EDIT: I’ve been terribly unclear. We both know she needs counseling. How do I find a counselor? I have never in life even started to search. Also, I’m almost certain our insurance won’t cover it. Got so solid advice on a DIY plan. Anyone add to that?
Said I’d never date a jealous woman, married her anyway, eyes wide open. Only real issue, everything else about our relationship outweighs it. But fuck me, it’s like a drunk beating his wife and crying he didn’t mean to, won’t ever do it again. I can be minding my own business and take an ass beating at any moment.
I cannot overstate how bad this is. My PC is in the living room on a 40" TV. Browser pics automatically expand (Imagus extension). I have to be careful to not touch anything with a pretty woman in it. If I switch screens while she’s looking, I’m guilty of hiding something.
She goes through my phone, I find apps I never opened. She’s checking FB, which I don’t touch, only Messenger for Marketplace replies. She’s checking my email.
Monster fight last night where she produced a phone pic of my screen with a woman’s name and asked why I replied. I didn’t. My email address was shown as which account I would be replying from. Whole screen shot: woman’s name and my email. Searched all: $womans_name right in front of her. Nada.
Had a recruiter almost score me a sweet job. Wife hated her guts because she’s cute and sounded perky. Y’all. The recruiter was in NYC, we’re in NW Florida.
I have to lock my PC to take a shit. She would birth live kittens if she saw this post, thinks you people are personal friends, like FB. “These people are strangers, don’t even know what fucking country they live in.”
She’s asked our friends if that’s normal. Now I look like a controlling asshole who’s hiding something. I have never done this with another partner and have told her that many times.
We’ve been through this shit three dozen times, and every, single, fucking, time I’ve proved to her what was up, nothing, she’s crying and apologizing, rinse and repeat.
We’re 54 BTW, not exactly teenagers.
Anyway, she comes to me today and says she might have a problem and what should she do about it. Fuck I know! Told her to stay the fuck away from me the rest of the day, don’t even want to look at her.
How would you reply?
Don’t divorce. Yet. Bugs me when people jump right to that. But…
Separate. Get your own little place if you can, give her, say, six months, to get professional help, and tell her if she doesn’t, or if she does and doesn’t take it seriously, it’s over, for good, no takebacksies.
Or, if you don’t want to be the one to leave, tell her to get out and report back in six months. Either way, it’s her job to seek out help, not yours, so don’t let her dump her shit on you to figure out for her.
Nothing outweighs this. I don’t give a fuck what you say, brother. I was there and I know how this ends if you just grin and bear it.
People tell other people on the internet to get a divorce because by the time you are asking the internet about your problems, you should get a divorce
Therapy would be a good first step.
That’s what she’s aiming for, but I have no clue what to tell her about specifics. We’re in America, on Obamacare, probably losing it next year.
Then improvise.
Therapy is hugely valuable where you can get it, but the sessions don’t last very long. It’s short, and expensive, and largely structured on getting you work on stuff outside it. Even if you’re rich, it’s limited.
So make your own therapy on top of it.
Make plans with her to address the jealousy when it pops up, not as aftermath. Have a framework!
Besides that, have deep, deep talks about it. Not “cry and make up,” talks, but planned and scheduled, deeply prodding, uncomfortable ones when you both are calm and rested and mutually agree to discuss these uncomfortable topics, about what makes her mad, and why, what the history is. And it has to be mutual, including talking about stuff you’re uncomfortable with too.
Where I’m coming from is my mistakes: therapy alone will not solve your problems. It points you the right way with a view and expertise you do not have, but you have to work at it.
And the “red flag” is if she doesn’t want treatment or these planned solutions. That’s a problem. You can’t make someone get better, they have to want it.
The book „Feeling Great“ by David Burns is a good first-order approximation of therapy. It has lots of „exercises“, too, which I recommend doing (both on cases from the book, and then later on yourself).
What differs David‘s approach from most other therapists is that he sort of weaponizes your own internal resistance against change against you. He makes you write down the POSITIVES of your pathological behavior (and trains you to notice them); and then asks „well why would you want to change if there are so many benefits“?
