Recent forum posts (all topics)

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

I am just so exhausted.  Literally nothing I am about to say is new, we have all been there and heard it all before.  The messes, the projects half done, the lack of any meaningful communication.  Today DH tells me one of his headlights is out on his car (he can fix it, no big deal) and it will cost $35 for the light he needs to fix it.  So I give him the debit card to go get it.  He comes home and hands me the receipt: $83.  "oh, I must have looked at the wrong thing online."  Okay then.  It's not the end of the world, just add it to the pile of crap that we all live with.

I have been with my husband for 7 years, married 1 year. He is the most emotionally intelligent, kind, loving man ever. We didn't live together at first so we found it easy to eek out the honeymoon period but since properly living together for the past 5 years and having children I have felt like I am going slowly mad and falling in to a pit of chronic anger. More recently I have questioned wether I can continue to commit my life to him, which seems ridiculous considering the love we have for each other and the morals and foundations of our relationship being near on perfect.

Hi Forumites,

Hi Everyone,

I'm back with a real issue that I just don'y know what to do about.  Even though I'm not in a relationship with anyone at the time nor am I looking for one...I still regard my family as a relationship and I've been carrying this around for too long now and need to let it go.

I have had a long standing issue secondary to my ADHD which I have literally no clue how to solve.  Often (far more often than I am aware of, apparently, according to my husband) he tells me that when he brings up a concern to me, my "default mode" is to immediately bring up how that issue or his proposed solutions will affect ME.  :( Ugh.  He is right, but I do not know how to stop this.

After two years of joblessness, my husband finally found something, so I quit one of my two jobs and had the opportunity to turn the other into my own business.  Then he lost his job again six months ago.  I've been hesitant to fully commit to the business because I kind of feel like I should quit and get a full-time job since I can't rely on my husband.

"Broadly speaking, working on important things typically requires having good skills for tolerating uncomfortable emotions." This is from an article about work that I just read.  It makes me think of my ex, who strenuously avoids uncomfortable emotions.  Some important things he didn't work on because of avoiding emotions included looking for jobs, talking about financial issues, and engaging in therapy for ADHD and other mental disorders. 

As J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, has said, "The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it."

This is on my mind today....or something like it.  I don't recognize the person I have become. I didn't see my life turning out this way. What could I have done differently 40 years ago, 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, yesterday that would have made my path different?