1a1a

Ugh, it’s time to look deep inside your self, why did you hold onto this red flag factory?

I’m sad for your grief but relieved this guy has turned his weirdo arsehole attention somewhere else. Don’t let him back in! Look for enthusiastic yeses. Everywhere in life, enthusiastic yes! No more luke warm boys!

How regular are the phone calls? I greatly prefer texting too but when I was long distance with a non texter I found daily phone calls really helped. And I still texted him often, and he’d reply to most of them. (I think texting for him requires a bit of being in the right head space). 

I would imagine you buying the house without her makes her feel like you two are not a team on major life decisions. She might feel like being a team with your partner is really important. 
 

If you want to take the romantic gamble, sell the house, keep doing therapy. Tell her you can’t imagine life without her and are doing x on your end to resolve your problems. How does her heart and her mind feel? 
 

If she says she’s done, let her go gracefully. If she says she wants to work things out, then it’s not you versus her, it’s you and her versus the problems that affect the relationship. You stringing her along, problem affecting f the relationship. Brain storm ways to try and resolve it. Her yelling when she’s angry (translation: so upset she has become emotionally disregulated), problem affecting the relationship. Brain storm ways to resolve that (you might find from your end by the time her voice is raised she feels really unheard. Are you listening to her? She might find from her end that even as she’s becoming emotionally disregulated she can see the hurt in your eyes and that prompts her to take a deep breath or three and try again to say what she’s saying but more calmly).

One thing is for sure, If you both choose to try again, and you want this relationship to grow, not die, you need to actually take the leap of faith and live with her. 
 

Maybe you too can move to the town that’s a bit cheaper so you two can have a life together.

Your uncle shows a woeful amount of ignorance about what’s actually happening when someone has their period. 

Tell your husband if he can’t take your word for it that your son doesn’t have the self sufficiency of an average 18 year old and your parenting duties are not over yet, continuing the relationship will be unviable. How would he like to proceed? (Maybe have your ducks in a row for divorce in case he baulks at this boundary. )

She may not recover from the accumulated pain before you got sober but the thing to do is the same either way, keep living your best and soberest life. I’m really sorry your wife is leaning out but I’m very very glad you have energy now. Use it to love yourself, her while that’s applicable, your friends and family and life itself. 

Reminds me of a book I read recently, The Younger Wife. But you have a very good head start on her because he hasn’t has lit you into thinking you injured yourself. 
 

Co signing with the rest, make that escape plan and get out, this will only get worse 

And my money is on he sabotaged your birth control. 

Then you have your answer, cut this one loose, it’ll be worth the cost of divorce to not try and build a life with someone silly enough to believe no communication is required 

Maybe needlessly obtuse. Yes you may prefer it when your partner intuits what you want but the communication between the two of you is in big trouble. Don’t set traps like that. Make clear requests. He will oblige or deny you and that is useful information. 
 

In response to the other thread, he is wrong for thinking because you are home you have more time. And you are wrong for thinking he is anything other than exhausted. Even if he worked a desk job, the simple act of having to leave the house and commute takes it out of you in a way working at home never will I think. 
 

Accept that you are both too exhausted to tackle the house work, sit down when you’re both calm and invite him to work with you brainstorming solutions to this problem. (If he won’t even do that, thay is also valuable information.) I do strongly recommend opening that calm conversation with 5 things you appreciate that he has done in the last 7 days and acknowledge that you might not really understand how tired he is after his work. Then you can go on, say you need him to understand when you’re working from home you’re still working and it takes energy and time and here are the things you’re struggling with and will he work with you to resolve them?’ If the love is there then I hope he will. 

If nothing changes how long will you stay? A month? 6 months? A year? 5 years? A life time? 
 

Being alone sounds better than having this little support. 
 

If a conversation when you’re both calm about how seriously you need to tackle the problem of conflict resolution and fighting kindly (or knowing when to take time out) is refused by him, or unproductive. Or you come up with some ideas of things to try and he doesn’t earnestly try them, I think ditch this guy. 

I would break up for the silent treatment alone. It is the most ***ty, immature, cruel way to express your displeasure. 
 

And I had a partner once who did that. For 10 days once, after a fight, he left without saying good bye and went radio silent for 10 days! We didn’t last much longer after that. The love was there but there was too much damage done. (Not just from the radio silence but that definitely contributed to destabilisation). 

Very doubtful that laughing along and pretending it doesn’t bother him will stop it. The advice to ignore bullies has got to be based on the wishful thinking of adults the problem will go away. 
 

Tangent a friends dad was bullied mercilessly at work for more than a decade and ultimately took his life over it. I’m sure he didn’t react much either but it’s still doing damage. 

Speaking as someone who was not bullied per se but definitely socially excluded (the scars run deep), I’ve never seen a school manage to resolve bullying yet. The only times my bullied friends have managed to get the bully to stop is when they were terrifyingly violent back!

Co signing self defense classes. 
 

And throwing in the mix maybe it is worth changing schools. I never did and as an adult I wonder if that was just choosing to keep my hand in the fire. That’s not to say kids at another school will be friendlier, they might not be. But it’s confirmed the kids at this school suck. The teachers can’t give them a personality transplant, they’ll go on sucking what ever action is taken. 
 

Other things you can do to support more outside the square, give him access to mental health care. And see if you can find him an out of school community to join where he stands a good chance of finding, if not friends, at least friendly faces. Community theatre comes to mind just skimming his interests but anything he’s into that’s conducive to people gathering could help give him a place to belong outside of school. 

