Because only a tiny, tiny minority of people know that tumors, strokes, etc. can affect behavior.
Well, yes. It ain’t fair. But it’s how it works.
My ex, who wasn’t making a wage at the end of the marriage (but was obsessed with a non-profit she was working for every day and considered it intense work and why didn’t I appreciate that, I’m such a hateful person?) got half of everything, which was $1.2m + $192k in support over 5 years, and tough shit to me and my future retirement, AND seriously she could have screwed me even worse. Really! And she felt like a victim! Sorry, thems the breaks.
I don’t have an issue with divided community property but I think spousal support ought to be extremely limited in time and scope barring extenuating circumstances. I kinda think everyone ought to float their own boat as much as possible–just like I don’t support the widespread expectation of certain gender roles being automatically the ones who perform the lion’s share of household upkeep and emotional labor.
OP, how much does your wife want to save the marriage? Is she alarmed by the thought of losing you, or is she chill about that?
@DCnDC See an attorney before you do a single thing, even if you opt to try to save the marriage somehow. You want to ensure whatever you do or say doesn’t come back to bite you if you do file for divorce, and you want to pre-empt anything she might try.
I’m not suggesting she’s NOT mentally ill, but there’s no rule that says someone can’t have a mental illness or personality disorder AND get vindictive or greedy.
Divorce is rough, but as someone who spent many years in hell with an abusive, mentally ill person, I can honestly say a terrible marriage is much, much worse.
I agree.
From what I’ve seen in recent years (admittedly, not that many cases, fortunately), alimony is usually a token financial amount, not enough for anyone to live on, and I’ve also seen cases where a spouse kept their ex on their health insurance for a specified period of time, usually a year.
It sounds a bit like borderline personality disorder, perhaps mixed with depression. That’s a tough thing to deal with.
I’ll go a different direction with the advice. Does she have any complaints about you? Things you do or don’t do that she doesn’t like?
Where I am going with this is that it might be a good idea to just focus on making yourself a better person, and see what happens. If you have let yourself go a bit, get back in shape. If you are unhappy about something in your own life, work on it. If she has complaints about your behaviour, try fixing them.
Sometimes relationships come apart because two people just can’t communicate and express what’s really wrong. In some people that makes them passive-aggressive and they start punishing you by stopping housework, etc. But you don’t know why she did that so you get mad, and she doubles down.
Anyway, if you just focus on improving yourself, that will pay benefits even if your wife doesn’t care and you ultimately divorce. Besides, your own physical and mental state are the only thing you have full control of, so you might as well use this bad situation to motivate yourself to improve. And just maybe your marriage will be better as a result. And if she is still the same and you ultimately leave, at leadt you will know you tried your best to meet her needs, and your own growth will help with future relationships.
I’m curious where you live. I was divorced at 52; in my state I could have been on the hook for 13 years of spousal support, until I retired. The amount wasn’t princely, but $30k/year isn’t peanuts.
I kind of want to remark a little about this. Back above, I mentioned separation being a rational option – maybe some time apart will do you some good. But, if we’re working within the framework of wanting to continue living with the person, here’s another idea. I volunteer facilitating an al-Anon-type group that is based on cognitive behavioral therapy. I am not a therapist, and you should not take my advice as anything more than my experience in the materials we have and from talking to many people who are going through living with a significant other or family member with substance abuse disorder (which often are comorbid with psychological/psychiatric disorders.) As I said above, nagging, pleading, yelling will not help. I assume, from your OP, you’ve already done this and it has lead nowhere. More of it won’t do squat.
As said above by other posters, you should also concentrating on changing yourself. I’m not saying you are the problem at all, but rather that the current way you are dealing with things isn’t work, so why continue digging in? Share some responsibility – yes, this is difficult. Why should I change if she’s the one with the problem? Well, if you want any chance of helping, if that is your goal, you have to try something different. Establish boundaries. Reward good behaviors. Yelling at bad behaviors is fruitless and may even act as a positive reinforcement, with attention as the reward. It’s negative attention, but it’s attention. When communicating, we like to use the blueprint of: positive statement, I statement, understanding statement, sharing responsibility. It helps keep people off the defensive and gives a better chance of you being heard. It’s certainly not guaranteed to work, and it always helps to start with small asks before leading up to big ones. I know it sounds a bit therapy mumbo-jumbo, but I find it does work in my day-to-day communication with my wife. With something like messes – and I’m just spitballing here – you might start with a small thing like “Honey, I love you and you’re very special to me. I sometimes feel hurt when I come home and there’s dishes left in the sink. I understand you have a lot on your mind – it’s been a tough year – and I understand that I have been difficult. Let’s figure out a way we both can make this work. [We can clean the dishes together, or I can put them away when they’re done, or something like that.” The key here is trying to put yourself in her shoes in a non-judgmental way and think of what you can sincerely say (as difficult as it may sometimes be) that shows the other person empathy and a combined solution to a problem.
Or, simply, have you expressed empathy with her, and simply said something along the lines of “honey, I love you and I really worry about you. I understand I can be difficult sometimes and not always available. Is there anything you’d like to talk about?” Not necessarily that exactly, but something like that. And if the answer is “no,” don’t press it. I’m just curious how a heart-to-heart came out. And, yes, I would say something like “I understand I can be difficult” as much as you may think it’s unfair, because I assume it is true. Sure, you have good reasons to be difficult, but that doesn’t change the fact. Share some of the responsibility.
