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I need some sincere advice about my married life. This post will be a little long, but please bear with me. I will highlight some of my wife's behavior traits or patterns that bother me.
My wife mostly gets silent on the tiny issue and keeps silent for longer, sometimes even 2-3 days. Even if she talks, I still feel something is there during those times. She gives cold responses during those times. Whenever I ask what is bothering her or if there is any problem? She doesn't give any response or a response that it's nothing. Silent treatment usually happens 2-3 times a week. Some silence lasts 2-3 days; sometimes, it is one day.
Let me share with you some reasons why she gets cold or silent.
• I came late, say 10 minutes, from the office. She doesn’t show any verbal concern or anything. She gets silent and is quiet for the rest of the night.
• We planned to go somewhere on the weekend, but for some reason, we got late, and then I changed to visit nearby (a new place we had never seen); she agreed. Then when we visited there and she didn’t like the site and gone to silent.
• If I have not taken her anywhere on the weekend for some reason, she goes silent.
• If I have to finish some unfinished work on the weekend related to my office (I am a researcher). She doesn’t like it if I spend more than one hour there; if I do more, she goes silent.
• I usually prefer very simple food in my life, I am okay with routine food, and she likes a lot of fried and relatively fast foods. If she asks me what to prepare and I say some simple things to prepare, she goes to silence.
These are some examples; sometimes, even though I don’t know why she goes silent, she can communicate with me if she wants or expresses herself. However, she refuses to speak of those issues. This relay bothers me; sometimes, I question what happens. Sometimes she responds that her silence has nothing to do with me but herself. I also told her this bothered me, but she ignored my feeling and showed no concern. Whenever I saw her face in those moments, I felt there was something. Still, I never got any communication or response to her behavior.
Now I would like to indicate some crucial incidents I can always remember.
I have given complete freedom to my wife; she can wear whatever she wants and live her life in whatever way she wants. However, whenever she is with my family, she should follow some traditions, like wearing conservatively. This is only for when we visit my family (hardly 20 days or less than that in a year, till now in the last two years). I am an Indian my mother comes from a conservative family. When we were at home, my wife was applying nail paint to her nails. My mother suggested using red nail paint as it would look good, in my mother's opinion. By the way, I was not there when it happened. Now let's be forward some days; now my wife and I are in another country. One day my mother called and saw her and me side by side. That is entirely normal; we are on a sofa side by side with little to no gap. When she received the call. My mother got uncomfortable as she is conservative, and she just told us we should not sit that close when talking to elders to parents. When my wife listened to this, she just got defensive and explained to my mom that this is normal and told many things in a little higher tone. I just sensed and took the phone and told my mom we would keep it in mind and disconnected. After that incident, my wife said I did not support her, and she felt humiliated. After this incident, my sister called my wife to negotiate and say that it was not a big deal, to keep in mind and be careful when parents call. My wife again told me a lot about my sister in a higher tone. While responding, she complained a lot about my mother and many other irrelevant incidents to my sister. Like my mother made my wife's life hell when she was with them. My mother interfered with everything in my newly weeded wife, along with many lousy mouthing about my home and my family members' behaviors; she stressed that my mother has even had a problem with her nail paint as she suggested applying red. The conversation between my wife and my sister got agitated after this. She came up with many incidents with her and many nonessential things like she doesn’t like my family members when they argue. The central point was just being careful when my family calls. I can say my family is a little conservative and traditional. Still, they can never harm or say hurtful things to anyone intensely. Unfortunately, my mom was there when she was complaining a lot about her to my sister.
This incident made my wife silent for a few days. She even slept in another room for two days. I tried to communicate with her, but it was avoided due to her cold response or not being interested in sharing. After 4-5 days without communication, just formal communications, we were outside of our house trying to communicate on this issue. I told her that we must take some responsibility since it is our family. She can say sorry to my mother to make things normal as this incident mentally damaged my family and me. After hearing this, she got too defensive. She told me she was still feeling humiliated and lost, and her husband should support her. She again went into deep silence and formally apologized to my mother that day. However, she kept silent for me.
After that, she never communicated what she felt about this issue with me. However, after all these, something damaged from inside, especially in me. After that, I started avoiding conflicting issues and agreeing on most of the issues or concerns with her.
After living with her, I realized the issue was that whenever I said no or didn’t agree with her about any problem, she either gave a cold response or went to silence instead of providing an argument or communicating. Even if it’s a minor issue like telling her to spend less and save for the future.
One more incident I want to highlight. While traveling alone, I told her to update me whenever she boarded a train or flight as she was traveling for the first time on an international flight. She forgets to update or text in transitions or does not care. I was a little upset and worried. When she reached me after traveling after some formal rituals, I told her she should have updated me; I was nervous. Her response was defensive again, and she told me she could travel and I should not be angry or have any issues on this matter.
I can tell long stories, but I felt miserable during those times. Because she goes to silence on all the issues. Sometimes she says we should leave this on time, and time will heal everything.
