sirwonder

Sorry this is so long. It would be great to get some advice about this.

My wife and I have been married for ten years and have two kids. We’ve had a great marriage up until recently (my opinion only, she thinks everything is fine). My problem is that lately she prefers to spend many of our weekend nights with her friend and is not that interested in having fun with me. I’ve brought this up, and she says that we already spend so much time together (around house, evenings, weekdays) that going out with her friend at least one weekend day or night is “her fun.” We do have fun dates together occasionally, and we of course have family fun times a lot, but it seems like her preference for social “fun” is with her friend. For example, on a Friday night she’ll go out with her friend, but then Saturday, which I then view as our night (after kids go to bed), she might just decide to read and go to sleep early, and even ask me if I want to go out with a friend because she doesn’t feel like “partying” (in our house, partying means have a few glasses of wine, listening to music, and having lots of social interaction with each other). Other times, she prefers that we join a group of friends out somewhere, which I like to do too, but we don’t have a couple that we’re really close with.

Of course I’m totally fine with her doing things with her friend, one or two days a week. I’m not trying to prevent her from doing what she wants. I just want to be her number one choice for having fun. Is this just insecure of me? Do other people ever feel this way in their marriage?

Part of the problem is that even though I have a few friends I like to hang out with (maybe once a month or so), none of them are really close friends. I would prefer to be with my wife. My wife is very close with her (single) best friend - she talks to her multiple times a day on the phone and works with her too. I often feel like I am mainly the dad and domestic partner and not the best friend that my wife is to me. I want to be the person that she wants to make plans with regularly, the one she chooses to have fun with most often, doing just about anything together. We go out on dates maybe once every six weeks. I just want more, and I want her to want more. Even if we don’t go out, I want more social interaction at home, like long conversations with some wine and music. Often we just zone out to the tv, and she falls asleep. I've brought this up a couple of times, but things remain the same.

Maybe I’m too needy. Maybe I need a more fulfilling life outside of the marriage, with new activities and closer friends. If I had a great friend that I had a lot of fun hanging out with, maybe none of this would be a problem, as it might be a lot more exciting socially to hang with some close friends than trying to plan date nights all the time with the wife I see every day.

Does one date night every 1-2 months sound normal for a married couples with kids?

Can other people relate to this? Do I sound reasonable here or is there another way I could look at this to ease my worries? My main worry of course, is that over time we end up having our fun separately and lose our bond and our marriage.

less_disgruntled

What is it that she does with her friend that you don't do with her? What do you do with her that she doesn't do with her friend?

And if you want to 'do' more stuff with her, it sounds like she already told you (ears, they're great. brains, not so much. take it from one who knows). In fact, you said it, too. You want to do "anything" but aren't happy just watching TV with her, which apparently both of you do, a lot. She thinks you 'are' boring and you think she's only 'doing' boring stuff with you. Spend less time with her 'being' not-fun.

Also you keep saying "plan" date nights. Are there, like, to-do lists involved?

I'm guessing. There's really not much detail here.

On edit, like, about the kids. You have "family fun" a lot but we have no idea how much time you spend and doing what with the kids.

Syrum

I call going out with a friend drinking once a week as way too much. I visit my friends and family and go out to dinner etc, but I don't go out "drinking". I also prefer to be with my fiance, and he doesn't go out drinking either. We are not 18 year olds on the look out to meet someone, so I really don't see the point.
When you go out drinking it's just a bunch of people flirting and hitting on each other, and if it's to catch up with friends, she probably can't hear them over the music.

I think if she wants to unwind and have a few drinks, it should be with you.

NavyBuckeye

Sirwonder, I think you need to be careful and find out if she is really just going out with her friend only and make sure there is no one else involved. It is cold to say it but I know from experience.

I am new here as well and my post is a few down from here. I am going through a very similar situation. One difference my wife's friends are out of state and she travels to see them. When she is not out of state...she is on text messages and FB with them all the time. The second difference, my wife had an affair. That is why I say you need to find out what else is going on with the hanging out. It may be nothing but then again there may be more to it.

My life is very similar to yours. We try to plan date nights. She would rather go out with friends. We do alot of things with the kids. I know the feeling......it sucks.

But like I said...investigate...there may be more there.

O

peace

Sirwonder,

If you see my thread on the TOXIC FRIENDS you will see what I have been thru. My wife and I always did things together party, drinking and always had everyone come over to party at our house that I have set up with two outdoor wet bars and tiki huts. She went from no warning signs to just saying I`m going out drinking tonight with my girlfriends.

