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.

Divorce always remains an option.

Every parent has a diminished social life when they have young children. Parents prioritise their family.

You lose nothing by taking up your old hobbies and meeting friends. Be genuinely open minded about things improving.
Think about your own needs and persue them.

Your wife seems supportive (now that you have alerted her) that you need more time to focus on yourself.

You might be surprised that the grass doesn't look so green on the other side of the fence. You might rekindle happiness with your wife. If you do, it will be beneficial for you all.

You didn't end your marriage when she gave you an ultimatum. That was your choice although obviously coerced. There is no way to know if your life would have been happier/less pressured with only two children but it's clear you have lots of resentment. You can leave a relationship at any time but I think you should be doing so because you're not happy now, rather than to punish your wife for something she said years ago. Holding onto resentment won't ever make you happy, get rid of that and plan your future.

Totally clear this is the script op is trotting out now because he's had his head turned and he's scrabbling around to blame it all on his wife. Can't believe more posters haven't spotted it

I hope the third kid doesn’t feel like a burden. I think they would know something is up. Even just how you said you were uncomfortable at the social event but thought you hid your feelings…this is enough to indicate, there would be many times unmasked, where the discontent was apparent.

I know my dad was similar with me. I was the unwanted third kid, the kid who held him back, the one who wasn’t like her older siblings and I was always experiencing his impatience. He clearly was desperately waiting for me to grow up. So I didn’t get the childhood my siblings did. I was the one to blame for having existed and ruining his life.

I guess you feel to blame your wife though. Maybe the blame game should not be played here at all. If you don’t approach this carefully without anger or resentment, you may end up getting your wish still (divorcing your wife) but you are also putting your children (although adults), in the middle.

Good luck.

100% you got me, you aren't at all coloured by experience or biased and all I really wanted to do with my limited free time is cheat on my (selfless, doing it for the family, issuer of well reasoned demands) wife with another woman. Must be why I am contemplating just handing over the vast majority of my assets as well, I am desperate to jump from one relationship straight into another.

I'll go round in circles for eternity with some of the posters on here, but I can appreciate their arguments at least even if I don't agree with them. People who assume "there is always a woman" or that men are all unfaithful dogs though, no reasoning with that.

I think the part of the script that is most relevant to you is that you tell yourself that you need to sacrifice your family to save yourself. Or else, what good would you be to your family..... but you're going to fuck off.

You are an oxy moron.

I really hope you aren't raising sons.

What had happened prior to this ultimatum and your wife making plans to leave? I understand that a 3rd child may have been a condition of her staying, but what else was going on?

Was there a pregnancy loss?

@Velvian
What a crass and insensitive question. So crass and insensitive I don't want to quote it.

Disgusting

Apologies for such a bald question. I was wondering if there was something more going on for the OP's wife at the time of this 'ultimatum' . The more OP posts, the more I think there is some context missing.

For whatever reason, the OP has no care whatsoever for his wife and I think any sympathetic context has been erased.

@Velvian I wonder, and I'm not saying this is the case, it's just wondering, if whether his wife was already pregnant and OP wanted her to end the pregnancy, and so the ultimatum was more "I'm keeping the baby and you can either stay or leave" as opposed to "start having unprotected sex with me until I conceive or I'm leaving".

I wonder how long it took them to conceive the third time, as from the sounds of it, it only took literally one go?

There's a lot of 'just wondering' going on here and some quite unpleasant assumptions being made.

Anything to absolve the woman of bad behaviour, because she can't possibly have done anything wrong or unjustified. 🙄

This is such a personal question we have utterly no right to know. It's got nothing to do with any of us.

Edited to add

What the OP feels for his wife he feels for his wife, he's had years to wonder about her personal part to play in this, he knows her way better than any of us. It's by the by, the general consensus here is that he should leave and he and his wife find happiness elsewhere.

@whiningshinji "People who assume "there is always a woman" or that men are all unfaithful dogs though, no reasoning with that."

There's a saying in medicine: when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. In other words, first suspect the more common diagnosis, not a rare one.

