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Post by csl on Apr 14, 2020 8:33:13 GMT -5
I think I'm in the leaving eventually camp, with the stated goal of first getting my shit together, and launching our youngest (16) child. That said, what would it take for me to leave right now? 1. Confirmation of infidelity. ... Infidelity comes in two forms. The traditional marriage vows have "to have and to hold," sexual intimacy, before "forsaking all others," monogamy. You cannot have monogamy without sexual intimacy. A spouse that continually refuses sexual intimacy is cheating on the marriage just as surely as if they were fucking that mail carrier every day. sounds like you read my curmudgeonlylibrarian.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/marriagedivorce-restoring-balance-part-2/
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Post by ironhamster on Apr 14, 2020 8:35:39 GMT -5
Infidelity comes in two forms. The traditional marriage vows have "to have and to hold," sexual intimacy, before "forsaking all others," monogamy. You cannot have monogamy without sexual intimacy. A spouse that continually refuses sexual intimacy is cheating on the marriage just as surely as if they were fucking that mail carrier every day. sounds like you read my curmudgeonlylibrarian.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/marriagedivorce-restoring-balance-part-2/If I could only remember every place I picked up great advice, I'd foot note every comment.
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Post by csl on Apr 14, 2020 8:45:17 GMT -5
If I could only remember every place I picked up great advice, I'd foot note every comment. This ability was why I was such a good librarian.
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Post by Apocrypha on Apr 14, 2020 10:02:56 GMT -5
Apocrypha ..... Maybe you can share what part of it you found to be helpful or insightful.Relationships are more than love connections. Other thing influence why women pair up with men. Social and economic reasons seem to be important to many women.
My ideas about marriage were formed in the 1950 and 1960 where the H worked and the W stayed home with the kids. This idea where the W earns as much as the H is different than what life was like for me for a long time. I understand it on paper but never experienced the woman earning anything more than pocket change.
So, the woman in those pairings did not benefit in any way from the household income? Effectively, she was a pauper, but her husband a wealthy man, and both living in the same house? In practice, as far back as the invention of money, perhaps pre-dating it and into barter economies, women have generally controlled household provisioning and budgeting - which means they were the primary purchasers for households - including today. If you go, say, as late into the game as Victorian England, the man would come home from the coal mines, hand his wife his paycheque, and she would give him an allowance from it. It is a relatively modern phenomenon, based in gender ideology, to pose a single household income in two parts: men vs women - to only look at earning power in that equation, and to ignore women's own choices and agency in selecting that partner and setup. None of that has anything to do with capitalism. Many Old World communist countries have some of the very traditional views of gender roles. Agreed though, that relationships are more than love connections. Not every relationship is a love, nor the same type of love. Not every love has the legs for a marriage. And love and/or personal fulfillment as a goal to be found in marriage is a relatively new development in the history of it - a product of abundance. Throughout much of history, the goal was survival.
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Post by Apocrypha on Apr 14, 2020 10:21:15 GMT -5
The problem is that the cheated on partner occupies the high moral ground and the cheater is scum. The sexually denied recieves much less sympathy and shame stops them shouting their betrayal from the rooftops. My "celibate" wife cheated on me. She did it when we were in marriage counselling. She started shortly after I lost my stable job, after a corporate restructuring and we had two infants. Also, it was with a co-worker in her new job, after I'd agreed to step up significantly at home to "give her her shot" at upgrading her career - and I made sure she was well-supported in this. After her affair was revealed, she also revealed ANOTHER affair, which she'd been having when we got engaged. And she revealed that she also snogged another co-worker, someone who worked with and for her. After she confessed to all this and agreed to "work on it" with me, she spent the next year blaming me for ruining her love and openly pining for him. When we eventually tried relationship 2.0 - an open relationship - she systematically and thoroughly broke every courtesy and rule we agreed to, repeatedly, across several years. She also behaved as if my own paramours were affair partners, and treated me horribly - while simultaneously enjoying her own. If at any point any of these behaviors were pointed out to her, she would blame me for "making her feel badly". And yet, some 6-7 years later, despite all this - she appears to have created a narrative in which she is somehow a sympathetic hero driven to all this. My point: we are all the protagonists in our own stories. If my (then) wife can still see herself as having a moral authority after her part in taking a bad situation and making it into a living hell, then anyone can and will. There is no external body that will render judgment and reward you in this life for what you are going to endure. Your friends and family may take a view, and will (regardless - and likely already do), but it won't affect HER view. There is no point ahead where any of us get to cash in our saintly points with our spouse - no "reckoning" - where the spouse realizes all you've endured and opens her eyes and the two fall in love again. If anything happens, instead it is a deepening of disrespect and contempt of you for settling for so much less.