Whenever I ask her what her plan is for the rest of the day. Her response is, "I have a lot of work to do,” and “I am not free.” This kind of small conversation and issue happened a lot.
Whenever I leave the house for the office or come back from the office, I get the silent treatment 8 out of 10 times without any reason or communication.
This reminds me of one more incident, I was at her home with her parents, and all my uncles (father in laws brothers) lived nearby with their family. However, no uncles have invited me for tea or dinner or anything. I told her they should have asked me for at least tea as they are close family members. She got too defensive after this and told and blamed me for accusing her family and bringing up many other irrelevant issues which were unrelated to this.
I also want to highlight something about my sex life. I never force her anything like that, but most of the time (8 out of 10), I get a cold response or no reaction. I am a Man, and I need it sometimes. It happens hardly 4 to 5 times in months since our marriage; that is significantly less for me; I masturbate most of the time separately or am lonely. Every time I try to initiate sex, it is mostly avoided. She hardly started sex. Similar to kissing or hugging. She evades it intensely. She only gets excited once a month; this makes me frustrated often. Even when she is close to me, I feel unsatisfied, lying on the same bed.
Whenever I told her my feelings or my needs, she either ignored them or did not take them seriously. She never shared her actual true feeling. I spent much more than her and gave her some monthly pocket money (4 times more than I spent on myself). But she never felt enough anytime since the beginning.
For one issue we talked about after I told her that I wanted to communicate to resolve these issues: Hovevr from the talk, I felt that her every behavior was due to me. She blamed me for everything. I could say anything about my feeling as I felt it would be useless to communicate the same feeling again and get a similar response. I realized I could not continue to be like this. This is bad for my mental health. However, we had sex once in the last 15 days, and she might have got pregnant as she is feeling symptoms and missed periods. Now I am worried about How I can live the rest of my life like this; if a new person comes into the picture, things will be complicated.
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Instead of carrying on like this the two of you need to get help to change the way you treat each other and communicate with each other so see a marriage counselor for this help. You two have designed a pattern of connecting and this pattern needs to be changed especially as neither of you seem to be happy. You are bouncing off each other in a toxic way so get the help otherwise a divorce may be inevitable.
ReplyI can relate to your wife’s behaviour, I also go silent for a bit when I’m angry or sad, even if my husband doesn’t know what happened to cause that. From that perspective I can tell you that, though it is not a fair way to react towards a problem and it need therapy to solve, she actually needs you to initiate the conversation on what is wrong. And hear me out, I know this is not easy, she probably doesn’t respond to you when you ask what’s wrong but try to be really insistent. She will eventually tell you. If you choose to not to that she will start talking to you after a few days, but she will still feel misunderstood and like you don’t care about her. Again, this is not an healthy behaviour on her part and she probably knows this. But maybe if you start to break this pattern slowly with her this will heal.
As for your family-wife issues. Honestly neither is right about this. Your family shouldn’t meddle with your relationship as much and your wife is your own person. She should also keep in mind it’s something that comes with the “package” and try to be patient. What you should do about this (in my opinion only): talk to each part individually to try to make them see the other side of the story and then make them communicate with each other in a calm and honest way to try to find a middle term. If that is hard for them, make them see that this is only a few days in the year and that it would be very important for you. I think the fact that they all love you very much will make them try to solve this in the best way.
Anyway… hope everything works out!
Relationships are hard but they are worth it :)
ReplyYou have given her complete freedom. What a big man you are. It's not for YOU to GIVE her her freedom. Her freedom is hers independently of you or anyone else on the planet. She is a person in her own right.
ReplyMake sure you never force her as that is rape. Rape is a crime. And you don't get bonus points for NOT raping her.
ReplyMiddle aged male here and I actually deal with something similar and may be able to shed some light on this as well.
My wife and I have been together for many years but, since our last child was born, she's has the tendency to get short for seemingly no good reason (or at least it seems silly to me).
Here are a few examples of things that triggered her and I should point out that, before these things triggered her, she was completely fine. We were not arguing. We were visiting and enjoying each others' company until these things happened.
1. Not enough mayonnaise on a hotdog. I can't make this up. I started plopping condiments on our dogs and put mayo on only the bottom side of her bun. She lost it and told me that I didn't put nearly enough mayonnaise on her hotdog and asked who doesn't also put mayonnaise on the top of the bun. No biggie - this is an easy fix, right? I offered to get the mayo so we could put more on her hotdog but she angrily said, "You know what? Just don't even worry about it." She moves away from the table, now not going to eat, and complains that I'm too stupid to even put mayonnaise on a hotdog.
