QFT. My apologies for singling out this post, but I couldn’t have said it better.
It’s scary to me how much the OP reminds me of both myself and my ex, from about twenty years ago. If you want to stay in the relationship for your son, by all means try, but I’d recommend realizing that your difficulty accepting your wife is your problem and not her shortcoming.
Sorry I couldn’t check here earlier. Now to answer your concerns.
It was the other way around. I was an Engineer when we got married, she just had an associate degree. Then few years after marriage she finished her BSN and worked as RN for 3 days a week. Then from coworkers influence, she wanted to advance her career further and kept switching between few Masters degree as she couldn’t make up her mind first before finalizing on FNP which would be a 5 day job plus 1 weekend a month and once a day weekly oncall rotation. I was against the idea since both couple working 5 day jobs would be hard with a 4 year old who gets sick from school every other week. She ignored me and went ahead with her degree anyways.
As expected, every time son is sick, I get to work from home as my job is flexible and hers being not. She just ignores the kid is sick with a 101F temperature and was planning to drop him off to school as she can’t take off from work. I was forced to WFH again as I didn’t want him go to school in that situation. And we had discussion over these scenarios even before she did the FNP as I saw it coming with her new 5 day job but she could care less. Now I am, by defacto, supposed to take off or WFH every time the kiddo is sick.
So bottom line, NO. I didn’t marry a successful career woman but more like a family woman who somehow changed into a career woman just because her coworkers/friends were doing so. Now she wants to start her own clinic and practice independently. But don’t have the financial and needs my help from my savings. I would rather put that money on my sons college fund than on her career-holic mind. So in case I end up moving on, he has some form of support for his college expenses if he ever makes it there to begin with once I am gone.
Regarding family background - I am from a middle/upper class family with well educated parents and siblings/relatives. Her parents neither her relatives passed high school except herself and her brother. So she was in charge of her household growing up and her parents looked upon her since she was the educated one and hence her personality became I know it all. I don’t blame her for that, she just didn’t had someone to guide her as a mentor growing up.
In addition, my entire family was against our marriage. Why? Because they preferred an educated girl from an educated family as my wife. And I was a young donkey brained moron that I told my parents/relatives to **F off **and married her anyways with just 4 of my friends attend the function. I didn’t talk to my dad neither my relatives for an year as they were all pissed at me. And the young Adrenalin rushing myself could care less. But guess what, KARMA GETS YOU BACK.
Took me several years to figure out why my parents told me to find a girl with an educated family background. I never realized the importance of parents personality/role in a child’s life. Now I do. if you are raised without proper guidance/family values/etiquette, you will have a hard time adjusting with your partner. But it’s too late now that I haven’t told a single soul in my family about all my problems as they will laugh at me for what a clown I am who learn’t it the hard way. And my freakin ego just won’t let me go down like that. lol
She used to cook before. But now with her new job she just don’t have enough time for everything which was part of our discussion as well.
I don’t have any issues helping my son with his homework because if not his grades will go down and he probably wont make it to college. For some reason I wished my partner chipped in as well, maybe from seeing all my friend’s partners taking so much initiative with their kids school work. All are different I guess. She suck at math so she can’t help it.
I didn’t marry this woman, She changed into one during the course of years. I would have definitely not got into this relationship if this was our situation back then. I prefer a family woman over a career focused woman any day. I still don’t mind marrying someone who works at Walmart for $8/hour than a bread winning high paying FNP. I can pay own bills(I make 6 figure salary) and that’s not the reason I got married. Just wanted someone to go back home to after a long days stress filled work hours. Unfortunately I wasn’t lucky enough I guess.
It’s funny, when I think about it, I called my dad on phone and told him I got married. There was silence on the other end for few seconds. Then he replied,*** I will let you suffer for your mistakes*** and hung up. He indeed did let me suffer.
I don’t want my son pay for my mistakes that I am still hanging in. As you guys stated, maybe it’s not good for the kid to grew up miserably through this. I need to wait another 12 years before he goes to college.
