What Women want

LegacyUser

Im totally confused here. Basically my wife was made redundent a couple of weeks ago..and tbh it was a great thing to happen. we paid off a few loans and that left us clear of debt apart from the mortgage. I have a good job and over the next 12 months Im lined up to become the MD as the incumbent CEO retires. this is not an easy path...I work about 70 hours a week and Im studying in the evenings for my Masters.


At first my wife was very supportive..but as the drag of my current situation bares down on her its putting a strain on our relationship..not to mention my relationship with my kids. Right now i leave the house at 5.30am monday to friday and get home on mondays, wednesdays and fridays at 8pm and at 11.30pm on the other 2 college nights.

this is tough going but I do it all for them..to make sure that we are never in hardship or worrying how we pay the next bill...but my wife is having none of it! She is saying that Iv changed because Im so tired all the time and that Im never around. this confuses me because she complains if we dont have enough money...and when I work hard enough to make enough she complains.

Suggestions pls?

Katgurl

I fail to see what women want has to do with it as this is clearly about what your wife wants.

You need to sit down an ask her. Talk it out, listen to her concerns, air yours and try to come to an agreement that works for you both.

What I want is not relevant here but just so you know I would want a husband to be part of my marriage and my children's lives and not just in a financial capacity.

dixiefly

I agree that this is a strange thread title. First of all you cannot generalise from what women want overall to your own marriage. You may think that all that is important in a marriage is financial stability but you are very naive if you think that. Like most things in life there are balances and work life balance in a marriage and parenting is certainly one of them.

I have worked in a number of sectors and business over the years and the number of hours I worked / money earned certainly did not correlate with the quality of my marriage.....i.e. more money and hours did not always mean that my wife was happier.

You seem to have the belief that once you are doing all of this work and study that it will be right for your career and right for your marriage. It may be right for your career (and only might as those hours and study might burn you out). However I don't think it is good for your marriage but you may get away with it in the shorter term and only you can make the call. If it was me I would be concerned about the relationship with the kids......the kids years go by in a flash and you won't be the first CEO to regret never knowing your kids in their early years.

One last thing, I was a little surprised to see you perceive that your wife being made redundant to be a good thing - I know what you mean but your potential earnings should mean that you shouldn't have had a financial problem anyway and your wife has a career too that I am sure she worked on.

Maybe you should consider reducing the work time or taking a hold on the masters for a year or two might help your situation but only you know how feasible that is.

daisybelle2008

OP, a quick way to get people's back up on a public forum is to make sweeping generalisations about one gender. People like to be viewed as individuals, not put into generic gender buckets and stereotyped. I know you are frustrated but part of your problem seems to be that you are not communicating with your wife as an individual. You are assuming that she wants you to do what you are doing for the financial benefit and is be hypocritical. Why not sit down and ask her what she thinks should happen. It sounds like now she has free time she would like to spend more time with you. That is not a bad thing.
You are in a risky period where ye could grow apart very quickly.
You both need to sit down and prioritise what's important and be on the same wavelength.
If it means deferring the masters and or cutting back at work, so be it, that could save your marriage in the long run. But keep communicating about it in a solution based way until ye are both on board with whatever ye decide or compromise together.

blatantrereg

Jimmy1977 wrote: »

I work about 70 hours a week and Im studying in the evenings for my Masters.

That's mental. Are you trying to kill yourself? You want to do that for the next year? You will be under severe strain. The possibility of you spending quality time with your family, or even doing much in the way of mundane activities is pretty much ruled out.

I'd take the idea that you'll be MD in a year from this with a pinch of salt too tbh. Burnout would seem much more likely to me tbh.

daisybelle2008

blatantrereg wrote: »

That's mental. Are you trying to kill yourself? You want to do that for the next year? You will be under severe strain. The possibility of you spending quality time with your family, or even doing much in the way of mundane activities is pretty much ruled out.

