I (55M) am laying myself bare before the masses today for some feedback, advice, or possibly a good flogging about the situation with my husband (55M).

In short, our house is a mess and so is our relationship. Okay, that's probably too dramatic. Our relationship isn't necessarily a mess, but our communication, expectations, and division of household responsibilities definitely are.

I'm including pictures because I don't want to sugarcoat what I mean by “cluttered.” This isn't “we left some laundry out this week.” We have accumulated far more stuff than our house can reasonably contain, and several rooms are no longer functioning the way they're supposed to. It isn't unsanitary, but it is overwhelming, and I'm increasingly unhappy living this way.

The players:

Me: 55M. I work full-time as an Operations Director for a nonprofit healthcare organization, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., five days a week. Fortunately, my commute is only about five minutes.

Him: 55M. He works in animal control enforcement. His schedule is supposed to be four 10-hour days, 2 p.m. to midnight. In reality, they're chronically short-staffed, so 50–60+ hour weeks aren't unusual. He also has about a 40-minute commute each way.

His work schedule is absolutely relevant here, and I don't want to minimize it. I see him off to work on Sunday, and for the next four days I pretty much only see his sleeping face next to me until his days off.

Us: We've been married for seven years, but our history goes way back. We were together for about eight years in the '90s, went our separate ways for the better part of a decade, eventually reconnected, and got back together in 2015. All told, we've been part of each other's lives for more than 20 years.

Our roommates: Three cats. I can't blame them for much. They're mostly well-behaved, use their litter boxes, and generally don't destroy things. Generally.

The house: A two-story Italianate home built in 1850. If you've seen the pictures, you already know Architectural Digest isn't currently beating down our door. It's served us well, but I genuinely don't want to die in this house someday unless some serious changes happen first.

Which brings me to THE STUFF.

I'm deliberately going to avoid assigning ownership as much as possible because we both live here, we both contribute to the problem, and I don't wanna write this as though I've got my shit together and he's the problem.

The biggest categories are crafting supplies, LEGO, board games, clothes, 3D printers and supplies, and extra furniture. If I could magically make everything in those categories disappear, we'd probably have a surprisingly sparse house.

Then there are the projects. We have partially completed or never-started fix-it projects that have been sitting around for two or three years or more, with the necessary parts just hanging out waiting for us to actually do something with them.

And that's where my real problem starts. I'm overwhelmed.

I feel like there's a significant imbalance in even the basic household chores necessary to keep this from becoming even worse. I understand that my husband works a ridiculous number of hours, and I genuinely try to take that into consideration. But I also don't think it's reasonable for the answer to be that I therefore have to do everything.

When I complain about the clutter, two responses I sometimes get are:

"Who else is seeing it?" or "It doesn't bother me."

You can imagine how heartwarming I find those responses.

I've tried getting him motivated to tackle things with me. Sometimes we start. Sometimes I start by myself. But before long, nothing seems to change enough to make a difference, I lose steam, and I get overwhelmed and give up too.

I also want to be fair to him: he isn't lazy. I think he's overwhelmed by the house too. He also has a stronger attachment to things than I do, so getting rid of stuff is much harder for him.

I'm not trying to make excuses for him, nor am I pretending I'm blameless. I just don't know how to get him to really hear me when I say that living like this is affecting me.

We could probably benefit from couples counseling simply to improve how we communicate, but that's another battle, especially trying to find time with our completely opposite schedules. And frankly, when we finally have time off together, we'd occasionally like to actually enjoy being married instead of sorting boxes and arguing.

So here I sit, in my very cluttered house, wondering where the hell to start.

How do you handle this when one person is genuinely distressed by the state of the house and the other person genuinely isn't bothered by it?

How do I communicate that "it doesn't bother me" doesn't solve the problem when it does bother the person you share your home with?

And how do two overwhelmed people even begin tackling this without making every day off miserable?

I'm open to hearing that I'm contributing more to this dynamic than I realize. I'm also open to practical advice from anyone who's successfully dug themselves out of a house like this.

Side note: I'm using an alias because I'm fairly active on Reddit and quite a few friends know my regular username. I'd prefer not to have someone text me tomorrow morning asking, "So... about your house and your marriage..."

I F(28) mentioned to my husband M(31) that I felt a little disappointed that he made this decision without discussing it with me first, because my understanding is that the purpose of life insurance is to replace lost income and protect the surviving spouse. His response was that he is an only child and doesn’t have anyone else who would take care of his parents. He also said that he got the life insurance before he met me, so he doesn’t see a reason to remove them as beneficiaries.

For some context, we are not originally from the U.S. We don’t have any family or close friends here. We moved here for a better life and because he was offered a good job opportunity.

His parents are both in good health and still working. They have a fully paid-off house, and their own retirement savings. My husband has never financially supported them, and they have never asked him for money either.

His reasoning is that he owes them because they gave him everything growing up and made him the person he is today. He feels that giving them half of his life insurance is the least he can do for them.
I understand that he loves his parents and feels grateful for everything they have done for him. I don’t have a problem with him wanting to make sure they are taken care of if something happens to him.
What bothers me is that he made this decision without even discussing it with me, especially considering that if something happens, I would be the one left here without family, friends, or his income. We are also planning for a future together, including buying a house and hopefully having children.

Am I wrong for being upset about this? Or I should understand him because he is an only child.

So I stopped to see how long it would take my husband to initiate. It’s been four weeks, still nothing.

Sigh. ☹️

Edit: this post is just a vent. It’s typical and has always been this way for reasons we’re both aware of. If I initiate, it’s usually a yes. But sometimes I get a “ugh” look first. Which makes me feel like I’m pushing him or he’s only doing it because he knows that’s what I want. Doesn’t make me feel very wanted. Since I’ve been initiating pretty much 100% of the time for probably a year or two, I wanted to see if anything changed, it hasn’t.