2. New restaurant opened in town and they serve french fries with toppings. This is all they sell which I'm ok with. So you can get, for example, a number 1 which is an order of fries with baked potato-like toppings, or a number 2 which is fries topped with chili, or a number 3 which is fries topped with Mexican toppings, or a number 4 which is fries covered in gravy, etc., etc. We discussed trying the new place out one afternoon and I explained to her exactly what it was. I had some friends that had been there and they all said it was great. But, because they had been, I knew what we were getting into. After she confirms she understands, we hop in the car and drive over. Inside, there were only about ten options and she stares at the menu FOREVER as if she can't make up her mind. People are in line behind us and the cashier is looking at us with a strange face because we're not ordering. I chime in and told the nice lady what I wanted. My wife finally picked one. The lady handed us our cups and my wife kind of storms off and I knew, in that moment, that she had just flipped the switch. At the table, I could see it on her face. To lighten the mood and try to strike up conversation, I asked her what she ordered and she looked me straight in the face and loudly, in front of all the other customers in this tiny place, said, "I ordered fucking french fries! That's all they sell here. What did you think I ordered?" Everyone heard her and it was so embarrassing.
3. Well, those two were both about food incidentally but she's gotten angry like that over many non-food related situations as well.
And now that we've seen some examples of some triggers, let me explain what she does after she's been triggered. In many ways, it sounds a lot like what your wife does to you. My wife gets angry, for no apparent reason, and then gives us (we have children) all the cold shoulder. She migrates to the bedroom where she will stay for the remainder of that day and through the night. With any luck, she will "reset" in her sleep and wake up in a "normal" state of mind. While in the room, she will not speak with anyone. If I ask her if she's ok or if I can get her something, she rudely tells me that nothing is wrong and that she doesn't need anything. If she doesn't "reset" during the night, she'll stay this way for another day. In many cases, this is a two-day ordeal and sometimes, unfortunately, it can last for three.
Let me explain what this does to me. After all these years, I've developed anxiety. I actually stop and think about what I'm going to do or what I'm going to say and, if I need to discuss something important with her, I actually sit and think about the best way to bring it up so as to ease into the topic during conversation. I do this for fear of triggering her and then having her retire to the bedroom for the rest of the day or remainder of the weekend and just being pissed at everyone. It really, really sucks.
So, if she's this way, why would I have married her and how could my story possibly help you? To be honest, I have no intent on getting a divorce but I would expect that most who go through these kinds of things would certainly take that option because this is, again, so very difficult to deal with. And while I have no intent to divorce her, I can promise you I wouldn't have married her if was like this. Yes, that's what happened - she changed. She wasn't like this in the early days. Every day was a happy day. After the birth of our last child, though, something changed in her brain and she started having these super crazy mood swings. Happy one moment, super pissed the next.
I can't promise this is the same for your wife but my wife has a mental condition that she is currently suppressing with medication. She wasn't diagnosed with bi-polar disease, but if you look at the list of symptoms and compare them to her symptoms, there's nearly a 100% exact match. Maybe she has this and they simply misdiagnosed her, I don't know. At any rate, I say suppressing because there is no cure so the medication is only suppressing the mood swings. She'll apparently not be cured of this. While on the meds, she's MOSTLY back to her old self.
I say all of that to let you know that your wife may wish to speak with a doctor if she finds herself being easily triggered for no apparent reason. She may find that she, too, has a mental condition that could be regulated.
I don't believe my wife should never get angry. By all means, if we discuss something and she says, maybe we shouldn't buy that expensive item right now until we save up for it and then, later, she finds out that I turned around and purchased this item, she may get angry and she has every right to. If the children misbehave, she has the right to get angry, sure. But let's not loose out on an entire weekend because someone didn't put mayonnaise on both sides of your hotdog bun. The meds help with that.
If you think she could have a condition with her, let her know that it's not her fault and that she may wish to speak with a doctor. See what the results are from her visit; should one happen. Later, or if she doesn't believe she has a mood disorder, maybe you two could visit a family therapist to discuss the issues you two are having with each other. This person may be able to help you learn to live at peace with one another.
Reading through your story was really hitting home with me because of what I've gone through with my wife. That said, I totally understand how this can be beating you down, mentally.
No matter what happens, we are wishing you the best!
Good Luck!
ReplyIf marriage counseling is available wherever you live, it seems that these issues need to be explored between the 2 of you and a marriage counselor. Apart from that, all I can say from observation and experience is that nowadays, if there are children in the marriage then the marriage is their family, and children are worth trying for a happy, peaceful marriage. But both mom and dad need to agree on this. Best of luck.
Courtesy notice: the following includes a reference to a book that contains writings over 2000 years old which are mostly parables about human nature, both vile human nature as well as moral human nature, parables that are meant to teach us to learn and grow, including the teachings of Christ Jesus. No religion required, and better yet: no public displays of devotion required, although the former and latter are admirable if practiced freely out of one's own free will and without the threat of being beheaded. Some bullies will label this "trolling", so "change the channel" now if of no interest to you.
1 Thessalonians 5:11
Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.
Mark 12:28-31
And Christ Jesus said the 2 greatest commandments are:
Love God first and foremost.
Love your fellow-being as you love yourself.
From following or not following these, all good or evil cascades, respectively.
Love...that powerful, invisible force that cannot be denied; even atheists live and die by it.
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