I do say ouch. I do leave the room. Why do you think I spend most nights in another room playing PS3?

We even discussed that last night. I mentioned that I leave the room when she is mean to me. She says "that is your only response? To leave the room?"

I should have said "yes, that is the appropriate response when you are yelling at me or continuing to hurt my feelings after I say ouch. I leave when you won't stop hurting me."

And this morning she said she was going out to dinner tonight. I asked "out to dinner?", because I was not aware we had plans. She said "oh, not with you" in a dismissive tone. I said "ouch!" She said "oops, that didn't come out right, I meant that you don't have to leave work early because I am going to dinner with a couple of the ladies from the gym."

But you are correct in the big picture. I am addicted to the pain. To staying with her. To coming here and rolling in the muck. If I weren't addicted, I would leave.

The good news is that I picked more berries and made 2 more pints of jam last night while Mrs. Hold was at a movie with her girlfriends. That makes 6 pints this year. 2 chocolate raspberry with creme de cocoa. 2 orange raspberry with grand marnier. And 2 peach raspberry with peach shnappes. D13 made brownies and we gave the brownies and some jam to our new neighbor who moved in last week. She said it was OK for me to pick berries from the vines on her side of the property line.

Hmmm, Mrs. Hold going out with the gals 2 nights in a row. The other gals are married and their husbands make alot more than me so I don't think they are going cruising for guys. Then again, if Mrs. Hold left me for some other guy, might not be the worst thing for me. Assuming she marries him so I am off the hook for support. Yeah right, like I could get that lucky. Oh well, a boy can dream, can't he? But I know God will not make it that easy on me. Soolee, you have your view of what God has in store for me. I have mine.

Speaking og God, D13 agreed to lead a part of services tomorrow, so we are going together. I am glad that she said yes when the cantor asked her. That she doesn't feel "over and done" with religion now that she has graduated from Sunday school. But I am not sure what I should pray for.

You do ouch, but you didn't in the exchange you just told us about.

You do removal, but you didn't in that same exchange.

You do and you do not. That's all there is...

and your "Ouch" DOES NOT MEAN SHE'S HURTING YOU.

How irresponsible and arrogant that is...

You know better than that.

Your wife is hurting and you don't care....you don't do amends for your stuff and you don't ask for them from her...

you keep that hurt cycle going around and around, keeping that rejection coming like a faucet...inside and out.

and you know you're doing harming, causing hurt, and pain...

and you don't do differently.

You have all the tools...God has reached inside your life, again and again, and laid them all out...and I have no doubt he feels rejected by you, again and again...because you are his artwork and you trash what he made by hating yourself.

And you don't think you couldn't make some cool side cash selling your pints? Because they sound dreamy...like worth $20 each in your neighborhood.

LA

I was thinking the same thing! I'd pay a lot for those. Yum.

Soolee, you have your view of what God has in store for me. I have mine.

Have you considered taking your troubles to your Rabbi, Hold?

MIL sent me an e-mail today. She said the chocolate raspberry jam was amazing. She was surprised that an Ivy League lawyer could be so adept in the kitchen. Trying to hold onto that as a good feeling.

Yeah, I got a lot of shoulds and shouldn'ts rattling around inside my head.

I won't elaborate on what the ladies have said today. Read their posts again, Hold.

Your wife is no more happy with this arrangement than you are.

Forget the slow withdrawal from her spending attempts to soothe herself. Cut up the cards. Pay cash for Dave Ramsey's book, Total Money Makeover. With your income, you could be out of debt in a year.

Tell your wife the truth. It will be hard to do without sounding like blaming, but she didn't make you less productive at work. You did that. She just broke your heart, and you were unable to leave that a home.

Don't even discuss SF. Discuss the money problem, the attitude problems you both have. You aren't going to clean up your side of the street for sex. Neither is she. Right now, the two of you have to bring some financial sanity to your arrangement and stop punishing each other. By the time you accomplish that, it will be a whole new playing field for SF.

I know she didn't make me unproductive. I know I did that. Am still doing that.

Retread, do you have an e-mail address I could use to contact you off the boards?

It is not so much about how you dont make as much as you think you should, it is about HOW MUCH SHE SPENDS!!!!

