What was your X;s/STBX's....

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-08-2004
What was your X;s/STBX's....
33
Sat, 04-08-2006 - 10:11am

major complaint or complaints about you? Before I moved out of the house, I asked my STBX what was so bad about me.....what should I have changed? His answer:


"You didn't go out with friends enough."


Oooo...that made my blood boil. No, I didn't have the social life of the century, like he did, but SOMEONE had to be home to raise our DS! I think it was just his way of projecting on to me that his going out 6/7 days a week was "ok." Wouldn't most men LIKE to have a committed wife who actually wanted to be home with their family?? I don't know too many men that would say, "Gee, I'd like it if my wife was out partying more!"


The other complaints were that I nagged too much, and of course, didn't want sex enough.


Just needed to vent this morning and see what anyone else had to say!




What lies behind us and lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-17-2001
Tue, 04-11-2006 - 2:28pm

Reading all these posts has been a complete howl. Kind of makes me think that the original assessment that all men are pigs is not too far off the mark! So you're all going to laugh at my response here. My XH was very specific about this.

We're driving down the road after a counseling session and had been discussing separation seriously. This was several weeks AFTER I told him that the 2 things I needed from him were respect and conversation which he couldn't deliver. (I'm so demanding, aren't I?) So I say to him.... "I'm obviously not what you want in a partner. If I could be anyone in the world, who would you want me to be?" Now, the words are still hanging in the air like words in a cartoon bubble, and he says "June Cleaver." These words came out of the mouth so quickly and so firm, I knew he had been thinking about this for a long time and then after the long, pregnant pause, he followed up with, "If I had known how hard it was going to be to be a two-income family, I wouldn't have married you." WTF???

I can laugh about it now, but at the time, it REALLY hurt!

Oh, and like you all, I did everything IN the house. To be fair, he took care of the yard work during the summer.

~calla~  mom to rosie and gracie

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Tue, 04-11-2006 - 3:02pm

My x2b said that I should have been in the verbal olympics (didn't know there was such a thing).

Peace,

Di

***If you cannot define yourself, your circumstances will.***

 

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Tue, 04-11-2006 - 4:48pm
I know!...... it's the lesser of the immediate evils.

Karen ~ wildlucky4me ~

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-22-2006
Tue, 04-11-2006 - 10:35pm
I hear you. My stbx only wants me to support him in all his crazy money-making ideas (none of which he ever carries thru with), his business which I pulled from the brink of bankruptcy 5 years ago, his grown-up kids who can't work - not even around the house. I finally put all the figures together and discovered I was contributing 80% of the financial means of our household (including the cost of building the house) and I have to do over 90% of the physical work around here. I work for his business plus I have to work another job to pay all the household bills. When I want to buy something - usually some small item, I get the 3rd degree why it is not needed, yet he keeps coming up with plans to buy large TVs, trucks, a satelite dish, etc. My adult children are all self-supporting and now refuse to come to visit as they can't stand the way he and his children use me as a slave. My stbx keeps asking if he should do something, then does it no matter what I say and when things go wrong, of course it is my fault. I have finally decided enough is enough and am making preparations for selling the house and filing for a divorce. I was better off and much happier the years I was a single parent between husbands.
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-22-2006
Tue, 04-11-2006 - 10:46pm
Yep, sounds familiar. My first X wanted to stay married and have a girlfriend, but I wasn't allowed to have a boyfriend as I was "the mother of his children". When I discovered them, he assured me the sex between them would stop and they would just be friends. He never understood that their sexual activity didn't matter to me, it was the amount of time he spent away from his own family and his disconnect from us that was the problem. Since he didn't understand that, I figured he would understand if I said I would stay married to him as long as I could have my own male friend. That brought out his good ol' double standard side.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2006
Tue, 04-11-2006 - 11:01pm
My stbx had the same complaint. He said I needed a life outside the house. I thought it ironic, because every time I did go out, he would make a nasty comment like "well someone has to be a parent - I guess it has to be me". He too, wanted June Cleaver - and thought we could stay married and just not have sex/intimacy. I think he wanted to stay married just to get his laundry done and his dry cleaning picked up.
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-22-2006
Tue, 04-11-2006 - 11:14pm