Experience with men in real life and on forums such as Mumsnet means that a lot of women know exactly what the Script sounds like, and that the Script is pretty much always trotted out because the bloke has his eye on someone else. It's unusual for men to leave a marriage unless it's for another woman, whereas women often leave because they're tired of being used, abused, or ignored.

So when a man comes along talking about his wife as though she doesn't exist as a human with her own thoughts and feelings, AND ludicrously blames her for his own decisions, AND really seems to want validation from not just men but also women that he's justified in his desire to leave the marriage - well, that looks bang-on like the Script, and we're going to suspect that the bloke is busily dehumanising and demonising his wife because he wants to fuck another woman or he's already fucking her.

You may be the rare zebra, OP, but I think more likely you're not being honest with yourself, let alone us, about why you really want to leave your wife. Self-deception and splitting are common psychological mechanisms that humans use to escape seeing what they're really doing. Otherwise they will feel cognitive dissonance, which comes when they do something they know is immoral. Cognitive dissonance is mentally painful. So it's a lot nicer for the person doing something immoral if he manages to twist history/the narrative so that someone else (his spouse in this case) magically becomes responsible for his choice to act immorally.

And OP, you have MAJOR form for blaming your wife for your choices. We've seen it right here in this thread. I also don't see any self-reflectiveness in anything you've said. So yes, I think you are more likely a horse, not a zebra. At a minimum, you are not being honest with us. Or probably yourself.

We also see on here all the time women considering issuing ultimatums to male partners. I often think "why would you treat a partner like that?"

Coercive control is another horse, by the way.

Experience with men in real life and on forums such as Mumsnet means that a lot of women know exactly what the Script sounds like, and that the Script is pretty much always trotted out because the bloke has his eye on someone else. It's unusual for men to leave a marriage unless it's for another woman, whereas women often leave because they're tired of being used, abused, or ignored.

Nah this is just a cliche. It's always trotted out on here but it bears no relation to what I've seen in real life. Most men who've ended relationships that I know have done so because they're not ready to settle down and want to travel or focus on their career. Actually the same is true for many of the women I know who've ended relationships. There usually isn't another woman or another man waiting in the wings.

MN loves to believe that men are like this, women are like that and make sweeping generalisations about the sexes, and then ignore any empirical evidence to the contrary.

Actually, that's a good point. Most of the break ups I've seen in real life or on here are about
A. Money
B. Kids
C. "The load".

What OP sees as an "ultimatum" is that his wife wanted another child and she was prepared to leave the relationship if he would not agree.

What a lot of people here who are hung up on the word "ultimatum" (OP's word) haven't realized: what OP's wife wants from life is every single bit as important as what OP wants.

OP's wife has only one life to live, and no, she wasn't prepared to sacrifice what she dearly wanted for how OP wanted to live his life or how he thought she should live her life.

She behaved honestly and openly. She didn't pregnant on purpose to trap him. She gave him the choice: either you do this with me or this marriage is not for me.

But like many PPs here, OP didn't/doesn't respect that his wife has her own life, thoughts, feelings, wants, autonomy. He thought the marriage should go the way he wanted, and he has lived for 17 years in a state of peevish rage that she disagreed.

I would say that OP generally does not respect his wife, and might have a low opinion of women in general: he recently sarcastically referred to his wife as the "issuer of well reasoned demands", meaning he sees himself as the logical calm one and she's a hysterical demanding silly bitch. In his eyes, she should have done as he told her, because he knows better.

The only thing OP is a victim of is (a) the patriarchy, and (b) his own passive (passive-aggressive) weak-willed self-pitying character. The patriarchy has told him that in marriage, he is the head of the house and final arbiter of marital decisions, simply because he's male. And because his wife did not agree with this model, OP labels (and implies to us) that his wife's decision to leave was crazy, ridiculous, unreasoned, irresponsible, and he's the victim of this maniac bitch. It's classical patriarchal thinking that allows him to completely ignore his wife's being and bitterly see himself as the victim.

