Marriage and the Power of Divorce

^good post

put her on an allowance.

Shit post

Cad_sl said:

Yea but what do you do to accomplish that? Kick her out, take her car back and say let me know when you accomplish something? Then she'll just hate him for another reason.

If he didn't pay her CC, she'd hate him for taking vacations that cost more than her CC but won't help her out. It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't thing when they take that attitude.

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Hmm, that wasn't really the message I was going for. More like when she gets in a situation, don't just throw money at it and move on. Talk it over, make a plan, hold her to the plan. An expectation of accountability is a positive thing.

Again, it sounds odd but holding someone accountable, as long as you aren't just being an unreasonable asshole about it, can be a positive message even if it makes things harder.

Way I was raised, rarely ask for help with money and always pay it back promptly. It was pretty heavy stuff. Family that betrayed trust wasn't really welcome around. I've always been real hard on living within my means. When I do owe someone a favor it means a lot to me and I make an effort to repay it. It's demoralizing for me. Maybe she got the same shit growing up. My people have never had money to throw around, but they do alright year over year making some progress toward what they want.

And yea, being critical can be a sign you care. Same shit with my family. They don't shit on each other, but if someone is doing wrong it isn't kept quiet, and the expectation is that you will appreciate being criticized and work to do better. Have you met her people? Do they have this kind of culture? She clearly wants your help, but she doesn't want to feel like she's in debt to you for material possessions. Gifts on birthdays, anniversaries, etc. are an entirely different category psychologically, but you can even tread too heavy there with someone who didn't come from money.

Not getting mad is often incorrectly perceived as not giving a fuck. I recommend you get right pissed of that your generosity is being through back in your face as a negative. The next step is to communicate that you expect her to get over the income inequality, you empathize with her feelings on the inequality, but in your mind it's a very small part of the relationship equation.

My wife never pushed for marriage, she advised later this was on purpose and a specific strategy, even though she very much wanted to get married. We dated for 3 years prior to being engaged for a year.


Reading betweenthe lines, it seems that the long distance change is creating doubts.

Happens to me sometimes. I am a really relaxed guy and sometimes my wife gets mad that I'm so nonchalant about things. So I turn the volume up once in a while and she doesn't complain anymore.

Eomer_sl said:

Wut do?

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Have the following conversation with her:

Soygen_sl said:

This is how I read the situation as well. I find her "you don't get mad at me often enough" remark to be pretty retarded though. I'm guessing she just worded it badly, but maybe you're just too passive in general, Eomer.

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That does remind me of one thing she said, regarding the not getting mad thing. With most everyone else, I can be an asshole if I feel like they fucked up or otherwise deserve it. Shitty service at a restaurant, incompetence from a sub-trade, employee or whatever. I don't go out of my way to be an asshole necessarily, but my dad, bro and I all are not shy about letting someone know if they fucked up. That's how I was raised and treated myself. And she specifically mentioned that and contrasted it with how I don't get mad at her for just about anything. But as I explained to her, she basically never gives me a reason to. I'm not even kidding with that. I'm the pickiest mother fucker on the planet, and she rarely gives me something to nitpick about. It's actually pretty impressive.

Haast_sl said:

Paying off her credit card debt was well meaning, but a huge mistake. Helping her pay off the credit card debt, with her making meaningful contributions to the pay-down, is a useful financial exercise. Paying off credit card debt on the spot leads to more credit card debt 100% of the time. Which we've already seen here.

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You might well be right on that part. Instead of just making it go away I could have been more participatory.

Haast_sl said:

Honestly, it sounds like the car situation was mishandled. Maybe she was looking for Eomer to step in and give her some guidance when she was clearly over-reaching for the car. Maybe she wasn't, and is being retroactively resentful about it. Who knows.

