# Been married 6 months, considering a separation



## Newlywedman (Oct 14, 2011)

Background
I am recently married. My wife and I have dated for 4 years with a 3 months break after 1.5 years. We then got back together and got married. We lived together after six months of dating. We had a beautiful wedding and all family members get along great. Her parents are nice people, my parents are good.

We had previously seen a marriage counselor and after 2 session he said we could work it out on our own. We just need to communicate better,

The issues
We seem to have fights about really stupid stuff sometimes. Small things she makes into big things. Me not replacing the toilet paper = fight, Me not hanging up a towel in the right spot = fight, etc. I try to accomate so many of her little requests (wear a nose strip to bed, switching sides of the bed, keep the toilet seat down, etc.), but something small seems to turn into a fight. She says it is about me not respecting her.

I should also add we both have a lot of extra time (she has a lot more than me) and I think spending too much time together might be the cause of some of the tension (we both work from home).


My parents have spoken to me and they see how I am very unhappy and her parents notice it as well (that she is stressed and unhappy). I just don't know what to do. I feel like it is too early to separate but I don't know what else to do. I mentioned going back to the counselor but she is against it. When she calms down (after a fight) she usually apologizes and admits that she overreacted. But it seems to happen all the time.

I realize I have to take some blame, but I am trying to accommadate and take notice of all her requests.

My parents think she is depressed and it is showing up in other ways. 


Cliffs: *Fight with wife of 6 months about stupid small things all the time*


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## grenville (Sep 21, 2011)

You don't mention anything about your feelings for each other. Do you love her, does she love you back? Other than the arguments, is the relationship otherwise good, etc?


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## Newlywedman (Oct 14, 2011)

grenville said:


> You don't mention anything about your feelings for each other. Do you love her, does she love you back? Other than the arguments, is the relationship otherwise good, etc?


She says she still loves me so much (she says different things all the time). I love her but not as much as I did. I feel for a newlywed, my love for her should be a 10 out of 10 and its not. Its slowly decreasing


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## omega (Aug 2, 2011)

Welcome to TAM 

I was similar to your wife when I was first married. Actually, before that as well. I would get very VERY, *VERY* upset over small things, and blow them up into a fight where I would be yelling and he would kind of be standing there looking like I had just grown another head.

I had an anger problem. It wasn't his fault and it existed before we met, but once we were living together, married, and spending all our time together, he was an easy target. 

I pulled stuff like that because in my mind, I was reacting to thoughtless things. Leave up the toilet seat? Thoughtless. Come home half an hour late for dinner without calling? Thoughtless. Etc.

Well, luckily for us, we actually went through a number of remarkable changes after about 6 months of marriage: we moved from a HUGE city to a TINY village, I stopped working at my absolutely crazy job (tons of overtime and a lot of responsibility), in our new place I actually didn't work at all for the first few months, and our new home was much, much more comfortable, in the country, just all-around relaxing and quiet. The completely new environment really helped and we spent a lot of time together working on my anger. It got to the point that I went from having these outbursts once a week to, well last time it happened was in April. So I would say that is a success.

As far as what works for each person... it can't be the same. I think counseling would help most. I didn't have counseling because in our new area, there weren't any counselors (we're talking about a TINY village!) and we were able to find a solution together with a lot of talking and affection and bonding. 



> I love her but not as much as I did. I feel for a newlywed, my love for her should be a 10 out of 10 and its not. Its slowly decreasing


This made me so sad... I feel incredibly grateful that we had those changes in our lives and were able to find a solution BEFORE his love for me went down the drain - because I know it would have. He was still at the "love the sinner, hate the sin" stage when we were able to get a handle on it. I wish you the best of luck... give it the best try you can, because it can be fixed if you BOTH recognize the problem.

Since she apologizes and admits that she overreacts, she can probably be "fixed". I always did that too - my problem was getting out in front of the overreaction and preventing it. Once I learned strategies to do that, things got better FAST.


