I don’t respect my husband - would you divorce if you were me?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Can you give an example of what you mean by life’s big responsibilities? How is he not stepping up to those and how are you forced to fill in?

He doesn’t know the first thing about about maintaining anything having to do with our house or our cars, it all falls on me. And I make more money. And I work more hours.

Oh, so you are a time traveler from the 50s.

Lol. I want a partner not a child. Like all women.

LOL. So you're ready to explain to your daughter that the reason she has to shuffle between 2 households , deal with step parrents, step siblings.have siblings and all those complexities for the rest of her life is because her dad was not a mechanic and a plumber and this made mommy unhappy?

Well right. I worry a lot about that (the complexities). But the flip side is not how you described it but rather her seeing a marriage where the woman carries the burden of life so daddy can live as a child at her expense. I am sincerely not sure what is worse.

How is he living as a child if he has a job and is a good father? My DH is also not good at fixing cars or household items. But he has a good job so can afford to outsource. He’s a good dad and my soul mate. We are on the same team and bring our strengths together to reach our goals. Sounds like your marriage is more transactional and he didn’t live up to your expectations so you fell out of love. It’s cliche, but love is hard work. That is something you could model to your daughter. Thinking of each other as teammates and not adversaries.

I am glad you have a happy marriage and can afford to outsource from your husband’s income and that he acts like a teammate. That is not the case in my marriage as much as I wish it was.

+1. No lie, my ex-husband literally would rip up the weeds from work of tulips I was stupid enough to plant by hand for the first time. He ripped up the tulips, and he watered the weeds. Some teammates just can’t cut it for an all-star team, or even a little league team, no matter how much they love the game and want to win.

You both have to know your roles, agree on your role, and know that team performance means a win, as defined by the rules you both agree too. No modifications to the rules to the game halfway through it, no table talk, no cheating, no incompetency. Sometimes you have to look at this as someone trying to play monopoly with a 3 year old. Maybe you will get there, but uou should probably start with a Candyland Board. Then maybe Trouble. After that? That’s when the big bucks come in. And you might make manager!

[Anonymous]

You need personal therapy and maybe couples therapy. I was having feelings like this, wanting to leave my husband over very minor things. Fluoxetine helped me. It was me, not him

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Can you give an example of what you mean by life’s big responsibilities? How is he not stepping up to those and how are you forced to fill in?

He doesn’t know the first thing about about maintaining anything having to do with our house or our cars, it all falls on me. And I make more money. And I work more hours.

Oh, so you are a time traveler from the 50s.

Lol. I want a partner not a child. Like all women.

LOL. So you're ready to explain to your daughter that the reason she has to shuffle between 2 households , deal with step parrents, step siblings.have siblings and all those complexities for the rest of her life is because her dad was not a mechanic and a plumber and this made mommy unhappy?

Well right. I worry a lot about that (the complexities). But the flip side is not how you described it but rather her seeing a marriage where the woman carries the burden of life so daddy can live as a child at her expense. I am sincerely not sure what is worse.

How is he living as a child if he has a job and is a good father? My DH is also not good at fixing cars or household items. But he has a good job so can afford to outsource. He’s a good dad and my soul mate. We are on the same team and bring our strengths together to reach our goals. Sounds like your marriage is more transactional and he didn’t live up to your expectations so you fell out of love. It’s cliche, but love is hard work. That is something you could model to your daughter. Thinking of each other as teammates and not adversaries.

I am glad you have a happy marriage and can afford to outsource from your husband’s income and that he acts like a teammate. That is not the case in my marriage as much as I wish it was.

Well, if you are too poor now to outsource then divorcing will make you poorer still. You earn more than him so you will also have to pay him alimony and child support. Maybe make peace with the fact that you are not a high quality female (looks, family, education, income. self-esteem, maturity, character) and you got the best sperm donor that you could get.

I think you should seriously think about divorce, give full custody to your DH, go back to school, get a better job, get some extreme makeover done and then find another man. Also, next time, don't have a kid.

- DP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You need personal therapy and maybe couples therapy. I was having feelings like this, wanting to leave my husband over very minor things. Fluoxetine helped me. It was me, not him

Yup. OP is anxious and maybe has postpartum depression and postpartum aggression.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn't divorce your husband OP. But maybe you should and let a nice single woman who wants a good looking guy who works and is a good father have him. They aren't a dime a dozen you know.

[Anonymous]

Are you depressed op?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Can you give an example of what you mean by life’s big responsibilities? How is he not stepping up to those and how are you forced to fill in?

He doesn’t know the first thing about about maintaining anything having to do with our house or our cars, it all falls on me. And I make more money. And I work more hours.

But I bet you turned your nose up at the guys who graduated trade school and have business bringing home more than you and your husband combined fixing up houses and cars. So sad for you OP.


Also, I'm going o go ahead and call troll now, the answers are too canned, but you all can entertain it for the next 50 pages.

Not OP, but what you’re alluding to is something that does happen often, women judging external and not the shiny buffed diamond sitting in a pretty setting ready to wear.

I’d like to share another perspective. I always took and respected people at face value. When I met my ex, he was broke in a busted car making no money and living with a roommate. (Like many moms, I wandered here from a random google search around engorgement and cabbage leaves; I didn’t have DCUM perspective when dating which certainly would have shifted my attitude in how to best prepare myself for a good marriage and a happy and strong family).

Anyway, we were both in the initial l stages of young adulthood, much like college romances where you are broke and eat ramens together and loved the person before they were the billionaire tech bro. However, in my case — I was broken, and he was a crutch to my dysfunction. I was a crutch to his. We gobbled together until one day I realized we were both short hanging ourselves and wanted to work on self-improvement. It was okay foe a while - we stood together, and lost the hunch back. We eventually even developed a stride. In my opinion, that is where things turned.

