First time reader and first time poster. I am having a difficult time right now and have been unhappy in my relationship for a while, but this feeling ebbs and flows. Right now it is ebbing pretty hard.
My immediate crisis is that my wife is in the middle of a week long vacation with some distant girlfriends. I'm was unhappy with her going on this trip to begin with, but didn't feel it was my place to forbid her from going. But the trip doesn't sit well with me AT ALL! Not to mention she planned this trip over Mother's Day and gets back home at midnight on my birthday morning. She knew that this would make things worse (me grumpier, but the date worked for her friends).
I have a counseling appointment set up for June 1st 2015 to sort out my feelings, and we will start couple counseling sessions sometimes after I check my own issues out (am I being controlling, am I just unreasonable, am I too co-dependent, or is my wife being as selfish as I think she is being).
So the background. . . This trip is six days long with two "friends" that she lived and worked with for 6 months about 15 years ago. Every five years, they go on a reunion. 10 years ago, it was at our house, no big deal. Five years ago, it was to Vegas, and came after we had been in counseling for six months and it sent us right back to counseling. And now this trip, which has us headed straight back to counseling at a minimum. To be sure I am not too worried about affairs on these trips. I mostly have a lot of resentment towards my wife for a great number of things, and these trips are just salt in our already wounded relationship.
Some of my problems: we don't do much together, yet she does things with her friends incessantly. Two weekends away a year to the coast over the last four or five years, and biweekly lady nights. In that time, weekends away with me has been one or two. We do do a fair amount of date nights but nowhere near as many as she does with her friends. I suggest weekends but get nothing but flak about it being too expensive. I am an introvert, so don't have a lot of close friends and have trouble making new ones (which is difficult while working full time and helping with the kids, while she stays at home which allows her to create her friendships during the day.). So it is hard for me to get an equal amount of my own free time.
We have mismatched libidos. I have a very high sex drive while hers has dropped off over the years. I am very adventurous (kinky) and she is highly reluctant to try many of my ideas. To self report, this is probably where I haven't been a perfect husband, as I will keep asking for something she has made clear she won't do (asking nicely but still asking too much.). This issue is what sent us to counseling five years ago, but it never got solved.
I could go on (money, unequal chores when factoring in amount of free time, when she's gone I have to hold a full time job with overtime AND take care of the kids (she gets refreshed but I get bitter and resentful), etc.) but those two things are my main issues.
My crisis is that I think on divorce a lot and it seems like it is becoming a self fulfilling prophesy. I imagine different scenarios that would push me over the edge (for instance, if she took or even asked to do a BIG trip without me somewhere, like Hawaii or a cruise or the Caribbean, i would either forbid her from going alone, or leave her.) these thoughts in my head I believe are telling me how I am DEEPLY bothered by these seperate trips when she hasn't been putting an even close to equal time into the relationship side of things. Five years ago, I was diagnosed with a type of depression called dysthymia, which is probably how my mind is working right now. So maybe my issue is just a chemical in balance, I don't know.
My parents both think she is being very selfish. . . This is the first time they ever said anything bad about her in seventeen years of marriage and dating, and it was unsolicited. But they are also 70 years old, and grew up in a simpler time where air travel among the masses didn't seem to be as common as it is today. My sister says she does her own girls weekend trips herself (although not without the joint trips with the husband to balance things out), so I fear that I am being incredibly silly that I would actually follow through with a divorce when it seems the whole world is doing what my wife is doing. Then again, the people that we know doing these trips do do trips together much more often and are in two income families where money is not such a hot commodity.
My sisters advice was well just do a trip together when she gets back . . . But that seems to be incredibly easy for my wife to do and have all of the anxiety and resentment that I have been experiencing be forgiven, especially since I fear that her time away from me won't be reduced and the time with me will be somewhat halfhearted . . .
I am just looking for a sanity check, is divorce crazy in my scenario, especially with three kids aged six to eleven. Are others doing seperate vacations, especially when one spouse has such a problem with it (even if having a problem with it is unreasonable and controlling). I have to wait till June for counseling, but I could really use a fresh and independent perspective. Thank you for reading, and thank you for any advice.