AND HER ABUSE!

"Keep on shufflin....."

No Bubbles, it isn't. Yes, she overspent by a bunch. But Retread is correct. She broke my heart and I could not leave that home and succeed at work. If I were a senior partner today, I could earn back in 2 or 3 years what she overspent. Now that kind of income is beyond my reach. Which is my fault for allowing her behavior to control mine.

This is about me and my choices. I have given in to revenge rather than rising above her provocations.

Hold,
I have an email just for this forum. You can keep it anonymous, if you like.
mbretread@yahoo.com

Hold, what's happening?

Retread, I wanted to stop hijacking the other thread.

My wife did massively overspend in the past. All our savings. Ran up huge credit card debts. Hid it and lied about it. Then she kept spending after her misbehavior was discovered.

Our current financial problems are not caused by her overspending. Eventually I got separate checking acocunts and she gave up all her credit cards. She now lives on a strict allowance. Every so often she falls off the wagon and buys something that was not authorized. Maybe she takes a credit card out of my wallet and buys something online. Or she uses an online account tied to one of my cards.

But these days the financial problems are my fault as well. I do not insist that we live within our means. I threw big parties for my son and daughter and put them on credit cards. I could not bear to not "keep up with the Joneses" as to my kids. Those 2 parties are half our credit card debt.

Another 1/4 is when I weakened and gave Mrs. Hold back a card for a few months last year when we had finally paid off (10 years later) most of the debt from her first fiasco. My fault for not standing strong and insisting she live without them permanently. Yes, she chose to overspend. But I made it possible.

At this point, I am not willing to cut back on our lifestyle to the point where we can pay off the debt quickly. So I am as much to blame as she is. A big part of this is my guilt over not being as successful as I should be. I feel I should be able to afford to live the way we live.

We live at the low end of our community. I do most of my shopping on Ebay or at Walmart and the Dollar Tree store. I pick berries and make jam. We have cut way back on going out to dinner and cook almost all our meals at home. I make my son buy much of his sports equipment used. I cannot bear to cut back further. But since I don't have enough money to pay the electric bill this month, we may have to. Now I am going to have to tell my wife to turn off the air conditioning in August? And I am not supposed to feel like a failure?

You have too much income to not be able to get out of debt in a hurry. I guarantee you it could be done in a year or something close to it. Things would be different if you were out of work, or unable to work. I've been there, hobbling around the house from one piece of furniture to the next, from an income like yours to zero, and not even knowing when I could start talking to anyone about working again. A lot of people have been there.

You need to think outside the box. I know lawyers who graduated at the top of the best schools and don't practice in NY, LA, or Chicago. They live in nice, smaller cities, in houses that cost 1/4 what the cost in those places, and make as much money as they could make there, because they have national clients who come to them. They live in the first house they bought when they were just married a few years, paid for, fixed up, added onto. They fly to NY on business, take the wife, see a play, and fly home with the money.

Yes, if I were willing to make the required changes in lifestyle. I am not. Dot you realize what you are saying? Suppose my wife agreed to these changes? Then I could not blame her for our problems. Then I would have to take responsibility for our situation. Then I would not be able to feed my resentment and frustration toward her, and I would have to turn my attention inward. What are you trying to do, solve the problem? Who the heck wants to do that?


I already live in a smaller city in a house that costs 1/4 what it costs closer to NY. I tried to do what you suggest 10 years ago. Move to a smaller city, cheaper cost structure and make the same income. I actually got a substantial raise to come here over what I was making at a firm in a bigger city before (well, they paid me a fixed salary equal to what I made as salary plus bonus at the old place). Helped to pay off the debts from Mrs. Hold's fiasco.

But the years have gone by and I have not increased my income to match inflation, health care and college costs, etc. At this point the key is not to switch jobs, it is to gather clients who view me as their trusted advisor. I have been trying to do that for 10 years with zero success. I seem to lack whatever social skill or salesmanship is needed to close the deal with clients. Without clients of my own, there will be no increased income, whether at this firm or anywhere else.

