I was given a huge reality check about my failed marriage

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Aunt Betty is not a smart as you think.

Seek therapy ... good men love that a woman is dedicated to raising their child.

+1 Poor ex-H, he wasn't ready for a child, so he ... knocked up another woman? Nah.

[Anonymous]

Say if he punched you in the face, would you be conflicted then? Would you want your child to see that? He was emotionally abusive because he couldn't focus on raising kids.

Winners focus on winning. Losers focus on trying to trying to figure out how they could have been a better wife to a selfish loser. You are losing right now.

[Anonymous]

I agree spouses need to prioritize their marriage....SPOUSES. Not just wives. But it seems the burden of sustaining the marriage falls entirely on the wife and how much she puts out and makes her husband feel special. I know very few husbands who reciprocate and I have never heard anyone give men advice on how to nurture their marriage after kids. I bet if OP's husband had put the effort it took to carry on an affair towards his marriage instead, things would have been very different.

It's also such a cop-out to say he cheated because he wasn't ready for kids. If someone isn't ready, they should be an adult about it and not ejaculate in a vagina. It's nobody's fault but his own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Aunt Betty is not a smart as you think.

Seek therapy ... good men love that a woman is dedicated to raising their child.

I’m actually planning on doing this. I’ve put it off long enough.

Good. Old women mean well but they are clueless.

If you follow her advice you would run yourself ragged trying to be perfect and he'd still cheat on you. Cheaters cheat. He will cheat on his new person.

Normal responsible adults discuss discourse before it gets to the point of an affair. Sulking because a baby get more attention and then acting out with an affair is not your fault.

This was my exW and the reason she's my ex. She made a histrionic art of trying to be (in her eyes) the perfect wife and mother. No one can do it all 100 percent of the time. I tried to relay that to her, but she didn't listen. She kept driving us - me and our kids - crazy with her helicopter mothering, the need to have a perfectly clean house 24/7 and an inability to deal with the chaos of having small kids and wanting to keep on working full time. I didn't cheat, we did marriage and family therapy and she basically viewed it as I was being unappreciative of "all she was doing," and she ended therapy when the counselor told her she needed to take responsibility for her own feelings and stop projecting them onto others - me, her children, etc. She actually ended up being the one who cheated (more than once), and I finally had to give up it was so emotionally draining on me. To this day, she cannot understand why I left her or even acknowledge that she had issues. It was all on me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Woman here. There’s a lot of women on this thread who are going to wake up one day and be shocked that their marriages collapsed and will blame everyone but never look into their own role. Focusing on your spouse doesn’t mean becoming a sex-slave in high heels in pearls, but making time to put the baby down, talk about something else, and remaining connected as a couple. In this age of competitive parenting it is mostly the women making themselves nuts about feeding and napping schedules, freaking out about any sitters ever, and focusing the entire family life on the kid. When I first had my kid, it drove me nuts when DH wasn’t worrying about doing things “the right way” and was just getting things done in a haphazard way and “forgetting” about the plan and schedules. However, a few months in, I realized that he was actually taking a healthier appproach and we were more than simply parents to a baby human. Things got done, the kid was happy and healthy, and parents kept their connection.

OP, I wish you the best in the future -you were not at fault, but congrats to you for thinking about how you might use relationship skills differently in the future.

Thank you for posting this. As a single mom who dates, and understands how hectic the early years can be, I realize how important it is to nurture all aspects of your life.

[Anonymous]

OP is so obviously a man.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Woman here. There’s a lot of women on this thread who are going to wake up one day and be shocked that their marriages collapsed and will blame everyone but never look into their own role. Focusing on your spouse doesn’t mean becoming a sex-slave in high heels in pearls, but making time to put the baby down, talk about something else, and remaining connected as a couple. In this age of competitive parenting it is mostly the women making themselves nuts about feeding and napping schedules, freaking out about any sitters ever, and focusing the entire family life on the kid. When I first had my kid, it drove me nuts when DH wasn’t worrying about doing things “the right way” and was just getting things done in a haphazard way and “forgetting” about the plan and schedules. However, a few months in, I realized that he was actually taking a healthier appproach and we were more than simply parents to a baby human. Things got done, the kid was happy and healthy, and parents kept their connection.

OP, I wish you the best in the future -you were not at fault, but congrats to you for thinking about how you might use relationship skills differently in the future.

Thank you for posting this. As a single mom who dates, and understands how hectic the early years can be, I realize how important it is to nurture all aspects of your life.

Sure, as long as you're not persuaded by idiots that you have to put yourself last.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Excuse me, that's poo, and an old one at that.

A grown adult can take care of him or herself and communicate in a positive way to get their spouse's attention before philandering.