My immediate crisis is that my wife is in the middle of a week long vacation with some distant girlfriends. I'm was unhappy with her going on this trip to begin with, but didn't feel it was my place to forbid her from going. But the trip doesn't sit well with me AT ALL! Not to mention she planned this trip over Mother's Day and gets back home at midnight on my birthday morning. She knew that this would make things worse (me grumpier, but the date worked for her friends).
I have a counseling appointment set up for June 1st 2015 to sort out my feelings, and we will start couple counseling sessions sometimes after I check my own issues out (am I being controlling, am I just unreasonable, am I too co-dependent, or is my wife being as selfish as I think she is being).
So the background. . . This trip is six days long with two "friends" that she lived and worked with for 6 months about 15 years ago. Every five years, they go on a reunion. 10 years ago, it was at our house, no big deal. Five years ago, it was to Vegas, and came after we had been in counseling for six months and it sent us right back to counseling. And now this trip, which has us headed straight back to counseling at a minimum. To be sure I am not too worried about affairs on these trips. I mostly have a lot of resentment towards my wife for a great number of things, and these trips are just salt in our already wounded relationship.
Some of my problems: we don't do much together, yet she does things with her friends incessantly. Two weekends away a year to the coast over the last four or five years, and biweekly lady nights. In that time, weekends away with me has been one or two. We do do a fair amount of date nights but nowhere near as many as she does with her friends. I suggest weekends but get nothing but flak about it being too expensive. I am an introvert, so don't have a lot of close friends and have trouble making new ones (which is difficult while working full time and helping with the kids, while she stays at home which allows her to create her friendships during the day.). So it is hard for me to get an equal amount of my own free time.
We have mismatched libidos. I have a very high sex drive while hers has dropped off over the years. I am very adventurous (kinky) and she is highly reluctant to try many of my ideas. To self report, this is probably where I haven't been a perfect husband, as I will keep asking for something she has made clear she won't do (asking nicely but still asking too much.). This issue is what sent us to counseling five years ago, but it never got solved.
I could go on (money, unequal chores when factoring in amount of free time, when she's gone I have to hold a full time job with overtime AND take care of the kids (she gets refreshed but I get bitter and resentful), etc.) but those two things are my main issues.
My crisis is that I think on divorce a lot and it seems like it is becoming a self fulfilling prophesy. I imagine different scenarios that would push me over the edge (for instance, if she took or even asked to do a BIG trip without me somewhere, like Hawaii or a cruise or the Caribbean, i would either forbid her from going alone, or leave her.) these thoughts in my head I believe are telling me how I am DEEPLY bothered by these seperate trips when she hasn't been putting an even close to equal time into the relationship side of things. Five years ago, I was diagnosed with a type of depression called dysthymia, which is probably how my mind is working right now. So maybe my issue is just a chemical in balance, I don't know.
My parents both think she is being very selfish. . . This is the first time they ever said anything bad about her in seventeen years of marriage and dating, and it was unsolicited. But they are also 70 years old, and grew up in a simpler time where air travel among the masses didn't seem to be as common as it is today. My sister says she does her own girls weekend trips herself (although not without the joint trips with the husband to balance things out), so I fear that I am being incredibly silly that I would actually follow through with a divorce when it seems the whole world is doing what my wife is doing. Then again, the people that we know doing these trips do do trips together much more often and are in two income families where money is not such a hot commodity.
My sisters advice was well just do a trip together when she gets back . . . But that seems to be incredibly easy for my wife to do and have all of the anxiety and resentment that I have been experiencing be forgiven, especially since I fear that her time away from me won't be reduced and the time with me will be somewhat halfhearted . . .
I am just looking for a sanity check, is divorce crazy in my scenario, especially with three kids aged six to eleven. Are others doing seperate vacations, especially when one spouse has such a problem with it (even if having a problem with it is unreasonable and controlling). I have to wait till June for counseling, but I could really use a fresh and independent perspective. Thank you for reading, and thank you for any advice.