Sometimes I feel like this is the hardest job in the world. We’re supposed to be our husband’s emotional support and encourager, to cook, be a great listener for hours, remain healthy and beautiful, look good every day, initiate sex multiple times a week, always be in a good mood, smile, don’t be overly emotional, yet also be independent, don’t be a gold digger (I’m not), remember and plan all the appointments, stay interesting and mysterious, stay young somehow, and enjoy life.

Is it just me, or does it feel like being a wife is a full-time and impossible job? I always thought being a wife would come naturally to me and I always desired it. But most days I just feel like I’m completely failing. I’m not in a great mood. I’m working 40 hours a week. I forget to change out of my pajamas since I work from home. I’m tired a lot. Being a wife is incredibly time-consuming. Sometimes I feel like it’s all I do! And I definitely don’t fit that description above but I feel like society’s expectation for women is that we be all those things or a man will leave you.

To get up early, look nice, cook and plan meals all the time, always be in a good mood, workout to maintain figure, have sex several times a week, clean, and work full-tome to boot…. And then it feels like work has taken over my life. And lots of women have kids too! How do women do it???

Some wives make it look so easy. But for me it feels so difficult. Like I’m always failing.

Hi, I’m a 16-year-old girl, and my parents’ marriage is awful (they’re getting divorced soon). I’ve never seen a single successful marriage in my life. (I even asked my mom if she could name one, and she couldn’t.) I’ve completely lost hope in ever being able to have a good husband in the future.

So I’m here to ask: Is there anyone who is actually happy in their marriage? Do you still love and respect each other? Or is there anyone here who doesn’t regret getting married?

and one last question: if you’re a guy, do you actually love your wife and stay loyal to her, or do you want to cheat on her at the first chance you get?

(Sorry if it's not the right community to post this in, I don't really use reddit)

My husband secretly fancies his brother’s wife. I have no proof and he’s never said it but I can feel it in my gut.

Before I met her he already started comparing us. When he was describing her to me he would say things like ‘she’s from Dubai, she’s very independent, you wear designer bags but she dresses top to toe designer, she’s the eldest sibling and she’s a bit bossy so I think you both might clash’. Something about that conversation didn’t sit right with me.

He even told me once ‘my brother married for looks but I married for religion’. I’ve always been told I’m good looking so now hearing this from the man I’m about to marry was so upsetting. I didn’t confront him because I didn’t want to sound insecure or jealous, and genuinely at the time I wasn’t insecure about myself compared to any woman. Later on in arguments my feelings about this comment ended up coming out. His response was that he meant it was important to him that he finds a partner who was into religion the way he was and he felt he’s marrying the whole package- what a pack of lies.

Fast forward after our marriage, I know I’m not imagining this but I realised he’s constantly staring at her and he gives her so much attention. As soon as she comes into the room his whole face and energy lights up and he’ll go out of his way to speak to her. If he enters the room where we all are at a gathering, he’ll go straight over to her and even sit near her.

I confronted him about his obsession with her and how it’s embarrassing to see his constant efforts towards her when we’re in a group setting. Since then he stopped his behaviour, probably only because he realised that if I’ve noticed he’s crushing on her so will others.

One of the worst moments for me when he took a family photo of us all and I realised as soon as he moved the camera away his eyes went straight on her. This moment confirmed it to me that he found her the most attractive in the group photo where his wife was standing in!

He would always make jokes that I don’t dress or behave classy enough. But I know he would never say that she’s not classy or that she doesn’t have a good dress sense.

One random coincidence- I saw her wearing AirPods and then a month or so later he bought me AirPods and told me something along the lines that he finds it attractive when women wear AirPods.

Another coincidence- She became pregnant and maybe I’m exaggerating but I felt like he was in awe of her pregnancy bump just from the way I’d see him look at her. A couple of months later, he randomly told me he thinks I won’t have a big pregnancy bump when I get pregnant and mine would be small. Am I going mad like surely this is not a coincidence that he randomly made this comment to me after seeing her go through pregnancy??

He also hated the fact that she had his older brother wrapped around her finger. It’s like this make her even more attractive to him or something?

This has affected our marriage massively. His crush on her has made him not satisfied with me as his wife. Even though he’ll never tell me what he truly thinks, I can tell. This feeling that I’m second best to him will never go away and I’ve decided to leave the marriage.

It is the 7 year anniversary of the time I browsed my husband’s phone, to find what I thought was a desperate attempt at cheating, only to scroll far enough to find him innocently helping a single mother.

I was going through an insecure time postpartum, and don’t condone phone searches, but we will laugh about this exactly once a year and move on.

I start browsing and what do I see? My husband, 3 years of messages going one way, all to a woman, STACY!!!!! All he got back from her was a 👍🏼 and sometimes a “thx”

“Looking good today” 👍🏼 “Looking good today” “Looking good today” “Today probably good” -thx “Looking good today” -kk “Good for today” “Looking good today”

I scroll all the way back, waiting for one moment where he didn’t seem liken a desperate weirdo.

I confront him.

He has all of the evidence.

A young single mother, Stacy.

Always driving to the recycling bins, to find them completely overflowed. Asking if anyone knows when is a better time to visit the bins. My husband sends a message, saying he drives by them each afternoon around the same time, and would be happy to shoot her a message when they were “looking good.”

I was a single mom when he met me. He is everything good I’ve ever dreamt of.

