tenochtitlan

It wasn't so in the past. She told me in the beginning that it's important to her to find a very talented man, so she was happy with me. We studied together at uni, and she was constantly in the presence of what I did well and how impressed other people were by me, but now she is completely isolated from my career and only knows what I tell her. Maybe that's a factor. But also a deeper problem is that she doesn't understand why you would care to fight for working one specific thing, and not anything that pays the bills well enough, and doesn't understand things like deep curiosity, honest interest and the desire to be useful to the world, and so on. So I fear that to her my ambitions feel like meaningless egoism. I am losing money too - I can't work and take care of the child, even though I work from home. Seems to me it's fair to split the sick days equally. Noticed that. We had a short talk about this the other day in a slightly different light, which might still be useful. I told her that in my mind partying in such a hot way requires the same hormones that sex does, but she replied that in her mind the two are entirely unrelated. Interestingly however, she told me the rare times she does have some interest in sex are when I am pushing her, as it were, "inspiring her", otherwise she would completely forget about it. So maybe I should keep doing that, and not stay passive in waiting for her to decide she wants it, or be afraid that I might annoy her with showing that I want it. I think I am doing that, but she keeps saying there is no problem with me or what I do, it's all in the hormones. I might actually do that. I think she would still resist it, but she might pay a bit more attention to the dangers of not talking. I think at this point she feels safe, taking me for granted, whatever she does, I want leave her. And I certainly have given her reasons to think that. One condition I could imagine she's in, is like, she sees that we want very different things and ways of living, and we have shown in previous conversations that those are very important to us and there are things we are not willing to give up, but also we are not willing to break up. So, she tells herself, there really isn't much point in talking, it will just be frustrating, let's instead ignore it and focus on wha't still good in our life. She just can't help but want what she wants, and she knows that want different things, and even, she knows I have my right to want what I want, it's not unreasonable, so she couldn't just demand that I give it up. That impossible situation is what she may be trying to avoid by avoiding conversations. Absolutely, this seems to sum it up very well. And I could see how talking about this could be hard - even if she sees to some extent that her desired lifestyle is idealized, she would still not want to give it up. Even if my words sound convincing, as she has told me, they still fail to change her inside, she wants what she wants. And so that moves "the burden of compromise" to my side, but then I feel, is it really right for me to give up things that I find so important, so that I could satisfy someone's infantile and superficial demands from life? Is this trade off really wise? I often think, if I do that, I would feel I've betrayed the good in the world, and have shown weakness. And I have done some of that, I have certainly done many more concessions than she has, we have agreed about that, and my feeling that that was an unwise move of weakness on my part is adding some poison to the interaction.

