mother said was correct to someone who thought everything my mother said was wrong.

And, of course, I did it at just the wrong time, a time when she needed reassurance that she still had something important and valuable to contribute.

My father was bewildered and caught up in the middle. Like you, he couldn’t imagine why his wife was fighting (and often being flat out crazy) over such trivial stuff. And, like you, he got a lot of grief for not being “supportive.”

They got through it. I’m not privy to how because my parents didn’t share the details of their relationship with me. All I know is they did. It was a tough time, but they came out okay. My guess is that mom eventually got past her insecurities when time and experience showed them to be unfounded.

65

I hope whatever you decide that you end up happier, Dinsdale, because you do sound really miserable right now. That said, I wish for you that your wife just stops saying things like she hates you…because that’s completely mean and unnecessary.

66

[QUOTE=Dinsdale]
This morning over coffee she saw fit to up and tell me how much she hates me. Over a disagreement we had had over my recent purchase of reading glasses. Just wanted to let me know. And went back to reading the paper. Nice way to start the day! :rolleyes:
[/QUOTE]

That’s just plain emotionally abusive.

Look, I don’t know you, and I don’t know your situation, but I have to wonder if you are able to look objectively at you wife’s behaviour, or if instead, after many years of such emotional abuse, you have fallen into a rut, in which you simply tolerate, tolerate, tolerate . . . . Stop looking at yourself to assign blame for your wife’s conduct – whether the problem is one of co-dependency between the two of you, or simply that she is bat shit crazy, the simple fact of the matter is that, for whatever reason, she is taking a verbal knife to your soul. Do not accept such conduct. Recognize her behaviour for what it is, and then reject such behaviour.

There’s a great wonderful world out there that you are missing while you sit at the dining table being denigrated. Year after year of a crappy marriage is nothing worth preserving. What is worth saving is your future as a whole person who has the opportunity to go through the next couple of decades without living in an emotional meat grinder. At least now you can still get out while you are at the top of your game.

Seeing as counseling has failed, I trust that you know a good family lawyer who can prepare you to deal with the various issues of separation. Don’t wait until there is a blow up, or until your wife pulls the plug first. Separation and divorce are often brutally hard on the parties, but at the end of the tunnel, usually lead to much happier lives.

67

I so agree about the difficulties in finding the right therapist. It’s my experience (and my family’s) that 80% of them fall on the ineffective–>dangerous spectrum.

But the 20% that are good - ahh! The marital therapist we’re seeing right now is blowing my mind.

I agree that the way your wife is behaving is unacceptable. It may well be that she’s a cuckoo bird, for one or many reasons.

But I think it would behoove you to find out what’s going on with YOU. With or without her. You’re a part of this dynamic. You need to heal. Seriously. If you guys can’t agree on a therapist, try it on your own. Six sessions should give you a solid idea of what your doctor has to offer.

It may not save your marriage, but it might save your sanity and I’ll bet it would improve your other relationships.

68

[QUOTE=Dinsdale]
Wait, you’re assuming I was not the parent involved? What am I talking about, this is a hypothetical, right?
[/QUOTE]

Dins, consider it a compliment.

In my family, the parent who’d get nervous when we went to family shindings was the parent whose family was involved. Dad was more irritable on the way to his Mom’s, but would calm down once we got there and nothing exploded; Mom (whose family lived much further away, therefore stays would be longer) fretted endlessly about “what will I have forgotten to pack this time?” (uh, Mom, there’s stores in Barcelona, promise, 3M+ town, remember?). We all have hot tempers, but Mom is the only one who doesn’t just hold grudges but nurse them till they’re strong enough for Olympic weightlifting - in general we learned each other’s limits and knew to back down or leave it for later. There were a few cases of slammed doors followed by “no, I’m not coming out for dinner!” “then you’re not getting dinner” “That’s. The. Idea” (most notably between Middlebro and Dad); those times when one of the Parental Units tried to drag the rest of us into saying (s)he was Right, the rest of us (most notably the Child Units) have had no problem saying “no.”

But that’s my family. I have friends who’d get into rams-in-heat fights with one parent similar to what you describe… all they seem to gain by it is headaches, but both parts are unable to see how stupid it all is.

69

Well, no fireworks this morning.

Maybe things will settle down to some semblance of what has passed for normalcy these past many years, tho there’s no telling how long that will last, or what will set off the next blow-up.

In all this, I insist on acknowledging that I must be very difficult to live with in many respects. I’m just not convinced that my idiosyncracies and transgressions are such that they merit the response they receive.