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## grenville (Sep 21, 2011)

Newlywedman said:


> She says she still loves me so much (she says different things all the time). I love her but not as much as I did. I feel for a newlywed, my love for her should be a 10 out of 10 and its not. Its slowly decreasing


There's two answers that come to mind. 

The first is omega's well articulated post above which I can't possibly improve on. 

The second is to say you're not long married (I'm guessing you're relatively young too) and if you truly think you made a mistake then you should get out now whilst it's still relatively easy (much easier than in 10 years time with a couple of kids in the mix for example). I lived with a girlfriend a long time back and we had similar sounding ridiculous arguments about me leaving cupboard doors open, the toilet seat up and so on. In the end we split up fairly acrimoniously but, years later, became friends and, with maturity, have been able to discuss openly just why we were totally wrong for each other. The toilet lid arguments were just a proxy for underlying issues in the relationship; we were too immature at the time to realise what was going on but decades of experience made it clear.


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## NotLikeYou (Aug 30, 2011)

Newlywedman, I am a person with well-nigh prescient powers of perception. Sometimes, I can see the future with total clarity. 

And I see yours right now. Don't worry, I'm not like the Oracle of Delphi- you don't have to pay me.

I see a future where you have poured total effort into ACCOMMODATING HER REQUESTS. It has been a long, hard slog. The toilet seat is always down, because you sit down to pee, and you spritz a little air freshener after you go number 2. You put a pretty fold in the toilet paper (dispensing from the underside, of course. Chicks hate it when the toilet paper comes over the top of the roll), sometimes WHEN YOU HAVEN'T EVEN USED THE BATHROOM. The house is painted in soothing pastel colors, everything is exactly where your wife wants it to be, including you, standing behind her with a cup of chamomile tea, waiting for a break in the movie on Lifetime that she is watching.

You're a little worried- you haven't used depilatory in a couple of days, and some body hair is starting to come back. You hope she doesn't notice, but then again, she doesn't notice much about you, these days, anyway. You'll probably be okay. 

But that's a long time ahead of us, today.

If you want to excuse your wife's behavior on the grounds that she is "depressed," and keep on accommodating her, you are going to lose your self respect. You will have already lost her respect for you. Pretty soon after that, you will find out that your wife "no longer loves you," and, well, there's this really cool guy who "puts me in my place- he would NEVER leave the toilet seat down, and that gets me so excited." You can probably see where that would end up.

I suggest that you set some boundaries and try really hard to stick to them. 

If you're already having this kind of problems only 6 months in, you're going to have a long hard race to run, dude.


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## omega (Aug 2, 2011)

OH and I totally forgot to mention: my husband leaves the toilet seat up ALL the time. He never let my outbursts change his behavior. I think that's probably for the best. While I think *NotLikeYou*'s post might be a little harsh, there is a lot of truth in what he says. SHE is the one being unreasonable, so YOU do not need to change your behavior. 

As for age - not sure we can make assumptions like that: I was 30, my H 33 when we went through this. Not that that's old, but it's not exactly teenagers either.


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## RunningOnEmpty (Aug 29, 2010)

NotLikeYou said:


> I suggest that you set some boundaries and try really hard to stick to them.
> 
> If you're already having this kind of problems only 6 months in, you're going to have a long hard race to run, dude.


NotLikeYou is right on all accounts. 

You are not setting your boundaries and communicating them to her. Instead you are withdrawing your boundaries bit by bit, accommodating all her demands. This will only get worse. 

Maybe your W has BPD, or an anger issue, or was raised in a high conflict home. Regardless of the cause, get in MC, and try to fix things now. And if she doesn't want to go to MC, and she doesn't want to change, and she doesn't want to respect you..... too bad. Get out now, while it is early and easy.


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## Locard (May 26, 2011)

I think you should read up about s*** tests as this is what your W is doing to you. I would look up Athol's blog, the married man sex life site. I would avoid having any kids to be safe, but things can really get better, I think it is too soon to give up already.


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