I still think based on what I've said it's fairly obvious that me not helping at home is not the problem. I'm sure I'm helping more than most men. I've always believed men should help with housework, which is still not the default, at least in our society, and have always tried to help as much as I can. I don't see what more I could do in this area. Since you're not there and you don't see what I am really doing, I think you should just assume that I'm telling the truth. This tangent is not productive. This is obviously not about her being my slave or something. As SooSad33 seems to understand, in a relationship behavior that affects the other person should be negotiated, this is what it means to care about your partner. If I tend to do something that hurts her, she has to be able to tell me, we will discuss it and look for a solution, even if, as it sometimes happens, I am not ready at this point to give up this behavior right away completely. My point here was that she doesn't seem to care how her behavior affects me, the person she loves, and so the idea that I might not like how she treats me and that she should consider changes, if she wants the relationship to work, is kind of foreign to her. Of course this is not entirely true - she does try to be more like what she knows I need and to do less of the things that hurt me, as I am doing for her as well, just in terms of being ready to talk she seems less concerned. I think in her less-verbal mind it goes like, she will pay attention to how I react and will try to be better, and that's it. But I think it's not always obvious how the other person reacts, what he feels, thinks and wants, if the changes you're making really work, and so on, and all of that is just easier, if it is discussed. It's hard for me to understand that, because of how it compares to my mindset - if I notice that my partner is not happy, I want to know why exactly, and then I will do anything to make things better, I will think about it all the time and constantly try things, and I will ask her if what I'm doing is working and if she feels better now. All of that in my mind shows that I care about her experience of my presence, if you really care about someone, you should try to be your best self with them, you are an experience of sorts for them, and you should care for it to be a positive experience. Good questions. She wasn't that way from the beginning in some ways, but was in others - most of the issues I described we didn't have, but she always was visibly averse to open conversation, and I've always struggled with that a bit, even when the problems weren't so big. Yes, we both always preferred for her to be a SAHM. At this point the only obstacle is money. I am doing my best to make more, but it doesn't only depend on me, and it takes time. The major importance of money is partly the answer to Lambert - why I don't have days off. This is just too important for me, I will not neglect it. I always tried to encourage conversation is subtle and careful ways, and many times it did work. But maybe problems were less intense, and less frequent. The last year that changed and conversations were a bit too frequent and a bit too heated, which is unusual for our communication, we are both patient and careful, but these issues really pushed the buttons for both of us and it's hard to stay cool. Also, this is a period of more intense job dissatisfaction for her, which makes it more important for her to feel good once she's home, and these conversations understandably make it harder to feel good, so she protests more. From my position however that is unavoidable, we have to figure it out, if we want the relationship to endure. The conversations are stressful and exhausting for me too. I think she is satisfied with how much I help around the house. But she wants me to travel less, if at all, and so miss career opportunities that she knows are very important to me. Also, my job is home-based, so she thinks it acceptable for me to always look after the child, when the child is sick, while she doesn't take additional days off her job, because she's so careful not to upset her colleagues, who will have to work more to compensate for her absence. But she doesn't care about her job much, it's just a source of money, while I care about mine a lot, and this unfair requirement that I have to work less when the child is sick, is a problem for me, and it is a problem for her that I resist it. And the biggest problem is her expectation that I make more money, so that she can leave her job and spend the whole time with the child, and as I said, she assumes that most men can afford that, so I'm a failure compared to the standard. Don't get hung up on the phrasing, it's not that long or complicated, but it's not that simple either. I think most people know that relationship stuff are complex, because it's a matter of the clash of two minds, of different values, of different life preferences and so on. To constantly admit fault is on its own not productive. If I was admitting fault, I would want to explain why I did what I did, so that it's clear that I still care about her, I was just a victim of circumstances and of my own mind, and also, I'd want to throw some ideas of what I propose to change, what change I think I can do, and what I feel I can't do, and I'd want to make sure that's ok for her. Again, all of that shows that I care. While simply admitting fault is often a sign of being pressed to admit it, you just have no more good replies, and you do it like "ok, ok, you win, please stop bothering me now", that's how it sometimes feels. A lot of the struggle around that whole theme of conversations in our case is just me not seeing that she cares. I just don't see her really interested in making it work, in me being satisfied. But don't get me wrong - I'm not saying she is always admitting fault. Not at all. The most frequent case of admitting fault I guess it this - she says "you're wrong, I care about you, but I admit that my behavior doesn't communicate that". But I can't bring myself to be fine with that.

I've already mentioned that I am equally involved in housework. Interestingly, I imagine, if she told me "if you do all the housework, so I can rest with my feet up the whole evening, I will appreciate you and love you and we will have sex", I might agree - of course. But then, should I really? Isn't this blackmailing? Would you respect such a man? Is it that only that man who does all the housework deserves to be appreciated in a relationship? Why do I not expect her to do stuff for me, so that I can appreciate her and desire her? Yet, that does suggest an idea - one time to get her to talk to me about something else, I took her out to a place she liked; maybe in this case I could ask her to talk to me about our issues in return for me taking all housework for her day off, and all things to do in general, so she could completely relax. It might work, although I suspect she will still be annoyed by the invitation to talk. But still - I think I'd prefer a relationship in which we could talk openly about things as a normal right, given to a person you value, and not to have to buy my right to a conversation.

