# Hey there!



## CATDieselTech (9 mo ago)

Hello All,
I have just turned 22, my wife is 23. I started my marriage journey with my beautiful wife nearly 1 year ago, our anniversary is coming up in 30 days from the time of posting this. We have good communication skills and are both trying to be open to more in-depth talks about different things. We are interracial, I am white and she is black. We have our fair share of arguments, both heavy and light. Most of the time it's about something stupid or because one of us is exhausted and just can't handle the situation. I work as a Heavy Equipment Technician, which is a very physical job. I typically work 55 hours a week, she doesnt work. For the most part we are both very happy in our marriage, there are other things that I'd like some input on, that being why I registered for this forum. Overall, I think that we can work anything out, I'm just too stupid to recognize how to do so most of the time, despite my intellect I still tend to lack common sense. The ability to filter words also tends to escape me. Thanks for any help through this journey! Hope all of you are doing well!


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## ccpowerslave (Nov 21, 2020)

Welcome!


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## BeyondRepair007 (Nov 4, 2021)

BigCATBen said:


> Hello All,
> I have just turned 22, my wife is 23. I started my marriage journey with my beautiful wife nearly 1 year ago, our anniversary is coming up in 30 days from the time of posting this. We have good communication skills and are both trying to be open to more in-depth talks about different things. We are interracial, I am white and she is black. We have our fair share of arguments, both heavy and light. Most of the time it's about something stupid or because one of us is exhausted and just can't handle the situation. I work as a Heavy Equipment Technician, which is a very physical job. I typically work 55 hours a week, she doesnt work. For the most part we are both very happy in our marriage, there are other things that I'd like some input on, that being why I registered for this forum. Overall, I think that we can work anything out, I'm just too stupid to recognize how to do so most of the time, despite my intellect I still tend to lack common sense. The ability to filter words also tends to escape me. Thanks for any help through this journey! Hope all of you are doing well!


Welcome to TAM ! I hope your situation can be improved by the collective wisdom of this community.

I’m intrigued by the your details so far… “1yr marriage with great communication except somehow you are complicating things by lacking an adequate filter and common sense?” Do tell. From this statement alone one could assume you are male 

Welcome!


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## Andy1001 (Jun 29, 2016)

You don’t mention children so why doesn’t your wife work?
At the very least she should be doing most if not all of the household chores. Is this what your fighting about?


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## CATDieselTech (9 mo ago)

Andy1001 said:


> You don’t mention children so why doesn’t your wife work?
> At the very least she should be doing most if not all of the household chores. Is this what your fighting about?


Some of it is about that. Although, there is a lot going into that which I didn't mention. We don't have kids, although we plan to soon. We are currently under contract on buying our first house. She has mentioned that she wants to work. However, she has huge anxiety with driving. She grew up and never learned how to drive. She lived in a little 4.5 sq mi town. They didn't even have a car for a long time so she didn't have the option even if she wanted to. I met her at college which is 6.5 hours away from where we are living now and where I'm working. (I was sent to school by the company I work for.) We are in a 65 sq mi city now and the traffic is insane. Where she lived, you might see 2 cars an hour. Here you see 20-30 cars in 2 minutes on a side road. It's just a huge change. She also lost her mom at 16. So that's always been hard on her. I helped her grieve through that a little while after we got together, as she never got the chance when she was younger. There's been a lot of sadness due to that because her mother never got to meet me or see us married or anything. The last part is that she wasn't able to finish school until the end of last year due to the pandemic. One thing that I've impressed upon her is that maybe she could work from home when we move into the new house. I've told her that I want her to get a license, but I also told her that I don't want to push her. I really dislike arguing with her about anything. I myself struggle with depression and have a hard time when we are arguing. A lot of the time I end up in tears. Most of the time because I'm angry at myself for arguing. Anyways, a lot of that is what I plan to post on another thread soon. I just need to get my thoughts together.


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## jonty30 (Oct 23, 2021)

CATDieselTech said:


> Some of it is about that. Although, there is a lot going into that which I didn't mention. We don't have kids, although we plan to soon. We are currently under contract on buying our first house. She has mentioned that she wants to work. However, she has huge anxiety with driving. She grew up and never learned how to drive. She lived in a little 4.5 sq mi town. They didn't even have a car for a long time so she didn't have the option even if she wanted to. I met her at college which is 6.5 hours away from where we are living now and where I'm working. (I was sent to school by the company I work for.) We are in a 65 sq mi city now and the traffic is insane. Where she lived, you might see 2 cars an hour. Here you see 20-30 cars in 2 minutes on a side road. It's just a huge change. She also lost her mom at 16. So that's always been hard on her. I helped her grieve through that a little while after we got together, as she never got the chance when she was younger. There's been a lot of sadness due to that because her mother never got to meet me or see us married or anything. The last part is that she wasn't able to finish school until the end of last year due to the pandemic. One thing that I've impressed upon her is that maybe she could work from home when we move into the new house. I've told her that I want her to get a license, but I also told her that I don't want to push her. I really dislike arguing with her about anything. I myself struggle with depression and have a hard time when we are arguing. A lot of the time I end up in tears. Most of the time because I'm angry at myself for arguing. Anyways, a lot of that is what I plan to post on another thread soon. I just need to get my thoughts together.


Maybe she can create a business from home. Home offices are tax deductible expenses and the amount that you can tax deduct for the office is the percent of the space it takes up.
There are lots of businesses that she start from home.
Many of the AA degrees are designed to allow one to work from home.

The general rule in my house hold is (Total hours work + housework)/2
If a spouse is working, but the other is not, than the other spouse has to do 40 hours of housework before there would be an expectation for the other spouse to have to do any housework.


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## Mr.Married (Feb 21, 2018)

I was you 25 years ago right down to the greasy hands from overhauling 3500’s nonstop. I was doing 65-70 hours a week and had more than 40 hours by the end of Tuesday more times than I like to think about. I don’t regret those days as I really enjoyed engines. Unfortunately I didn’t give my wife the amount of attention I should have and like most diesel mechanics I had a very unfiltered mouth. Had I known how different words effect a woman compared to a man I probably would have greatly moderated my tongue. I’m very confident in everything I do in life even from a young age but there were times it would have served me better to listen. When we had children this made her drift off to being focused on being a mother while the wife part drifted away. While we never had a bad marriage I wish I had done some things different and so does she. Always take the time to stop talking and listen. Try to understand her point of view. You and I were born bred and raised to solve problems and fix things but VERY OFTEN she only wants you to HEAR and EMPATHIZE with her and not solve the problem.

Listen to her words … cuddle her heart.

On another note plenty of playful spankings and oral sex doesn’t hurt either 💪🏼

Good luck with your SnapOn bill !!!!


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## Talker67 (Apr 7, 2016)

i have been married a LONG time.
and looking back, i wish i had developed the ability to NOT ARGUE about the small stuff.
If i just could say "OK dear, i will do that" my life would have been measurably better!

So think about it, are you arguing about trivial stuff that you COULD let slide? or is it serious stuff? You have your entire life before you now, with a relatively blank canvas to paint on. how do you want your marriage to look like when you look back on your 50th aniversary?


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