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4 Posts
I won't go into the entire back story with my wife. This is a flavour.
But basically she never shows me any affection and although I spend most of the time thinking about how to do best my people and put in effort their behalf, her included, she treats me like utter crap. I'm 'lazy', I 'don't do anything to help' and weird stuff like berating me for minor untidiness I always deal with. It's like she's ready to pounce. I'm constantly stressed and anxious around her because I don't know if I'm about to be set upon.
The laziness accusation is frankly bizarre. I spend every hour either working or doing things for her and the family and often at other times I'm doing stuff for others. When her friends come over she knows I'll leap into action, shopping, making dinner (I'm a good cook), clearing it away and trying to make sure the guests are welcomed and taken care of. Anyone that knows me would think 'lazy' as the last thing I am.
I have have genuine faults and failings but she invents new ones based on nothing. On occasions I've done everything she asks without questions I'm still 'lazy' and 'never help' and she invents new things to denigrate me.
To be honest she's always been like it but there were very good times too where I could enjoy conversation, sex and her intelligence. Now it seems to be just the bad. There's zero sex. A female friend, about the only one who knows that our outwardly happy marriage is a nightmare, says that I am being 'emotionally abused'. I don't know about that.
I suppose thing have been bad for many years but I've always loved my wife and just want her to be nice and address me with basic civility. 80% of my friends are women and my job tends to take place in female-heavy environments. In 10 years of marriage I've perhaps only once or twice felt 'fond' of another women in a way I felt went beyond friendship and nothing came close to happening. I don't want to be the 'guy that has an affair'. I just want my wife to be nice.
The trouble is more recently I've become quite close to a good friend of my wife. She's beautiful, very intelligent, someone I can talk to for ages but, I think above all, she's hugely appreciative of me and that's attractive. Much to my wife's annoyance she often says how lucky my wife is to have me and that why can't all men be like me (she's divorced). I think she's a close enough friend of the family to have noticed I'm at the very least a 'doormat' in my marriage.
We are quite often together with our respective sets of kids without my wife these days and we always have such a happy, stress-free time. It's hard not to feel like 'perhaps is this is what a marriage is supposed to be like.' The real clincher is I have this horrible feeling she 'likes' me as she's grown a little more flirtatious.
I just don't know what to think. I don't want my life to become a car crash.
But basically she never shows me any affection and although I spend most of the time thinking about how to do best my people and put in effort their behalf, her included, she treats me like utter crap. I'm 'lazy', I 'don't do anything to help' and weird stuff like berating me for minor untidiness I always deal with. It's like she's ready to pounce. I'm constantly stressed and anxious around her because I don't know if I'm about to be set upon.
The laziness accusation is frankly bizarre. I spend every hour either working or doing things for her and the family and often at other times I'm doing stuff for others. When her friends come over she knows I'll leap into action, shopping, making dinner (I'm a good cook), clearing it away and trying to make sure the guests are welcomed and taken care of. Anyone that knows me would think 'lazy' as the last thing I am.
I have have genuine faults and failings but she invents new ones based on nothing. On occasions I've done everything she asks without questions I'm still 'lazy' and 'never help' and she invents new things to denigrate me.
To be honest she's always been like it but there were very good times too where I could enjoy conversation, sex and her intelligence. Now it seems to be just the bad. There's zero sex. A female friend, about the only one who knows that our outwardly happy marriage is a nightmare, says that I am being 'emotionally abused'. I don't know about that.
I suppose thing have been bad for many years but I've always loved my wife and just want her to be nice and address me with basic civility. 80% of my friends are women and my job tends to take place in female-heavy environments. In 10 years of marriage I've perhaps only once or twice felt 'fond' of another women in a way I felt went beyond friendship and nothing came close to happening. I don't want to be the 'guy that has an affair'. I just want my wife to be nice.
The trouble is more recently I've become quite close to a good friend of my wife. She's beautiful, very intelligent, someone I can talk to for ages but, I think above all, she's hugely appreciative of me and that's attractive. Much to my wife's annoyance she often says how lucky my wife is to have me and that why can't all men be like me (she's divorced). I think she's a close enough friend of the family to have noticed I'm at the very least a 'doormat' in my marriage.
We are quite often together with our respective sets of kids without my wife these days and we always have such a happy, stress-free time. It's hard not to feel like 'perhaps is this is what a marriage is supposed to be like.' The real clincher is I have this horrible feeling she 'likes' me as she's grown a little more flirtatious.
I just don't know what to think. I don't want my life to become a car crash.