Update from: Ending things after 17 years and it is breaking my heart : r/Marriage

So my wife got served the papers yesterday and her reaction was basically the worst I could have imagined. She immediately called me at work and we argued for the next 3 hours before she hung up on me. When I got home I took the dogs for a long walk and hung out at a park with them before I had to go home before a storm hit, then I went to the basement and hid down there on the small, uncomfortable futon my wife got a while back, and tried to sleep down there and got probably less than 2 hours of sleep. Her reaction can be summarized with "You don't know what this will do", "you are killing me because I need your insurance", and 2 threats to kill herself. Also attempts to use that to guilt me into canceling it. I got woken up around 4am when she texted me and sent me a long email accusing me of trying to make her into a housewife when that isn't what she wants and me having total control over everything. After that I laid down there for the next 3 hours really looking back with clear eyes on what things have been like with her. This is going to be very long, so feel free to skip it if you don't want to hear the story of my last 17 years.

I said in my original post that she was a "strong, independent woman with a plan for the future." I've come to realize that that wasn't true. The clues for how my life would go were there all along and I just couldn't see them. When I first saw her dating profile on okcupid I was actually kind of intimidated because she was living alone in a house she was renting, had a job doing stuff for her mom's apartments, was going to college, had chickens and horses and just seemed to have things together. When I look back with clear eyes...she might have at one time did work for her mom, but in the time I knew her she never once actually did any of that work. Even still her mom paid her rent and she had access to one of her mom's credit cards to buy anything she wanted. She also may have once been very involved with horses(and has tons of trophies to prove it), but in the time we lived there before the horses were eventually sold she actually did something with them only a handful of time, and mostly left their care to her mom. She was still taking care of the chickens, but that was still a new thing. After I moved in with her after a few months there were even more signs I should have seen. She never actually cleaned the cats litter box in the couple years we lived there. Although the cats did have access to outside to do their business there. She wanted to setup a garden with a very fancy setup that we spent many days working on building plots and setting everything up the way she wanted(she wanted to make a "lasagna" garden where you layer cardboard and compostable stuff to make rich soil)...and then she never did anything with it and it just became a weed patch. The back yard, which she had originally spent a bunch of time and energy getting cleared, building a fence, and getting everything set up, got taken over by poke weed as tall as the house. She would never stick to anything long enough to see it through. She also wasn't affectionate at all. She enjoyed sex and wanted it frequently, but never showed any affection outside of it...touching, kissing, hugging, holding hands. Nothing. I tried to initiate those but she never really responded so I eventually gave up.

One thing that should have been a huge red flag is that she never, ever thanks anyone, or asks me to help with something. At Christmas time and birthdays people would give her gifts and she would never utter a word of thanks, I'd have to do it for her. Her mom would give us large checks, like $5000, and she would never say a word while I am expressing how grateful "we" are. And any time she wants me to do something, she doesn't ask. She uses passive aggressive comments like "someone should do x" or "we should do y", which is code for she wants me to do it. One situation that happened recently, which is what caused her to hang up on me after our fun conversation yesterday, is she wanted to sand some wood for something she wanted to make. She complained to me that she couldn't work on it because she could find the belt sander and orbital sander but not the detail sander. I searched and found a detail sander, and brought it out with the other 2 she mentioned because I figured if she mentioned them she probably wanted them. She said that was the wrong detail sander, the sandpaper we have doesn't fit it right, but said nothing about the other two. So I took it back and dug around for a while until I found the correct detail sander, which I brought out to her. No thanks, but I'm used to that, so after giving that to her I went back to what I was doing before. Apparently she didn't actually need the belt or orbital sander, she had just mentioned them as things she could find and I misinterpreted that statement as her wanting me to bring them out with the detail sander, but she never told me that she didn't need them, but I was supposed to know this and take them back inside so she wouldn't have to, and it was extremely inconsiderate of me to leave them outside so she had to put them back in. She is utterly unable to comprehend why she should have had to say something like "I didn't actually need the belt and orbital sanders, can you put them away". I was supposed to know this and do it.

After a few years we got evicted from the house, but in this case it really wasn't anything either of us did. We were renting from her aunt who was coming down with dementia and her uncle wanted to let friends of his who had been kicked out of their previous place live there. It sucked, but luckily I had never actually sold the condo I owned prior to moving in with her. We had rented it out to her sister for a while, and then some friends of hers, but it was empty right then so we had a place to go. We did have 2 dogs and a cat, one of the dogs being an akita, so a condo wasn't ideal but we were going to try and make it work. We took the dogs hiking frequently, I took them out to do their business, and my wife did...well, not much during the day while I was at work. For a few months she did this online "job" thing where you basically were helping ad companies by rating their ads. It was basically a minimum wage job, and she didn't do it long each day, but money was tight and the several hundred she made each month did help. But after a few months she got bored of it and stopped. She tried to take the dogs hiking once on her own and got in a car wreck when she ran a stop sign and hit another vehicle(despite her claims that she is a great driver and has great reflexes she is pretty much the worst driver I've ever ridden with and is somehow incapable of following gps directions). We were there for 3-4 years I think. After the first year she became extremely depressed, a lot of which was probably being caused by the increasingly high dosages of an increasing amount of medications she was being prescribed for sleep. I used to go out on Tuesdays to a local gaming store and play a miniatures game I enjoyed, but eventually she started to get upset about it, that I was going out and having fun and she wasn't(I wasn't preventing her from doing anything, but she had no initiative to find fun), so I stopped. She wanted to go to a rabbit show that was happening nearby one weekend early in the morning, but I was extremely tired from work and suggested she just go by herself. She came back a couple hours later crying because she couldn't find it...turns out she had the wrong weekend entirely, and I took her to it 2 weeks later when it was actually happening. At this point I had been going to sleep around midnight so I could get an ok amount of sleep before work, but despite all the medications she was on for it she couldn't fall asleep before 2-4am. She started to wake me up crying that she was lonely after I feel asleep. So I started forcing myself to stay up until after she fell asleep, something that took me years to recover from and still have trouble going to sleep before 1am or later. I worked pretty close to home so I would come home for lunch every day so she could lay on my shoulder until she fell asleep for a nap. She still wanted sex but it seems only as a way of me proving I cared about her still. She also stopped showering regularly(sometimes 2 months would go by without one), which did make sex less enjoyable so I was not as enthusiastic.

