Whooboy.
Roland, this isn’t going to be solved on a message board. You have huge huge issues in your relationship. Watching the mother of your son is not going to save things.
BTW, you have money to pay for a swinger’s club, and money to pay for a babysitter while you’re at the club, but no money for therapy? That’s bullshit. Who says you have to go with her? Go by yourself. You need to figure out yourself.
Dude. You are toast. Accept it.
Ivylass, you think that’s bad, wait till he starts in on how his 1500-calorie-a-day diet is because they can’t even afford food, much less counseling. Again, though, I have to say BULLSHIT. If you can afford a babysitter and admission fees for a sex club, you can afford some goddam groceries.
If you love her, you sure have a funny way of showing it.
I can relate to this. But I would also find myself thinking about what sort of modifications they would need to the sneeze shield at a buffet in this kind of place.
Well, maybe this needs saying…
If you want to save your marriage, why don’t you, A) respect her wishes and stop talking about your private life on message boards, B) at least occasionally go to bed with her, C) get some financial responsibility going, and D) stop trying to run her life and telling her what she must study and where she must live.
Frankly, you sound like a selfish ass. Maybe you’re not, but that’s the way your message sounded to me. I don’t talk about my relationship on public boards, because I believe my wife wouldn’t like it, and I respect her enough to not do something she wouldn’t like even if she doesn’t know about it. I DAMNED sure wouldn’t do it if she explicitly told me it made her uncomfortable.
You are mad because you aren’t getting enough sex in your marriage, but you refuse to go to bed with her when she wants to go to bed. Gee, you think that might be related? I’m a night-owl too, and spend too many late nights up while my wife is asleep, so I know where you’re coming from. But I try to compromise. Rather than just saying, “This is who I am, so suffer”, I understand that I’m a bit weird this way, and I try to at least moderate this and go to bed at a normal hour when she asks me to.
If you didn’t do anything for her during the first five years of your relationship, I hope you’re making that up by doing things for her now. I hope you just don’t sit at your computer by yourself and whine at her that you don’t get laid enough and ignore her otherwise.
This marriage might yet get salvaged, if only because you’re both committed to hanging around until your kid is grown up. That means you have a lot of time. But I’ll tell you what - from the vibes I’m picking up, you’re in desperate trouble now, and it’s going to be a long, hard road back. And it starts with YOU, not her. Clean up YOUR act. Listen to what she wants, and act on it. Show some consideration. Do nice things for her. Be financially responsible, finish your education, and then earn a living. Instead of telling her where she should live, ASK her what she wants, and RESPECT HER WISHES. It’s called compromise and respect. Be good to her, and maybe, in five years or ten years she’ll decide that maybe you’re worth keeping.
As for the swing club, whatever. I think it’s a horrible idea. But you have to make up your own mind, and it sounds to me like you’ve already made it and you’re just hoping that some people here will back you up. You seem to be going into it with eyes open, but I hope you’re ready to watch your wife having sex with strangers, perhaps better sex than she’s had in years, and then coming home and not wanting to have sex with you. 'Cause that’s what is going to happen.
But you guys need serious counselling. I know you don’t want to, because you’re not willing to make the changes you know you’re going to be told to make. If that’s the case, then you need to sit down and think about how important your marriage really is to you. If you’re willing to put message boards and “Coast to Coast” ahead of your wife’s profound wishes, then you clearly don’t give a rat’s ass. On the other hand, perhaps you do, but you’re too lazy/selfish/willful to do anything about it. So perhaps it’s you that needs counselling. Forget about ‘marriage counselling’ if she won’t do it (and maybe she figures it’s a waste of time because you won’t listen anyway, and she figures the problems are mostly with you). Also, she may think that marriage counselling is just going to devolve into you bitching that you’re not getting enough sex. So perhaps you need to seek out personal counselling and deal with the problems you have that prevent you from treating her properly.
And don’t ever miss her birthday again.
