Marriage and the Power of Divorce

Our similarities from 20 years ago were we wanted away from people. She was a gigantic fan of me living 40 miles from town. She wound up living in Austin when I kept the property and house in the middle of nowhere. It worked out. I have no idea why. I have told her she wanted to get away from nowhere and we did that. She liked that we had long conversations about a lot of stuff, she has told me as well that was a big attraction. She was not a fan of guys that didn't want to. Like I said the other night we stayed up till 3am talking and listening to music. It was pretty refreshing just talking without anything else going on for a change. But we've been together for 20 years it was nothing new. We almost never fight. We have some really long talks about how the other one is totally wrong on an issue. We just never really escelate it. Which is very rare for me. As mentioned she has a magical way of telling me how wrong I am and I don't get upset and every so often conceded she is right. She tells me how uneducated I am and don't care for those downtrodden. Amazingly enough over 20 years I have moved more liberal and she has moved more conservative. Hard to imagine I used to be much more conservative.

So basically I was a chance to escape the small town with someone that made a decent living and we were interested in some similar things. I used to read all the time non stop. She did as well and owned a bookstore before amazon killed that off. She now works in a library. Similarities I guess.

Hoss said:

"opposites attract" is a saying for a reason. That said, there have to be some core similarities between mates... The biggest difference is that she has to struggle a lot with reason vs emotion.

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Perhaps it's just after the fact rationalization, but I've got some good mileage out of the Keirsey-Bates/Meyers-Briggs personality archetyping. The successful couples in my family and friend circles share dominant cognitive modes (intuitive/concrete thinking/emotion) and complement each other along the axes of intro/extroversion and planning/organization. (The textbook description for my archetype, INTP, is so spot-on as to be funny. Both my wife and sister have had moments of "Oh, so THAT'S why you're such a pain in the ass about ____".)

Basically, if you can talk to your partner on a fundamental level that the other recognizes, which I think is responsible for that feeling of "clicking" with someone, most of the rest really doesn't matter. Views on money, religion, family, etc, are clearly important as well.

Boy has a penis, gal has a vagina. Match.

Soygen said:

That was Noodle's chief complaint, but since he says he's not going to dish on his marriage anymore, we'll never know if that's been corrected. Noodleface , I wish nothing but the best for you.

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It's a work in progress. My office is cleaned, the house is more or less clean. I have to stay on top of her clutter to deal with this.

Hoss said:

But it never motivates me to buy another. It motivates me to empty the storage area.

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I'm a naturally cluttered person and so is my wife. I also inherited an internally inconsistent guilt complex about cleanliness from my mother. My solution is to do my best to put anything I haven't used in six months into the garage or attic. Then, every couple of years when those areas fill up, I throw all that shit out because apparently it wasn't important enough to take out again.

My wife hates it when I throw away her shit, but I just don't tell her when I'm doing a storage purge and she never notices. I don't touch her office, which is a disorganized shithole, and compromise by never opening the door.

Also, a decent cleaning service is about the best financial investment you can make in a marriage.

How do you convince the wife to get a cleaning service when she's too prideful to admit we need one, but too embarrassed to let anyone else see the mess that the house has become?

Tried it for a while. Wife spent more time cleaning up before the cleaning lady came than she did cleaning the house on her own.

Borzak said:

Tried it for a while. Wife spent more time cleaning up before the cleaning lady came than she did cleaning the house on her own.

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That's a great reason to keep the cleaning lady working for you.

Crone said:

How do you convince the wife to get a cleaning service when she's too prideful to admit we need one, but too embarrassed to let anyone else see the mess that the house has become?

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Borzak said:

Tried it for a while. Wife spent more time cleaning up before the cleaning lady came than she did cleaning the house on her own.

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This is exactly the point. If it weren't for the guilt of strangers seeing our pigsty, we'd never clean. Worth weight in gold.

We split the house up for each persons responsibility. At my house I did it all. She sometimes would get into a deep cleaning mode while there. There were certain things off limits like my office and reloading room. The rest was ok.

Now we're together in her house nearly everything for me is off limits. We're still working on that. I have an office but she still cleans it. Of course I'm not doing anything really work related so it doesn't matter.

But since I'm not working full time I have time to pitch in which helps. But she has her system and her way. I have to get with the program on that.

Crone said:

How do you convince the wife to get a cleaning service when she's too prideful to admit we need one, but too embarrassed to let anyone else see the mess that the house has become?

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Start by telling her how much it bothers you, and how much stress it's creating for you. Say you don't care who cleans it, as long as it's getting clean. I hate ultimatums but maybe it's time for one. If this house isn't in shape in a month, were hiring some help.

It's fine to be proud, and it's fine to have some shame - but neither are getting the job done.

Is she working? If not, then no excuse. Either she cleans or someone else does.

Sometimes you just have to make the call, and she can deal with it.

Now let me pull my foot out of my mouth

Noodleface said:

Start by telling her how much it bothers you, and how much stress it's creating for you. Say you don't care who cleans it, as long as it's getting clean. I hate ultimatums but maybe it's time for one. If this house isn't in shape in a month, were hiring some help.

It's fine to be proud, and it's fine to have some shame - but neither are getting the job done.

Is she working? If not, then no excuse. Either she cleans or someone else does.

Sometimes you just have to make the call, and she can deal with it.

Now let me pull my foot out of my mouth

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Tried all of that, and I get the excuses that the kids were hard, or the kids didn't feel good, or I didn't feel good, or it was busy. Was always something. That's something with my wife in any situation though. She has an excuse for everything. She screams at me that it's not an excuse, but whatever.

We now have my wife's identical twin sister and family (husband + 2 baby kids) living with us. I thought that it'd get better because she had some "help", and to be honest, it has gotten a little better, but that's just because my sister in law isn't as lazy as my wife. Frustrating situation, but I'll take small victories where I can get them.

I'm gonna go on Craigslist right now, and see about a cleaning service. We live in Small Town USA, so none of the "normal" maid services make it out to where we live.