It will be interesting to see what happens when we put the house on the market in a couple of years. I think that would probably be a very sensible time for us to part ways.

Like I said, I think a large part of her anger might reflect fear and/or resentment that our mutual choice that she stay home has made it that now she is far more vocationally limited than I. I told her that as long as she worked 40 hrs a week, I’d be willing to split salries with her 50/50. We didn’t get further into specifics, but I got the impression she thought I owed her something more than that - which didn’t really make sense to me. We’ve got money set aside that should be plenty to get the kids through undergrad. And I’d be happy to simply split all of our other assets 50/50. Not sure what would be appropriate re: my pension and such.

Pleasant thoughts, no?

70

Pointing out the more or less obvious:

Talk to a lawyer experienced in divorce law --and maybe an accountant/financial planner about what the future will hold-- before you make decisions about things like your pension based on what feels “fair” to you now. Especially if your wife is holding grudges right now about petty stuff–what feels fair to you may not feel fair to her, and I’d hate for you to impoverish yourself, and imperil your ability to help your children out if they need it later, just to try to appease someone who appears irrational.

I’m really sorry that your recent family drama appears to have turned into the straw which may break the camel’s back.

But really, being alone is not the end of the world. And, while I can’t promise it will work this way for you, I do have friends who had a twenty or thirty year marriage, finally got tired of trying to keep things together and got divorced. Now, they are friends and partners in helping with their grandchildren (for example), but they no longer have to put up with each other’s most annoying traits all the time. So they get along better than they did when they were married.

71

My parents spent all their money in the process of divorcing. Twenty-seven years’ of equity shot. They couldn’t agree on future support and kept returning to court.

But the damage from unresolved problems and emotions had a far greater impact, in terms of their physical and mental health and future earning capacity. Medical bills and unemployment caused them both to go bankrupt.

I read somewhere that an ideal divorce is one where two people agree, openly and without rancor, that they want to live separately because their goals are no longer compatible.

I believe that divorcing in anger, with unresolved issues, doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve separated yourself from the problems.

72

[QUOTE=Dinsdale]
We didn’t get further into specifics, but I got the impression she thought I owed her something more than that - which didn’t really make sense to me.
[/QUOTE]
Perhaps a compensatory component of spousal support.

[QUOTE=Dinsdale]
Not sure what would be appropriate re: my pension and such.
[/QUOTE]
Perhaps an equalization based on the value of the asset.

Start by consulting a good family lawyer in your jurisdiciton, who can explain to you the family laws in your jurisdition, and based on the number you provide, set out baselines for support and property division.

73

Dins - I’m sorry - let me know if there’s anything I can do. You have my email - use it. :slight_smile:

74

Damn, Dinsdale. I’m sorry this is all happening. I cannot imagine sitting at the table and hearing my partner say they hated me over something that petty. :frowning:

75

My family is pretty eccentric and difficult (though I don’t talk about it here) and we don’t say stuff like this to each other at all. Reading glasses disagreements do not merit hatred-no matter how annoying you might be in real life. Unless you have been beating her for the last 22 years and cheating and being a general asshole (and I doubt she’d put up with that), you don’t deserve to wake up to cold hatred.

Either your wife is slowly going insane because

a) She’s been a SAHM and is now confused about where her life is going since your youngest kid is almost out of the house

b) Is going hormonally crazy

OR you have to maybe face the fact that she is just punishing you because that’s her way of dealing with her own pain. Given her insane family background, she may just be slowly torturing you about her other issues.

Either way-you don’t deserve to be punished for stuff this petty and I agree with Muffin that it is downright emotionally abusive to talk to someone that way. If a man said stuff like that to me, everyone and my mom would be painting a gigantic scarlet “A” all over him. You shouldn’t be giving your wife a pass on talking to you like that…

76

Just to give you all a good laugh at what an idiot I am:

I think I mentioned upthread that (I think) part of my wife’s is over what she thinks she will do with herself when the kids are gone, her lack of satisfaction with primarily managing a household, and her frustration at the difficulty of re-entering the full-time job market.

Well, we just got an e-mail that our boss is going to be putting on a hard press to hire another attorney soon, and was welcoming any resumes from qualified candidates. I’d have to be a complete idiot to suggest that my wife apply to my shop, wouldn’t I? Unfortunately, my sense of self-preservation outweighed my desire to be a nice guy. What the hell. In a worst case scenario, I can take early retirement in 3 years.