Just out of curiousity - do you do your share of housework? Do you make half the meals, or at least have an agreement where you clean up after meals if she makes them? Do you share your child-rearing responsibilities, or does your wife do most of it?
Your lack of sex in the relationship could simply be a matter of your wife being exhausted from work, and her resenting you because you don’t help out like you should, coupled with the fact that you don’t go to bed at the same time so there’s never any opportunity. Perhaps she’s excited by the thought of a swing club not so much because she wants to ‘swing’, but because she’s starved for something new and exciting, and you’re not helping. Or maybe she can’t enjoy sex with you at home because she’s just surrounded by too much emotional baggage and there are too many other issues.
Also, given what you’ve said about how you’ve treated her otherwise, how are you in bed? Considerate? Do you take the time to do what she wants? Do you listen to what she says she would like? Do you ignore obvious clues that she’s not liking what you’re doing? Do you pressure her into doing things that make her uncomfortable?
If you don’t want to do the swing club, why don’t you offer instead to take her out on a romantic evening? Can you get someone to look after your child overnight? If so, find a little cozy bed and breakfast or whatever you can afford, and for a night just TREAT HER. Forget what you want - just find out what she wants, and provide it. Show her that you care about her. Take her away from the place that has all the bad associations and just give her the night of her life, without the sex with strangers.
Or do both. Perhaps do the romantic night out before you do the sex club - it might make the sex club experience a little better.
My mother in law lives with us and we pay her $100.00 per week (plus room and board) for basically unlimited childcare.
I do some things around the house. I do all of the laundry (every two weeks at a laundrymat about 20 loads. We need about $1,500 worth of plumbing work before we can use the garage where the old washer and dryers are located. I would do the cooking, but she says that I use too much garlic and spices (actually I think I make her feel bad about not being able to do it herself, she is a control freak type person and so am I).
I am a selfish ass and probably a sociopath as well. Some days I’m not as bad as others, and even feel certain human emotions such as regret.
As a sociopath I don’t think that I need counseling. Indeed, I feel that I’m the sane one and that the world is crazy.
I’m not even sure that either of us would having sex with anyone at the club it could just be a sociological excursion. Once in the Navy (in the early 1990’s) I spent the whole weekend riding the bus around LA (in my Navy whites no less) just to observe people in various behaviors and socioeconomic situations. I find people fascinating and watching them have sex (including with my wife) might fit within that context. I’ve always felt like an outsider who clinically observes more than participates in most things.
We have actually had alot more sex lately. I think that the club might make it even better or at least enhance the goals and interests expressed in the above post.
The club at issue charges $20.00 dollars admission and her friends said they will pay our way if we will go.
Right now I’m so hungry that a bus full of HIV+ convicts could masturbate on the buffet and it would do little to decrease my appetite.
The bottom line is that I was raised as a spoiled, only child (my brother being much older and out of the house before I grew up). Even in death my parents spoiled me by leaving me money and a house (which I managed to avoid paying their creditors on via complicated living trusts, and never letting an estate be opened, and skillful transfers of assets as my mother was dying so that an estate wouldn’t have to be opened). In many ways I am still that child and she is willing to tolerate that behavior (to some extent). While I despise these tendencies in myself I am 35, and fundamental changes in my character seem unlikely. I am trying to become a nurse so that I can better support my family. However, while I score nearly perfect 100’s on the written examinations the “simple” clinical skills befuddle me. I cannot make an occupied bed to their standards, and other simple skills such as donning sterile gloves and catheterization seem out of my reach.
Dude, the abbreviation TMI was invented for you.
I now think that counseling wouldn’t help but a lobotomy might be just the ticket.
Jesus, man. Get thee to a nunnery.
A sociopathic nurse?
I just don’t know what to say.