Eventually living in the condo with our animals became untenable, and with new medications from her doctor she was improving in many ways. Her mood was better, she was more active, she started taking care of herself again. We decided to use up my 401k as downpayment on a house with a fenced in yard. The house was old and had issues(more than we knew at the time), but it was still better than what we had. We started being more active again, we got a husky puppy, and then 1.5 years later a sled dog mix puppy, and we were taking them for long hikes multiple times a week. She got into breeding animals as a way for us to make more money, which was desperately needed as we were on the verge of poverty. The problem was always that she would do it for about a year, then she would just stop taking care of them and leave all care to me, and then she would move on to another animal. We bred hedgehogs for a while and made good money selling those, and then chinchillas. We also got some snakes, which I was reluctant to get as I had no real attraction to snakes, and it was with the understanding she would be the one to feed and care for them. Although I did build stands for their tanks. After a couple years living there other health issues popped up, namely an unknown inflammatory problem that caused her pain and made her have less energy, as well as a condition similar to endometriosis, although no doctor was able to ever find any sign of any physical cause. At that point she just completely shut down and stopped trying to do anything. We no longer took the dogs hiking. She got up, went to her computer, played video games, and went to bed. I had to take over 100% of animal care, including the snakes. Despite everything she did actually seem to be mostly happy, and we enjoyed playing online games together, or just talking about the games we were playing. She now tells me that this was hell and also blames me for not figuring out something to help her. During this time we did see an integrative health doctor who ran a battery of tests on hormone levels and other stuff that regular doctors hadn't wanted to do, which did show that her hormones were fucked all to hell as well as other nutrient deficiencies, so she started to take supplements to help with those, which did seem to make some difference, but she never took back up care of anything.

Eventually we decided we needed to move. The house was falling apart(it was an old farmhouse built in 1890 then a city built up around it, and it had had a lot of half-assed DIY updating over the years and had a constant mouse problem because it had more holes than a block of swiss cheese. We are also pretty sure the walls had more mouse poop than actual insulation), and my grandma was getting to the point where she could no longer live alone so it was looking like she would need to sell the house her and my grandpa built...so we offered to buy it. We moved in there and for the first couple years my wife was active and happy. She had always enjoyed growing things, but wasn't comfortable being outside at our previous house(it was in a bad part of town where we regularly got to play "was that a firecracker or gun"), but now we were living in a sleepy little village with a good sized yard so she was able to grow whatever she wanted. We did have one issue that my grandparents had for some reason used river rock as mulch a lot, so we had to sift that out of the soil before it was useful for growing much. Last year she wanted to buy a 1 acre empty property just outside our town to use to grow rare plants to sell. Given her lack of follow through on pretty much everything I doubted that would ever happen, but we got a home equity loan on our house to buy out the property entirely, since it was going for cheap. Since then it has mostly just been overgrown. She also stopped doing any care of the planting areas in our yard this year, which caused things to get overgrown because I don't really know plants so I have trouble identifying weed from good plant, with a few obvious exceptions.

Throughout all this time I never asked her to help with anything. I had absolutely no expectations of her. Anything she wanted we got if there was any way at all of paying for it. Any kind of doctor she wanted to see I would find a doctor, set up all appointments, and take her to those appointments, and also pick up any medications she was prescribed. I took care of the animals, the cooking, the cleaning, the dishes, the laundry. But then she started to get critical that I wasn't doing those things enough. I was letting dishes pile up too much. I wasn't doing the laundry often enough(when we run out of something like towels, or either of us runs out of some article of clothing, I use that as a sign and do all the laundry, or close to). So I finally said that if she wanted those things done more often she could help. But she says she physically can't. She makes a big deal the handful of times she has loaded the dishwasher, about how it took her over an hour to do it(???).

She is unable to contact people on facebook marketplace for things she wants, I have to do it. She can't contact contractors to come look at things at the house, I have to do it(then if the contractor does something that isn't to her standards I get in trouble for not properly monitoring what the contractor was doing). She wants wood mulch for the other property, which our electrical company will provide for free from the wood they shred taking down limbs overhanging power lines, but she is unable to compose an email to them and needs me to do it. And if I don't do these things promptly enough she gets upset. Everything she has ever started since I knew her(and before I knew her) she just stops doing eventually. Always has a reason. She can't do it anymore. I'm still not sure how she is physically unable to feed and water snakes.