I went ahead and started confronting the situation at hand and she would not tell me the reason why she checked out without any type of consideration. It led two several all nights out and my daughter and I stuck at home without even getting a call. This has led us to be apart now, even though she has stopped her routine.

With that said, be careful and do not let this get carried away because she will get used to it and never look back until she runs into a brick wall. Be assertive and do not antagonize her, let her be and let her know that you do not approve her actions or her intentions out of respect to you and the kids. Good luck

MrK

You need to know what she's doing out with her friend. Where she goes. I'm guessing it's late night partying at meat markets, but I'm just paranoid. And always with one friend? A group of girls can be a night of fun (maybe). One girl is a wing-woman.

less_disgruntled

Maybe. I kind of think you'd know, though. I wonder if the OP isn't trying to hide that knowledge. I think the rule is that a cheating spouse usually talks about the other man/woman well before admitting it.

Of course, the vultures come out at night, too.

At the same time it's easy to see that if your partner is well-behaved when you're not around, that just makes it easier for them to stray. I probably could have gotten away w/ more than a few one night stands by now. I'm sure my wife could have as well. But she doesn't even remember to turn off the gas on the stove or close the fridge door or log out of her email or facebook. I would have found something by now. The one or two times something's seemed off I've quietly looked into it and found nothing. Since I got suspicious reading this I was an ******* and looked at her emails. Nothing.

I think. Can never be too sure about anything, really.

Anyway, if I did find that out, I'd be really embarrassed to learn that I was the one being cheated on and not the other way around.

Atholk

Hmmmm.... friend huh. Dig deeper.

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sirwonder

Thanks for the advice everyone.

Just to follow-up. She's definitely not going out to meet people, she's just having fun with her friend, and not really "going out drinking" either. Sometimes it's just hanging at her friends house or getting a pedicure, or shopping. That's all fine with me.
She always tells me what she's doing, and she doesn't come home late and doesn't come home drunk either.

I guess the main problem is that I'm not "fun" like her friend, and that kind of hurts.

But, I always thought that you make your own fun - it's not what you're doing, it's who you're with. And if you really don't like being with someone, then no matter what you're doing it's not going to be "fun."

So my worry is that she just doesn't have a great time "being" with me, either out on a "date" or at home. This is weird after 10 years of marriage, something has changed and I don't know what it is. I guess I need to work on just being more of a "fun" person, light and funny, extroverted, and easy-going. And start doing new activities with her that we both like. Fun and active things...definitely not watching tv or just going out drinking.

thank you.

MrK

You may just have the same problem as me. She's just not into you any more. Others here will beg to differ, but there's not much you can do now. Find someone who enjoy's your company. Spend time with them. Imerse yourself in your kids. Let her do her thing, you do yours. It's worked pretty well for me. I compare it to a standard breakup in a relationship. But a relationship where marriage and kids prevent the actual separation part.

Accept it and get used to it.

COGypsy

It does sound a lot like the classic tug of war between introverts and extroverts.

I'm totally an extrovert. My energy comes from being out around other people. Having to sit still and watch TV makes me want to stab my eyes out. The life you describe of sitting on a couch, getting hammered and discussing your deepest hopes and dreams makes my skin crawl. By the time it's Friday night, I'm tired and all I want to do is go out and have dinner in some interesting new place I heard about and try some new wine or their signature ****tail and then maybe catch a band somewhere.

My husband on the other hand, could probably live on the couch if the beer and toilet weren't in the other room. I literally have to tell him to put on pants instead of sweats to leave the house. He can sit for hours and hours watching ridiculous old movies....like black and white old time stuff. Then he could talk for hours about which actor did what in all of them. It's a nightmare.

If you want your paths to converge again, you have to make plans to go out and "do" stuff. Not just "hey, what do you want to do?" "I don't know, what do you want to do?" stuff, but "hey, I heard about....let's go try it". Or if you stay in, have a movie, something cool to make together for dinner or something like that to engage in. Otherwise, as you've probably noticed, it just doesn't happen and she'll go ahead and take people up on any better offers, since you guys aren't doing anything anyway.

For the record though, I'm out and about all the time. I volunteer, have dinner and drinks with friends, go to networking events, all kinds of stuff and I've never done any of it looking for a hook up. I haven't ever had an affair that resulted from socializing during evening hours out in the big scary world. I'm just not a homebody kind of person. I try to be sure and spend a few nights a week at home, but my husband has also made an effort to find friends at his cigar lounge and different auto clubs for his cars and it's made a huge difference for him.

tpb72

Sorry, this is totally off topic but I thought it was quite funny how the censor on this page bleeted out the c0ck in c0cktail.