I'd take the idea that you'll be MD in a year from this with a pinch of salt too tbh. Burnout would seem much more likely to me tbh.

Very true, I would also add the breakdown of your marriage to burnout as real possibilities OP.

CaraMay

It's easy to say that you are going this for your family but the first thing you mention is your opportunity to be MD. It's not all about your family then is it?

You should be happy that your wife wants you for more than your pay cheque... So you have choices to make here - keep doing what you are doing and be md but possibly lose your family or take a step back and put your family over your ambition.

Curry Addict

from what you have typed i think its likely she wants a bigger emotional investment in the relationship from you. Its unlikely you are fulfilling her wants and needs as a husband and a father of her children as your focus is very much elsewhere.
a marriage needs an emotional connection to survive or even call it a real marriage rather than a sham. the post title suggests that you dont have this with your wife as u are unaware of what she wants.
sometimes we overcompensate for our fears. maybe your driven by a fear of financial hardship and this greater good in your mind is blinding you to other things.
maybe its time to ease off the pedal, your doing ok financially. talk to your wife and listen to what she wants. adjust your balance of life to suit her more as she is 50% of who you are.

MissFlitworth

Why are you doing a masters & working a 70 hour week? Surely the smart thing to do would be to defer the masters until next year when you actually become MD and have extra time? That way you actually get to see your wife & kids and won't end up flat on your back from exhaustion?

Can't speak for 'women' because our hivemind is offline until after the bank holiday but what I would like is to see my husband and to see that he had a decent relationship with our kids and to never hear mean, snide remarks like "she complains if we dont have enough money...and when I work hard enough to make enough she complains." [that seem to be placing the blame for the current situation on her shoulders]

trio

Your wife became redundant = Yippee, we can pay off loans, whereas even if she hated that job with a burning passion does not mean she wants to stay at home looking at the four walls all day. But who else is going to raise the kids? It's probably just hit her how alone she's going to be, whilst you work 70 hours a week and do a Masters.

I'd say she's just realised she's effectively going to be a single parent.

mashedbanana

Okay, here is my own tupence worth. Im a stay at home mom (I had worked ) with 3 kids. My hubby works mad mad hours. I know he does it all for us, so (like you) we will never ever go without. We have a beautiful home, savings, and don't owe anyone a penny thank God. He is as the saying goes, money rich, time poor. I know, in an ideal world 'daddy' would have a 9-5 job. It doesn't always work that way though, does it? The kids have absolutely everything they could ever possiby want/need, maybe too much. They enjoy their time with their daddy on a Sunday. Thats family day.... He can't be out providing & at home playing horsey horsey too! My job is in the home.

At the risk of sounding like a complete cow, I think that maybe your wife is bored, now that she is at home alot more.

Advise about balancing marriage & family & job... Please! gimme a break! We are in a recession. You go out there and you do what you gotta do, to provide for your family. Sit herself down and explain that to her. Seems a bit childish and abit 'What about me?' (sorry if I sound harsh, but your mad work hours aren't gonna be forever, she needs to be a bit more understanding, and lower her expectations a lil bit) :-)

CaraMay

Kids need a dad more than they need money. Owing no one money makes your life easier but in the short term they need their dad every day and not just for a few hours once a week. Materialism in its extreme.

mashedbanana

Better 2 hours 'quality' time of an evening, then an unhappy, uneventful, unproductive, daddy.

There is a time & a place for everything. The OP made it clear that he would be promoted in the next 12 months or so. So, it's not like he's working 70 hours a week is gonna be forever.

A man NEEDS to work, this recesson has seen too many men go into a deep depression cos they can't provide...loss of jobs etc. Sacrifices have to be made so as to provide for your family, and to keep them in a way theya re being used to kept! (ya ya ya, materialism whateva!)

