resentment over ultimatum

[whiningshinji]

Many years ago my wife gave me an ultimatum around having a third child. I adamantly didn't want a third, but to spare my other two children a broken home I acquiesced.

All the things I knew would happen happened. I got locked into a high pressure,high paying job I hated to cover heightened costs, free time totally evaporated and the friends I did have soon drifted due to me going from work to home and back again and never seeing anyone! My hobbies, modest though they were all withered due to lack of time/funds. My wife maintained some of her social contact and hobbies once all children were into school(less full on job with better annual leave - mine unsurprisingly was stingy and was absorbed by school holiday coverage)

The resentment I felt towards my wife over this never went away. Our third child is now approaching adulthood and all I can think about is leaving.

I got dragged to yet another (tiresome) couples thing by my wife. I normally don't drink, but I had a couple this time. We were talking to some people who were talking about how hard the baby and toddler years were and how they stopped at one, saying to us and another couple how did we manage three. I said it was a very hard slog - my wife chipped in by saying that we wouldn't change a thing.

Apparently at this point I scowled and muttered that I would. I wasn't even aware of doing this! Either way my wife is now getting an inkling that my mindset hasn't been changed by the years. He attitude has wrongly always been she was right and that I fell into line in the end and was content.

Now suddenly she is encouraging me to meet up with friends (who I haven't spoken to in 15 years) and mentioning finding a club for one of my old hobbies.
Bit late!

I am 80% sure I will leave, but this has thrown things because I was hoping to quietly arrange things and then cut the cord. I certainly wouldn't fight on the house or forking over half savings, the house is paid off and she can have it! Well worth it to break free of her.

I don't know what to do, I just feel the resentment has totally eaten away any affection I had over the years.

Yes I agree with what you’re saying but again, it was his choice to martyr himself this way. It’s a shame that things have worked out this way but I feel that taking accountability now will be very helpful for OP.

Just leave. Life’s too short. She basically used you to get what she wanted.

You sound like a sulky teenager looking at anyone or anything else to blame. Take some responsibility for your own life your own hobbies your own friends and stop being so self pitying.

Couldn’t agree with you more

I think it’s more a case of the sulky teenager being the DW who demanded an extra child and then used her DH as a beast of burden and pushing him beyond his limits. She put her happiness first and screw everyone else. That blase comment at the gathering, for example.

What goes around, comes around.

I just hope the OP stops being a doormat and sticks up for himself at long last. Fight for a good settlement.

I regard the so called ‘biological urge’ to reproduce talked about in this thread in the same contemptible vein as male adultery. Sensible people put these urges aside and think of the existing children who are invariably the victims of this type of shitshow.

Imagine brining up something that happened 17 years ago and being sulky about it now? It’s bizarre.

@Daisyrainbows Maybe the penny has finally dropped for the OP that his ‘D’W really doesn’t give a toss for him, and his role was solely to facilitate her preferred lifestyle.

Now the DC are flying the nest and it’s just the two of them. In his shoes, I’d have called her bluff and invited her to leave the matrimonial home to find some other glorified sperm donor.

The OP chose the wrong forum to seek a hearing though.

@Daisyrainbows your post under the thread " Why are so many women with crap partners" :

Daisyrainbows · 22/03/2025 11:52

fear of not seeing your small children every day
finances. Gender pay gap, cost of living
mental health issues/ depression in men as an excuse for abusive behaviour
groeing up in an abusive household and history repeating itself

So your top two reasons - think they may also be reasons why men may stay with crap partners?

Leave and make sure you get your financial fair share.

so many of the comments on here are ridiculously unfair. Resenting your wife does not mean that you do not love your third child. And imagine what all these posters would say if you were proposing to leave your wife when the children were young!!

i expect your wife is now looking forward to a pleasant retirement funded by your years of souls destroying work. Protect your financial future and go and live your life

No, wanting to sleep around isn’t the same. Women don’t go through years of invasive expensive ivf treatment just to scratch an itch. Men dont end up in therapy if they don’t get to sleep around. It might help you to see things differently if you understood this and I mean that respectfully.

@Happyinarcon Fair enough, but that sounds like its drifting into 'ends justify the means' territory. Regardless of what you think of me I hope this thread will stand as a testament that men dont always come around

@Velvian "I can't help wondering if OP has his sights set on pastures new and has come onto to MN to check the feasibility of his narrative for when he drops the bombshell on his wife and makes it all her fault."