Thanks people, appreciate all the replies. Some main ones - first, I had success in my career, which required traveling, and instead of supporting me and being happy for me, she made a big drama of me leaving her behind while traveling. She has this assumption that once married and with a job, people never travel and never leave their partner alone with the child, and so traveling makes me worse than other men. Second, she also had the assumption that most men make enough money so that the wife could afford to not work while the child is small, which in my opinion is very far from the truth in our country. So she blamed me for not making money. Also, she criticized mercantile girls on tv, but shows many signs of wanting to live in luxury, as she has said, and once she literally said "I envy pretty girls, because they can find rich men", which I interpreted as "you are of no value to me as a person, I only need your money", and that hurt me. Also, I accidentally read a chat with her friend where she said essentially that girls should choose men based on money, and not handsomeness, as she did, which again made me feel awful, but I never told her that Another thing was that she was often treating me badly, with the excuse again that her hormones are not right, and that she's tired and so on, but I felt not valued and, since this was going on for a long time, even not loved. And the several conversations we had about all of this were unproductive, because she was denying everything - that she doesn't love me, that she's not attracted to me, that she doesn't value me outside of money, that she doesn't support my success, and so on, while at the same time, as listed above, she was doing and saying things that suggested otherwise. I do this all the time, I call it "physical initiative", which is important to me, it shows not only that you are physically attracted to your partner, but that you are intimately close with them and appreciate their presence. I constantly touch and kiss her, while she almost never, and in many days, literally never does, and some conversations we've had exactly because not only she doesn't have the initiative there, but she doesn't even respond to my initiative positively - she's often entirely passive, ignoring my contact, or even slightly pulled back. And again, she denies that that really means anything, but I can't help feeling that it does. Her explanations are things like, she's not a person of words, doesn't know how to express herself properly, doesn't have the energy to pay attention throughout a long and complex conversation. Another problem I have there is that even when we do talk, it's mostly me, and she doesn't even react with "yes" or "no" to many of the things I say, and she's not even aware of how frustrating this is. I have tried to explain it to her many times, and she tells me things like, "well, when I say nothing it means that I agree", but I've told her that it doesn't always work that way - if I tell her how I have hesitations how she feels about me, if her silence is agreement it would mean that she really doesn't feel about me the way I'd want, which she would deny. Also, even if she does agree that something was her fault, say, agreement is not enough, I'd like us to discuss what are the reasons for this and what we can do further. She seems to prefer to ignore problems in the relationship and just pass the time as if nothing is happening. Also, she sees all this talking as annoying philosophizing, she is generally not a person of discussions or opinion exploration, she sees herself as very practically-minded. She kind of expects to be allowed to do whatever she feels like doing and not be bothered about it too much. I think she on some level has completely abandoned the idea that this relationship can give her what she wants, and is trying to get it from other sources - now when the first child is growing out of the cutest phase, she wants a new one. There is another assumption of hers I suspect - the fairy tale archetype, that a man who truly loves his princess would shower her with money, so she can look after children and not work, and in our case - that I should be there for the child at all times, when she can't, so my traveling is a betrayal of sorts. So now when she's not getting this from me, she feels that she is not valued as a woman, because the assumption goes that the average valuable woman has all of this from her man, and so hurt by this she's closed in herself and attracted to romantic movies. Yes, that could help our inability to talk to each other, and I really believe that deep down she still remembers that she loves me and all the adventure we had together, and talking could fix are issues. But knowing her I assume she would be strongly against it. She distrusts therapists, and also, she would resist the idea that there is a problem to solve, and that by this I am forcing her to do the talking she's trying to avoid.

Ok, you're partly right, I've noticed that dynamic. But I don't see what I can change practically. We both have our plates full, I can't really take anything from hers into mine. She at least has her days off, at least part of those days is used for rest, while I have no days off. I have always tried to help around the house and I think we have split the household tasks fairly equally. Of course nagging will make her even less interested in sex, but the question is, why did it get to the need for nagging - her desire went down before any "nagging" on my part. I have my suspicions what the causes of that drop could be - disagreements we had during the last two years that make her feel I'm not giving her what she thinks most women get. Before those we had the same life, with the same amount of work and distribution of household duties, and it had never been a problem for intimacy, and I don't think it is for most other people - after all that is life, you are full of work both in the office, and at home. I am ready to make changes, if I see that they are justified, but that can happen, I think, only with talking, and she is not open to talking. Without talking the wounds only fester. But another side of the problem is, as you say, that she's checked out - she doesn't seem to be bothered by the situation as much as I am, and so she has no motivation to overcome her natural aversion to hard conversations. So she's not even interested in telling me directly what the problem is and what on my part she would accept as a solution. Even if I don't think that the solution she expects is possible, or if I disagree that it is fair for her to demand it from me, it would help to simply know what she wants. Otherwise I think I know what changes would solve the situation as she sees it, without any talking - I make lots of money, she quits her job and is less stressed and tired, and we can afford having a second child, and the frequent problem of who has to look after the child goes away, because she's always home. That's perfect, except I don't think that it's possible. I somehow believe that our relationship should not be a slave to such utopian outcomes. But still, to me it's not surprising to say that there is a difference between me suspecting all of that, and her telling me that it's what she wants.

Hey, My wife and I have issues, but we can't talk about them. I want to, but everytime we've done it in the past, she reacts defensive and angry, tells me that I've ruined her day off and such stuff. Also, her responses to my worries are not full of understanding and not very helpful. So I've learned to not bring it up, but it kills me to keep silent. And I can't talk to anyone else about this, and can't afford therapy. What could I do? Additional challenge is that she's partly right - she works hard and has many chores in her day off, we have a small child, and this is her only time to relax and feel better. But if not then, when? There is no right time. The problems are several, but I will mention one that's pressing of late - sex. We do it rarely, maybe once a month or less, and her excuse is that her female hormones are not right from dieting - which is partly true. But it doesn't convince me completely, because she has the energy and mood to enjoy parties and dancing, often her hormones, as visible in behavior, seem just right to me. Also, at parties especially, but also at other times, she's extremely hot, which is painful to me, because I know I'll only build intense desire, which will get nowhere, which is exhausting. The way she behaves about this makes me feel she doesn't really understand what pain I'm in, and I'd like to talk about it with her, just to kind get it off my chest, but because of the abovementioned reasons, I can't. Any suggestions? Thanks.