Possibly getting Divorced: Need advice

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So me and my wife have been with each other for nearly two years now. After a long 5 year waiting process from the Visa and Pandemic, it has been exceptionally difficult for me as I’ve had no familial support (Emotionally and financially) and I’ve tried to do all the heavy lifting on my side.

When my wife came to live with me, my apartment was basically a room, so I explained to her we should hold off from having sex lest I get her pregnant and her having to stay in a room most of the time for 9 months, with no one from my side of the family even bothering with us.

Well I got a house three months ago and we’ve barely settled in and alot of frustration from my wife has boiled over as to why we’re not having sex to get pregnant yet.

To be honest I’m constantly exhausted, I work two jobs, I take my wife out everyday after work
My wife is quite isolated as we’ve moved to a new town and we both don’t know anyone, she doesn’t want to get a part time job until we’ve had kids. My wife is quite sheltered and vunerable so stays in the house alot.

I feel bad because I can’t spend enough time with her because I’m constantly working, my family doesn’t even want to get to know her and there I’d alot of expectations put upon us to start making a family immediately.

So she’s reached her breaking point. She already threatened divorce when we moved in and I managed to reassure her last time, but this time she’s just adamant about splitting up. I think the marriage is worth saving and that I can salvage the situation?

2

In January I walked out on my wife of then 25 months. It seems we had a far better relationship then than you two do now. Now that I’ve been on my own for ~5 months I’m a new man. Leaving her was about a 20x better decision than was dating her, letting her move in with me, and especially marrying her. She is not a monster; in fact I respect her greatly. But she is someone who wants all the things I don’t. And is insistent about getting what she wants, not what I want. And to some degree vice versa.

I am not you. What is important to me is not what is important to you. I am not in your phase of life (I’m 65 and just retired). But I would be running screaming from your situation and have done so long ago.

Being married is not about having someone to eat dinner with every day. It’s about choosing to walk side by side down the same shared pathway through life in every respect. Yes, there will be minor differences of opinion, and minor compromises. But if she deeply needs to go East and you deeply need to go North, that is epic fail. If one understands the differences between needs, wants, and whims, and the other does not, well that’s epic fail too. Of a much more painful nature.


With that intro, what marriage do you think you have that needs saving?

From your description, she wants a meal ticket and a sperm donor. And to stay at home caring for her babies that you pay for. I can’t tell what you want. But I bet it’s not that, or at least not just that. From the smell of your economic circumstances, if it takes two jobs to pay for a house and two adults, imagine what work it will take to pay for a house and two adults and two or four growing children? The idea of her starting work after bearing children is nonsense. If she’s unwilling now while her life is otherwise easy, how much less willing, and legitimately so, will she be when she has the burden (and joy) of baby care 24/7/365?

The fact your every sentence is dripping with resentment suggests you’ve already passed the point where anything remotely akin to delivering the things she wants will make you miserable. Correction: make you more miserable than you already are.

So I ask you: What good came into your life this week as a result of her being in your house and in your life? No need to answer me publicly, but think long and hard about that question in your own mind and write down your answers someplace.

If you can’t articulate how you’re specifically better off, it’s a darn good bet you’re not better off.

If the only answer you can come up with is “At least I’m not alone”, well I’ll suggest (having recently been there myself) that that’s a lot like a prisoner facing release into the world deciding he likes the company of his cellmate enough to choose to stay in prison rather than taste freedom again.

As the song suggests, don’t be a prisoner of your own device. You will hate your life and you will hate yourself for doing that to yourself.


I am not you. I am not living your life. But you sound very very similar to prior me in some major respects. Prior me was miserable. Current me is giddily happy. That is all I’m certain of.

3

You mention waiting on a Visa… is this a foreign bride that you brought to the US? If so, you may be on the hook for 10 years of alimony at roughly 2K USD per month. You’d have to weigh if she’s costing you now more or less than that.

It sounds like there isn’t anything in the way of intimacy between the two of you? I know nothing about annulments, but a lack of consummating the marriage may play favourably towards getting one. How that would work with alimony I don’t know. However I also wonder if there may be asexual issues that you are avoiding and blaming on it being a bad time to have kids. FYI: you don’t have to raw-dog it if you don’t want to… show her some affection and maybe she’ll be more willing to wait.

Last thought: if she is indeed a foreign bride, there may be cultural obligations she is expected to live up to. It could be that children are what she’s been waiting for her whole life, and is understandably frustrated with the delay. Especially if she’s already living better in the US than she was in her homeland.

4

Threatened, huh?

5

Not US, UK, we’re affectionate with each other, I just abstained from sex until the living situation improved. She’s also 32, and she has the memory of her mum stopping her period when 40 so she’s basically full of anxiety. Plus all her cousins of similar age bracket are pregnant having kids and she’s the only one.

