Recent forum posts (all topics)

Hello all,

I have been a member for 5 months now and this is my first post. I have found invaluable information on here, thank you for your thoughtful posts. I am having trouble finding a post about exactly what's going on in my marriage and looking for a bit of outside perspective here:

I've been divorced for two years, and not being married isn't that bad.  I think I'm coping well on almost every measure.  That said, I am feeling down since the delivery for my ex-husband of a letter from our state's department of revenue, here at the house that I now solely own, almost certainly on the topic of him not paying taxes.  Ugh.  

The letter arrived yesterday.  He was here a few days ago, visiting one of our daughters, and he scoffed when I mentioned my belief that his practice of being paid in cash and not putting money in the bank is related to tax evasion.

H left his company phone on the train and got a replacement on Monday.  Thursday he came home in a foul mood and I said nothing to him, in fact I made plans and went out after dinner.  Yesterday (Friday) he was charging his new work phone, only 4 days in his possession, and I saw that it already  had a cracked screen.  Now I assume his super nasty mood on Thursday was related to the broken phone. 

This isn't a vent...And it's not a blame...It's just my view of our reality, and marriage in general.....

We have been on an extended timeframe with family trips. My husband seems to only be interested in spending time with members of my family and although we use natural family planning methods, he is ignoring my time of infertility (aka the only days per month we can be intimate without having a baby). I will shortly have my period and then a few more weeks until we can be intimate again since we are being very careful to avoid pregnancy currently. 

So way last January I stopped all therapy--mine and couples.  I just could not sit around talking about the same stuff every week that didn't change (couples) and I spent most of MY therapy time talking about HIM.  So enough already.  But lately I have not been sleeping and having those unhelpful loops in my brain: what am I not doing?  how did I end up like this?  what have I done to wind up in such a crappy marriage?  my kids are going to be damaged forever because I stayed in a crummy marriage.  how did we get this far gone?  what is wrong with me that I settled for this?

My ADHD husband nags me. I do not have ADHD. He constantly repeats things, but that’s not always a problem although it’s annoying.

When I do something, then it’s a huge deal and instantaneous, before I can even explain to him what’s going on he’s already criticizing.

He acknowledges that he has to learn to “put on the emotional brakes”, but it drives me crazy. He can’t or won’t let me have time to myself to regroup if I get angry either, so it leads to me feeling like he’s poking the bear with a stick 100 times, then I get angrier and I eventually lose my temper.

H is “going to get evaluated for ADHD” but I won’t hold my breath while waiting.  And I expect him to pop a pill but nothing else. He refuses to take responsibility for so many things and has from the start of our marriage, so I think it would be foolish to get my hopes up that he will do any real work on behaviors. 

Where did you start with placing boundaries?

So far, I’ve stopped doing his laundry. (He does no house chores whatsoever.)  I don’t clean his part of the bedroom.  And he is getting more and more unkind when he speaks, so I’m going to start walking away or taking the kids to the park or something when he’s rude.

We are getting some major home renovations done this week and we had to pack up all of the clutter so people we hired could move everything into a portable storage unit.  I started boxing books a month ago, but I am working this summer and my wife is off.  I  expressed concern during the course of the last month that we would not  be ready.  This was based on previous experiences, such as packing for moving a 3 in the morning and then leaving a bunch of stuff behind--in a different state!  Also, part of the reasons she did not get more packing done was because she was too focused on fightin