Behind every strong sucessful man....is ... etc. Some people are not in a position to cut their hours, and people/general public/wives need to make alowances for this. My own kids are happy kids, mad for the swimming, horse riding, they have what you could call a 'full calender'. They have a better social life then me! Himself works damn hard for all of that, cos he wants to give them all that. I for one, appreciate all he does for us. The OP is doing the best he can, and all he seems to be getting are these insinuations that his marriage will end cos of it. I dunno...maybe when you're good, you're TOO good.

vitani

mashedbanana wrote: »

A man NEEDS to work, this recesson has seen too many men go into a deep depression cos they can't provide...loss of jobs etc. Sacrifices have to be made so as to provide for your family, and to keep them in a way theya re being used to kept! (ya ya ya, materialism whateva!)

So do plenty of women. If I was made redundant and had a husband going 'great!' in response, I wouldn't be very happy.

Tbh, OP, I don't get the impression that you're considering your wife very much at the moment. It's almost as if you think she doesn't have the right to complain because you're working so hard. Lose the sense of self righteousness and put yourself in her shoes, and then maybe you'll understand what she (not all women) wants.

LegacyUser

mashedbanana wrote: »

Better 2 hours 'quality' time of an evening, then an unhappy, uneventful, unproductive, daddy.

There is a time & a place for everything. The OP made it clear that he would be promoted in the next 12 months or so. So, it's not like he's working 70 hours a week is gonna be forever.

A man NEEDS to work, this recesson has seen too many men go into a deep depression cos they can't provide...loss of jobs etc. Sacrifices have to be made so as to provide for your family, and to keep them in a way theya re being used to kept! (ya ya ya, materialism whateva!)

Behind every strong sucessful man....is ... etc. Some people are not in a position to cut their hours, and people/general public/wives need to make alowances for this. My own kids are happy kids, mad for the swimming, horse riding, they have what you could call a 'full calender'. They have a better social life then me! Himself works damn hard for all of that, cos he wants to give them all that. I for one, appreciate all he does for us. The OP is doing the best he can, and all he seems to be getting are these insinuations that his marriage will end cos of it. I dunno...maybe when you're good, you're TOO good.

Speaking as a child who saw little of one parent because they worked insane hours to keep the family "as they were use to being kept" I can tell the vast majority of kids and partners when given the choice would opt for more quality time with a loved one then having swimming lessons and fancy holidays. My relationship with them fell apart totally when I reached my teens and had them scream at me constantly they were working hard so I could have all these things but they never asked me if I wanted any of them. My parents relationship suffered greatly as a result of all the pressure and it made for just a miserable home life I was happy to escape once I was old enough. My father died a few years back - 52 years of age and I never repaired my relationship with them and its something that upsets me ever day. I remember being a very young kid when we had no money. We took holidays to the beach in Ireland and a treat was going for a drive together and walking in the woods. Those are the memories I cherish and the times I miss with my family - not the fancy house, and material crap.

So think about this OP what sort of relationship do you want with your kids, your wife and your health?

mashedbanana

Oh Lads... I know plenty of women need to work too. I'm not silly. But the OP's hours weren't an issue till his wife was at home, on her own, with the kids. Surely she knows it's all for them that he is doing what he's doing. He is bettering himself at the same time. No Doubt his wife was always independent, had her own money etc. But that is not the case anymore. Personally, when I stopped working I couln't wait to be at home with the kids. I understand that not all mums are like this.

His massive hours won't be forever, and she, may very well, not be redundant forever either. No point making a man feel guilty for doing his best by the wife & kids though. Sometimes you have to hope & pray that the marriage is strong enough, to hold together for the sake of 12 months. 12 months like!!!It's not like he is out messing around!

Now if his wife is upset, lost, lonely, culture shock, due to her redundancy...well thats a seperate issue. Using his long working hours against him cos of that, is plain unfair! Maybe she was just 'sound boarding' off him.

