[trying_to_rejuvenate]

Need some thoughts and opinions on this:

I have been the earning member of my family for the duration of the marriage for 10 years. I feel I have been a very responsible husband and father. on few occassions both of us have had issues with outbursts of our anger though at each other. Nothing extreme except single slaps on each other a few times. My wife was making about 20% of what I did for 1 year or so and then she left her job and accompanied me to various places around the world. We settled in a country where the government pays certain unemployment allowance (about 25% of my income) while the wife trains for employment and about 10% of my income for taking care of our 2 kids. She will start getting these monies in the next month.

Now my younger son goes to daycare for which the monthly charges are about 10% of my income. I got my wife a trainee job in the company I worked in and she got an allowance for that. We agreed to open her bank account since she made the money. Now in the same time we got the permanent residence permit in the country so now she does not have to stay dependent on me to stay here. She said that she will keep 3000 currency in her account because she does not trust me and I agreed. (her reason of distrust are frivilous). We agreed she will spend anything over that on household expenses. Now that she will start receiving unemployment expenses she says she will only contribute 50% of it and rest she will accumulate in her account.

My fear is that she will leave me as the country's rules enable her to separate easily as it guarentees her support even though she is unemployed. I now wish to return to my home country to take care of my parents who are desperately in need. She does not want to return as she can stay independently here.

So I want her to contribute equally to the household expenses so that she has the security of 3000 currency but at the same time does not unfairly accumulate extra to enable her to leave with my kids. I want us to stay together whereever.

The facts:
She liked being a stay at home mom but is/was a lazy and non responsible one. Result was it came at a cost of growth of our sons. After a few attempts at trying to change her I gave up and let the situation be since I could not change her.

She cannot get a job related to her training because she is just not upto it. The temporary one that she got was because of my help in getting it and she could not extend it further due to her incompetence.

Now she throws a tantrum when I ask her to contribute to various bills. She wants now to accumulate money and says I do not trust her. She has in the past gone to the verge of separating at the expense of governments money.

I dont want separation as I will lose the kids in the process. I love her and she is now just obsessed in building her bank balance.

I have always provided for her in all ways. The past disagreements of spending money on minor things have suddenly now acquired a vicious touch as she wants to quarrel all the time now that she is not dependent on me anymore due to the country's support.

Her monthly government support is for supporting herself minimally and certainly not enough to be her 50% share of household expenses.

We have had other issues in our sex life but we agreed on certain things and that seemed sorted out for both of us. But now her quarrelsome attitude on financial stuff is very upsetting and ruining our relationship now.

So now I am in danger of losing my family.
My mother is in a terminal kind of illness
I am in danger of losing my job due to the economic slowdown and also because our marital life has started effecting work adversely.
She has threatened to bring false charges against me and my parents and land us in jail just because the laws assume a woman's words to be true till case is proven in court. I dont want a legal hassle at this time with so many issues churning around me.

Is my expectation of asking her to contribute to household expenses subject to her keeping a balance of 3000 currency in her account fair? The government is after all giving it to her to spend it rather than to accumulate it in her bank.

I am keeping up with her extremely aggressive and abusive ways for the last 3 months now and turning more and more patient. She however has become irrational, any slight dissent or protest from my part causes outbursts from her.

She has a close girlfriend and her husband and she both support her in addition to her parents. I on the other hand have not built close friends here (outside work) and certainly not been talking behind her back to any of my friends about the issues. The issue is also shameful for me to bring up in front of others for fear of jeopardising the situation further.

Her additional demand is that I should add her name in a couple of other assets where it is not added so that she gets 50% share. That would leave me at her mercy when I am in need. She already refused to agree to sell one asset when I needed it to buy a good home in my home country. I added her name in a few assets where she did not contribute any money early on in our marriage.

I know there will be suggestions of moving on and divorce but that is out of question from my side. I just want us to stay together and I am willing to support forever from my side. But this brinksmanship from her is so so unsettling. I know about the 180 degrees, MMSL etc etc. There have been small results from that sides which was encouraging. I will keep doing that slowly.