Look, your advice is generally sound. I need to stop throwing a pity party and get moving on making changes. A rational person would do that. I won't. Hence my contention that you were wrong to say I am not ill or that I am being rational. I am being many things. Rational is far from being one of them.

This article ( click here to link to article ) describes a guy who felt, years ago after his divorce, exactly how I imagine I would feel after divorce. He found someone who lifted him out of despondency. I can't imagine I ever would.

That was a really nice column. I don't know who Andrew Cohen is, nor have read anything else by him. He doesn't say why or how he failed to marry this woman. He doesn't say what went wrong with his marriage.

I do know this: when he met her, he didn't ever imagine he could be lifted out of his despondency, by someone else or himself.

Exactly. Maybe the best thing I can do is to get divorced and find someone who can lift me out of my despondency. I have always felt that way was cheating the game of life. That is was like hoping for someone to "wave a magic wand and make it all better". Which is what I thought I was doing by marrying Mrs. Hold.

In the past I have suggested undergoing ECT. Because I feel I need to reboot my brain. Many here have warned against doing it. Some have based their objection on potential side effects. But many have said "it is a fools errand, you are looking for a magic wand, you have to do the hard work within yourself."

This article does offer hope. But not of the "put in the work and earn your salvation" variety. For the author, meeting that woman WAS like waving a magic wand. She lifted him out of despondency in a way he could not have done himself through sheer force of will.

The article clearly resonated with me. But I am not sure it offers a MB-approved solution.

Someone with more authority will have to speak to what is the MB Approved Solution. Dr. Harley does have an article on, "When to Call It Quits".

There is no guarantee you will find the woman with a magic wand. Few people do. I just say again, if you are even considering divorce later, at what you think will be a more opportune time, or if you think it is an unavoidable tragedy which you don't want, you owe it to yourself and your wife to start some frank and honest discussions about it now.

I think you make a lot of assumptions about why your wife married you, and why she did and didn't, and why she does and doesn't do this and that. She is probably making the same mind-reading, disrespectful judgements about your thoughts and motives. What do you have to lose by laying it on the table in small enough doses that you can both take the medicine? You can start by the same sort of three-sentence summaries you post here every day, then be stop for night and listen to her, let it sink in, don't dwell on it or drag it out by trying to air it all in one sitting. You can easily do that.

I have told her everything. We were in marriage counselling for 8 years. We tried to implement the MB system. We failed. I have told her I am staying for the house and the kids, not to be with her. She has not offered to work on the relationship, and she will not tolerate relationship discussions. A couple of times lately I have said "I would really like us to be madly in love with each other. How do you feel about that?" She rolled her eyes and said something like "ugh, we aren't going to talk about us again, are we?"

She has made it clear that "I predict I will want to leave 5 years from now if things stay the same" is not sufficient motivation for her to change. She seems to believe that I don't have the guts to leave, ever. Neither of us will know whether I do or I don't until we get there. Until we confirm I do, discussions are pointless because she has made it clear she is not changing. Neither am I.

Moreover, even if she were willing to implement MB, I do not believe I am capable of meeting her needs. She needs someone who earns way more than I can ever hope to earn. She has openly admitted this recently. She is disappointed in my lack of career success. She may choose to stay with me. At least for now. Because she likes me as a person. But she does not feel romantic love for me. And she won't ever feel that unless and until I triple or quadruple my income.

I am too afraid to even attempt that. My fear. My fault. My problem. But unless I find the "magic wand" that changes that. Similar to what is described in the article. I don't see myself ever overcoming my fear. Eventually it will be too late to even try.

Divorce is not my choice as a path to happiness. I don't believe I will ever attain happiness. I am not willing to even try. Divorce is my path to stop getting my teeth kicked in every night.

Who knows. When the day arrives. Maybe my libido will have waned sufficiently that it won't feel like getting my teeth kicked in. Maybe I will be able to foregive myself for not leaving sooner. And forgive my wife for not being any braver than me. And learn once again to enjoy her company. And I will stay.

News flash!
Tripling your income won't make you or your wife any happier than you are now. You have to be happy before you can become happier.

Happiness is influenced by outside circumstances, but it comes from within, by learning how to accept what you cannot change so much, and CHOOSING to focus on the good things in life instead of the bad.