Czarcasm

CaraMay wrote: »

Kids need a dad more than they need money. Owing no one money makes your life easier but in the short term they need their dad every day and not just for a few hours once a week. Materialism in its extreme.

Hmm, I've a child here might disagree with your assertion there CM! :pac:


Ah no, seriously OP, it's a real rock and a hard place situation you find yourself in, and only you and your wife really can decide what works, or doesn't, for ye. The only way you'll do that is by really listening to what each other is saying and not dismissing each others opinion.

I can completely understand where both sides are coming from, because I and my wife were there at one point ourselves, where my wife was always happy to work at home when I was doing "normal" 9 to 5 hours and home in the evening to work on my own business. But things quickly ramped up when I was getting promoted in work and I also went back to university to upskill my educational qualifications.

I was working anywhere between sixty and eighty hours a week in work, then another thirty to forty hours a week on my business, while still trying to squeeze in study for assignments and project work for my university course.

Money wasn't my motivator, it was more a by product of my need for my own sense of achievement. Sleep was a foreign concept tbh, and my wife and I were almost complete strangers to each other, where at one point she mentioned we were more like flatmates than an actual couple!

I ignored the signs and carried on regardless, convincing myself that she "just didn't see what I was trying to do!", which was to make what I thought was a good life for "us". I say "us" in inverted commas because really we were living like two completely separate entities who shared a bed every so often.

We also had a child in that time and that made me even more determined to work harder to, in MY mind- give my child something to aspire to, to be what I thought was a good role model for them.

We're talking about a time span of a good ten years here, and it all came to a head about three years back when at 33 I suffered a mild heart attack, which could've been more severe had I not recognised the symptoms and gotten to the hospital in time (it actually came on while I was in the cab on the way to the hospital thinking I'd just go just to be on the safe side).

The heart "attack" really knocked me for six, and during the time off from work, I took that time to stop and think about everything that was happening around me- my marriage was a disaster, I was a stranger to both my wife and my son, and there were many, many other issues within the "relationship" I wasn't happy with, when I actually was forced to sit down and think about it.

Sure, we were financially set for life already, but it was the QUALITY of that life, for the THREE of us, that when I sat down and thought about it, just didn't sit right with me. It looked shìt, to put it bluntly.

I decided to leave the company I was working for (who were actually looking to make redundancies at the time), and just concentrate on my business and my university studies, finishing off my degree. I talked all this over with my wife, who had her reservations because she wasn't sure we could come back from where we found ourselves.

Three years and a lot of heartache and heartbreak later, we're somewhat there or thereabouts, things are still far from perfect, but certainly our relationship is a hell of a lot better than it was five years ago. I've had a couple of times where I fell back into my old ways in the last three years alright, but I've been able to talk about it with my wife, which never would've happened before. I just kept all my failures, fears and frustrations to myself and dealt with them "in my own way" (alcohol, gambling, sex, drugs, each of which came with and created it's own set of problems!), but now I talk to my wife a lot more and things don't get to that level where I become dependent on something else to disguise the stress.

In fact I'm far less stressed and tense and unbearable to live with than I was, because I'm far happier than I was. I may now be earning a tenth of what I was earning three years ago, but now I have more time to enjoy it, and I work because I enjoy working, not because I have this insecurity inside me that says "I'm never going to be good enough, I need to do better, I have to be the best, in everything!".

I have more time to enjoy spending time with my family and I know well I can't make up for the time I lost out on, but nowadays I'd rather lose out on time spent breaking my balls while my wife was miserable, than run the risk of losing my wife and my son because I wanted to give them what I thought was what they wanted, while all that time ignoring them when they tried to convey to me what they ACTUALLY wanted.

Basically I've become much better at the work/life balance malarkey, and now I make time for simple things like going out for dinner and drinks with my wife, or taking my son to hurling and rugby training, we all go swimming together or on Sundays after I take my son to mass (I'm RC myself, my wife is atheist), we head down to the park for a kickabout and then my wife joins us down the park and we go for a family meal.