6

Sex and pregnancy are two different things.

But if she wants kids ASAP and you don’t, then it’s long past time to resolve that to a common plan that both parties can and will stick to. Or you need to divorce on that grounds.

7

Your wife sounds lonely and isolated, and not having regular intimate relations isn’t helping no matter how affectionate you are. If she has no local family or friends to lean on, and no baby in the offing, she doesn’t have a lot to look forward to, and her biological clock is ticking. It seems you should have had a better plan or you should have resolved these issues before the marriage, but that ship has sailed.

Get some marriage counseling and see what can be done to buy you both some time, assuming you want to stay in the marriage. You may find there are other underlying issues that may prevent long term happiness for both of you. You’re obviously working hard and both of you are frustrated with the current situation. You either need to try to fix it, with professional help, or take a break from each other for a while and see what happens.

8

Get divorced. You two are not compatible. P.S. – Have you ever heard about birth control?

9

I made a similar allusion to sex with birth control somewhere upthread. Which I later recognized as a mistake but haven’t yet said so. I’ll take this opportunity right now. I was wrong. OP: Do NOT have sex with this woman no matter what precautions you take or you believe she is taking.

If the OP knows in his heart that kids are a bad idea and that wifey is desperate for them, the only 100% guranteed effective BC method is keep your semen to yourself. Which abstinence will be especially useful if she turns up pregnant anyway.

However screwed the OP is today, a pregnancy would increase his screwedness by 1000% easy. And he’s wise and foresightful enough to understand that fact and disciplined enough to act on it.

IMO I/we should not be counseling him contrary.

10

Children seldom ever improve things. They only complicate things: not necessarily in a bad way, but if you’re already having problems, kids won’t make things better or easier.

11

Or cunnilingus?

It was stated above that sex and pregnancy are different.

That bears repeating. OP, are you that sheltered that you don’t know the recreational value of sex in a new marriage?

12

Yeah. I did not mean to suggest that I think children are always and everywhere a bad thing or they always wreck a marriage.

But for the very precarious state the OP’s marriage is in now, they are (IMO) an unequivocal bad thing that will not help and absolutely positively will make everything worse.

13

She should be working now since she doesn’t have any other responsibilities. Waiting to get a job after having kids doesn’t really make sense. It will be much more difficult to find the time to work after having kids. Certainly it can be done, but if she’s not working now, it’s unlikely she’ll be working after having kids.

There are many forms of birth control that would make pregnancy very unlikely. Not having sex is likely reducing the intimate connection in your relationship.

To be honest, from what you’re describing, having a lifelong, happy marriage is going to be a challenge. You should try to save the marriage if you truly feel there’s a way for both of you to be happy in the marriage. If you’re just trying to save the marriage because you want to be married, then you may want to reconsider. A lifetime is a long time to be in a relationship if you’re not happy. That goes for both of you. If you’re happy and she’s not, then that’s not fair to her. A successful marriage is one where both people are happy with the relationship. Sometimes, it’s actually for the best for the couple to go their own way if it’s unlikely they can both find happiness.

14

I didn’t get that from his description at all. I think you’re bringing along some severe issues with women to the discussion and that might not be helpful. Unless the OP wants this to become red pill/MRA thread.

15

I can see how it might appear that way, but no I’m not having those issues myself and I certainly agree with you that red pill/MRA garbage would be a very bad outcome for this thread and ultimately unhelpful for the OP himself. And for their marriage.

If I have overstated that case and given anyone that impression I am sorry. That was not the intent.

16

What did you get from the OP? There are some severe issues revealed on that OP.

17

I get that they have serious issues. I didn’t get that she’s some gold digging succubus looking to trap a man with a baby.

18

I agree. They’re newly married and presumably not having sex? If I were the wife, I’d be pissed and threatening divorce, too. Or am I misunderstanding the OP?

19

At this point, he absolutely should not have sex with her , because there’s almost no chance that a divorce is not in the near future.

But if I understand correctly , it took five years to get a visa and they’ve now been married and/or living together for two years. Without having sex - not just trying to avoid pregnancy , but avoiding sex altogether. Which is indeed the only way to guarantee that there will be no pregnancy - but it’s also a good way to end up on the road to divorce. I wonder if the wife was told in advance that there wouldn’t be any sex until the OP decided they were ready for kids? This is not a situation where after being married for some time one partner lost interest in sex or became unable to perform. It’s pretty clear the OP decided this before the marriage and if the wife didn’t know and agree, I’d say the OP has a lot to learn about relationships - I can’t imagine why he thinks there’s any chance to save this one or even why he would want to since it doesn’t appear possible for both of them to be happy.

20

That’s my read. At a minimum, it sounds like there’s a case of mismatched sex drives here, as well as apparently a general lack of intimacy.