Plus, if I move on, I wonder who will call WFH next time the kid gets sick. Obviously not her. Few years back, we had similar arguments and she ended up living separate with the kid in an apartment for a year. Arranged a carer to pickup/drop off my son to/from his school since she works 12 hour shift as RN. Turned out every time the carer didn’t show up due to personal reasons, my son missed school. I ended up volunteering to pick up/drop off the kid once I realized whats going on. Her ego wont let her ask my help.lol
So she will be losing all these perks if I walk out of the relationship with her keeping child custody. I can easily prove in court that my job flexibility is definitely beneficial for my sons future/education. But I really hope I don’t have to go to that level and make the kids life miserable in between our ego clashes.
I cared less about my own parents when it came to our marriage, I care even less about a woman I met few years ago.
Charity work is different from picking up strangers from highways especially at night time. What if they have a gun or knife? Well, that would be a charity towards me that I don’t need to deal with this anymore then I guess. lol
Honestly I don’t feel anything towards her anymore. If I could go back in time and erase everything, I would gladly do that in a heartbeat.
I could still go back to my family/relatives and mend things up if I really wants to and start all over again with a clean slate and find a better partner from a good family this time. But unfortunately my *freakin gigantic ego *won’t let me do that either. I am such a loser I guess. :smack:
Well. If you have a problem with one person maybe the problem is with them, if you have a problem with everyone then maybe…
You’re responsible for you’re own happiness. If you’re not happy leave. If you can already work from home and generally work around having a kid then, do so.
Shouldn’t be hard to swing if she would rather focus on her career.
You want a house wife? Find a girl that wants to be one make her you’re second wife.
I’ve made the mistake of believing that a woman’s job is the home regardless of other jobs. I had no idea I was a dumbass, I just expected it for some reason, I was wrong but it took some time to understand why. Weird. The fact is if she has a job outside the home, AND you, for some reason, expect her to cook and clean and shit, you’re expecting her to work two and a half jobs to your one. That makes you the lazy one by default.
Your family problems are separate and distinct from your marriage. Unless they were right, in which case you fucked up and didn’t listen. Still your fault, on both ends.
Yes, leaving is hard. But if staying will be harder then leave.
You are, again, looking for validation. I understand why now. Your family is not behind you. So erase their response from your mind. Think what you need, what your child needs. Don’t concern yourself with others opinions. I suspect your wife won’t care if you take your child with you. If she does let the court work it out. Y’all could do some type of shared custody.
You just sound angry that you wife won the role in the relationship that you wanted. You see it as a major drawback having to work from home sometimes to look after your kid in your job because while you can it’s not optimal, but you consider it unfair that your wife didn’t want to stop her whole career just when she had the option for it to start taking off, to focus on childcare.
You sound shocked that a woman would leave a sick child with his Dad. Why? If she was at home, would it be at all shocking for you to head out to work leaving the kid with his Mom? Why do you think childcare should be her job?
From the setup you’ve described, it’s far more practical for you to do it. The way you’re doing it now would be pretty close to optimal if you were working as a team, with both partners considered equally. But you apparently don’t think her wishes are as important as yours. You sound like you want her to be your sidekick, taking care of the things you consider less important and you’re angry that that isn’t what she’s doing.
Did you agree before having the child that care was going to be primarily her responsibility, or is this just what you assumed would be the case? If you agreed it was her job, fair enough, it’s a problem that she’s breaking the agreement, but if not, the agreement was between you and your imagination, and you only have yourself to blame if it’s not working out.
You also sound almost like you intend to punish her by leaving her with the kid and not trying for custody at all, even though you describe yourself as your son’s primary carer and you claim you only care about the child’s best interests. I’d think about that.
To the OP, I have only skimmed the thread but it contains a lot of good advice. I’m going to reiterate (again) the point about seeking counselling. Your marriage sounds a bit like where mine was a couple of years ago, in that the two of us had different expectations about what we should be doing/contributing to the household. Before we fell in to hating each other, we had a few sessions with a marriage counsellor. I think both of us probably went in thinking on some level that the counsellor would take our side and explain how the other person was being unreasonable. In fact, it helped both of us to see the other side of the problem and how we could both make lots of little changes that would improve our standing with the other. Now, counselling works best if it is done early (and, perhaps, often - if necessary. Maybe we will need to go back again in the future), and both parties fully commit to it. But that’s not to say it’s not useful if some of these conditions don’t apply, I’d definitely recommend it anyway. You might find that with a few small changes in behaviour and attitude, you can learn to love (or at least respect) each other again.