These are the kind of things OP you seriously need to sit down and think about and talk over with your wife and try and understand what she's trying to tell you, before you find yourself ten years down the line and all the money in the world, but nobody to share it with. Then your money and your career and all your hard work is worth fùckall, and nobody will thank you for your efforts.

CaraMay

mashedbanana wrote: »

to hold together for the sake of 12 months. 12 months like!!!

So if he gets the promotion he will be working less? Very unlikely.

mashedbanana

CaraMay wrote: »

So if he gets the promotion he will be working less? Very unlikely.

Yerra, it isn't that either. The man is out providing for his family, plenty of money coming in. Her redundancy put them in the black and out of the red. It was all hunkie dorey, till the wife got bored, as she has now no job. Thats the long & the short of it.

'I want you out working love, but at home too, holding my hand'
'Go ahead, get your masters, but college is effecting our dinner plans & general family life'


Come on like...! Kids are very resiliant, and we should give them more credit! and I'm not talking about phone credit! lol.

The only concern that I would have (as a previous poster said) is for the mans health. My dad, from working massive hours all over Europe, suffered his first heart attack at 42. Well, that was the end of that for him. My husband, 3 years ago, at the age of 33 had a massive burn out. But you cant teach an old dog new tricks, after taking a few weeks off.... & away he went again. You're either a worker, or not.

Maybe I'm too traditional though! Maybe I overly respect & appreciate what my husband does for us. Him dealing with quite a few ignorant & rude people all day long, taking orders from above (so to speak) leaving the house when it's dark, coming home dark. Just to pay the mortgage & feed his family. Geez, tis a disgrace really that he can't be in two places at once, wouldn't you agree?

CaraMay

I'm sure he could pay the mortgage and see his kids if he chose to. It's not about being traditional - kids need their fathers.

mashedbanana

I heard a fella say something similar to that a few years ago, when my husband got his burn out. Now I must admit, my fella was doing nothing short of 'illegal' hours really. We were saving for something at the time, we hadn't long moved into the house.

Anyway, some neanderthal, came along and told me, that '(name) was ony working the hours he's working, cos he wants too'

Now, the same fella wouldn't work IF you paid him. Is a sponge, truth be told.
I explained that we had a hefty mortgage (which we since have greatly decreased), cars to pay for, kids, social life for us & the kids, and general day to day stuff. This fella glared back at me! He didn't have a car, mortgage, anything to pay for. So couldn't make the connection between 'having to provide' & 'pick & choose his hours'. There are people out there, that will never unerstand that a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do! and it still boils down to whether a wife is capable or not. I also feel that no one should have to apologise for having 'stuff', or being 'materialistic'. We have what we have, cos we worked hard for it. My oh has now managed to lessen his hours from back then, but still does mad mad hours. Sometimes it's not a matter of choice, when things have to be paid for.

strandroad

mashedbanana wrote: »

Yerra, it isn't that either. The man is out providing for his family, plenty of money coming in. Her redundancy put them in the black and out of the red. It was all hunkie dorey, till the wife got bored, as she has now no job. Thats the long & the short of it.

'I want you out working love, but at home too, holding my hand'
'Go ahead, get your masters, but college is effecting our dinner plans & general family life'

That's just a lot of projection. We don't know how long ago OP started working and studying so much, it may be a major change just like his wife's redundancy. He's not likely to work less once he gets the job either.

mashedbanana wrote: »

Come on like...! Kids are very resiliant, and we should give them more credit! and I'm not talking about phone credit! lol.

Perhaps his wife does't want their kids to be resilient and "parked" during his busy period.

He should probably defer the degree for now to have more family time and she should look for a job, part time maybe if his work investment is indeed worth it for the family.

nikkibikki

There is more to life than money and all it can provide. Life itself for one. My husband and I are far from financially rich but we are rich in other ways which we believe are a thousand times more important. My husband had a heart scare last year, he was just 30 at the time, it turned out to be something minor enough but could have been fatal. He has no lasting issues thank god. Moral of the story is, I would have preferred to be pi$$ poor than to loose him or one of our kids.

