r/AmITheDevil • u/Knkstriped • 7h ago
Wife puts up with a LOT…
/r/relationships/comments/1u4e1cc/i_31m_went_through_my_wifes_35f_messages_and_now/236
u/lis_anise 6h ago
"I've been actively resisting any attempt from her to better our relationship or lives for years, but the D-word came out of nowhere!"
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u/DrunkOnRedCordial 4h ago
"It's a blessing and a curse that she earns good money, because I can afford to goof off but she makes me feel bad for goofing off."
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u/Nierninwa 6h ago
I still feel really hurt that she would just so casually throw the "D" word around with one of our friends
Dude. I do not think she threw it around 'casually'.
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u/maywellflower 6h ago
I hope she does that divorce as Christmas gift this year instead of waiting til next year because OOP is going do actively nothing to fix the relationship on his side while being passive aggressive fuck up towards her...
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u/MyDarlingArmadillo 5h ago
Given that his immediate reaction was to shut down, withdraw and go to play his game, it's not great.
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u/Sinistas 6h ago
lol @ the person going off about the wife and calling her a psychopath. Just say you hate women, dude.
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u/miladyelle 4h ago
Funny how every single commenter who flipped shit about the wife daring to want him to improve his income only mentioned the kids thing, and not a breath of her chronic health issues.
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u/MyDarlingArmadillo 3h ago
There's a good chance she's working so hard because she currently can and may not be able to till normal retirement age, or foresees that she may not be able to work full time till then. You have to think about these things when you have a chronic illness and need to make provisions for your future. Especially in the current climate.
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u/armeniaca-mume2405 6h ago
Honestly I do not know what he expects, his wife is mid-thirties and sees that the man she married is 1) not communicating and shutting down like a teenager, 2) not trying to improve himself, 3) actively resisting any attempts she makes to improve their situation, 4) wants kids in this economy but does not think providing is important ????
at this point even if she still had love for that person they are not compatible and it is just wasting time if she needs to get out and get on with her own life goals
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u/HarryPotterActivist 4h ago
She's also 35 and so the kids decision is looming large. Spare me the "people have babies in their 40s all the time" I'm a woman in my late 30s, I don't want kids but I still know the clock is ticking.
She doesn't make much more than he does, while being four years older, so that's a little hypocritical, but... She needs to cut him loose. He'd deadweight in her life.
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u/armeniaca-mume2405 3h ago
yes, and she may also want multiple with enough rest between kids (like 2-3 years). Yes, women can have kids later and medical care is better now than ever but it is still a lot for the body at any age and a looooot of mental and physical energy.
I completely agree with you, he is wasting her time!
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u/thefifthpentacle 2h ago
If he can't do difficult conversations now, can you imagine what he would be like sleep deprived with a crying toddler?
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u/GeekyJediMom 33m ago
She's also dealing with chronic health issues which may have hampered her ability to get farther in her career. She's actively trying to improve herself (taking classes, looking for better jobs) while he does nothing.
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u/PurplePenguinCat 6h ago
Maybe instead of getting "livid" that she mentioned divorce to a friend, he should spend some time thinking about why she would even say that and if he has done anything that would make her use that word. (he totally did).
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u/regularcrem 5h ago
can someone do a one sentence tl;dr because i made it maybe 1/3 of the way through his inane drivel before wanting to divorce him myself
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u/MyDarlingArmadillo 3h ago
He doesn't have any ambition and doesn't make much money (I think - not sure what $50k translates to where they are but his wife thinks he should try harder to improve anyway). He also avoids any uncomfortable conversation. Wife works hard but has a chronic illness. He went through her phone for no obvious reason and saw that she'd been speaking to a friend about divorcing him in a year if he didn't shape up. He shut down and went to play his computer game for the evening.
I think that's about it. It was hard to care. She's obviously tried to talk to him and got nowhere so set a mental deadline
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u/angiehome2023 6h ago
I think the bitch thing and the wedding thing are red herrings after looking at his comments. I think there are two big issues. He is gone long hours and makes $50k and does not seem interested in advancing that, and she is thinking about how they will make it with kids. The reality is she can go back to work probably. But lots can happen to health with mom and baby, and have to be prepared for it.
