“We were having all sorts of problems with priorities, family, and communication in our marriage, but after we had kids it all got way better!” said no one, ever.
There are lots of sexual activities that don’t include the chance of impregnating the woman. I mentioned oral sex; you should try it, it is great fun.
It doesn’t sound like you and your wife enjoy each other (whether physical or otherwise). You are both together for utilitarian reasons. That’s not a successful modern marriage.
also, to the OP … be aware that often women from other not-so-individualistic-and-more-traditional cultures are seen (and see themselves) as somebody who needs to be desirable to the other partner.
You with your “no sex policy” might completely pull out the rug under your wife’s culturally baked it self-esteem. Even if she knows on a cognitive level that it is not so (big IF) … on an emotional level she still might perceive herself as undesired by her husband (and lets face it: 90% of westener’s woman would feel the same).
Also, I assume (a friend was in a similar situation some 15 years ago, with a Thai wife) … she is whatsapping/texting/facetiming a whole to to VT where her friends/family still feed her their trad. value system (b/c thats all they know) … and that causes an even bigger rift and cognitive disonances.
While I agree with much that was said above, I’d make a last ditch effort …
- get upclose and personal with here, make her feel desired and wanted as a woman, while still controlling BC
- you need to get her out of the house (socially speaking) … make here volunteer/community college study/whatnot to expose here more to the US/western individualistic culture and create her own social networks, friendships and instances for contact. At this stage you wife might be a plant in dire need of a few drops of (social) water.
trigger/huge generalisation warning!
Women from traditional cultures (that differ a lot from yours) might be raised to play a more passive role in a relationship/family (esp. the “exterior” part of it) where being a mother is a life-goal or at least a “given” - and you might need to (gently) push her into taking more initiative for her life (beyond that), helping her to find a job/activity/reason to get out of bed in the morning - something to get here enthusiastic about.
Also:
She might not want a job b/c she is afraid of not being able to do it right … so excuses are being made - bear that in mind. So she might need some ushering in into volunteering, etc… where the levels of scrutinity are lower and she has a safer learning experience/environment to build self-esteem and also learn different cultural codes and DOs and DONTs.
But your main problem is: you have brought yourself in a position where (from the wife’s perspective) you have a bird in a (not golden) cage … and that must change - or its over.
An outsider’s take, who might be off, but my gut tells me a lot of what i mention does play into your problems.
Even without of the other issues, this is untenable. When you say two jobs, is that one full time job and a part time job? People can’t really keep that going for very long.
If she’s stuck at home without friends or family, then she’ll be counting down the minutes for the OP to return. He gets no down time.
It doesn’t sound like they are on the same page, and in international marriages, that can make it really difficult.
Yeah, I would be very interested in this as well.
I first lived in Japan in 1981, and have spent 35 years in Japan and Taiwan, which are worlds apart from SE Asian, but I am quite familiar with international marriages and relationships. Not only mine, but friends and others I know / have known.
I also know absolutely nothing about the OP or his situation, but something I’ve noticed is that while international relationships or marriages require even more open and direct communication than ones between people of the same culture, unfortunately it quite frequently the case that there is less communication.
I have a few theories, but that’s for another thread.
I wish the OP all the best, but this seems to be a situation with no easy solutions.
That’s worse! You made the unilateral decision that you two were giving up sex after previously having had a sexual relationship. I can’t imagine how rejected and frustrated she must feel.
And why was it OK to have sex with her before marriage if the worry was getting her pregnant? You’d still have had the same responsibility.
We had a really good friend. In their young 30s, his wife insisted she wanted children. He did not. She divorced him, and our friend seemed shocked when less than a year later she was remarried and pregnant. Didn’t surprise us at all. And didn’t make her a bad person.
Quite right there @Dinsdale.
Back in the Bad Old Dayes of only at-fault divorces, one party demanding kids and one party refusing kids was usually one of very few checkboxes provided for in statute as a legit reason not to be forced to remain married and “just make it work”. Oh the Insanity!
