Dear Dave:

You shared that when you met the woman you married, you were in your early 20s, on a lads holiday in Spain, but otherwise, living at home with your parents. During the holiday, you were “consumed with a wave of emotions“, and immediately called your best friend and told him: “I’d met the woman I am going to marry“. You moved in with her, separated briefly because you were not experienced living independently, and “her expectations regarding things in the house and bills etc.” burdened you. The two of you got back together, you proposed 6 months later, very happy, and had 2 children within 3 years of being married. Following the 2nd child, the two of you were “starting to rediscover our initial relationship“, but then you had a 3rd, unexpected child,  eight years after the second.

Currently, you have 2 pre-teens and a 3 year-old, and the relationship with your wife is unhappy and very limited: “She just seems cold towards me and distant… our relationship is very much about the children and how we feel about each other never seems to be addressed… and she confirmed my worst fear that she has felt we are just too different but she feels trapped. She said this because her feelings are based on keeping our family together and being with me feels better than being without me, although when together she doesn’t actually feel happy“.

“My dad works full time and provides for the home and my mum works part time.. they don’t go out or have a social circle and my dad from the second he gets up just sits in the same chair day in day out and watches TV whilst living a ‘yes dear’ life… she often compares me to my father which I find infuriating“-

– you find the comparison infuriating, I gather, because you hate the idea of being like your father. So, you made sure you were different from him: he sits in the same chair day in and day out, but you “like to party and go out with friends and work colleagues, often coming home later than agreed“. He is a “yes dear” kind of man, but you are not: you return home from partying later than you agreed to, and you express to her “sarcasm and negativity“.

“A lot of the time I feel a deep seeded sadness within me that I cannot figure out where it’s from“- is your sadness about watching your father being a “yes dear” kind of a man, feeling sorry for him, wishing he was a sometimes No Dear kind of man, his own man?

I will wait for your response to what I wrote here, and if you do respond, I will be glad to reply further.

anita