Maybe I am highjacking here a little bit but please forgive me.

You aren't hijacking at all. This Thread is about how women create problems out of white noise.
As an old fart, I can see a few patters in your experience, but I'm not a Certified Marriage Councilor and I'm not going to name them here.

What I can say is that women have short cycles and long cycles. It seems yours is coming around on the long cycle. It is merely disguised as an exacerbation of the short cycles. I'm going to post a link about: "the specific pattern women follow before divorcing their husbands". Especially notice the part about, "They blame their partners for their behavior...and eventually, after making themselves and everyone around them miserable for an indefinite, but usually, long period of time, they end their relationships or marriages."

I don't care if you reject the words, "divorce" and/or "cheating". I want you to recognize that a long cycle exists. Your wife might not be headed for cheating or divorce, but she is showing signs of the long cycle arriving.

http://womensinfidelity.com/divorce-why-women-divorce.html

 

Boy! Do I feel sorry for all you guys!

It just drives home again how incredibly fortunate I appear to have been -- my wife and I are coming up on our 9th wedding anniversary and we still haven't gotten around to scheduling our first fight. We occasionally remember that we've been overlooking it, but we just always seem to forget to actually pencil in a date.

I've seen many relationships filled with drama -- sometimes driven almost entirely by the man and other times almost entirely by the woman. I've only seen a couple of situations in which both parties were drama queens and I hope to hell never to see any more!

If something were to happen to my wife, I'm pretty sure that I would never marry again, either. But because I'm convinced I could never again find such an amazingly tolerant, rational, nondramatic, easy-to-get-along-with being.

 

I sympathize with your predicament, @strantor. I wish I had something positive or constructive to say, or a solution to offer, but it reminds me too much of my second marriage for me to be even a little bit objective about it. The kind of game-playing your wife is indulging in is extremely corrosive-- and sadly, it tends to not get any better with time.

If she's threatening to leave and take the kids to another country, I'd say you need to get yourself to a good divorce lawyer who can at least advise you on what she can legally do and not do-- and what you can do if she tries.

She isn't threatening to leave and take the kids to another country. She's threatening to leave, and she naturally assumes the kids would go with her. She has no other friends or family in this country so I naturally assume she would go back to hers. She skypes with her sister and parents every day (literally) and is always pining for home. I get that, I would to. But I've already experienced trying to track someone down in that country and it's impossible if they don't want to be found. I don't know if or why she wouldn't let me visit, but if she decided not to, I would be screwed. If she left and went there with them, and agreed to let me see them, I would have to fly literally to the other side of the planet to do that. If she left and took them there without my permission it would international kidnapping but her country is non-extraditionary and that's what I mean about being screwed. But I guess the silver lining would be no court-mandated alimony/child support. I would still support them with money but it would be on my terms and I know that the money would go a lot further in her country than here.

 

Get a lawyer. SERIOUSLY.

 

I confront her about it and she comes up with some reason randomly picked from a bag of emotions and what do you know, it's a some problem with me, every time. I'm not sweet enough. I don't give her enough attention. I stay up late watching Netflix when I have insomnia, instead of staying up late and talking to her. I spent some money on a need, that she wanted to spend on a want. I didn't take a day off of work to babysit her when she felt bad. I never give her a surprise gift. And on and on. I get mad that she's blaming me for her bad mood and we fight. She takes longer to cool down than a hot pocket multiplied by a poptart . So after a couple days and after I've promised to "improve" in the area of the stated grievance, she's back to "happy" (relative) again.

I've done some experiments in these situations. I've tried to meet her demands in earnest and I've also done absolutely nothing to change my behavior, and the result is the same. We go through a good period for a while and then the slow descent into madness. From this I conclude that she doesn't really need me to change in any way; what she needs is a fight. The fight flushes out whatever emotional blockage she has. I doesn't matter what I do, the emotion tubes get backed up again and they just need periodic maintenance (a fight).

I've been dealing with this for years and I just accepted that it was our status quo. It was a plateau we reached after about a year of marriage. But in recent months she has been escalating it. Threatening to leave and take the kids. Then after the fight she says she would never do that. And when she says it, she tries to make it sound like a benevolent act. She says she is "holding me back" and there are things that I want to do that I can't, because of her. She says she just wants me to be happy and be able to do what I want. That really pisses me off and it turns my side of the argument from half-hearted routine maintenance into real rage and depression.