There is probably a better clinical term than sociopathic since I often find myself crying with, and for patients at school and being having a good deal of empathy in many other situations. What is the proper, clinical term for someone who sporadically, or consistently displays sociopathic behavior in some (but not all) aspects of their life? As a child I was diagnosed as high functioning autistic, but was never treated (because my parents feared the social stigma that the diagnosis might bring upon me at school). However, I don’t see how that could integrate into my current situation.
Getting back to the swing club I have at least two lingering questions:
What percentage of those that attend such places actually engage in some sort of sexual interaction with others (obviously it varies and the answer is heavily opinion orientated since I doubt we have good studies on the subject.) Her friends emphasized that we don’t have to do anything, and that they probably won’t either. They compare it to the clinical observation days that she spent in nursing school at hospices, homeless clinics, and Planned Parenthood facilities. To quote one “observation doesn’t imply participation”.
How often does a couple go to such a place and then have a situation where one of them gets involved in an extramarital (extra club) relationship? That’s really my biggest fear I suppose.
Oh, ferchrissake.
(a) Will anything anybody says here make one iota of difference to you anyway?
(b) Why are you asking here rather than doing some basic Googling yourownself?
Why is an affair your biggest fear?
Based on the way you yourself describe your ‘marriage’, you are both committed to staying together for several more years, so really, what difference would an affair even make?
You seem pretty confident you’ll both have a good time, so just go and see if it’s for you. Or don’t.
In your case I really don’t see what difference it makes one way or the other.
I have as you say Googled the subject. However, I find that Google has several limitations:
a. The webpages often present a highly commercialized perspective.
b. The FAQ’s give you the standard “book” answers.
I’m looking for more original perspectives that arise from unique experiences. Furthermore, keep in mind that any answers “exist for posterity” not just my situation (in the same way that the writers of the Jewish Talmud were addressing issues of their day, but which are still studied and applied to even current situations). That is to say something that you offer here might benefit someone doing a “Dope archive search” ten years from today. I always ask my questions not only from my personal perspective, but also with the desire of adding to the StraightDope knowledge base with different perspectives or “takes” even on previously discussed issues.
Also, (although this does not restrain anyone else) I always follow what I call the “Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pots, Idia Amin, Mother Teresa” doctrine when I answer questions. That is to say that I try to supply the same information or answer to questions without regard to whether the asking party was Pol Pots or Mother Teresa. The fact that the asking party is good or evil (or somewhere in between) has little to do with whether or not the question is valid or interesting (at least in my mind).
Diagnosis by message board is always a risky business, but since this thread is such a trainwreck anyway, has anybody every mentioned the term Asperger Syndrome to you?
I dunno edwino. I was thinking more along the lines of borderline personality disorder than HFA/ AS. Roland’s already said that he had a dx of HFA as a child and functionally the major difference between HFA and AS is when speech developed.
But sociopathic tendencies fit more closely with BPD than ASD. Narcissism and egocentricity and the like. Anecdotally there’s supposed to be a higher proportion of BPD amongst the nursing population because it’s easy to get your narcissism fed by being there in a limited capacity in a crisis.
The diagnosis I made really can’t be posted in IMHO, but it involved some pretty creative cussing, lemmetellyou. And I’m certain it’s not in the DSM-IV.
Sometimes they’re sick, sometimes they’re just jerks. If he has sympathy for others, he ain’t sociopathic.
Between this one and the weight-loss thread, we have a pattern of TMI paired with a blatant refusal to consider whether or not his behavior can or should be changed. He doesn’t want information or advice, he wants a one way conduit of communication with a fan club. He wants a blog.
“Exhibitionist” I’ll give you. No doubt. Emotional, if not sexual. I’m not sure where the swing-club-as-a-voyeur stance he’s advocating fits in. Sounds like another way to achieve sexual gratification without actually giving anything to anyone.
Selfish and lazy are not illnesses. They’re not your parents fault, and they ARE changeable, even at the ripe old age of 35. The fact that you’re not willing to even attempt to change them is what makes you a jerk.
And the only thing I can say about voyeuristic jerks is I wouldn’t want one in my swing club.