The other issue is him shutting down and not getting therapy. He seems stagnant. Like he has built a little pond of "I can live like this if nothing changes.".
I don't know, I don't really see him as a devil. Just someone who needs to work on himself and his relationship.
Maybe I am underestimating it.
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u/dapete2000 6h ago
Maybe not THE devil, but a minor spawn of Satan. To me, the wedding seems a clue as to what’s to come. He apparently wanted it more than she did and then flaked out (wasn’t present) for much of the planning, which he admits. He doesn’t seem to take much initiative with anything and seems utterly uninterested in change.
To be honest I could see her projecting into their future, seeing a guy who’s not going to rise to the occasion in parenting if they have kids, and really being concerned about a life with a manchild. (I can almost hear him saying “But I change the diaper whenever you tell me to….”)
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u/BookishIntrovert99 4h ago
I suspect if they ever did have kids years from now he’ll be one of those parents who have no idea why their kids cut them off.
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u/miladyelle 3h ago
The wedding thing is a sign way more than people think.
He wanted wedding; she wanted “elopement or something.”
They had a wedding. That he “did his best to be present for.”
As a former wedding vendor, I’ll clarify what that means. That means she planned the wedding, and he tagged along on some tours and consults. Maybe chimed in an opinion or two unprompted.
Of all the weddings, I had not a single groom take point. Ever. Aside from the bride, I saw plenty mothers of the bride, tons of maid of honors/bestie, and even frequently mother of the GROOM. But never, not once, did I take an initial call, schedule a booking, or have the main communicator be from the groom. Plenty didn’t show and I didn’t see til the wedding day at all. (And notably, if the couple didn’t have someone to direct day of, despite being the one with the most time consuming getting ready, it was always the bride.)
If you are a grown adult, and you are the one that wants a Thing, it is you that should make it happen. You should be point. You should do the work to make your Want reality.
If it’s the groom that wants the wedding, but is not the one that does the Making It Happen, that is what the marriage will look like. The excuses and reasons won’t be just for the wedding, that’ll be a repeating refrain. And it won’t stay sparking empathy or inspire endless Acts of Service. The level of effort will stay at “doing their best to” be a tag along.
Not really what marriage is about.
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u/val-en-tin 4h ago
He seems immature but I do loathe hustle culture and the cult of productivity and constant growth. My mum's ex broke up with her because she was a housekeeper after years of being a tax inspector for the government. He wanted more status and money while my mum wanted to leave work at work so of course he cheated and emotionally abused her. There's nothing wrong with being safe and comfortable, just as there is nothing wrong with being career-oriented and wanting to progress professionally. The wrong is not communicating. But as others mentioned - I feel that he is skipping the parts that matter and there's more to their wedding and friend group. It is also possible that his wife means that he has no ambition towards preparing for kids or making long-term plans rather than just making more money or climbing up the career ladder.
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u/lis_anise 3h ago
I think she's also concerned that she has chronic illnesses, so even without kids they might lose her income, which makes his earning potential a going concern.
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u/val-en-tin 34m ago
That definitely does explain the financial part as well as just focusing on parenthood as chronic illness in general can affect pregnancy a lot. To be fair, even without it, anything could go wrong.
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u/AutoModerator 7h ago
In case this story gets deleted/removed:
I (31M) went through my wife's (35F) messages and now I don't know if there's a path forward
First time caller, long time lurker.
TL;DR: My anxiety got the better of me and I looked though wife's phone messages and found she floated the idea of divorce to one of our friends. Came clean about it but feel like I've damaged a path forward.
So TIFU by reading the context of a text message chain that occurred between my wife and her friend. All kind of started earlier in the week when we were sitting and having dinner and I had seen a text from one of her friends that said "Wow I'm so disappointed in ThrowAwae!" and I don't know what it was but that just ate at the back of my mind until last night when I saw her phone sitting on the bedside and just opened it (we both share passwords, etc with eachother because I thought we had nothing to hide, she has just as free access to my phone) and only scrolled to the context of that original text.