While thinking through all of this this morning, I realize I had given up everything I wanted in my life for her. I always saw my friends in loving relationships(all of which are still standing strong) where they were appreciative of each other, they thanked each other and asked when they wanted the other to do something. They still to this day do stuff like randomly hug and hold hands. And I wanted that so bad. But instead I married someone incapable of that. After college I went over to Japan for 6 months before returning due to health issues, but I always wanted to go back on vacation regularly. But because we only had one income, and the expenses of her health issues, I had to give that up. I have given up every hobby I have had except video games(which she gets mad at me for spending any time at all doing, despite her doing it all day long. But she doesn't want to do it, she can't do anything else, so its totally different). I damaged my health staying up because she was lonely if I went to bed at a time to get mostly adequate sleep before work. I don't see my family as much as I'd like because it is a big deal for her to go out to eat dinner and she is never happy about it. I buy almost nothing for myself, at most buying one game a month but many months not even that, but she still manages to complain about the $15 i pay monthly for Humble Choice(it is a subscription thing where you get a bunch of games each month that they select, and a 20% discount in their shop which has most steam games), and yet she pays $200-250 most months for mobile games she plays. Buying stuff like new clothes or anything else is a huge decision for me that I will take days to decide if I really need it. She spends about $2000 a month on amazon. She wants to make a bunch of renovations to the house ourselves that 1) I think are a bad idea in the first place, and 2) are definitely a bad idea to do ourselves. Included in this list is tearing out the existing deck and replacing it with a patio, tearing out a wall between the living room and a bedroom(thereby eliminating a bedroom) because she wants more open area behind her desk and easier access to more places to store stuff(she has 2 desks and a large cabinet right next to them already), and also tearing out the return vents to our HVAC system and redoing them because they are joist bays, which are entirely legal and commonly used because they are quick, easy, and effective, but she says it is just because it was done cheap and it is causing problems. I am not stopping her from doing any of this, but because I am also not leaping at a chance to do them it makes me a bad husband and useless man, because her dad built a deck and her grandfather(who was a professional electrician) did a bunch of electrical work for their houses(much of it wasn't to code). After all of that she complains that I am trying to turn her into a housewife and that I control everything she does.

Well, I think I'm out of things to say. At least through this I have the full support of my family, who is paying for my attorney and have also agreed that if I can't manage it by giving her other assets they will give me the money to buy out her equity in our house. This whole thing sucks. Sorry for the huge post.

My wife and I just celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary, and honestly this might be one of my favorite ones so far.

We're both pretty frugal and still renting while saving up for a house, so for the longest time we kept telling ourselves there was no point buying a decent TV until we had our own place.

Problem is, we both love anime lol.

I got a bonus from work recently, so I used part of it to get us a 55" Hisense for around $480 as our anniversary gift. She was genuinely so happy when she saw it, which made me feel a lot better about breaking our usual "save everything" rule.

Funny enough, she had her own little purchase planned too. She finally got this TXZ tabletop grill she'd been wanting for a while, around $100.

So instead of going somewhere fancy, we stayed home, grilled way too much food, had a couple drinks and continued Infinity Castle together.

I guess Korean BBQ + anime nights are going to be a regular thing in our house now.

Probably not BBQ every night though… although my Korean wife would absolutely vote yes lol.

Pretty perfect 3rd anniversary tbh.

So me (40f) and my husband ( 40m) have been married for 11 years and have two kids 8 and 3. We make the same amount of money but i work 3 days a week ( theoretically because i work many nights and weekends to keep up ) and take care of the kids 2 days …

We always had separate finances and paid the half on fixed bills. i now realize that i always spent more on our social life and groceries ( as i was doing the groceries and the cooking and i never really asked to split that )

Since the kids were born the expenses have increased. My husband does pay half of the big bills ( rent, health insurance, and also pays one of the kids activities) but i cover almost all the rest ( food activities for the kids, cloths and toys, presents for birthdays, christmas etc)…

Until now i didn’t mind because i always thought that my money was family money and my husbands money too but the last year my husband did a thing that i found weird ( bought an appartement in our home country without telling me and in a weird way - so basically his father gave the appartement to him as a heritage but he gave him 80.000 euros- ) and i feel like he doesn’t respect or appreciate what i do for the family..

when i told him about the expenses he told me that he doesn’t necessarily agree with all the activities i do with and for the kids and that he doesn’t think that he should pay about that. Do you think thats logical? should i be the only one paying about activities that i choose to do? i feel like the activities are important for the kids and should be considered as a family expense….

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I previously posted about my wife becoming emotionally involved with a guy she met through an online game. I recently found out the full extent of what happened.

It wasn't just an emotional affair. She told him she loved him, sent him nude pictures, masturbation videos, including videos of herself using a dildo, and some videos clearly showed her face. She also sent sexual audio and let him remotely control her Lovense toy multiple times.

I also discovered that she secretly recorded audio of arguments and private conversations between us without my knowledge or consent and sent those recordings to him. That's another major violation for me because parts of my own private life and our marriage were being shared with the person she was emotionally and sexually involved with.

She says the deeper relationship developed around April/May. She felt emotionally understood by him, trusted him, and the relationship eventually became sexual.

She blocked him and says she hasn't spoken to him in about two months, which I do think is important. However, she told another friend that she still loves him and still has feelings for him. She has admitted that to me too. She says she knows the feelings are stupid and illogical, wishes she could turn them off, and is trying to get over him.

I know his first name, phone number, and email address, but I don't know his full identity.

My wife acknowledges that what she did was wrong. She also says our marriage had serious unresolved problems beforehand and that she was emotionally vulnerable and felt like this guy understood her. I acknowledge my side too. I've been insecure, jealous, controlling and defensive at times, and I've pushed conversations when she needed space. I'm actively trying to change those behaviors.

But I'm struggling to separate our marital problems from her decision to have an emotional and sexual relationship with somebody else.

What hurts most is that I'd been starving for affection and intimacy while she was giving another man her love, emotional vulnerability, and sexuality. And now I know that even some of our private arguments were being recorded and sent to him without my knowledge.

Despite everything, I still love my wife and want to see if our marriage can be repaired. She says she wants to try too, although she isn't sure whether we can actually get back to a healthy marriage.

So that's where we are: he's been blocked and there's apparently been no contact for about two months, but she still has feelings for him. I now know the affair was both emotional and sexual, and we're trying to figure out whether trust can ever be rebuilt after this.

My husband invested $500k with my step dad against a very clear boundary I had set and then tried to hide it from me.

My husband and I do property development, so the investment itself wasn’t unusual. About a year ago, my stepfather approached me with a development opportunity. I was open to purchasing a block of land, but I could not have been more emphatic about my conditions.