Czarcasm

mashedbanana wrote: »

Yerra, it isn't that either. The man is out providing for his family, plenty of money coming in. Her redundancy put them in the black and out of the red. It was all hunkie dorey, till the wife got bored, as she has now no job. Thats the long & the short of it.

I don't know if it IS all that's going on though MB, I mean, all we're getting here (and one of the long standing issues I've had with RI and PI in general) is we only get a very one sided perspective in the OP. There could be numerous other factors that the OP is missing out on. I know from my own experience that it wasn't just boredom on my wife's part, but rather the fact that first and foremost she loved me, and I'd become like a different person from the guy she met and fell in love with; two- that she worried about me pushing myself so hard and worried about my health and hated seeing me doing what I was doing to myself; three- the fact I was simply never there, and when I was there, I was only just "there", as in physically there, but my mind was always somewhere else- thinking about work, or projects, or future projections, etc. I literally had no "OFF" switch that I could allow myself some downtime.

'I want you out working love, but at home too, holding my hand'
'Go ahead, get your masters, but college is effecting our dinner plans & general family life'

I wouldn't be too sure that's what the OP's wife is saying. I think if the OP was actually willing to listen, he'd see there's probably a lot more going on that he isn't aware of, because he's closed himself off into just thinking about what he wants FOR his wife, instead of listening to what SHE actually wants, and allowing her to feel like she too has a valid input in their relationship and where their future is going, as a couple, and much as we all loathe passenger drivers, a marriage is the one occasion where you HAVE to take account of the other person, sit back a bit in the driving seat, and compromise maybe to let them work the pedals while you work the steering wheel. The better coordinated you both become, the better the driving experience for both parties involved!

(It's an analogy people, I don't seriously recommend anyone actually try doing this in an actual car, probably a better analogy is rally drivers- one drives the car while the other navigates, or golf- even Rory McIlroy wouldn't be where he is today without his caddy!).

The point I'm trying to make (albeit very badly), is that for a long time- I DIDN'T listen to what my wife was trying to tell me, in fact we had blazing rows over it because of my misinterpretation of her opinion as being immature and not seeing what I was trying to do. I wasn't willing to listen to being told (as I saw it) that I wasn't doing good enough or that I was failing in some area. As far as I was concerned I was doing my best, and I could work on the "other stuff" (my marriage, which was fast disappearing down the shìtter tbh) "later, when I had time!". There was never going to BE a right time if I'm honest, if I'd kept going the way I was going, when I look back on it now.

Come on like...! Kids are very resiliant, and we should give them more credit! and I'm not talking about phone credit! lol.

On this I totally agree, but it depends too where they get it from, say my child now is eight, and he'll get up in the morning, shower and dress himself and make his own breakfast. Sometimes if he's feeling particularly generous he'll fill the coffee maker and stick it on for me while I'm in the shower! :pac:

But then I have a friend who has an able bodied fit and healthy 15 year old boy who she literally has to prise out of the bed in the morning and actually help him to dress himself, then she has to go make his breakfast, and breakfast for the other three children, and I mean she mentioned this little nugget as if it was the most normal thing in the world! I mean, she wants to do it, and for me it was just like "No. Just, no!".

I mean I remember when I was 16 and I wanted to use the home phone to call a cab to go into town. My father just basically said "what's wrong with those things hanging out of your àrse? If you want to call a cab, you can walk into town there and go buy your own phone!". So that's exactly what I did- walked into town and produced my fake ID to get a contract mobile phone.