By the way, one really striking thing about the patriarchy is how fucking self-pitying and bitter men are, how they see themselves as victims, how they are unable to see real victims, how they don't see how privileged and advantaged they are as men... and their bitterness is always directed at women, because women didn't/don't do what the guy wants/wanted. It's utterly pathetic and infantile and ludicrous, and over the centuries has caused SO much harm to women and children, and even men themselves.

Going onto point (b), OP has behaved in a deeply infantile way for 17 years, ridiculously seething with resentment at his wife and martyrishly hanging himself on the cross as he slogs away at a job he hates. Over those 17 years, he has had many options: to let his wife leave, not get his wife pregnant, find a better paying job, find a good job that he likes, ask his wife to improve her income earning, express to his wife that he wants a better work/life balance and could they brainstorm how they can make that happen. But he took none of those options.

I know you're a himpathizer @LameBorzoi but OP is not and has never been under coercive control from his wife. It definitely can happen to men but this is NOT the case here. I am sure of this because men (and women) who are under cocercive control don't talk like OP. They present as uncertain, self-doubting, fearful, and very anxious and confused. They have difficulty seeing that they're being controlled, and find the notion hard to accept when they're told it by bystanders. Deep down, they're afraid to accept it because they're scared of their controlling spouse.

OP has none of these markers. He's not being controlled, he just can't accept that his wife refused to be controlled by him. He's absolutely not a victim, and the people here feeling all sorry for him are NOT helping him.

OP should be encouraged to see a therapist so that he can gain honest perspective on that event from 17 years ago, see how he has been the architect of his present misery, and develop self-actualization. If he's lucky, he has another 20-30 years: he should live those without the bitterness and anger that has completely poisoned his life for 17 years already. But for therapy to help, he has to be very honest with himself.

I don't think he's there yet. And you and the other himpathizers aren't helping by pandering to his idiotic sense of victimhood.

You keep forgetting the children in this.

It's not just what one partner or another wants, there were two children involved at the time. Divorce and subsequent money issues and parental strife has a massive.impacy on children as well as the parents. In some cases it is better to stay for the children's sake. He chose that option at the time. Whether it was the right or wrong decision is by the by, the situation he is in is the important thing not what he should or shouldn't have done.

The script is bs, people do lots of things prior to a break up, there is so much in the "script" it would be bloody strange if one or two things didn't match, all the alphabet is in the dictionary. And while some men are slaves to their erections, others aren't, making assumptions that this dog bites therefore all dogs bite is just a syllogism.

As for "himpathise" and it's variant formats are often used as insults on MN usually when their argument doesn't stand up to scrutiny. It's pretty low grade discussion if you use insults to try and shut down discussion.

I think back when this ultimatum would have been made we weren't so positive about co-parenting. I remember there was a lot more negativity about broken homes and weekend dads at that time.

So liking and respecting my husband makes me a "himpathiser?" Or is it seeing men as individuals?

And no, OP's wife's decision wasn't "equal". It was deeply selfish. She put her own wants above the needs of her existing children.

If my husband did that to me, as much as I respect him now, that would be destroyed.

@LouiseMadetheBestBroccoliPasta that's quite the wall of text.

I agree that OP should get some therapy and it would certainly help himself if he got out of the victim mindset. I also wouldn't describe his wife's behaviour as coercive control based on what we've read, though none of us have anywhere near the full picture (and some of us will acknowledge that rather than trying to overlay "scripts" on to an individual situation).

However the whole bit about how his wife was free to pursue her own desires and those should have been respected is just waffle. Her desires and his desires conflicted. With no kids in the picture, those two things are equal; I've known many couples who have split over that, and it's sad but understandable all round. But once kids were in the picture, the stakes were raised; it wasn't just about what she wanted vs what he wanted, but about the preservation of the family unit. I don't think what she wanted was important enough, given what was at stake.

I do wonder what conversations they had about family size before her "ultimatum", I don't think we know that.

Fully agree with this.

Once you have children it's not just about your individual wants.