She says it now every time we fight. I try not to let it get to me but it does. It's got me stressed out to the max. Life is stressful enough already for me, being the sole breadwinner and the one who takes care of everything except the kids. I know if she decided to leave and take my kids back to her country, I would never see them again.

I'm not sure what to do. I think she doesn't want to be with me anymore, but she doesn't want to say it. She wants me to say it. She wants me to tell her to take off, so she can be the victim and take off with no guilt. Or maybe I'm just paranoid about that.

I don't like saying it but been there done that dance too. My Ex did everything she could think of to drive me off and failed largely because I have played that same game more than once in my life and knew how to deal with it.
I went through the same threatening to leave crap until I started calling her bluff and saying I would even help her leave too, which I did and life for her got way worse real fast after that. She wanted the drama and boy did she get more than she cared for when it came.

My advice would be to start squirreling away as much cash as you dare pull from everything you can for as long as you can and hide it's existence where no one but you can find it in case you do get divorced and she manages to clean you out on everything else.

I think that's what saved my butt. The vast majority of my financial worth was and is tied up in things she saw as worthless junk (and investments or future cost of living reducers she didn't know about) not worth fighting for a cut of so she left it all alone and considered me to be penniless for her lack of having ever gotten to know that part of how I handle my financial life and keep our primary cash outlay cost of living expenses well below what most poverty level people could live off of.
You don't have to have a huge bank account to be well off in life but fortunately for me that was the primary metric she judged me on.

At the end we were making a combined near $150K a year with a less than $10K of basic cost of living I payed about 80% of yet she still lived paycheck to paycheck and I was squirreling away every spare dime I had into things other than building up a bank account she could use or brag about.

 

. If she left and took them there without my permission it would international kidnapping but her country is non-extraditionary .

As far as I know, both Canada and US. require written permission from the other spouse when one spouse is traveling with their children out of the country.
Max.

 

As far as I know, both Canada and US. require written permission from the other spouse when one spouse is traveling with their children out of the country.
Max.

That's sure news to me!!!

My wife has traveled with our daughter to Taiwan twice and no one ever said anything to her about it. The first time my daughter went back to Taiwan she flew with her grandmother (who was only visiting the U.S. and is not a citizen). Again, no one batted an eye. If she goes back again she will likely fly unaccompanied. She did that to Minnesota this past summer at the age of nine and there were no problems and her cousin has flown from Minnesota to Taiwan unaccompanied several times and with just her father or mother and nothing had to be signed.

I think you might be thinking of situations in which there is some kind of court order in place, but that would be very hard to actually enforce except after the fact.

 

It just drives home again how incredibly fortunate I appear to have been

Looks like you got a NAWALT. They are as rare as unicorns.

I used to have a NAWALT. I had 10 years of blissful marriage. It was only later that I found out my wife wasn't married and that's why she didn't drive me crazy with constant complaints and nagging. She had nothing invested.

I can hope you're right, but I wasn't.

 

That's sure news to me!!!

I think you might be thinking of situations in which there is some kind of court order in place, but that would be very hard to actually enforce except after the fact.

Not at all, a few years back I took my family for a holiday in Mexico, my daughter had one son where the father was absent in his/her life, the air line wanted a signed document to allow him to leave, we could not locate him so we had to leave him behind.
They said it was federal policy.
Max.

 

As far as I know, both Canada and US. require written permission from the other spouse when one spouse is traveling with their children out of the country.
Max.

That's sure news to me!!!

My wife has traveled with our daughter to Taiwan twice and no one ever said anything to her about it. The first time my daughter went back to Taiwan she flew with her grandmother (who was only visiting the U.S. and is not a citizen). Again, no one batted an eye. If she goes back again she will likely fly unaccompanied. She did that to Minnesota this past summer at the age of nine and there were no problems and her cousin has flown from Minnesota to Taiwan unaccompanied several times and with just her father or mother and nothing had to be signed.

I think you might be thinking of situations in which there is some kind of court order in place, but that would be very hard to actually enforce except after the fact.

Not at all, a few years back I took my family for a holiday in Mexico, my daughter had one son where the father was absent in his/her life, the air line wanted a signed document to allow him to leave, we could not locate him so we had to leave him behind.
They said it was federal policy.
Max.

I've looked it up. There are no exit controls for things like this. Only entry controls. When you leave it is up to the airline to verify your passport/visa is valid, parental consent, all that. They really don't have much incentive to do so. So what if your Brazilian work visa is expired? When you get to Brazil they will inform you of that; ticket paid, service rendered. Why would they tell you something that might make you cancel your flight? There is no database of children who are attached to custody cases (or not) that the airline has access to. They are not required to verify a letter of permission from an absent parent, but sometimes they do ask for it. That's why it's hit or miss.