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The car thing was an ordeal that lasted the whole summer. Her car was broken in to and stolen from behind my condo building. So then her dad lent her a 1999 Chevy Venture van he had, which promptly died while crossing a major bridge in the city, leaving her stranded in the middle of it. So then I lent her a spare truck from the office while she sorted a new car out and waited for her insurance settlement. That got broken in to while eating dinner at a restaurant and her iPad was stolen out of it (I replaced it immediately, so yeah, a pattern is forming I agree). We went to a few dealerships and test drove a few different vehicles, one of them being a Matrix. She latched on to that one, but the one she'd driven was too old, with too many KM's and a lot of body damage. We went to a used vehicle outlet for one of the major dealership groups where they tried to get her to take a Focus and a couple other ones, but her mind was set on a Matrix. So then the salesman calls her up one day while I'm working and says "hey we found a Matrix for you!" that was low KM's and in reasonably decent shape. She goes there and agrees to buy it for list price. She needs me to come down and co-sign on the financing, as well as put down the remainder that she can't afford. I get there, find out she's paying list price, and tell her that she should be walking away from the deal. She turns on the water works and says she's exhausted from the two months of fucking around with stolen vehicles, dead vehicles, car break-ins, and insurance companies and this car is perfect and why wouldn't she just pay what they want for it there's noting wrong with it and and and. So fine, she's paying 15k for a vehicle that's probably worth 12k, but at that point I just want the whole thing fucking over with because it's been stressing her out for so long. We go in to sign the paperwork, and of course the dealer has slapped another $500 administration fee which are specifically banned in Alberta by the car dealer oversight group, but they call it some other shit and put stickers on your door panels to provide a "service" or whatever. I turn to her and again say in front of the finance slut that she should be walking away from this deal, but again the eyes water and she says no she just wants this done with. I told her she was probably paying 2-3k more than she should be, but she insisted that she just wanted it over with, and I said fine. With the insurance settlement she'd gotten and the limited amount she could finance, the only alternative was an absolute shitbox. Yes, if I wasn't around she'd have had to face reality and end up with one, and initially she was resistant to me helping her, but once her mind was set on that Matrix everything else went out the window. If she holds that against me, that's just bizarre. But this is a woman we're talking about, even a normally pretty sane one, so who fucking knows.

Haast_sl said:

It sounds weird and it is a wealthy person's problem, but Eomer: you DON'T have any expectations for her. If she screws up ruinously, daddy warbucks Eomer steps in and smooths it out without consequences. At some point, if you aren't a vapid entitled cunt, you are going to feel pretty worthless. So that is actually a positive sign for her, I think.

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From a financial perspective, yes, you're absolutely right. There's probably little she could do that I couldn't make go away. But fuck, what am I supposed to do? Let her go bankrupt? Miss a tuition payment so she drops out of school? I agree that her resistance to me helping her financially is on the whole a giant upside to most vapid cunts out there (like her best friend who married my bud), but what's the alternative here?

Haast_sl said:

That said, it may be fixable. It sounds like a lack of involvement. Like, she wants Eomer's help to improve herself rather than have Eomer passively solve her screw-ups with money that means little to him. Or such is my armchair guess from reading the text wall.

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Yeah, I would very much agree with you here and will go forward accordingly.

Agraza_sl said:

Have you met her people? Do they have this kind of culture?

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I've met her parents (who are divorced) a few times, as well as her older half-brother. Her dad is a weird dude. I think he was an alcoholic earlier in life. He and the mom divorced when she was 18, but they'd been more or less separated for years before that. I don't know how he was when she was growing up, just that her family didn't have a lot growing up way up North in a small oil and gas town. He's never done much with his life. He was driving a UPS truck when I first met her, and now I think he's working in a lumber mill. He converted to a Jehovah and married a woman not much older than my girlfriend about 4-5 years ago. From what I gather he's an honest, hard working guy who didn't do much with his life for whatever reason. The mom is an LPN, and seems really nice, but my girlfriend has bitched a few times that she thinks her mom needs mental help because she blames everyone else for her problems and doesn't accept responsibility and is a drama queen and makes everything about her and she doesn't want to turn out like that and so on and so forth.