The irony of course being that I hated walking at the time because I was always in excruciating pain with what I was unaware back then was a click hip that hadn't been detected at birth, and my parents were convinced I was just putting on a limp to get attention (I've had steel pins put in at 22 to try and correct the issue but I still have to get around with the use of a crutch for now as doctors say at 36 I'm still far too young for a full hip replacement).

The only concern that I would have (as a previous poster said) is for the mans health. My dad, from working massive hours all over Europe, suffered his first heart attack at 42. Well, that was the end of that for him. My husband, 3 years ago, at the age of 33 had a massive burn out. But you cant teach an old dog new tricks, after taking a few weeks off.... & away he went again. You're either a worker, or not.

Well really I'd see it more as finding a balance between work and personal life. My own father died of a sudden massive heart attack at 62 while out walking his dog, this was only a couple of years after he'd had a quad bypass op already, and when I called him two weeks later to see how he was getting on after he'd the quad bypass done, his exact reply was "I'm out picking stones in the garden if you want to come up and join me?", there weren't enough facepalms in the world for that one!

This is a man who had worked for a company for 30 years before he set up his own business and became self employed. It was also one of the things I thought about when I had the heart attack and why I was also so acutely aware of the symptoms. I decided I wasn't going to allow what happened to my old man happen to me. I saw how he couldn't take his accumulation of wealth with him. It wasn't of much use to any of his children either, I had no desire for what was left to me by his estate.

Maybe I'm too traditional though! Maybe I overly respect & appreciate what my husband does for us. Him dealing with quite a few ignorant & rude people all day long, taking orders from above (so to speak) leaving the house when it's dark, coming home dark. Just to pay the mortgage & feed his family. Geez, tis a disgrace really that he can't be in two places at once, wouldn't you agree?

I wouldn't think you were "too traditional" MB, different strokes for different folks and all that, and that's why I said to the OP that only he and his wife would be able to decide what works for them, because right now, it isn't working. There needs to be a bit of give and take on both sides, and a whole hell of a lot of listening, by both the OP and his wife.

People often like to label myself as a "traditionalist, conservative, old fashioned", etc based on how they view the dynamics of mind and my wife's relationship, but they're quite surprised then when they learn that BOTH my parents were works parents before it became trendy in the 90's, my father was an engineer, my mother was a teacher (I think she qualified as a teacher first, then qualified as a nurse and put her brothers and her sister through teacher training college, then had to give up nursing when she got married, and so went back to teaching, which she retired from a couple of years back).

While they were working, we were all fobbed off on a neighbour who, to be fair to her, was nothing short of incredible, so generous with what little she had, wouldn't take a penny for minding us (six boys and one girl) and taught us all the things our parents should have taught us.

I truly believe that had it not been for her though, I would've ended up as the kind of person that was only interested in what road frontage a girl had, than what she was like as a person. I also didn't want someone else taking responsibility for and raising any children that I and my wife would choose to have.

Carson10

You need to stop living your life based around the future. LIVE now.

mashedbanana

nikkibikki wrote: »

There is more to life than money and all it can provide. Life itself for one. My husband and I are far from financially rich but we are rich in other ways which we believe are a thousand times more important. My husband had a heart scare last year, he was just 30 at the time, it turned out to be something minor enough but could have been fatal. He has no lasting issues thank god. Moral of the story is, I would have preferred to be pi$$ poor than to loose him or one of our kids.

I abolutely agree with you, there most certainly is more to life then money.

Big Bag of Chips

A friend of mine went back to college to do a degree course. It was 4 years part time. They have 2 small kids.

While his wife knew the reasons for doing the degree, it didn't mean that things were less hard on her. She was effectively a single mother for 4 years.

Now that he has finished he swears you can do 2 out of 3: family, work, study. But you cannot do all 3. Something gets the raw end of the deal, and it's usually family.

You need to talk to your wife. You're frustrated with the situation, not her.. she's frustrated with the situation not you. Once she knows there's an end date in sight it makes it easier. It doesn't make it 'easy', but it does make it easier.