My stbx had me working for his now just barely in the black business, but I had to take a 2nd job to pay the household bills. So now I work 2 jobs and do all the housework. Meanwhile he makes such bad decisions and won't follow any good advice that his business is again headed for bankruptcy. After we were married I discovered that the "truth" he told was only 1/2 the story. Yes, he owned his own "business" for most of his life - but none of the 'businessES' lasted more than 3 years. The way he provided for his first family was to close each business when he had a pile of cash on hand. He got the cash by collecting from his clients and then not paying the businesses' bills. What a scam! Now he is mad at me as I have made him keep the same business going for longer than he planned and I make sure all the business bills are paid before he and I get our paychecks.

He is also upset as I no longer want sex with him. He's right, I don't. 2 reasons. #1 is I no longer have any respect for him. #2 that he now weighs about 500lbs. I only weigh 165 so it is rather dangerous for me to have sex with him. He has no awareness of my inability to breath or if he is accidently choking me with his arm. He has put on 1/2 of this weight since Sept 2003 when his grown-up kid started acting out. (which was about 3 months after we married). He looks like a beached whale when in bed - I don't even like sleeping with him anymore.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-22-2006
Tue, 04-11-2006 - 11:38pm
sounds like my 1st X. I gave him a year after I found out about the girlfriend, he still couldn't make a choice to stay with his family or go live with her, so I made it for him. After a 6 month separation, he wanted back in our house as "Sex is so much better with you, she doesn't know much or care about it". Stupid me let him back as he finally agreed to go to a counselor with me as long as he could chose the person. That person made us both promise to get any other people out of our lives - was easy for me as there was no one. But 3 weeks into the counseling the psychologist caught him in a lie and realized he was still seeing his girlfriend. X yelled at counselor, "You're supposed to be on my side cause I am paying you!" Then he stomped out. the guy looked at me and said he felt there was no way to save our marriage. I knew he was right. Now I can look back and laugh. A couple of years later X yelled at me that it was my fault he had to live with her. I laughed and told him he didn't have to live with her, he could move out and look for another woman as there were plenty of single ones out there. He hung up on me - something he always did when the truth hit home.
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-22-2006
Wed, 04-12-2006 - 12:07am

From my 1st X it was "my sister is the best cook ever." yeah, she cooked twice a year, thanksgiving and easter. the rest of the year her family lived on tuna, bologna, pb&j sandwiches, cereal and hot dogs. She was also the best gardener - but in reality her gardens got planted then she didn't weed or harvest them. Too busy drinking beer all summer. She even had to come along the first time I saw the house we were considering. He looked at her and asked if he should buy it. Her husband looked at me and said, "lets go walk outside and look at the gardens". He knew what I was feeling as he had been living with the same thing for years.

My current stbx did marry me as I am a lot like his mother. I work hard, I budget and save, I am a good cook, etc. My current MIL and I get along great. One of the reasons I am still with him is because it will break her heart when I leave. She is elderly and I hate having to do this as I know what it will do to her. But over the last year I have started to see her behavior that made her son the way he is. She is always excusing the things he does and says whatever words will make him feel better, even when they are not true. His sibling (who does live in the real world) tells me their mom has always done this as she was trying to protect him from his father. stbx had learning difficulties- maybe adhd - in the days when this stuff was not known and it was thought to be just "misbehaving". I was told his dad was very fustrated with him and yelled a lot.

Men do marry their mothers. They always have and they always will. there is even a song about this. One line goes something like: "I want a girl just like the girl dear old dad married" I think it was in a musical movie from the late 1930's or the 1940s.

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-22-2006
Wed, 04-12-2006 - 12:16am
I do everything in the house, all the yard work summer and winter, 2 jobs and more. He sits in his chair or stands at counter and eats. But he can't understand why I want out of this marriage.