Thoughts can really drive us nuts I think, from what you’ve written here I can see how the one intrusive thought ‘jeez that was cruel, why did she say that’ has laid the path for more thoughts to follow, other times people have been cruel, times you’ve been cruel (or at least thought about it). For me when I get plagued by thoughts like this it’s usually death of a pet related, those are my ghosts. Anyway, one way to try and manage it, and it’s no silver bullet, speaking from experience. Is to say to yourself ‘ah, I see I am having this thought.’ You give it a little head nod, put it down, and try your darndest to redirect your powerful mind somewhere else (breathing is the cliche, but cliche for a reason, but also sometimes not at all distracting enough which is why having a box of distress tolerance helpers is a very good idea and this reminds me I still need to make this thing.)

Chump Lady would say don’t waste time trying to untangle the skein (of crazy making behaviour). 
 

You did the wise thing blocking her when she hit below the belt. It doesn’t matter why she turned mean, it is everything that you adapted to the new data and enforced the boundaries required to stay safe. 

‘It’s over, I’m just not feeling it any more.‘
 

He can’t argue with you about why your feelings are wrong, only you know what your feelings are. And if he tries to, repeat once ‘I’m sorry, I’m not attracted to you anymore and I don’t wish to continue discussing this.’ Now if he replies to this the next message is ‘I’m taking some space’ and then you block him everywhere. 

I’m sorry this guy turned out to be such a jerk. I reckon you’ll still be smarter and wiser and more experienced now for having met him. (But now it’s time to get this douche out of your life!)

If you don’t feel safe approaching your partner (and I don’t doubt that, please keep trusting your gut), I think that alone is grounds to split. (Without even adding the emotional abuse or loss of intimacy and possible infidelity).

Perhaps a joint account for living expenses and savings could be the go? And she doesn’t have access to that one. She can go on monitoring what he does with his spending money if that’s what they both want but the money that sustains you both as a couple, that’s your business only. 
 

When you bring this up next try and present it in a way that it’s you and him against the problem of money management that might have worked well when he was single but isn’t working now he’s married. Open with something he’s done that you appreciate about him then let him know how his mum’s involvement makes you feel (uncomfortable? Weird? Side lined?) Does he have any ideas how to resolve this and become a more cohesive married unit going forward? See what he says.

Not hanging around for more of the same is maximum wise I think. Having to ignore your feelings of attachment to do what needs to be done (detach from a bad fit) is really hard. You are mighty!

This is tricky because while you’re paying rent, she’s gaining an asset. I’d face the same dilemma if my partner and I moved into my place. Ideally I’d like to pay for it in the clear myself but with our lives merged together it might not be that simple (and it’s doubtful I could make the full amount alone). 
 

Ideally I’d like to enter into a prenup kind of arrangement where it’s clearly specified if we split some amount of that property relative to the amount of money he contributed over time is his. 

Everyone has their things they’re not comfortable with and you’re not wrong for having the discomforts you have. 
 

I am much more like your partner, as long as the feelings have faded I’m comfortable having relationships with exes (these have tended to only develop when the feelings are all gone and we have a foundation of commonality on which a friendship can be built post romance). Since I still talk to exes I would be unphased if my partner did as long as that wasn’t sucking a lot of his attention. Then I’d have a prioritisation problem same as any other thing that makes me not a priority. 
 

My partner is I think more like you. He doesn’t talk to his exes and experiences feelings of discomfort and, maybe an idea of disrespect, at the idea of me speaking to mine. 
 

In practice there’s only one ex I interact with, in a work setting same as your girlfriend. Sometimes he’ll come to our house to pick up some piece of equipment and if I’m not home my partner is the one doing the handing over. I know he’s testing his own boundaries trying this out and really appreciate him for it. (And in turn, not that we even were doing friendly things outside of work but it goes without saying that I wouldn’t increase the level of contact I have with this ex beyond what it settled into post heart break. )

I think the best you can do is keep checking in with yourself, can you find some peace with this? Does your love and attraction outweigh your discomfort? If not, it’s totally ok to let her go. 

Rough rule of thumb, if they’re less than half your age plus 7 years they’re too young to date. It happens anyway. The older person should adhere to the campsite rule and leave their younger partner in as good if not better condition when the relationship ends. Alas this rarely happens either and from how you describe him i doubt your BIL will leave this young woman in a better state than he met her. 
 

As for why bother getting to know her? Why not? She’s a person too. Are you blaming the younger one for the inappropriate age gap because out of the two she’s not the one that ought to know better. 
 

As for not being able to interact with people in their early 20s, that’s a shame, i’m sure it keeps you from building relationships with family in that age bracket too. 

Settled in pretty swell. Still getting use to how much travel time fluctuates depending on how close to peak hour(s) you are but I’m about 6 blocks away from a national park so that part is pretty darn nice. This sure is not the inner suburbs (aint no one can afford to live in those anymore ah hah)

Tell him you’re really sad you upset him by your mindless browsing and also how he’s expressing his hurt to you, with harsh words and withholding presence, is completely unacceptable and unsustainable. How does he want to move forward? Would he like to try couples therapy? Tell him it’s not you versus him but you and him versus the lost trust and unkind ways of having conflict and you love him and you’re more than willing to get outside help to work through that. One thing is for certain though. If he wants to move out the room and spend the rest of his time growing old alone you’re a hard pass on that option and will be exiting the relationship. 

If you stay with someone who you have to beg for intimacy it will decimate your self esteem. 
 

For the years spent together it could be worth having a serious talk when both calm where you say you know he’s going through a lot and you want to support him but this situation with him acting like he’s repulsed by you will kill the relationship faster than you could ever nurture his trust and he needs to make a choice does he want to work on this together or call it quits because if his behaviour doesn’t change you will be gracefully bowing out. 
 

You could also skip it