She's pretty much none of those things, and if anything has gone off the deep end in the other direction. Hence why she feels guilty about not just the money situation or even our stuff, but also other personal/family situations. (backstory: She's got an uncle (who her grandmother raised as a foster child, he was a Native abandoned by his family) who was nearly beaten to death around 5-7 years ago and now lives in a group home in Edmonton that she's basically the legal guardian and trustee of. He's got a pretty severe brain injury so he can't live independently or take care of his own affairs. Her grandmother and mother are 8 hour drives away, so my woman has been basically dealing with all the shit attendant with that situation on her own since her early 20's. They've recently been trying to get the paperwork done so that she will legally be his guardian and trustee because at this point it's still the grandmother who is in her 70's, in poor health, and not interested in dealing with her now retarded, formerly alcoholic, Native foster child. It's an ugly situation and she's a saint for dealing with it even though there's no blood relationship there. She was crying the other night because she thinks she's a terrible person because they've been trying to finish the paperwork for 2 years but with the distances, a useless lawyer, a lazy mother, an uninterested grandmother, and a monolithic bureaucracy they aren't making any progress and as such a lot of shit with the uncle are slipping through the cracks. None of that shit should be on her, but there she is taking it anyway.)

I dunno if that answers your question. I myself don't really know what kind of values her parents tried to instill in her, from what I know they were too busy being fuck ups themselves to do much for her. I just know that she turned out pretty damn good in any case.

Nester_sl said:

Not getting mad is often incorrectly perceived as not giving a fuck. I recommend you get right pissed of that your generosity is being through back in your face as a negative. The next step is to communicate that you expect her to get over the income inequality, you empathize with her feelings on the inequality, but in your mind it's a very small part of the relationship equation.

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That was all already addressed in our conversation last week, really. She was better for a day or two, but the last couple days she's been miserable again. Although I think that the stuff with her uncle I mentioned above is a big factor as well, that shit's got her stressed. She spent last night driving out to the grandmother's place to get some paperwork signed. When I asked if she'd made any progress with the big stuff, she snapped back no, it had nothing to do with that, it was just so that her uncle could go to a gym for exercise or some shit (he's a big fat mess because he doesn't leave the house because he more or less can't without forgetting where he is, where he's going, or what he was doing).

Lenas_sl said:

Happens to me sometimes. I am a really relaxed guy and sometimes my wife gets mad that I'm so nonchalant about things. So I turn the volume up once in a while and she doesn't complain anymore.

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I'll try to occasionally beat her. A little.

Eomer_sl said:

From a financial perspective, yes, you're absolutely right. There's probably little she could do that I couldn't make go away. But fuck, what am I supposed to do? Let her go bankrupt? Miss a tuition payment so she drops out of school? I agree that her resistance to me helping her financially is on the whole a giant upside to most vapid cunts out there (like her best friend who married my bud), but what's the alternative here?

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People have figured out how to go to school and still not die in the process due to homelessness. I get that it makes sense to you for her to just take out an Eomer interest free loan* but it may actually make her financially responsible if she actually got a loan herself.

Eomer_sl said:

34 vs 27.

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Okay, that's about what I expected. My take on it is that she hasn't really had a chance to establish herself as an adult and because you are well established she feels threatened that she might end up defining herself as your someone instead of achieving her identity on her own. I don't think it's really about money or that you don't get mad. It's just that you've got your shit together and she's intimidated.

Tenks_sl said:

I guess to pull from my own life my friend was living with a girl who was going to vet school to get her doctorate of cat psychology [kidding, its whatever a PhD is in vetting.] She had no cash but he still set the expectation of "These are the bills you have to pay." He pulled it from me where I had the same arrangement with my wife when we were dating. Was it hard on her to pay for the groceries every week? Yep. It was basically all her money. Was he extremely financially secure even paying for almost everything else? Yep. But sometimes to feel like a contributing member of a partnership you need to add something more than "You make me happy, babe!" It is good to make her pay for things and stretch even if you could actually make it easier. Because that is living. Unfortunately for Eomer I think this has devolved past the point of "Ok now you pay for the groceries and heat" but it may be a lesson for him to learn for future relationships.

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This sums it up pretty well. Women like to have lots of little goals and milestones in the context of a relationship, but those things remain implied by them more than outright stated. For lack of a better word she needs to feel "challenged" by you. When she doesn't have to work for anything and the relationship admittedly and mutally doesn't even have a marriage/kids discussion on the table to push for in the future then there's really no relationship in a woman's mind. She doesn't even have intangible stuff like your approval to strive for because you never disapprove of anything.

For a man you had the perfect dream, a woman you loved who you got along with perfectly. For her there was increasinglynothing, no passion because there's no incentive. They aren't content in that way like we are, they need a bit of conflict. Not to say you should abuse her verbally and beat her ass, but she needs something to fight for in your lives. She doesn't really want to argue and have resentment but as a person and as a woman she needs to have a standard to live up to that gives her a sense of earning the relationship. So far its all just been given to her, literally and figuratively.