This works wonders to getting people to say „ok I see that but I am really suffering please help me change“.
I found it helpful, though be aware that I had therapy in the past so I kinda know my way around my own feelings and what usually happens in a therapy.
That is to say, this book does not replace therapy.
Therapy. She needs it bad. She desperately needs to get that jealousy under control
I had a girlfriend that was almost like that, she’d always accuse me of hiding something if I didn’t want to show her my phone. She asked “who is she?” for half of my contact list. I told her she was being toxic, she acknowledged and got slightly better with time, but one time I got a long text message from an ex while she had an old tablet of mine, which had a synced telegram account. I deleted the message without viewing it, but she came to me asking if I was talking to my ex.
It’s weird how we can put up with this kind of shit for years. I lasted 5 with her.
“How can I help you?”
She’s come to you for help. Ask her how you can.
If she has no idea, offer to help her find a professional who can help her.
First two wives did that!
Do you just love weddings? Going for a high score?
Don’t. Marry. Crazy.
You’ve done it three times now. Maybe park the old ring finger for a while, like forever. This is the kind of distrust that should sink a relationship before it gets to the “let’s move in together” level.
She’s crazy suspicious because she knows she’s your third wife. And whatever fucked history shes got, too.
She’s probably coming off previous relationships with lying cheating bastards, so consider that. And therapy.
I have a friend like that (not exact same situation but has been through the ringer several times now, with even more kids) and the first time I tried hard to warn him, to slow him down, but they had a baby on the way and he ‘wanted to do the right thing’. Which is noble and all, but that bitch was lazy as shit and crazy as hell. I tried to talk him into at least getting a prenup. Now she sits on her ass all day and spends the child support on her own bullshit, kept the home and the car too. Phones, clothes, shoes, makeup, hair done all the time, you know, the ‘important shit’.
Swore up and down that he wouldn’t do it again. Take it slow, just getting laid and not getting serious. The idiot was tied again after, shit, a year and a half? Maybe less than that. That shit went up in smoke after about the same amount of time too. Though she was at least not certified crazy, and had her own job. Still had a baby though so hey tack on child support check #2.
Now, a couple years later, I don’t think he’s married her yet, but they do, again, have a baby on the way. I told him he needs to start stocking up on condoms all over the damn house, but at this point taking him to the vet and getting him snipped is really the best course of action. Baby is due really soon actually. I haven’t met #3 yet, so no judgement yet.
He’s got issues, and he admits that, and I know that he is taking his fair share of the blame, but damn man you need to stop falling for girls that wear flashing red warning signs, and really needs to jerk it, alone, before making relationship decisions. He’s actually drowning in debt because he loves the pussy. My dumbass is drowning in debt trying to save him, and I’m not even getting any.
So yeah, fucking a. Don’t marry crazy. Fuck crazy, with a condom that you brought and you put on yourself, but damn guys like this, it’s like watching a pileup on the highway during winter, and there’s black ice all over the fucking road, and you’re at the side of the road with flares trying to warn people, and they just ignore you and smash into the back of the big rig at 90. “how could this happen?” and it’s just like, ugh.
You might not like it, but this is what peak evolutionary fitness looks like
Divorce.
You’re in an abusive relationship. You need to get out, now.
everything else about our relationship outweighs it
This ain’t my first rodeo. I know what I signed up for, never expected it to get better on this front. But she’s finally asking for help and I don’t know where to point her.
And yes, I’ve very pointedly let her know this is abuse.
Therapy.
Friend, I understand. I’m older than you, and I’m having my (belated) 25th anniversary this weekend. I’ve dealt with a lot of shit over the years including chronic depression and hoarding.
What you’re going through isn’t going to change. It isn’t going to improve. You csn try counselling and there’s a chance that it’ll help, but I don’t honestly see a solution.
I would consider couples counseling and your individual, separate therapists apart from the couples counselor, if you can afford it. You told us the issue but we don’t know what’s available unless we are in your area. Do a search that fits appropriate criteria.