Its hard to feel that I am being gobbled up and so is our future along with our kids'. I hate the institution on marriage now for its unfairness. She has been breaking all the marriage vows that we made. It seems she wants her independence without any responsibilities or duties.

Marriage counselling is something that will not work because she does not want to even look up any article that help in solving on marital problem. Basically she always says I dont need to read anything to understand our situation. Same will be her attitude to what the marriage counsellor will say.

I am doing all the communication, wanting to do the solutions and she just seems to raise issues and fight on every pretext. I am taking all precautions not to ruffle her feathers and tactfully leading to solutions. My hours of talks calm her down for a few days until she gets into fighting mode on trivial things.

I guess I am asking the question am I being a jerk in asking for what I think is fair or is she being the jerk? Or is there more?

 

[PBear]

I'd need to hear HER side of the story before rendering an opinion...

C

 

[trying_to_rejuvenate]

Its a lengthy post but I am really looking for opinions here pls !

 

[I'mInLoveWithMyHubby]

PBear is right. There are two sides to every story.

Some husbands expect their wives to contribute financially while others do not. My husband fully supports our family and knew once I quit my job I would not return to work. My husband wanted me home raising our children. We discussed the financial situations and came to an agreement before we married.

I'm not sure if you were in an arranged marriage or not. Also, there is a big cultural difference with you and your wife and my husband and I. I'm not familiar what's expected of a wife and husband in other countries. I would think marriage counseling would be really helpful in your case if you continue the marriage.

 

[Mavash.]

I don't know how this would work there but if you were here I'd advise you to rethink the bills that you pay. If she wants to take her money from the gov't and hoard it while being a lazy housewife then I'd take certain luxuries away. If she wants to play separate finances I'd happily let her.

To me it sounds like she's in a power struggle with you over money or she's plotting her exit strategy. Either way you need to protect yourself financially.

 

[trying_to_rejuvenate]

I don't know how this would work there but if you were here I'd advise you to rethink the bills that you pay. If she wants to take her money from the gov't and hoard it while being a lazy housewife then I'd take certain luxuries away. If she wants to play separate finances I'd happily let her.

To me it sounds like she's in a power struggle with you over money or she's plotting her exit strategy. Either way you need to protect yourself financially.

To clarify:
I have been paying all bills till the time she started getting the monies from her temporary training job as well as the government support money when I started expecting her to contribute as well - of course the result being that since her monies were not enough to cover 50% of expenses so I was doing all the rest.

I will support her no matter whether she gets her monies or not as I always have and told her so and she knows that. All her earlier earned monies are in fixed deposit in her name and have not been touched.

But my guess is that now she knows (in her heart though she will never say it) that since she created all the hassle/quarrels unreasonably ( maybe due to resentment etc ) over finances she thinks that I may try to be vengeful later.

Bottomline is I have always supported her and our family no matter what until she started earning money in this foreign country.

My guess is that she has plans/dreams to get her parents over here from time to time while I am away, or she is planning her exit strategy. Since I dont want her to leave me or us to stay apart while I stay in my home country to be with my parents she is doing all this. If only she would come through honestly about what she wants rather than trying to be shrewd about her hidden agenda.

My fear is also that while I go away to take care of my parents she will file some false charges of domestic violence to keep me from returning so that she can continue to stay here easily entirely dependent on government support. Man this whole thing sucks !


I love her and want her to love me back but her hidden agendas/being out of sync is killing us. I mean after all the years of willful dependence on me since she was too lazy to work or even look for work she suddenly sees easy money from the government while she enjoys her short training days (which are really picnic kind - language learning) at the cost of family life. And all this because I got my family and her the permanent residence permit after struggling here and making hard earned money for years here to provide my family/wife an international life. And now my trusting in her is being used against me possibly to get away and take my children along.

Add to this I can see her doing cheating kind of chats with some facebook friends etc i.e. continuing to chat with her college friends even when they explicitly write inappropriate messages like "should I come over since your husband is away". Although the guy is in a different geographic location but still her thoughts of continuing the chat makes me squirm.


She tells me it is beyond her belief why my expectation is like this. Am I a jerk to have expectation of her contributing equally financially in this perspective?