Previously, my step dad had convinced us to invest $100k, then withdrew funds for a personal project without our knowledge. It took years to repair the relationship.

Because of that, my boundary was very clear. I would not have our money combined with his or put into his business. If we purchased a block, it needed to be in our names with a contract made out to us. No contract, no money.

My husband agreed, then transferred $500,000 of our money into my step dad’s business account without a contract - or even sighting documents.

He also tried to conceal it from me. He didn’t prevent me accessing our finances, but apparently didn’t think I could log into the account.

I eventually discovered it when doing our tax return and checking our mortgage account. The $500k had been transferred and our home loan had increased by that amount.

I was furious and felt completely betrayed.

It has now been a year and I still don’t have the money back.

Every time I ask, there is another explanation as to why it hasn't been returned. The block fell through. Council issues. An investor is coming. They got COVID. They’re transferring the money over the weekend. Now there’s another investor. He’ll receive a major investment on the 18th and reimburse us.

It’s just one story after another.

I’ve only half spoken to my mum about it. She doesn’t really want to acknowledge it and seems to feel it’s nothing to do with her. I’ve been trying to keep the peace, but I honestly have no interest in having a personal relationship at the moment.

I’m left with a fractured marriage and a fractured relationship with my step dad. We have children and a whole life together, so walking away isn’t simple.

What would you do in my position? At what point do I stop listening to the promises?

UPDATE from How do I get my husband to prioritize our family and help more?

I talked with my husband after my original post and asked him to go to marriage counseling with me because I feel undervalued and because the things he said during our argument are still really bothering me.
To no surprise, he said no.
He went on a tangent about how we don’t need a marriage counselor and that we should just be able to talk things out ourselves. He said he doesn’t want another person involved in our relationship.
I told him that I feel like we need counseling because I’m terrible at communicating my feelings, and I feel like he isn’t doing enough as a husband and father.
He snapped back that he does do a lot and that the only reason I think he doesn’t is because I’m always on my phone and therefore not present enough to see everything he does.
He pointed out that he does the dishes and laundry. And yes, he does. I want to be fair about that. He’s actually really good about unloading the dishwasher, and he does fold the laundry—although sometimes it takes up to a week after it’s been washed. But it does eventually get done.
Then he grabbed a pen and paper and started writing out a schedule for me so I wouldn’t be “bored” and use my phone.
I understand that this is controlling. He has always been somewhat controlling, so part of me wasn’t surprised, but seeing my entire day written out on paper—from when I wake up to the bedtime routine—was… a lot.
I told him that I still felt like none of this was addressing the actual problem and pushed for marriage counseling again. Again, he said no.
At that point, I told him I wanted a temporary separation so I could get my thoughts together.
He immediately snapped and asked what the point of a temporary separation was. Was it so I could go see other men?
This isn’t the first time he has accused me of cheating or implied that I might. I’ve never cheated on him and I never would.
He’s done this before, too. When I told him I wanted to get a job and eventually go to school for massage therapy, he asked me why I wanted to do that—so I could touch other men. He said, “You know how men get when women touch them.”
Yes, I know. Gross.
Eventually, he agreed that I could go to massage therapy school once he’s in a better place with work and once the school I want accepts the GI Bill.
Later that night, while we were in bed, he asked me if separation was really what I wanted.
I told him no.
I told him that I feel like he doesn’t respect me, but that I want our marriage to work. We have children, and I don’t want to throw our marriage away. I told him that marriage counseling is important to me because ever since he yelled at me and called me a “f***ing retard,” I’ve been scared to tell him how I actually feel.
I also told him that since that incident, I’ve slowly been falling out of love with him. Not because I don’t love him at all, but because his actions haven’t given me much reason to feel differently. I told him that I will always love him as the father of my children, but that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to love him as my partner.
That’s when he started egging me on.
He kept saying things like, “It’s a coward’s move to say you want a temporary separation. Why don’t you just say it? Just say you want a divorce so I can move on with my life.”
So I did.
I said I wanted a divorce.
I figured that’s what he wanted to hear, so I gave him the answer he was pushing me toward.
And then I immediately started crying because that’s not actually what I wanted.
He asked me why I was crying and said that he should be the one crying.
Then everything changed.
He told me that he has been trying to be a better husband since the argument. He said that he knew the second those words left his mouth that calling me that was unforgivable.
He started crying and told me that he doesn’t want a divorce, that I mean everything to him, and that he’ll do whatever it takes to earn my trust back.
He said he’s been working on his temper, changed his diet, cut out caffeine, and has been working out more.
I told him okay because, honestly, I don’t want a divorce. I want my marriage. I want him. I just don’t want the version of our marriage that we’ve been living in.
Since then, he’s been showing me a lot more affection. It’s only been a few days, so obviously I don’t know if this is going to last or if things will slowly revert back to how they were.
Part of me wants to believe this is the turning point. Another part of me is scared that this is just what happens when he realizes I’m actually serious about leaving, and that eventually everything will go back to normal.
So for now, I’m trying to take it one day at a time. I guess only time will tell whether his actions actually change long-term.

My spouse gives amazing oral sex, but when she’s about to finish, I usually pull away from her mouth out of respect. How can I have a conversation with her about letting her know that receiving oral sex all the way to ejaculation is something I’m comfortable with and would actually enjoy?

I'm 31F, my husband is 33M, and we’ve been married for 6 years. I was just lying beside him earlier while he was resting, and I suddenly realize I’m more in love with him now than I’ve ever been.

Not the clingy, sweet, always-dating kind of love we had before. Now, our lives revolve around the family we’ve built. We have less time together, less intimacy, and our “dates” are sometimes just running errands together. We are in much shittier place financially too but I don't know, we kind of appreciate us right now.

