[dontknowwhatdo]

Thank you to everyone who took the time to reply (especially @pdfernhout). There is a lot of food for thought here. You are right that it is many life experiences which has shaped my wife into the person she is now, and I am partly to blame.

We had a long chat about this today because I was losing my mind and I couldn't just take it any more. It got a bit heated sometimes but we are determined to resolve this. I'm having to face up to my own role in making her the person she is so that is hard.

But what we both realise is that we are both good people, but perhaps misguided. As life progresses, there seem to be more and more things which I regret and it is a constant battle to stay positive and look forward to the next day.

I was very ambitious when I was young. My wife allowed her career to take a backseat so she could look after the kids. I think I was so immersed in my career and trying to provide for my family that I neglected to see the stress she was under raising two kids largely by herself. I mistakenly thought that if I worked hard to provide financial security for my family it would matter a lot. I now realise that was not enough. My career has been okay-ish so far but not exactly the kind of resounding success I had dreamt of. I'm beginning to think that ambition is a curse as it is all consuming. And I also feel bad that I don't have a lot to show for all the time I spent working.

My parents weren't exactly great role models for a happy marriage. I somehow, very naively, assumed that a marriage would work if both partners had the best of intentions. Today has been exhausting but I still have hope that we will work this out.

I do believe the whole family will be better of "with" and I just need to find a way to make it work.

[ncarroll]

That all sounds very promising. Congratulations to you for having the courage to engage so honestly. That is a great and sustaining gift to a marriage.

Regret is a theme that everyone has to come to terms with at a certain point in life, don't you think? I'm finding it gets easier to have compassion with young-me, the good person who struggled and wanted and dreamed. Look how hard they worked. Look how young and earnest that person is and how little they really know and how much they honestly believe that more struggle, more desire and more dreams are going to take them where they want to go.

Today, I know better but that is only because in the past I didn't. Today, I am free to be different than I was back then -- I am even free to be different than I was yesterday. This is something important I know now.

I wish you and your wife all the goodness that comes to a marriage on the other side of your current struggle.

[dontknowwhatdo]

Thank you. In so far as my past actions have only largely affected me I am able to deal with regret stoically. It is much harder to come to terms with it when the regret is for actions which have affected others.

[ncarroll]

I see what you mean, I think. What I was trying to express was a slight change in perspective. What if you thought of past actions as having been done-by instead of having been done-to. That way you can throw them all in one pot and begin by forgiving the do-er for having done-to. It is admirable that you accept responsibility for those of your actions which negatively affected others. To put those regrets behind you, the affected person must forgive you too. And you must let them do that. I find that to be the hardest part, but you seem to be a courageous chap and I believe you can do it.

[dontknowwhatdo]

Actually, that helps I think, thank you!

[manwe150]

> and charging you a bunch of money as essentially a paid friend

A friend of mine is a therapist, and through discussions with him about his job, I'm not sure anymore this is quite accurate. A friend may have other agendas, like maintaining their own image and status, or may unintentionally gossip, or just may not be appropriate to cover some subjects with. I now view a therapist as someone I'd pay to actually be outside of my circle of friends, as someone trusted in a completely different way to discuss questions and help process. Or perhaps, metaphorically, like having CI to test and a rubber duck to debug, before you deploy something to production.

I also appreciated reading your story, your determination to work together, and the advice from this HN crowd. I hope and pray it goes better for all involved.

[pdfernhout]

You're welcome. Glad to hear you and your wife are talking about improving the situation for everyone. That shows bravery and dedication -- and also some love by both of you.

Something funny/ironic but all too often true about marriage -- and why everyone needs to work at it: "Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person" https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/why-you-wi... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCS6t6NUAGQ "We need to swap the Romantic view for a tragic (and at points comedic) awareness that every human will frustrate, anger, annoy, madden and disappoint us — and we will (without any malice) do the same to them. There can be no end to our sense of emptiness and incompleteness. But none of this is unusual or grounds for divorce. Choosing whom to commit ourselves to is merely a case of identifying which particular variety of suffering we would most like to sacrifice ourselves for. This philosophy of pessimism offers a solution to a lot of distress and agitation around marriage. It might sound odd, but pessimism relieves the excessive imaginative pressure that our romantic culture places upon marriage. The failure of one particular partner to save us from our grief and melancholy is not an argument against that person and no sign that a union deserves to fail or be upgraded. The person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every taste (he or she doesn’t exist), but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently — the person who is good at disagreement. Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate differences with generosity that is the true marker of the “not overly wrong” person. Compatibility is an achievement of love; it must not be its precondition."

Another issue especially for raising kids is changing male/female social expectations in the last few decades. And there is also the socially isolating infrastructure we've build around ourselves (especially suburbs). That infrastructure makes it harder to be part of a face-to-face community as you have indicated has been a challenge for both yourself and your wife. See for example: "How our housing choices make adult friendships more difficult" https://www.vox.com/2015/10/28/9622920/housing-adult-friends...

So even if our parents were perfect role models for a happy marriage, what worked for them may not work for us given different social and physical circumstances a generation later.

And social isolation (in a face-to-face sense) caused by many modern trends (even before the pandemic) is a key aspect of stress and depression that can make everything else harder because it puts too much pressure on a marriage to be everything where in the past there were multiple sources of social support

See for example: "Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions" by Johann Hari. https://thelostconnections.com/ From the last chapter of the book: "You aren’t a machine with broken parts. You are an animal whose needs are not being met. You need to have a community. You need to have meaningful values, not the junk values you’ve been pumped full of all your life, telling you happiness comes through money and buying objects. You need to have meaningful work. You need the natural world. You need to feel you are respected. You need a secure future. You need connections to all these things. You need to release any shame you might feel for having been mistreated."

It's a long haul, but an "upward spiral" for marriage and also personal life is possible and is a worthwhile accomplishment to look back on someday. Finding just the right amount of self-reflection (not too little to be reckless, not too much to be paralyzed) can also be part of that challenge. Best of luck on your continuing journey to building a better life for yourself and everyone you care about around you.

[dontknowwhatdo]

Yes, I have felt this way too for a long time, but this articulates it well. Thank you to you and @ncaroll for persisting with this conversation. I'll make sure I educate my children on this aspect so they don't have unrealistic expectations.