Another time, she told me that the only value I bring to her life is 'to provide for our kid until they turn adult'.
I don't think we will be together much longer lol.
I don't know the best way to proceed, since you no doubt have entanglements such as your children to consider, but I wish you all the best in finding your way out of that relationship. You deserve better than someone who would treat you that way.
Appreciate that she has made this commitment. Confirm it to her and tell her you are on board, and you will make life as easy as possible for the both of you until then. See if she is willing to make the same commitment out loud.
I have a suspicion, perhaps too romantic, that once you and her are broken from the bonds of obligation, you will discover yourselves again and will voluntarily decide to stay together.
But then again, some people just shouldn't be married.
So where I live, the standard for alimony is 1 year for every 3 that you are married. On top of that, if you're married 20+ years they think you should pay for life. There is no law that states this and couples are free to decide whatever they can agree to, but once layers are involved you're at a more significant financial risk the longer you stay married.
In short, if you honestly believe it will not work you should get out sooner rather than later. It will be better for both of you. Not sure about the kids though, but living under a broken relationship isn't good for them either.
But after that second quote about value, that is a big, fluttering red flag signal for you to leave. That is no longer a functioning relationship.
A guy I knew once told his girlfriend “just be a mom!” when she was tired and their son was crying. Rather than be a dad, he demanded that she resume a role and shamed her for wanting a break.
And yet I’ve experienced the same as a man. The sort of “just be a man” mentality and rhetoric you can encounter is widespread and ranges through all depths of relationships. Ever been unemployed as a man? People can be absurdly insensitive and unkind about it. It really makes people uneasy sometimes… Like there must be something wrong with you. Never mind why you’re unemployed; there could be any number of valid reasons, but people seem to assume that’s not the case.
The point is that this isn’t a gendered problem. I suppose it’s a people being selfish problem first, coupled with many possible issues leading to the selfishness and the gendered presumptions we make about our partners. We do the same thing with genderless accusations though. We just want certain behaviours from our partners and use all kinds of means to justify it, gendered or not.
My personal observation is that if the parents love the kid more than they dislike themselves, they are going to stay, at least until the kids become adults.
If kids are exposed to frequent arguments, spirals of primitive abuse, hatred, emotional coldness etc. they won't end up faring well in adulthood, and all the efforts of parents trying to stay together for them are pointless.
But yeah its a shitty situation where everybody loses.
I would replace "dislike" with "incompatible" though.
You can be very attracted physicslly to someone who is your intellectual and economic equal, to then not be able to hold it together because that person's personal traits ans preferences are so far off one's own. It goes beyond "he liked to watch tv instead of going out to eat w me"
That being said, your observation should be a heuristic, and it should be repeated more often.
If you want your kid to have successful relationships when they grow up, FFS don't let your kid grow up in an unsuccessful one.
Good call.
But I do think it's quite reasonable to expect more from life and relationships. Women tend to expect more, and society doesn't tell them not to.
It's possible to have a self-consistent worldview that does tell both men and women to expect less, but personally I think that would make for a worse society.
And how exactly this should help? It's clearly past that point already.
I mean, this is par for the course for nearly every married man in the West, myself included. We are objectified as wallets, we are treated very poorly, and when they inevitably leave to "find myself", they collect 50% of the assets we've earned and saved, and we collect 50% of the debts they've racked up in their instagram-influenced spending.
You can characterize the situation as "disgusting", but it's reality for millions of us.
Reality doesn't care about our moral judgements. It is what it is. The best we can do is attempt to educate our sons on the risks inherent in contractually obligating oneself to people who hate you.
Not to discount the lived experiences of men in this thread, but the discussion in here reeks of bitter manosphere ideology. Maybe people need to stop extrapolating their toxic relationships to an entire gender, or blaming them on biology.
And on that specific front, things are fine. The kids believe they are being raised in a warm, loving household. I've accepted my fate, but I will raise my son with different lessons than I had.
That said, I have (multiple) friends whose fiances turned from "Perfect Angel" into "Literally Hitler" the day after marriage, so even if my situation was a proper evaluation of my life partner, it should be noted that many men are defrauded by that particular trap as well.
That's optimistic naïveté speaking. Marrying someone you got pregnant just because it's the right thing to do, is in fact very much the wrong thing.
> The kids believe they are being raised in a warm, loving household
Maybe when they are very young. Kids aren't stupid, and you can't fake a warm, loving relationship accurately enough nor consistently enough to keep them fooled very long. At some point way before they become adults they realize exactly what is going on. At best they'll pity you. At worst they'll resent you for subjecting them to your inability to adult.
>> The kids believe they are being raised in a warm, loving household
> Maybe when they are very young.
Ehh, even a one year old is very good at sensing their parents' emotions.
Good grief, I hope not. My wife is nothing like that. At all. And very few of my friends and acquaintances have experienced a relationship like that. How sad to think that this is what marriage ought to be. That's horrifying. I'd be single and celibate before I'd let someone treat me that way.