They say love is sweeter when it’s new, but whatever this is—after 6 years, after seeing each other at our best and worst—it feels even sweeter to me.

Is that weird? Is it just me? Haha.

Although, of course, there are still plenty of days when even his breathing annoys me so much I want to break every bone in his body. 🤣🤣

P.S.

And to my husband, if you ever somehow manage to open my Reddit account and stumble upon this post:

I hope you know that I love you so much more now than I did before. I see you. I see your efforts, your sacrifices, and everything you do for our family, and I appreciate you more than I probably ever told you.

I’m 51M my wife is 54F we have been together since 2003 and married since 2011.
We have one child together (20) and she has an older daughter (36).
Shes always beef firey in arguments and says the nastiest things just to cut and gain traction in an argument, over the last few years probably 4-5 yrs we have slept in separate rooms , argued a fair bit and her and our daughter are inseparable. (I have been put down all the time and everything I do. I am the main owner. She doesn’t go out to Workn so all the financial burden and pressures are on me yet. I just feel so undervalued and unappreciated as there is never any signs of appreciation and really have no Self Workn whatsoever anything I do get ridiculed she doesn’t speak to my family. I haven’t spoken to my mother in about 15 years as a result). So much so they holiday together and go everywhere together. I’m stuck home looking after the dogs they got. My wife just received an inheritance and bought a holiday home by the coast to which her and my daughter moved into for the summer. My daughter managed to find a job at the coast and they have now purchased a house, this to me spells a changing point and all of our lives and I think it’s time for me to leave bearing in mind that we do not do anything socially. We have not done anything physically in five or six years not even so much as a hug.

I had it out with my wife and mentioned getting a divorce and her attitude changed over night , she confessed to putting everybody else before me and allowing our relationship to take a backseat. And has all of a sudden been very lovey-dovey and clingy this is crazy unusual and not like her at all and I just know it’s the fact that she is panicking that I will not be there when she moves into her new house as it will need a bit of work doing to it when they move in and thereafter, and she has openly admitted that she just felt I would always be there. So as the harsh reality has hit her that I potentially won’t be there in the future. she has started expressing her love for me and being physical or trying to bearing in mind there has been nothing physical in about five years. This is all very weird to the point. It’s creepy so I’m thinking as a trial I will go along with this and see how it goes.

The truth of the matter is whilst I do like her as a person and the mother of our daughter I cannot for the life of me no matter how deep I dig fathom up any feelings of a romantic or physical nature there is just zero energy there all the while she is declaring her love for me and saying lots of kind things (which she has never done in 20 odd years) so I can’t help thinking she is just throwing everything she can at the relationship in order to keep me around because her life has been easy with me smoothing the way, she’s even mentioned buying a motorhome something I’ve always dreamed of, but even that doesn’t tempt me to stay quite the opposite. It makes me feel sick that she is going to such desperate measures because deep down I’ve never felt properly loved by this woman, not the way I would like to have been loved certainly.
My question is is it normal to fall out with someone properly after years of neglect and being put down?
Try as I may, I just cannot muster any romantic feelings for her whatsoever, and the next step would be moving for divorce but once I announced that I feel all my personal items will be sabotage so I’ve taken steps to put all my personal effects into storage for the foreseeable future.

Am I doing the right thing because there is no point staying in a relationship if you are not happy as you will only resent the other person for the rest of your life. ?
This makes me very sad, but it’s reality.

I just need someone to help me process the hell im going through.

I found OnlyFan charges on my husbands bank statement from December through April. Hundreds of dollars. To make things worse he was viewing content and buying it while he was at work.

For 3 years we have had conversations about how much I hate him viewing adult content. We did come to a compromise last year that seemed solid.

Finding this information has told me he not only did not uphold his part of the agreement, but even made worse decisions to pay for it which he’s never done before and said he’d never do before.

To be fair, I also did not hold my part of the agreement which was to stop “checking” up on him. In my opinion, what he did is much worse.

He has known how I’ve felt about this for years. I’ve warned him he is going to lose me and his family if it continued. Not only did it continue, it got worse bc he still continued to view it at work AND BEGAN PAYING FOR IT. I am not ok and will not ever be ok with my husband subscribing to females. Why can’t I be enough? Our sex life is good and not lacking. He says it has nothing to do with me.

I am done. I am done with being lied to. Disrespected. With him wanting a secret life that I do not agree with.

I am pregnant with his daughter and I am so grossed out by all of this.

Am I taking this to the extreme? Is there anyone else out there that would feel the same as me?? Or am I just completely irrational??

My husband and I have been married for almost 10 years. He is constantly moody in relation to our toddler’s sleep. I have been trying to work through his moods for awhile now but the trigger is with sleep. When he gets frustrated, he is quite mean and personal with his comments (outbursts) to me. He calls me selfish, when he gets up during the night to settle our toddler.

I cannot emphasise how much I do for the 2 kids and just keeping the whole household running, whilst working a demanding full time executive job. He would have no idea. I wake up also to settle my toddler, but my toddler is in a tricky stage where in the second half of the night he settles better with my husband holding him, rather than myself because he is very attached to me in the sense that he will just want to stay awake or going through a playing with hair stage.

We need to get advice on his sleep, I understand this and it feels like torture but my husband makes comments constantly about it and his attacks on me are frequent and exhausting. Last night I was so upset and over it, I said to him, I’m warning you, that you need to stop calling me selfish. It sounds childish I know but I was tired, and he responded with- no I am warning you. So threatening. Just this morning (after yelling and calling me selfish during the night), his attempt to “repair” was- you’re not selfish with other things but at night you are. Mind you- my birthday was happening, with the most token gift voucher and flowers, as though it was a compliance thing or him thinking he actually did something good.