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Post by northstarmom on Apr 14, 2020 13:02:45 GMT -5
Apocrypha said:” If anything happens, instead it is a deepening of disrespect and contempt of you for settling for so much less.”
People who see or hear about how horribly your wife treats you may have the same reaction and may view you as a person unworthy of respect and good treatment. Most people do not admire doormats.
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Post by lessingham on Apr 15, 2020 3:45:51 GMT -5
The mental fantasy that keeps me here. In my mind, seperation is not good. I "see" myself in a bedsit, trying to live on a meagre income. I see the possibility of sex maybe become no sex definately. Or paid fun. See above about meagre income. I see my family disowning me and her family shunning me. I see my son siding with my wife. I fear my mental health, having fought depression all my life, I wonder if my defences could survive the above. Lots of folk here say they escaped and feel better out of the marriage. I dread it. Until I can turn the picture around, I sit in a miserable, sexless marriage believing it the lesser of two evils.
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Post by baza on Apr 15, 2020 4:44:12 GMT -5
You've been a member since January 23rd 2019 Brother lessingham . I reckon I've read all your posts since then, and putting them in to context it reads like living under a bridge would actually have a lot going for it as an alternative to staying involved in your present dynamic. It would get you away from the negative inputs of your self absorbed missus, the adult kid who borrows money but ain't that fussed about paying it back, the judgy extended family who apparently would disown you, and the in-laws who would shun you. It's hard to see any mention in your posts of these people bringing anything of a life enhancing nature to your table. Getting out and away from these duds looks quite an enticing proposition. A bedsit, and living from one giro payment to another doesn't look so bad in relative terms.
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Post by mirrororchid on Apr 15, 2020 5:20:56 GMT -5
You've been a member since January 23rd 2019 Brother lessingham . I reckon I've read all your posts since then, and putting them in to context it reads like living under a bridge would actually have a lot going for it as an alternative to staying involved in your present dynamic. It would get you away from the negative inputs of your self absorbed missus, the adult kid who borrows money but ain't that fussed about paying it back, the judgy extended family who apparently would disown you, and the in-laws who would shun you. It's hard to see any mention in your posts of these people bringing anything of a life enhancing nature to your table. Getting out and away from these duds looks quite an enticing proposition. A bedsit, and living from one giro payment to another doesn't look so bad in relative terms. To you and me, maybe. My wife's family is riddled with clinical depression. My daughter took her own life because of it. Lessingham's tone suggests he may have difficulty in motivation. You and I think about living under a bridge and rebuilding. A depressed person sees living under a bridge and dying there with no faith in themselves to get out. Possibly with justification. My daughter self-isolated, hated herself, was sure she was unloved, and kept one job for three months before being hospitalized for alcoholism. A sexless marriage may worsen depression, but he may be in a tough spot to have faith he'd emerge okay. This whole thing sounds like pessimism, but I've seen people emerge from depression and I've seen them permanently succumb. Not sure where lessingham is, but he has my profound sympathy if he's facing a troubled marriage and clinical depression making problem solving scary and difficult. I'd hope he might find ways of improving the depression so that compensating for sexlessness or an imperfect marriage might be more rewarding and fruitful. I take liberties assuming too much perhaps.
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Post by northstarmom on Apr 15, 2020 12:41:36 GMT -5
Lessingham, given that your wife has said she’ll put you in a home if you become chronically ill, seems that living divorced in a besit now while you are healthy and can make your own decisions and live your own live would be better than living ill and in a cheap home under your wife’s control.
