You’ve been doing couples therapy regularly for over three years and still have all these problems?
My take on it is that she understands it quite well. She’s preventing Valgard from sleeping to punish him. I don’t know any other way to explain the business of waking him up to tell she wants to sleep on the couch he’s on. Backing out of the wedding commitment is probably also a form of punishment.
It’s impossible to negotiate with someone who doesn’t respect boundaries and who won’t fight fair. When it comes to keeping the marriage together, I think this is a bigger issue than the money, the commute, the braces. . . Valgard, have you talked about this in counseling? It seems to me that, if you don’t get this resolved soon, you’ll have no choice but to leave.
And it sounds as if she may not even be angry at Valgard or be angry for a real reason, when she punishes him. Both my mother and her mother will punish people when they just happen to be mad at someone else, and often for imagined slights. When they’re mad at you, they tell you (well, they spit it at you); when they’re slamming things and huffing and puffing and won’t tell you what the problem is, it can be anything from seeing another woman wearing the same blouse to an imagined future slight on somebody else’s part. My mother spent months punishing everybody because she was sure that my brother wasn’t going to reserve room for her in the family bench at my nephew’s first communion - this after bro had already told her “we’ll have the third bench on the right”! Grandma, a couple of visits’ worth of not saying a word (not even answering “hello how are you”) because someone had told someone else that they had seen me with a boy in the street and I hadn’t told her I had a boyfriend (I didn’t, half of the world’s population is male and I happen to know some of them).
I’m sorry, Valgard. I hope you take the trip and catch up on your sleep. I think you need both desperately.
Jump forward.
Refuse to engage in another battle. If three years of couples therapy hasn’t kept you from reaching the point you’re at now, it’s time for both of you to face the truth. It’s time to dissolve this relationship.
Go to your friends wedding, leave her behind. Enjoy yourself, don’t refkect or rehash or share your marriage woes, just enjoy the time apart. And get some damn sleep too! Before you leave, and before another mega fight ensues, ask her if she prefers lawyers or mediation?
Tell her she wins, you’re now convinced the marriage is over, ask her how she’d like it to end. Then move forward from there. But don’t fight again, it’s pointless. And I think you realize that.
Wishing you Good Luck, I know it’s unpleasant, but this must be hell for all three of you. It’s especially unfair to the kid. And you’re deluding yourself if you don’t think this is affecting the child!
Standing up to your wife’s unreasonable or passive-aggressive behavior might also change things for the better. If she wakes you up when you’re on one specific couch because she wants to sleep on THAT couch, tell her, “There are other couches in this house, too” and go back to sleep.
If she is the type Nava describes or a slightly lesser form, like my ex, this is of no use, the fight will only get worse and last longer.
No doubt you have tried standing up for yourself, occasionally. No ?
Did it work?
Valgard, it’s like I hear myself talking a couple of years ago. Take** Elbow**'s advice and realise there is no use in hanging on, things are not going to change for the better, no matter how much energy you are putting in.
Some people are just poison.
Get out.
I’ll just reiterate what has already been said: Go to the wedding, have a great time, and come back ready to get a divorce. I’m sorry you’re going through such turmoil right now, Valgard. You deserve a fun weekend, I hope you decide to take it.
This is beyond the pale. This is physical abuse. Healthy people don’t do this. This is exactly the same as if she were hitting you, or not letting you eat, or stealing medicine that you needed.
Get out. Now. Sort out the rest of your life later.
It was the OP’s house coming into the marriage. Why should he leave?
I meant “get out” of the marriage, but if his wife refuses to leave their house, he will have to get out of that as well, at least temporarily. I don’t think you can legally evict your wife from your house, even if you own it.