Like I said, with that, you have to start slow, with easy tasks that will not set the other person up for failure. And, if it doesn’t work, try a different tack. Like I said, I’m not saying it will work, but it’s one place to start if you want to try and has a better chance of working, because what you’ve been doing hasn’t been working. If your wife truly has borderline personal disorder (BPD), that’s a rough one. One form of therapy to try for that, if you can nudge her in that direction, is dialectal behavioral therapy, which was original designed specifically for women with BPD.
Our meetings have a lot more than just that, but that’s one little skill that gives you a start. The most important one, though, is to take care of yourself.
How were things in your relationship before her apparent meltdown? Looking back on it, were there warning signs that you may have missed? Did she ever raise any complaints about you? About the relationship? About her life? Her family? Job? Whatever?
In my state, alimony is capped at 35% of the difference in the parties’ income. The two other states I practice in are lower, but not dramatically. Prior to the Trump tax giveaways, alimony used to be tax deductible to the payor and taxable to the payee. Now it’s not, so there has been a push to lower the rate.
Whether that’s enough to live on for the ex-spouse, depends on many factors, but I have clients paying $100,000 plus a year in alimony. Almost all of the them still feel got the better deal.
To address some questions and fill in some info:
I do. I’m willing to do whatever I have to, to help her, if she’ll accept it.
She’s had issues with panic attacks in the past. COVID restrictions and such probably brought a lot of the OCD behavior on.
We’re the same age, low mid-40s, just 2 months apart, and we met in 7th grade. Dated in high school but went our separate ways after graduation. She moved back into the area in 2009 and we literally ran into each other; turns out we were both living in the same neighborhood. Went out a few times to catch up and the spark was still there. I moved in with her just 6 months later. Married in 2014.
No kids. That was a conscious, mutual decision for a lot of different reasons.
I admit the OP was written in a time of anger and frustration. It’s more or less all true, but to be fair to her, I genuinely believe she does not do these things maliciously so much as she does them obliviously, which may or may not be worse.
Her parents spoiled her growing up and her mother still cleans up her messes whenever she’s around, so she has very little work ethic and a deep sense of entitlement. She expects her messes to just magically disappear, because they pretty much always have.
She wasn’t always like she is now. When she was working she helped out enough. Having a structure to her days seems to have helped keep that entitlement at bay, but when she quit her job this last time, that all went out the window. We used to spend a lot more time together but as her problems have increased it makes me not want to spend time with her.
I admit I’m not the easiest person to communicate or live with. I can easily go weeks without speaking a complete sentence to anyone, and I have a rage inside of me that I don’t fully understand myself. Like Luke Skywalker in the Force Awakens trailer, my father had it, my sister has it, and it’s in me, too. I’ve never been violent or abusive, rather when I get angry and frustrated, I tend to just go silent and walk away. I spend a lot of time by myself.
We had more or less this exact conversation yesterday and she recognizes and agrees this is not healthy behavior. We’re going to sit down today and try to find her a therapist and psychiatrist for some counseling and meds.
I’m hiring a laundry service that will pick up from the house and return them the next day, washed and folded.
We’re going to make a chore schedule and she will give genuine effort to clean one room a day for one hour. I never expected or wanted her to be a housewife or to clean the house 8 hours a day, but just cleaning up after herself and doing something to help out is enough for me. I know I’m an asshole but I think those are not unreasonable requests or expectations.
We’ll see how it all goes. I’m going to talk to somebody myself about my own anger issues.
Despite how it sounded in the OP she’s not a bad person. I’m not ready to give up on her. She’s always been the love of my life. When apart from her I was extremely unsuccessful in the dating department, but I still had options and I chose her. For reasons that I won’t get into here, it’s more than likely I will outlive her by a significant margin.
Based on this, it sounds like individual therapy for each of you and marriage counseling may be the best way forward. Good luck.
That’s great you’re able to talk about it and are going to try some things. One thing to keep in mind is that things are going to go well at first when you’re both motivated, but that motivation will fade in a bit and it may get a little harder. Keep that in mind and prepare yourself for it. It’s natural to feel like you’re falling into the same cycle and start to get angry about it. Instead, keep up communication in a positive way so bad feelings don’t boil over. Fixing things will be like trying to fix any bad habit like diet, exercise, smoking, drinking, drugs, etc. Backsliding and up and downs is part of the process. It’s not going to be a straight line to improvement. The important thing is that you both maintain the desire and motivation to improve as much as possible throughout this.
It sounds like you internalize a lot of your feelings, but that is going to be toxic to this process. You need to express to her how you’re feeling in a safe way that doesn’t make her feel threatened. That’s going to feel uncomfortable if your usual pattern is to hold everything in and eventually explode when she doesn’t figure out on her own what’s making you unhappy. Try to let your feelings out when they are just starting and they won’t get so bad.
Sounds like you’re making the right decisions. Good luck and feel free to come back and vent
That’s a great start and it’s good you are deciding to address your issues as well–it’s super easy to see behavior in others that pisses US off but nowhere near as easy to see how our own behaviors contribute to the overall toxicity of the situation. I’m a big proponent of therapy and while it might not work miracles it can sure bring you to some realizations you didn’t see or were unwilling to look at.
I’m so very sorry that you are going through this. I don’t have advice to give… just support and the hope that this will somehow work out to a solution where both of you will be happier.
Yes. Wishing you both luck.
wrong thread.
I live in Iowa, and I do know that alimony is uncommon, in large part because it’s taxable income.
I have a friend who pays $700 a month, even though they didn’t have any kids. Anything beyond that is NOMB and I’ll let him tell me what he wants me to know.