Even if I took all the proper steps; restraining order, court order restricting travel for the kids, she could still get out of the country. If she made it past the Philippine immigration checkpoint in the airport (why wouldn't she? - she's a citizen and they would make the problem go away with a 1000 pesos under the table), that's all she wrote.

 

Not at all, a few years back I took my family for a holiday in Mexico, my daughter had one son where the father was absent in his/her life, the air line wanted a signed document to allow him to leave, we could not locate him so we had to leave him behind.
They said it was federal policy.
Max.

Canada AND U.S. policy? Or just Canadian policy? I have no idea what Canadian policy is. I was only referring to U.S. policy (as observed in practice, which is admittedly not always what it is in the statutes).

I just did a search and found the following on a U.S. Embassy website regarding permission notes from non-traveling parents: "While the U.S. does not require this documentation, many other countries do, and onward travel could be impeded without a notarized permission letter and/or other documentation. (Canada, for example, has very strict requirements in this regard)."

 

Looks like you got a NAWALT. They are as rare as unicorns.

I used to have a NAWALT. I had 10 years of blissful marriage. It was only later that I found out my wife wasn't married and that's why she didn't drive me crazy with constant complaints and nagging. She had nothing invested.

I can hope you're right, but I wasn't.

NAWALT? I had to look that one up: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=NAWALT

That DEFINITELY does NOT describe my wife!

I thing there are a number of factors involved in our (so far) very peaceful marriage. Possibly first and foremost is that we came together at a much older age (me 43 and she 34) and with enough of a past to each recognize that we were damaged goods in many respects and therefore had no right to expect that the other was going to be some ideal specimen or that our marriage was going to be like some fairy tale. In addition, we talked (via e-mail) a LOT before we got married and we both became comfortable that were were very much on the same page on all the major items -- money, religion, children, discipline and a few others. But I think more than anything we are both very much alike in that we both genuinely try to be good and helpful to the other and to never intentionally do or say something that is going to be hurtful to the other -- at the same time we are both, possibly by way of acknowledgement and recognition of the first part, are very quick to forgive and forget when one of us does do (or not do) or say something that disappoints the other. If we choose not to say anything, then we accept that the burden is on us to get past it and move on. If we do say something about it, then (thus far) we usually exchange thoughts for a few minutes, very calmly and nonconfrontationally, and decide what, if anything, we should try to do different and then move on.

Certainly I'm very hopeful that this all continues, but not just for my own peace of mind. I think we are demonstrating to our daughter what a healthy relationship looks like and grooming her to have an appreciation for what is required of her for such a relationship to take hold, but also what she has a right to expect from the other party.

 

we both genuinely try to be good and helpful to the other

That's something I've never seen. Both my wives were parasites. I thought I was creating a team. They thought they had a meal ticket. Work or not, they always spent more than they earned and left me in debt.

never intentionally do or say something that is going to be hurtful to the other

I have learned to spot the moment that first happens. That's when I start arranging my exit.
The willingness to intentionally be hurtful is a line that must never be crossed with me because I know how to spot it and I know what it means. It means respect has ended and it's never coming back. The only thing I trust about a person who doesn't respect me is that I trust them to keep going the same direction.

ps, the Urban Dictionary doesn't do a good job on NAWALT. I'm sure you got the idea that NAWALT means, "not all women are like that". Every woman believes she is a NAWALT when she meets a man, but every woman is, "like that" when the divorce court awards her the house, the car, the children, the alimony, etc. and awards you the credit card debts, the car payments, etc. They are all NAWALTS until SHTF.

Good luck. The mistakes I made don't have to be yours. I wish you wisdom, happiness, and good health.

 

That's something I've never seen. Both my wives were parasites. I thought I was creating a team. They thought they had a meal ticket. Work or not, they always spent more than they earned and left me in debt.

I started out with Wbans type of wife and a generally enjoyable mutually beneficial partnership. Worked well for several years until the health issues took over and she turned into what you describe.

My concern is Strantor might be in the process of seeing the same negative changes take over in his life too. As you know, my wife went from loving, generous and thoughtful to cold, demanding and bitter over the dumbest of imagined issues. Issues she alone brought into the relationship and had zero interest in fixing other than to drag me down with them into equal frustration and misery.