Hahaha. I love this!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree spouses need to prioritize their marriage....SPOUSES. Not just wives. But it seems the burden of sustaining the marriage falls entirely on the wife and how much she puts out and makes her husband feel special. I know very few husbands who reciprocate and I have never heard anyone give men advice on how to nurture their marriage after kids. I bet if OP's husband had put the effort it took to carry on an affair towards his marriage instead, things would have been very different.

It's also such a cop-out to say he cheated because he wasn't ready for kids. If someone isn't ready, they should be an adult about it and not ejaculate in a vagina. It's nobody's fault but his own.

Yes. This.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cool story, bro.

My thought exactly.

+1. Even though you have cool story bro-ed one of my real posts before!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Woman here. There’s a lot of women on this thread who are going to wake up one day and be shocked that their marriages collapsed and will blame everyone but never look into their own role. Focusing on your spouse doesn’t mean becoming a sex-slave in high heels in pearls, but making time to put the baby down, talk about something else, and remaining connected as a couple. In this age of competitive parenting it is mostly the women making themselves nuts about feeding and napping schedules, freaking out about any sitters ever, and focusing the entire family life on the kid. When I first had my kid, it drove me nuts when DH wasn’t worrying about doing things “the right way” and was just getting things done in a haphazard way and “forgetting” about the plan and schedules. However, a few months in, I realized that he was actually taking a healthier appproach and we were more than simply parents to a baby human. Things got done, the kid was happy and healthy, and parents kept their connection.

OP, I wish you the best in the future -you were not at fault, but congrats to you for thinking about how you might use relationship skills differently in the future.

This is the opposite of what I see with strong marriages.

What I find is that every marriage has a time where you can't "focus on their spouse". Like, infant/toddlers, death of a parent, child with cancer, loss of a job (men are the worse with this), cancer, depression, deployed overseas..... you name it. There is a time in your life that your spouse will not "focus on you". The good marriages are running marathons. They keep their eye on the prize and don't let their little feeling get hurt when the going gets rough.

There is not 1 marriage that does not have tough times. If you want to cut and run and "blame the rough times" go for it. But there is no life without hard times. It's the people that can cope and deal with these times without blaming their spouse that have the strongest marriage.

[Anonymous]

What you do is, marry an adult

[Anonymous]

He claims he wasn't ready for a baby with you, but he had one with someone else? Makes no sense. What does make sense is things weren't right, he just wasn't into you, you all had a band-aid baby that didn't fix the problems so he left.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Recently divorced, due to ex husband’s infidelity and having a baby with another woman. I had a conversation with a close relative of mine and she gave me a huge wake up call about what went wrong. Now, I’m not (and neither is she) making an excuse for him cheating. However, it was brought to my attention that once we had a child, which he wasn’t ready for, he was put on the back burner for our daughter. I was too focused on being a mother that I forgot to be a wife or even take care of myself. I honestly didn’t realize it, but once she said it and I really thought about it, I did! I can’t take it back or change things, but I can take some responsibility for why things went wrong. I’ll know better next time!

Snort, you had a normal marriage post-baby. A baby is a BABY; a husband is not supposed to also be one!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Woman here. There’s a lot of women on this thread who are going to wake up one day and be shocked that their marriages collapsed and will blame everyone but never look into their own role. Focusing on your spouse doesn’t mean becoming a sex-slave in high heels in pearls, but making time to put the baby down, talk about something else, and remaining connected as a couple. In this age of competitive parenting it is mostly the women making themselves nuts about feeding and napping schedules, freaking out about any sitters ever, and focusing the entire family life on the kid. When I first had my kid, it drove me nuts when DH wasn’t worrying about doing things “the right way” and was just getting things done in a haphazard way and “forgetting” about the plan and schedules. However, a few months in, I realized that he was actually taking a healthier appproach and we were more than simply parents to a baby human. Things got done, the kid was happy and healthy, and parents kept their connection.

OP, I wish you the best in the future -you were not at fault, but congrats to you for thinking about how you might use relationship skills differently in the future.

This is the opposite of what I see with strong marriages.

What I find is that every marriage has a time where you can't "focus on their spouse". Like, infant/toddlers, death of a parent, child with cancer, loss of a job (men are the worse with this), cancer, depression, deployed overseas..... you name it. There is a time in your life that your spouse will not "focus on you". The good marriages are running marathons. They keep their eye on the prize and don't let their little feeling get hurt when the going gets rough.

There is not 1 marriage that does not have tough times. If you want to cut and run and "blame the rough times" go for it. But there is no life without hard times. It's the people that can cope and deal with these times without blaming their spouse that have the strongest marriage.

I was a huge fan of the West Wing, and having worked in the national security field, I completely got what Leo McGarry was telling his wife when he told her: "What I am doin right now, is more important than my marriage right now." It wasn't forever, but she chose to bail anyway instead of supporting him in the "most important thing" he was doing in his career.