Learning now that the OP’s wife is from a country different than his, and SE Asia to boot, the rest of the story makes more sense. Little details like that probably belong in a well-written OP seeking advice rather than merely affirmation.
My closest relevant experience was a co-worker who I interacted with regularly for a few months and got to know fairly well. In my job there are / were hours and hours of being trapped in a broom closet with somebody else for 3-4 days at a crack. We get good at telling our personal stories and listening to your counterpart’s stories as well.
He was a generic white American. A decent chap, but no rocket scientist. Definitely not a selfish or angry jerk as some folks are. His wife, then of about 5 years duration, was Filipina. He really liked the woman as a friend/lover, and they regularly traveled to the Philippines, but the experience of being married was about to drive him to divorce.
I would summarize his story as:
-
The list of unstated, nay unrecognized even by themselves, assumptions each brought into the marriage was huge. And very, very different.
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She found it much harder to live in a country foreign to her than she’d anticipated.
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In her take on her culture her duty to her blood family, which included her children, greatly exceeded her duty to her husband.
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In the extended family’s view, the American guy was so insanely unbelievably rich that any ask for money by any aunts, uncles, or 3rd cousins-twice-removed-neighbor’s-dogs should have been immediately granted with an unconcerned wave of a bejeweled hand.
In his view he was just breaking the 6-figure barrier in his mid 30s, saving what he could, and after paying for two cars, two kids then ~2 & ~4, so approaching school age, and a 3BR suburban house in an ordinary USA suburb, well, there wasn’t a lot of largesse left over to simply ship to a bottomless pit of people he’d never met on the other side of the ocean. -
When they did go over there for week or two he liked the folks & the food and the culture and all that, and they liked him in return. But his Tagalog was very limited and although most of them spoke semi-crappy English, they refused to use it around him. Leaving him ostracized at the party he had paid for.
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When he had to return from the Phillipines to go back to work, she’d stay awhile longer. But after each visit that “awhile” got longer and longer. Keeping the kids with her of course. The last trip over they’d gone for two weeks and she remained there for the next 2 months before returning.
I lost the trail at this point when I retired from that job. And of course I’ve only heard his side of the story so we each can / should apply some measure of discount to it.
But overall the trigger for items 2-6 is right there in the lede: item 1. They both “knew” how a couple, a nuclear family, and an extended family operates. But they both “knew” very differently and for whatever combination of reasons did a real inadequate job of discovering those differences early enough to prevent the marriage and then the kids. Oops.
Items #3 and 4 in @LSLGuy 's post above are really common in Indonesian woman-Western man marriages, too. There a lot of very successful such marriages, and a strong network of husbands residing in Indonesia who advise each other and commiserate. Whenever a Western guy contemplating tying the knot or having recently done so turns to them for advice, they always very clearly say: In Indonesia, you do not marry a woman. You marry her AND her family. She and her family will expect you to take care of them to the fullest extent that you can. If you can’t live with this, get out while you can, because that is never going to change.
I have a friend who married a Filipina woman and benefited from that. He’s had a lot of serious health issues, and this large extended family he barely knew was there for him. Not financially (which he didn’t really need anyway) but socially.
as central european living in LatAm, one needs to understand (or at least try to) these traditional cultures, which are rooted in implicit generational contracts.
In countries where there is (historically speaking and also way more current) no healthcare and pension systems to speak of, your (extended) family IS your healthcare provider and takes care of you in old age (and its understood to be a give-and-take). It’s the whole 3 gen. living under the same roof, thing…
Of course there are all kinds of - lets call it disonances - when you try to move over a society from the traditional model to the western model … and that can take many decades (centuries?) … just think of a 70 y.o. with no pension savings, b/c their social contract was to pay with their money the health problems of uncle albert and niece Kim, etc… not easy to break out of something like this and stash away $$$ for a rainy day (or decade) …
a person from that cultural background being pushed into AMERICA of all countries, which is def. one of the most individualistic “me first!” cultures … will create a strong need to navigate these situations in a relationship…
I don’t know why this thread was on my mind today, but it was.