I was the only self-reflective person willing to make difficult change but it didn’t bother me, because we were a team! I didn’t mind doing the hard work. Then he began to change in a way that was not supporting the same goal of complete healing and maturity. He hit blocks because of emotional pain in his past, much like I did. However, his response was to go deeper into a spiral of rejecting me, criticizing, ignoring and triggering all of my worst fears and experiences around other dysfunctional relationships I experienced as a child. What used to bond us became a threat as my attitude towards change was viewed as a feeling of superiority, when it truly only uncovered shame. I didn’t know this at the time, if I had my personality is such that I probably would have worked to help him untangle with what I could. But I was untangling myself. There parts of the cord really worn down and he would often point and laugh and my broken parts, because again - the maturity in how we responded to pain in the past was complimentary, until I kept going to the next level.

Add this to the fact that he was married to someone that made him feel like he was a star. I was healthy, genuine, educated, hardworking, loyal, committed, sexually insatiable, and willing to surrender (I heard about the book way before DCUM). I did the Love Darw, 5 Love Languages, and tried to help while he resisted. Eventually he took my change as a threat and he went off into terrirtory where he began devaluing me. He rejected me sexually and had inappropriate relationship with exes, you know when our child was lost from a miscarriage he was flirting with an ex girlfriend and crying about how hard it was? Mind you, he told me that we did t have a baby, it wasn’t life that I lost. He detached emotionally and then began to increase in philandering - he was in sales and had long weeks away, long nights out, and when he came home everything I attended to was unnoticed and undervalued by him. In hindsight maybe a threat.

This dynamic became TOXic. Working with him from the ground up, getting my fingernails dirty did not strengthen our respect. While he benefitted from my professional success and vested interest in supporting self-development for both of us, he quietly grew resentful. As my years were ignored and I was called dramatic and intolerable, he began to lash out. Losing the respect completely changed the rules. I was screaming for an escape during the worst parts - I remember crying about looking at my child’s urn, and he videotaped me, saying that I was emotional and dramatic. He taunted me. I lost self esteem. We were sexless. He cheated with nasty people and gaslit me. He tried to remove all financial empowerment and every counseling attempt together created a bigger monster.

I dated the plumber turned powerful man, and it made him lose respect for me and respond to a different level of women that saw the shiny Diamond with interest. He liked the attention. It inflated his ego and validated his fallacies.

Of course, if you finally break free from a toxic interaction that won’t heal, you must heal yourself. Our divorce allowed him room to resort to his common practice of wound kicking, and I was able to tend to my winds and get back up and move on without guilt.

I have noticed that often times men who complain about someone not wanting the money have a deep insecurity. It was something I noticed very early on once I started dating a few years post divorce. I’m sharing rhis long story because I think it is something single women reading should evaluate. Just scan and observe, don’t hold and seek a confirmation bias.

This is a common scenario. It happens a lot. Of course there are gold diggers without substance out there, but there are also men who drop the woman that helped them become the success they are. Unless they have built their own healthiness, they offer suffer and retaliate in anger once they don’t have the “credit” of a true team player covering their plays and helping apply the playbook strategy. They are on the court, alone, and feeling abandoned - it’s not pretty.

OP - you both have to respect each other to love each other. You have to respect your children to teach them respect. You have to show homer to receive honor. I hope you and your husband can find a way to grow closer and stronger when the weight gets too heavy. There are a lot of ways to creatively reinforce the bones of an old house if you’re both in board foe the renovation work.

[Anonymous]

He sounds incapable. Of adult life.

This is bad now that he has a wife, kid, cars, and a house,

Is there a mental disorder at play? Forgetful, poor executive functioning skills, lack of common sense, ant remember discussions, no life experiences, not m any friends or genuine interests?

[Anonymous]

Try the love and respect series of books/videos

[Anonymous]

I would leave. I have a friend who divorced her husband for similar reasons - she was doing all the work. Better to do it without having to deal with him as well. Years later and she’s fine, and the kids are fine. I’m a single mom and am so glad not to have to deal with someone I don’t respect on a daily basis. If your husband isn’t bringing anything to the table, then I wouldn’t waste anymore time with him.

[Anonymous]

There is no right answer only slight degrees of less pain. You will have a thorn in your side for the rest of your life no matter what decision you make. This is true of almost every full grown mature person at some point in life. That’s the ugly truth. Living life with a positive attitude even though you have a thorn in your side is the worlds greatest skill

[Anonymous]

Your situation is exactly the same as mine, OP, except that I didn't ask this question and I didn't leave him and now I have an 8 year old DC. I actually don't know that it would have been better to leave earlier, since his presence for sure eased the burden of parenting for me, but it's impossible to deny now. I recommend you divorce now, since it'll happen eventually and it's better to get it over ASAP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:He sounds incapable. Of adult life.

This is bad now that he has a wife, kid, cars, and a house,

Is there a mental disorder at play? Forgetful, poor executive functioning skills, lack of common sense, ant remember discussions, no life experiences, not m any friends or genuine interests?

She hasn't described a single thing indicative of a flaw in her husnand.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, your happiness, your accomplishments, getting things done that you want to do, is largely not impacted by a spouse.

This is not true. If you have a screw up spouse and kids to raise you can’t go get a c level job, count on him, even have back and forth conversations about most things. He’s like another child, but unlike most children, he can’t learn.

[Anonymous]

Write a check for anything he can't do and focus on his qualities.

Voila! Problem solved.

Also