Awhile back I asked my sig other if she thought it was a good idea if my grandmother moved in and she would take care of her and i would work during the day and once i got home she was "off duty". She is monetarily comped for eveything she does. Obviously she agreed. Now everything that we argue about is directly link somehow to the situation "I" put us in. As if every choice was made alone. She blames absolutly everything on our situation. I cant come to her and say hey i need to talk bc it will always end up an argument about grandma somehow. She feels like ALL sbe has to do is take care of grandma because thats what she said she would do. From the very beginning she has been resentful and unwilling to bend and be cooperative. I have gone out of my way to have extra help come in to sit with gma so we can have time but that was a big argument because i didnt do it fast enough. Mind you this has been about a month....only a month. God willing i have a few more years to deal with this. I try and nothing is good enough. I feel alone and ready to give up on everything and everyone. I am beginning to hate her for not being strong and living with her choices. I understand where she is coming from....i understand where everyone (uncle, dad,wife,grandme) is coming from because evrything and everyones problems and concerns come to me. And all i can do is take it in and find a way to deal with it bc i have no one to talk to. I cant have a bad day and break down to my wife. I cant have a concern and talk to my wife. But i have to take in all her issues and add it to everytbing else ,add it to the fact that she blames it all on me and just deal with it. Mean while who do i talk to? Who can i blame stuff on? Who can i lean on on the days i feel weak?? Im just fed up that none of my efforts are enough for her. I AM SO TIRED!!!! One month and she is breaking down. Everything in this house is so separate. Nothing is WE. Its her and I. She washed her pillow cases but not the sheets or my pillow cases. She will wash her dishes but not our dishes. They may seem like trivial things and on a regular scale they are but when its coupled with all the other things.......it starts to paint a very deliberate and sad picture. I dont know if things can be fixed. She is so content in blaming me i feel like she would rather our marriage fail just so she can blame me and tell everyone its my fault. I dont know. Thanks for listening anyway. *sigh*
Now let me take the foot out of my mouth and do a RuPaul: "I got one thing to say: Keep granny and kick the snickety wife to the curb until she cools off.
No disrespect my man. ... Intense emotions definitely cloud our judgement at times, but handle your business. The ball is in your court.
I've also wondered if your wife is depressed (long standing) and the depression is manifesting as bad behavior.
Also Countrymouse's comments about her neighbors' reasons for splitting up may have bearing on your situation. Your pace may be exhausting her. You are busy, she is unhappy/bored/frustrated/jealous/depressed. It looks like the busier you are trying to fix everything, the worse your wife behaves.
Another thought, she may be mourning the job she disliked, missing the social contacts she had at the job.
BTW, who put you in charge of everyone's happiness? As I eluded to in a prior post, making someone else happy is an impossible task. Happiness is an internal function not something that is derived from external circumstances. Certainly, externals influence happiness but the final determining factor of happiness/unhappiness is an internal of that person .
Not that Gramma seems to be the real issue here, if you have offered to move her out and that isn't satisfactory either.
Definitely get joint counseling. That may not work either, but it is definitely better than giving up without trying.
Well, after all this, it does sound as if you've tried everything and your wife doesn't know what she wants. Very difficult.
I suppose, the next time she's doing the "I'm only washing my towels" thing you could look her in the eye and say "shall we stop this, please." Anything that will get her to pull up, sit down and THINK where she'd like you all to be heading, instead of reacting to a situation she's perhaps panicking about? Do you think?
The only other thing that rings a bell is: there you are all nicely set up, you're rushing off to work and back, rushing around at home, trying to take on everything; meanwhile your wife's world has shrunk down to the home + grandma. I thought the depression query was worth a good look, by the way. But the lovely couple two doors down from us have recently separated (after fifteen years, I think) not because they didn't love one another but because one couldn't cope with the pace the other set - she was constantly exhausted. She works from home, too; and from what she said she began to feel as if her partner was a whirlwind who blew in and scattered all before her. Do you think the two of you might need to realign?
Provided her health is relatively good, Grandma can go back to wherever she came from. But even if she left, you'll still have to deal with the fallout. How about you going to work as usual, your wife finding full-time employment outside the home so she can defuse a bit, and hiring a housekeeper?
One of the biggest problems in caregiving is that when you're supposedly "off duty" your mind is still working. Even at night, when in the throes of passion, the thought -- and fear -- that "intruder" might knock on the door is enough to kill a the half-o-----sms you might be having. No one gets to enjoy anything.
Marriage is a contract between two people who've chosen to surrender many of their liberties. But a third person can inadvertently drive a wedge between the lovebirds, particularly when the one of them feels his/her freedoms are being lost along with the privileges and pleasures s/he expects to have. A loving marriage can turn into a love-and-chain relationship; add a needy party and you'll have slavery.
Holding grudges and lashing out here and there is just sitting on a timebomb. When it goes off, everyone will fly in a different direction; and everyone will lose. If you want your wife back, one option is for you to sit down with grandma and discuss other living arrangements. Or the 3 of you could sit down as a family and work on some sort of compromise beneficial to all.
Is there an Adult service (ours is "Just Friends") where you live that can take care of grandma while you are at work? Agency for the Aging helps out with that and the programs at these facilities slows down the dementia/Alzheimer's. Also, the Agency for the Aging can have someone come in and help grandma/or take her places.
If you can get your wife and you into counselling that would be a step to at least see if this can be worked out. Glad you are reconsidering having children.
Keep posting-You are by no means a lone. Hugs!
Unfortunately you are mistaken in correcting Elfgarden's reply. You wrote "please remember that the wife BEFORE the grandmother moved in, only took care of herself". Where goddessrp wrote...
"As far as cooking and cleaning it has always been shared. But now its such a separte issue. She makes it a point to let it be known she is only doing her things"
Just keeping things straight. While I don't believe in the "crying for help" she (the SO) needs something that is for sure.
I bring this up, because even though your wife said yes to taking in and taking care of grandma, and I'm sure meant it at the time, I'm also sure that she had NO IDEA of what it would be like to have someone else's (dependent) relative in her home 24/7.
Add on top of that, that she is the caregiver for a senior, again, a new experience. I now have the care of my 92 year old aunt. Nothing prepares you for the stresses of taking care of a senior, not even a nice one who you love, let alone someone else's relative.
So I'm just saying, yes, get to counseling and please try to understand that your wife may have genuinely intended to help out and thought it would be great. But you go out to work every day, and she does not. And you are not the one living with someone else's relative. As much as I meant well, I later regretted saying "yes", but didn't feel that I could kick them out. Your wife probably feels the same (but worse because it's a senior and she's the caregiver) stress and regret.
Best of luck with your situation.
This may be an eye opener into who your wife really is. I totally get that she regrets what she agreed to, and she has a right to change her mind but her way of handling it is immature and not that of a committed wife. I also think you need to get the other family members to step up. You are the grandchild, your uncle and dad are the children. I hope you agreed to this because you wanted to, not because you were made to feel it was your duty. You have every right to expect gma's children will contribute.
I don't know what to say about your wife. She wanted to work from home in her trained field. What other arrangement was she expecting? Was she going to do elderly daycare in her home? I don't get it.
If you want to save your marriage, you'll need to change the arrangement. Then you'll need to decide how you want the rest of your marriage to play out. Please look into counseling, couples or private, if your wife continues acting this way.
I have more compassion for that hungry dog than some of those so called human beings rotting in prison for the astrocious crimes to human kind. No animals have ever vicimized me, can't say that about another human being especially now that they are older.