I’d like to offer a pretty far-fetched suggestion:
Is there any way that the two of you can locate a couples counselor/marriage counselor/therapist who is female and Vietnamese?
I’m not thinking about somebody in Vietnam, worked with remotely. I’m thinking about a female Vietnamese resident of the UK.
I’ve had some friends who are couples counselors. They invariably all sing the same tune: most people – maybe more men than women – come to couples counseling “so that somebody can tell my wife that she’s wrong (and I’m right).”
This would be worse than useless, particularly in your situation.
A female Vietnamese therapist would have no communication or cultural boundaries with your wife, and – as a UK resident – presumably have some visibility into your generic culture.
Being sure that you both truly and clearly understand what the other is thinking and feeling … can only help provide clarity to you.
Maybe a way forward? Maybe the certainty that you two are totally incompatible and beyond repair? Maybe something in the middle?
Good luck to you both … whatever path you take.
I’m not here offer the OP any relationship advice. What I know about relationships you can fit in a thimble.
I do know this, if a woman(whoever, from where ever) wants babies, in a visceral way, she will get them. Especially if the bio-clock is ticking.
There are ways to do it that husband doesn’t need to know about.
You’re wife may have tried you out in VN before you were even married.
I’m sorry you’re going through this.
Insight is hard to come by sometimes.
I do know the Dopers give excellent relationship advice.
I don’t think this is always true. But i think if you succeed in preventing her from having kids until it’s hard for her to do that (which is, like, any year now) you are doing her an enormous disservice and likely ruining her life.
If you don’t want kids, divorce her and let her find a man she’s compatible with.
I would add the words “working 2 jobs” to the end of that statement.
If you need to donate sperm then find a company that will pay you for it.
I’m not casting any judgement, just going back to something a marriage counsellor asked me a looooong time ago when my wife at the time wanted to break up.
“Are you in love with her, or in love with the idea of being married?”
If it’s the first, figure out how to make it work. You can never afford kids, you just change priorities when you get them.
If it’s the second, which after reflection at the time was my case, end it and learn to love yourself a a single person, not defined by being in a relationship. That doesn’t mean avoiding any future relationships, it just means understanding that you are enough on your own, you don’t “need” someone else to complete you. If you find someone compatible with you who you love, great. If not, so be it.
My 2 cents FWIW.
This. As so often, @puzzlegal is full of wisdom and compassion.
OP: Do her a favor and get out of her way as she tries to fulfill her life goal. Just make sure you do get fully out of the way, lest you be run over by her success via your own undesired offspring.
That’s a much harsher take on it than I meant. Yeah, I used a bunch of trigger words in my snip there.
You’re not the first person to have risen to my inadvertent bait. So this is not a criticism of you; just me defending what I’d intended to say from further mischaracterization.
What I meant was that she wanted a “traditional” US 1950s-style “Leave it to Beaver” marriage. And later when we learned she’s from a much more traditional culture that desire makes a lot more sense and is in no sense blameworthy.
The challenge is that the guy in this situation, the OP, does not want that kind of relationship. And somehow got this far along before either of them really noticed that discrepancy. Oops.
Here’s a graph of fertility.
Of course, it varies from woman to woman, but any woman over 30 who wants kids should be trying to start soon.
What I wonder about is why the OP’s wife apparently does not want a job before having kids. DId you discuss what exactly her motivations are her?
I ask because
- Staying at home, with no outside contact except by Internet with her birth family seven time zones away, in a small house that does not need a whole day to keep up (if I understand post #1 correctly the OP even takes her out to dinner every day), is enough to drive anyone round the bend
- The OP is in the UK (per post #5), and I gather there is some amount of statutory paid maternity leave in the UK, so it would actually be advantageous to be in employment when becoming pregnant, even if intending to be a SAHM afterwards.
- I assume the OP’s wife will not have great prospects in the UK job market if she plans to enter it for the first time after raising kids, i.e. in her late 40s/early 50s. Much better to get some initial employment history at her age.
So I wonder why the OP’s wife is dead set against employment.
I presume because she presumed that they’d have kids immediately.