I agree.
My wife will show me pictures of hot women to get my opinion and wants to discuss which video game chick is hotter. She helps make my third person female characters so they look hotter since she has a better eye than I do for art.
First two wives did that! They’d also point out hot chicks in crowds. :)
Ive only had the one but love it. Honestly she has a better eye than I.
Hey, it sounds like your wife has a deep seated fear of… what, I don’t know, but it follows too many patterns to be a coincidence. You need to get her professional help, like extensive therapy and some help from a psychiatrist.
Welcome to Attachment Theory 101. It should be required learning for everyone. Remember, just because it’s divided up doesn’t mean people are exclusively this.
3 attachment styles.
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Secure (about half of people).
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Avoidant (about 1/4)
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Anxious (about 1/4)
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Disorganized (very small)
Get to a couples counselor based on the importance of the relationship before this becomes a bigger problem is the real advice.
Because at best it sounds like anxious, at worst it’s disorganized. Only avoidant is next to impossible to work with. Good luck
Speaking as a psychotherapist with an avoidant attachment style, I’d disagree.
It all comes down to finding the fear and putting it in context. The process of developing an external perspective on the fear can take a while of course.
Fundamentally, a good therapist can work with any of those styles.
Oh. I guess I kind of looked at it from my anxious viewpoint rather than any other.
My success rate has been low
That’s fair.
I guess there’s a difference between successful relationships in and out of the therapy room. A big factor being how the two attachment styles interact!
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I told my ex something like,“We can never know exactly what is going on in someone else’s mind. And I, along with everyone else, have the right to privacy of my own thoughts.” Something along those lines. It was a couple of decades ago, but it helped for a few months.
Get thee to a therapist. Maybe a couple therapist and she needs an individual therapist for sure to work through this. Along the way if both of you are interested I recommend Mating in Captivity by Ester Perel. Its focus is on maintaining erotic tension and sexual chemistry during long term relationships. However, there is a huge section about the “Other” as part of this. The “Other” will be anyone else either of you might be attracted to outside your relationships. There will always be a “threat” of this other but it should be used to help see each other from a strangers perspective. Its fascinating and might help her reframe other women not as threats but as something that can help your relatioinship.
Just be aware that it’s not something you can argue your way out of, or prove to her once and for all. The problem is emotional, not logical.
She’s feeling unstable, anxious, possibly afraid. Maybe you’re causing her to feel that way without realizing it, maybe something external is making her feel that way and she’s projecting that onto you without realizing that’s what she’s doing, maybe it’s just baggage from past relationships.
Ultimately the source doesn’t matter too much. You can’t “win” the argument, and any approach that comes from trying to win, or prove yourself right, will only make things worse. It’s a cry for attention. And remember, her feelings are valid even if the suspicion she’s projecting onto you is not. You can’t argue her out of her feelings. Trying to invalidate her feelings will make things worse between you.
If you want to maintain this relationship, you need to set some practical boundaries that you can both live with, and then stick to those boundaries because consistency will help you both feel more stable. Have that conversation when you’re both calm, not when either of you is feeling upset.
And then you and your wife need to address the emotional issues. Maybe that’s just the two of you making time to sit down and talk about what she’s feeling and why. Maybe it’s actual therapy. The fact that she’s acknowledging that she has a problem is a good sign. Self-reflection on her part is the key. When the moment of crisis comes, when she’s starting to get upset, that’s when you need to try to work past whatever she’s latched onto in the moment and try to address the feeling itself. Ask her to stop for a moment and breathe. Ask her to try to describe what she’s feeling, specifically, and then why that feeling at that moment. Listen to what she says. Remember, you’re not trying to win an argument, you’re trying to understand her feeling, and more importantly you’re trying to help her understand herself.
Also, this is very important - at some point when you try to work through this with her, she should have some concern for how she’s made you feel. It might not happen right away, you should be patient, but if it never happens then there’s really no balance and it puts you in the position of doing all the emotional labor of addressing her feelings with no reciprocation. That’s not a relationship.
Look at cute guys together.