Yes, his lack of accountability and sense of self-righteous victimhood does sound a bit like the Script. It could also just be the very common trope of men blaming the nearest woman when life doesn't go the way they thought it would. He thinks his wife should have sacrificed her desire for a third child for HIS view of happy families, and has been angry for 17 years that she wouldn't. He doesn't care - or respect - that her view of a happy family was one where there were 3 kids, because it doesn't fit with his view.

He's putting up a lot of economic arguments for why he didn't want a third child. But she no doubt did the maths too and clearly she would have been happy with somewhat less economic advantage in exchange for one more kid. Her wishes and decision-making were as valid as OP's.

The real problem here is OP's lack of accountability, towering self-pity, and desire to blame his wife for his own decisions. It's really immature, and corrosive to his own happiness. He also has some Main Character syndrome, where his wife is seen as a prop, rather than a person whose desires count as much as his.

@LouiseMadetheBestBroccoliPasta You missed out the solution in your reply there? If both person's wishes and decision making are equally valid, the answer is?

Yep, you got me I was running the Script for all these years. Its all a masterplan replete with gaslighting and rewriting history "Remember all those years when I said I didnt want another child, that I was unhappy, that I despised my job and felt I made my decision under duress.....well it was all a facade for.....something!"

My wife's economic mathematics must have been off, as earlier stated we came perilously close to going under about 18 months after the birth. Not sure she was happy with less economic advantage though - it wasnt me pushing to get a bigger house.

Leave then leave if you don’t have small children?

I don’t understand your motive for posting on here at all. Sympathy?!

The more you post the more self righteous you seem?

But she wasn't asking you to come around? She was perfectly prepared to leave if another child wasn't what you wanted. You've asked if you should leave, the answer in the most part has been yes. But what you are arguing about now is people suggesting that you take some accountability for a decision you made. Until you can take some responsibility and stop trying to put the blame elsewhere then I don't think you will ever be happy.

And the more you post, the nastier you come across. He can’t go back in time and leave her before they had a third child.

But he is entitled to say “I still resent you for feeling entitled to put me in that position.”
or “When you did that, the relationship was worse ever afterwards.”
”When you say ‘Oh we wouldn’t change a thing’ I have to swallow down the desire to publicly bring you up short.”

My advice to OP would be to develop a close relationship with his children separately from her. He should have lunch just him and the kids. He should phone the kids separate to her.

She has had no compunction at all about arranging her life to best suit her wishes. And he really should do the same - including leaving (or staying) on his own timescale.

But he was trying to preserve the family for the sake of the existing children, which she obviously didn’t give a shit about.

Anyone with two kids, who is willing to break up their home because she is broody for a third, is reprehensible and selfish.

Exactly.

That’s a bit gaslighty. The wife was prepared to leave if another child wasn’t what he’d accept. She knew he didn’t want it.

A bit like saying choosing to hand over one’s phone to a mugger rather than be assaulted is some kind of free choice.

It isn’t.

What a perverse logic.

I haven’t read the full thread, but the poor OP can’t win!

He gave in to his wife and they had a third child, he stayed with his family, worked hard at a job he didn’t like to provide them with the lifestyle his wife wanted, and spent his non-working time being with his family.

But that makes him weak willed and a doormat apparently! I think it shows a good deal of determination and resilience to stick with it for so long.

Women are entitled to leave relationships with men who wont give them the children they want.

That’s a very self indulgent view.

No one is owed or entitled to a particular number of children, much less to use the existing children as pawns to manipulate someone into having a child he doesn’t want.

But men who leave either to say no, or leave having stayed and provided are to be subject to whatever calumny your can muster?

He didn’t tell her to sling her hook then, but as we often say here- you can leave a relationship for any reason. Other than a negotiated divorce, what does he owe her that she doesn’t owe him? He certainly doesn’t have to go along with her narrative of events for one second longer. Whether you or OP’s wife like it or not, he still feels angry and resentful about that. If he is expected to be an adult taking responsibility for his choices, doesn’t that apply to her to?

I think that’s fair enough when you haven’t got kids, but when you already have two it’s incredibly selfish to break up your family and divorce the father of your children purely because he won’t agree to a third. In that situation she was only thinking of herself and not the kids she already had and her husband.