It takes effort on both sides but my personal opinion is a lot of people split up without having made a proper effort to work things out between them.
But his giant ego won’t let him admit his mistakes.
I should probably butt out, because the O.P. has had enough good advice already, and as was already stated, probably only looking for validation of their own point of view. However –
Please review this thread and its content. You may want to print it out (someone no one else, at work or home can see it!) and maybe make a table for your review. This is how technical people understand things better.
Please try to see how some of your statements are opinions from your own point of view. Notice how people spin them around back at you. Do this to yourself when you;re angry. If being angry at her, and then at yourself, and then at your family, and then at her parents, and then at the universe/human culture for setting up this situation exhausts you … then good, now you’ll have nothing but facts to work with, and take into perspective.
The expensive purchase is troubling. Odd purchase, a 5000 dollar cleaning machine, from someone who doesn’t clean. Do you have that much carpeting? If a man went and spent 2000 dollars on a strip club visit, just 'cause “we can afford it,” there’d be serious anger on this board. OK. So she doesn’t clean, but large purchases are also not her prerogative. This is also not a strength of hers, and you can, with mediation, bring this stuff up.
I’m not feeling the “screwed up dinner for guests” problem. I cook fairly well, yet at times I’ve failed to pull it off, and dinner was sub-standard. You need better examples than that.
Since its clear that you can afford it, you need a maid. A maid, you need. And this thing, that you need, is called … a maid. Your house needs to be structured, as an example for your child, and to alleviate your stress. Your house has to be clean, to alleviate your stress, to avoid you transferring your anger, and to prevent illness in your child. Employing someone in this fashion is a kind thing to do, surely she’d recognize that. Get it from a professional group, or from some college guys, or see if you can find someone you both want to work for you: i.e. no hot chippy for you, no charity case she wants who can’t/won’t actually work, and no using this person as a pawn against the spouse.
And get professional marriage mediation. Good news – you don’t have parents mucking the process up.
Wow. I don’t even know where to start with that update. If your job is more flexible than hers, why on earth wouldn’t you take care of your child when he is ill? That isn’t an outrageous demand, that is simply being a parent. As is taking your child to school. It’s truly nothing special, just an ordinary part of parenthood.
It sounds as though your wife has worked hard to forge a career of her own, with little or no support from you. Good for her.
Again, I will ask how much cooking, housework, and childcare you do on a typical day. Do you honestly expect your wife to do all of that in addition to working full-time? And if you choose to go down the path to divorce, what sort of custody arrangement will you seek and why?
I am assuming that English is not your first language, so perhaps some cultural issues are at play here as well. However, even if that is the case, surely the concept of a two-career household is not unfamiliar to you.
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Honestly, I wouldn’t stay “for the kid”, I’d stay because you love her, and it really doesn’t seem like you do. Sexless marriage? Forget it.
My wife is basically as you say, but we like each other for the most part, enjoy each other’s company, have a good sex life, etc. Are the kids going to be screwed up? Yeah probably, but I have the opinion that most people are screwed up a little. Have 3 adult children, they are all holding down a job, not doing drugs, and my oldest is finally moving out at 23.
We’re actually looking forward to being empty nesters. While I would never give up any of my kids, I think 4 is too much, and 90% of the mess in our house is on them.
An eccentric mother is one thing. An eccentric single mother could be a lot worse. I think it’s important that someone be in the child’s life to offer a different point of view and help the child learn not to grow up into the same kind of dysfunction. Does that mean you stay in a loveless marriage? I don’t know, maybe?
Again, why is abandoning your child even part of your internal monologue?
If there is anything your ego should stop you from doing, it is “moving on” from your son. (And to be clear, you can end the marriage and still not leave your son’s life. Lots of parents do that.)
I think she should leave you.
So, confusedguy, one of your main complaints about your wife is that she doesn’t take care of your kid–and so you want to move on, leave her and leave the kid in her care?
Does this make sense to anybody? 
Of course, the complaints about her not caring for the kid could be a “red herring” and the real complaint is what you see as her lack of respect for you. In which case–you really need to address your lack of respect for her too.