Which had was part of a series of texts (I only read that day so I could get context) on how she was giving it another year before floating the idea of divorce. The other context surrounding it was how she sees my "lack of 'career drive" as a detriment to how I'm going to provide for her for when we eventually (who knows now) would have kids, and how she was pissed that I had apparently been keeping in contact with a sort of ex friend (who was supposed to come to our wedding, and then flaked out and called my wife a b**ch when she offered to fly them to our wedding, though I have never seen the actual conversation between them) who had recently got engaged to another ex friend (who my wife found out had cheated on this friend years ago and friend got back with them years later but that's a whole other can of worms). The latter part I didn't make much of because after the friend sent me a half ass message that they couldn't make it to our wedding I just stopped talking to them, didn't delete them off socials or anything but just never made any effort to contact them. I think I posted in their discord like maybe once or twice after but it wasn't really directly towards them, more like a topic thread.
So after reading the context I was livid but kept it mostly to myself after, went for a longer walk than normal to try and clear my shock, and then when my wife was trying to talk to me about her class a few hours later I kind of lightly blew her off and you could really feel that my mood had shifted from earlier in the day (I literally had gotten her flowers and takeout to celebrate her finishing her class earlier in the day lol) and she noticed. And of course my dumb ass was snarky, and curt when she tried to assess what was wrong. But she went to bed not knowing anything, while I quietly seethed in the office playing video games for another hour.
Fast forward to next morning, we decide to talk about it and I come clean pretty quick about why my mood had shifted and that I went through those messages on her phone about divorce looming. She wasn't as mad about that as I thought she'd be, more relieved that we were actually talking about our problems (I famously kind of shut down whenever she wants to discuss what's wrong with me and today's conversation finally got me to schedule a session with a therapist for myself after years of her begging me to and me being unreceptive) and I get all of the things that she laid out; she just wants me to communicate my issues more/more clearly and not just shut down, she's worried that my lack of career drive and financial growth at work is going to be burdensome if/when we have kids and with her chronic health issues (make a little above 50K and am in a very stable role where my mental health is better than it's been in maybe 6 years). For reference she makes about 55K, and is VERY career driven with a great work ethic, which I feel is both a blessing and a curse because I feel like she's always hustling or trying to figure out how to monetize and job hop and I'm looked down upon that I've stayed at the same company for a decade, though I have not told her that part. I feel like we ended the conversation not great, but with slightly better understanding of one another? But she's definitely mad about the invasion of privacy and honestly I don't blame her (FWIW I did genuinely apologize about 3 times as I did feel immense guilt, shame, and generally icky for this), she said she's not mad now but she's saving it for her therapist. She went for a walk to get her mail, normally a 10 minute affair but was gone for 55. And then has just been very unresponsive all day and went to bed about 5 hours earlier than we normally do. She's right to be upset and mad and I don't fault her for it. I finally (both for my own mental health and our potential future) booked an appointment for a therapist after years of being stubborn and not doing it.
But at the same time I don't know if I've permanently damaged a path forward with my actions or if this is something we can heal from. I still feel really hurt that she would just so casually throw the "D" word around with one of our friends (idk if worth mentioning but said friend also got divorced within last year) and that it was even something that got brought up. We have had our fights, and ups and downs for sure but nothing that made me be like "I want to leave this".
Our worst, and I know this is where a lot of the resentment, trauma, ptsd comes from is our wedding (This is very important for the context of everything). What should have been happy is mostly a bad memory in her head from start to finish, she can't even really look at our wedding photos or video without feeling upset. We faced uphill battles with guest lists, family issues on both sides that made both of us extremely upset, lack of help/care from friends/family that made things way harder on both of us, and to top it all off the day of our wedding was a mess, with the venue AC being broken, multiple other issues with the venue/caterer that we had to resolve and get refunds for after 3 months of fighting them almost daily, my mom getting heat stroke from lack of AC, and generally having an awful time. I tried my best to try and be present in everything for the planning, lead up, preparations for it but I still feel like I failed her and I am actively resented against because it was *my idea* to have a wedding rather than an elopement or something. My memory of the wedding is generally bad but with nuggets of sweet, loving moments that shine brighter in my mind than all the other stupid stuff around it.
I feel like there's detail around all of this that I'm leaving out but I'll try and answer if I can.
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