Honestly there's nothing that women resent more than being given everything they want. To you the relationship was perfect because there was zero conflict. To her it was steadily dying and has devolved into something meaningless to her. The best thing you could have done in retrospect with that Matrix was put your foot down. Its a bad deal, I don't like it, we need to talk it over and sleep on it, you've lived this long with the car situation so another day or another week won't be the end of the world. Let her wail and cry around you and stand your ground. That's just one example from the stories but it was a total opportunity for you to show you expected some reciprocal sense of responsibility from her and you blew it.

I don't know that there's an easy answer at this juncture, but I'd worry like others said that she's essentially already moved on from this relationship in her mind. You're hearing about it because she's made her decision, not because she's trying to save it. Maybe I'm wrong though.

It's certainly not my intent. I don't take her on shopping sprees and shit. In any case, thanks for the perspectives gents. Famm's post was very helpful. I guess I just can't relate to that kind of thinking, it's just so strange and alien. My whole goal in life is to get to a point where I can just kick my feet up and be like "fuck it, I'm only doing shit I like doing from here on". I don't want more goals and milestones. I'm 5-10 years away from that, maybe even less, and I can just about taste it. But the more I think about it, the more I realize that she's just not going to be down with that.

Naked pics of her would really help us to pinpoint a solution.

I dealt with the expectations thing with one one of my exes and didn't understand it at the time either. A couple years later she clarified it for me when we caught up. Basically it falls very heavily in line with the we don't fight so you aren't emotionally invested in me implication.

In the case with my ex she was right on. We didn't fight because as long as she wasn't screwing up what I had going on I didn't particularly care what she did on a day to day basis. She was supposed to Make dinner but didn't? Whatever let's go out to eat or pick something up? Doesn't seem like a big thing to you or me but for my ex it was. In her mind I wasn't valuing her contribution of cooking meals enough to care when it didn't happen and I also wasn't willing to express displeasure in the fact this was a "duty" for her in the relationship and that she didnt fulfill it. So basically a double whammy to her self esteem.

We were in a similar situation, although I didn't have your type of money. I was working my first job out of college and she still had two years to go. So I took care of most of the money matters, while she was supposed to take care of the cleaning, cooking, etc in between her studies and part time. That made her feel like an equal, but when I didn't get worked up at all when those things slacked off from time to time it was giving her the idea that I could care less if she was around to do them. Which was right to a degree because I was a selfish dick back then. Anyway she gave me four or five more examples like that which basically showed I had no expectations for her in the relationship so how much worth did I place on her.

I still don't get that line of thought completely, but in my exes case showing more approval and or disapproval for her actions while being active in their resolution would have been a good thing.

You might also want to have the marriage talk. That will give you a clearer picture on her side of things and how she really feels about the relationship. Right now a lot of what you said could be short term goofiness because of her stress with school, the uncle, and what she perceives as lack of progress in your relationship.

Famm_sl said:

To her it was steadily dying and has devolved into something meaningless to her.

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Man, really going all the way, eh? So much fucking confidence people have in their interpretations based on a tiny points of biased data. I mean, sure, that's all you have to go on, but you're really extrapolating.

DickTrickle_sl said:

Man, really going all the way, eh? So much fucking confidence people have in their interpretations based on a tiny points of biased data.I mean, sure, that's all you have to go on, but you're really extrapolating.

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Eomer, we're gonna need financial documents, timelines and a thorough explanation of your relationship from start to finish. Preferably as an affidavit. Otherwise we simply cannot comment.

And nudes. You forgot the nudes.

Khane_sl said:

Eomer, we're gonna need financial documents, timelines and a thorough explanation of your relationship from start to finish. Preferably as an affidavit. Otherwise we simply cannot comment.

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Yep, that's it. Or, you know, write a response that takes into account the lack of knowledge instead of having absolute conviction in a narrative that is in parts already contradicted by things Eomer spoke of. It's a hell of a stretch, based only on what Eomer told us, that she has already made her decision to move on and thinks the relationship is completely meaningless. But yeah, this is Rerolled, so if you're not full of hyperbole and extremes you're just not doing it right.