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Post by Apocrypha on Apr 15, 2020 14:45:39 GMT -5
I see the possibility of sex maybe become no sex definitely. You don't see that now? Remember, she's also in a sexless marriage. How do you think that sits with her? I'm not the only one who got a surprise this way. And if she doesn't want to have sex with you - honestly - it's worse to have sex with someone who you know doesn't want it with you. You can only fool yourself for a while. If she doesn't want to have sex with you, and you do anyway - she's going to hate you more, and eventually she'll make you hate it too.
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Post by lessingham on Apr 16, 2020 3:23:02 GMT -5
There is a narrow bridge to walk as a depressive, between everything is my fault and everything is everybody else's fault. Maybe the word responsibility is more positive than fault? I have to unpick the things that are my fault and work on how to change them. Once the little stuff is sorted I get the experience and confidence to work on the big stuff. The advice I am hearing here suggests the opposite, do the big stuff and then clear up the fallout and debris with a positive and cheerful heart. Heady and scary advice full of wonder.
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Post by northstarmom on Apr 16, 2020 4:42:37 GMT -5
Lessingham: “ The advice I am hearing here suggests the opposite, do the big stuff and then clear up the fallout and debris with a positive and cheerful heart.”
That’s not what we are saying at all. You can spend your life being miserable and complaining while delaying the steps to give you the life you want. The other option is to take steps that lead to the goal you want. You can’t change your wife. You can take steps under your control to lead to the kind of life you want. For instance, if you don’t want to end up alone in a bed sit or nursing home, you can take steps now to develop and strengthen relationships with people who treat you well. There will be fallout and anxiety as you become the man you want to be and as you create the life you want. It’s hard but necessary if you indeed want a better life than you have now.
Life is finite. Unless you develop the courage to take bigger steps, you will forever lose your chance for the life you say you want. That’s what almost happened when your wife got sick.
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Post by Apocrypha on Apr 16, 2020 9:28:00 GMT -5
There is a narrow bridge to walk as a depressive, between everything is my fault and everything is everybody else's fault. Maybe the word responsibility is more positive than fault? I have to unpick the things that are my fault and work on how to change them. Once the little stuff is sorted I get the experience and confidence to work on the big stuff. The advice I am hearing here suggests the opposite, do the big stuff and then clear up the fallout and debris with a positive and cheerful heart. Heady and scary advice full of wonder. I don't know much about whose fault it is, or the value of there being a fault. I'm in the dating world now. If I meet someone I like but she doesn't like me in that way, is it her fault? Am I to blame? I've certainly had a experience with depression in and around my life. I think there's value in starting small. There's value, even when not depressed in breaking down the "solve the question of your marriage" into parts that can be understood. One such part might be - "Does my partner want me, sexually?" irrespective of the rest of it. If not, then pulling that thread, "Do I have a sexual relationship with my partner?" - which leads to reframing the whole thing to compare the behaviors and expectations of the relationship. And then, "What does this change for you? Do you sleep in the same bed, for example?" Rather than directing your attention toward achieving a certain end - "getting together or a divorce" - a smaller way to do this is to adjust your behaviors and expectations to fit the truth of the relationship.
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Post by Handy on Apr 16, 2020 16:40:41 GMT -5
Lessingham: I quit trying to manage the outcome of my relationship. It is a dead end.
Now I evaluate individual situations and ask myself, what would a reasonable person do and what is the right thing to do in a particular situation regardless of what my W will think or say.
Trying to manage the outcome depends too much on my W's dysfunctional behaviors and thoughts. Doing what is reasonable and right or the least wrong most times, is the only way to something resembling healthy.
You will not go from dysfunctional to healthy without taking smaller steps and learning what to practice that fits your methods and style of living in anyway but in small steps and have it stick. I say riding a bike took some small steps and there were falls but the more you rode the bike the better you got. I see that applicable to changing relationships.
OTH, if you made a casserole you didn't like but could eat a little bit of it at a time, you eat a mouth-full at a time until the casserole is gone OR you throw it out and start over (separate or divorce). Both methods involve the cost of the ingredients in the casserole or the past-future costs of the relationship.
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