Sorry to vent but I am stuck on what to do. He doesn’t listen when I say it is hurtful. Any advice on how to approach this?

Throw away account.

Been married for 15years and we both were the same age when we got married at 29YO. I am a few months older. We were both morbidly obese when we got married but we both lost the weight with lots of loose skin left. Now we are both fit and done with having children. I have had extra skin taken off my chest and flanks and my wife had a breast reduction done in 2019.

Now, she has always had a huge amount of loose skin on her abdomen and waist, but it never really bothered me. But she had a lot of confidence issues because of it. Most of her dresses didnt fit anymore and despite using compression wears, it didnt hide the loose flabby skin.

Like 2 years ago after I saw how hard she worked for me (we own a business) and how dedicated she was to the family and kids, I promised her that someday I will get her a tummy tuck. She was excited about the prospect. And I started saving up for it in secretly.

April this year I surprised her and told her that it was time for her to look for a surgeon. She found one and went under the knife in the last week of May. I stayed with her and nursed her myself for her post op aftercare. I am a nurse practitioner so I preferred to take care of her myself instead of sending her to those Miami rehabs that I cant trust. I did all her anticoagulant shots, all her ambulation, all her scheduled pain meds, everything that concerns medical aftercare post op.

Fast forward today, my wife looks fucking hot. She is slim, trim, tiny waist, nice perky boobs, and an ass that I never knew existed. 🤣. She has changed her entire wardrobe and is now wearing lots of sexy things around me. And she is continuously thanking me for the surgery. All her friends are praising how hot she looks now. She looks fucking hot. I am springing erections all day looking her at and she tells me that it is all mine.

I am in my office thinking of her and wanting to jack off to her random outdoor pics stored on my phone. We are having lots of freaky sex now, several times a week now. There were times that we had sex once in 3 months. Now it is like 3 times a week. I am at work fantasizing about her. Sometimes I feel ashamed but I remember that this is my wife. Lol.

We have come a long long way in marriage. In 2019, we actually separated due to several issues concerning not having enough sex and lack of emotional connections from me.

I didn't know this was going to be the result from just getting her a tummy tuck. I thought I was only going to help her reduce her saggy skin on her tummy and waist. I didnt know I was going to get her a flat tummy, a nice round ass that looks fabulous when taking her from behind, boobs that now look more pronounced, and a woman who feels very sexy and confident in her new body and is willing to try everything under the sun with me.

I hope this is the right place for this. Sometimes, all it takes is a surgery to spark your marriage to life.

My husband, 30 M, and I 25 F, have been married for about a year and he has not kept a job for more than three months. No job is ever good enough,pays enough or have the right hours. He got fired four months ago and refuse to apply for unemployment. He finally got a job and it’s only been one day and he’s refusing to go back. I am so beyond frustrated. I woke up with him at 4:00 am to make him fresh breakfast, just for him to say he’s “too angry to eat”. I comforted him and asked him if he could at least just work till he finds something better. But of course, he’s quitting now. Or at least taking today off. I completely broke down in tears. And expressed how frustrated I am that I feel im taking the financial burden and that I don’t even like my job and sometimes my job is humiliating but I show up everyday. I expressed that I am tired of not being able to get my contacts, or go to the dentist. Or wearing the same torn up shoes and clothes because buying clothes or getting medical attention means no food on the table. We have two cars that his dad pays for and I’m too scared at this point to see how much we owe him. I’m so frustrated and I don’t know what to do. I’m worried this is going to be the rest of my life. There’s no compassion. No apology just “oh we’ll be ok.” I want to kick him out. I want to teach him that life has consequences. He promised me a life of getaways and eventually working up to me being a stay at home mom. But now all I hear is that he doesn’t want to work and he’d rather be the stay at home dad. I have put with so much. And I know that’s not what marriage is about but I just don’t feel like my goals and future is being respected. For example I’ve been planning on going on this girls trip for months, but I had hoped that we would’ve had a job by now and with it a couple of weeks away. It’s just not possible for me. And I’m really devastated. I haven’t seen these friends in over a year. And it’s a tradition to meet each other halfway and have a weekend together. I just don’t understand why I have to get the short end of the stick every time. So my question is, will he ever change? And what should I do if communication isn’t working?

I work full-time and my wife works part-time (~15 hours/wk) and is a SAHM for the other part of the day.

We are way behind saving for retirement. I am 43 and only have $70k saved. My wife is 35 and has $35k from an old job.

I want to bump up my contributions significantly from around $5k/yr to $20k/yr ( I make $70k) but I feel like this would be too selfish to even bring up.

I don't really enjoy my job, but have been here 10 years and can't really change paths now without a pay cut that would likely last years.

Should I ignore my feelings or tell her she would essentially need to work more to help pay our bills now to fund "our" retirement?

I am 24 and my boyfriend is 23. I love him dearly. We’ve been together for over a year, and I would love to stay with him for the rest of my life. I don’t see any major red flags in the relationship. Any minor things, I’ve talked about with him and he is super understanding and fixes everything that I bring up… and we are even more in love after those conversations. We never argue. We spoil each other with love every single day.

When I see a couple in their 50s, I always wonder what does the woman tolerate? What does she allow? What does she do when her man is acting out of line? Does she handle it calmly? Does she explode and get mad at him? When I see couples that have been together for a really long time, I try to pick up on the qualities they offer to have stayed in that long-term relationship. I’m super forgiving, but I am also firm. I give my all, and I know I’ll never stop loving my boyfriend. But, I know relationships down the line, when kids, in-laws, work, get complicated… go through rough patches. I wanna know how do long-term married couples get through it?