We started out knowing full well each of us was damaged goods in our own way and played to our strengths to balance out the differences. The problem was I had already fixed the worst of my damages in order to become who I wanted to be in order to get too where I was then and now. Someone who was not being crushed by self inflicted debt and working at some job I hated with no way out.
The very thing I tried to teach her was the how and whys of what it takes to not have to live that way. I knew my past mistakes and had no interest in repeating them just so that someone else could watch me burry myself in a lifestyle I fought half my adult life to get out of and stay out of.

 

That's something I've never seen. Both my wives were parasites. I thought I was creating a team. They thought they had a meal ticket. Work or not, they always spent more than they earned and left me in debt.

Mine's just the opposite. The one thing that bothered her the most early on in our marriage was that she felt really bad that she wasn't bringing any money into the household. I told her that I didn't care if she ever worked, that marriage involves two people doing lots of different things and that all but a couple bring no money into the household -- money was just one of the things that a household needed to function. As long as we worked out some division of labor that made the household as a whole work, that was all that mattered. It took her a while to accept that I really meant that and she settled in to taking on so much of the household tasks that it was unbelievable -- and I've never seen anyone that could pinch a penny the way she can. Where it really came out was when we were getting my old house ready to sell. It needed a lot of work and it was work I could do, but didn't have time for. So even though it was work that she had never even dreamed of doing (like painting, laying a paver patio, building a garden wall, replacing all of the light switches and outlets, retiling a shower floor) she just set about doing it. I didn't even know that she was thinking of painting the house until I went over there and she had literally painted the entire inside of the house -- every painted wall she had redone. It wasn't bad, but it also looked like it was done by someone that had never even tried to paint a wall before. I gently pointed out some of the problems and also said that I thought it was good enough for the market we were going for. She clearly wasn't happy to hear that, but she wasn't at all defensive about it. And she obviously paid attention (or really just gained an eye at how to step back and look at the job and ask if it was good) because the next time I went over there (which was only a week later) she had completely repainted the house again and this time it looked very close to a professional job.

Now, there have been a few times where that eagerness and willingness to dig right in and grab the bull by the horns has bitten us because she really didn't know enough to do the job properly. She messed up some of the house wiring and didn't block the shower drain when she retiled it and so a bunch of mortar filled up the J-trap and set. So I had to call in an electrician and a plumber to deal with those because I wasn't confident that I wouldn't mess things up worse if I tried to fix it (since the J-trap was in plumbing under the concrete slab so I have no idea how I could have accessed it to replace it if that turned out to be needed). She also gave away well over $400 of copper pipe to a guy that came up to the house and offered to haul it away for free. She thought she was saving us money -- she didn't know what copper was worth at that time. But I'm more than willing to deal with the occasional misstep like that and I am absolutely confident that she has saved us MANY times the cost of all her missteps combined -- and she learns from each incident and almost never makes the same misstep again (something I certainly can't claim to the same degree).

I think the one single event that signaled to me that we had a real chance was the night I arrived in Taiwan for our honeymoon. Here we were a married couple who, prior to that, had spent a grand total of four days together four months previously. Our wedding a couple weeks earlier was so small that not even the bride was in attendance! So she picks up her husband and things go wrong right away -- in leaving the airport the garage token that is needed to exit fell off the dash and slid down the steering column behind it. Here we are in the lane to exit the automated gate and she can't get the token out and there are cars stacking up behind us. She is clearly getting frustrated and I think panicking in part because she's nervous about making a bad impression on her new husband since, let's face it, she really doesn't know anything about his temperament. But what she didn't realize was that I was just as nervous for just the same reason about my new wife. So even though I've gotten so that I can just accept situations that I can't control pretty calmly, I made a particular effort to not put any more stress on her. The end result was that she simply figured out a way to deal with the situation (I couldn't even offer any suggestions because I had no idea how there systems worked -- bizarrely, it turns out) and got us out of there. That set the tone for our entire three-weeks there. As would be expected, we had several things come along, including a flat tire on an isolated mountain road with no spare well after midnight and me injuring my knee pretty badly after crashing through a false floor in a hotel room. But we just worked together and dealt with it -- and given that I was a stranger in a strange land, it was mostly her that had to do the dealing and I just helped as much as I could. And that's just been the way we've been ever since -- I've often wondered if our marriage would be as sound as it is if the honeymoon had gone blissfully perfect.

Oh, and she's worked her way into a new job that brings in enough that we could live on it if we had to. That has really opened up some possibilities that we are both eagerly pressing towards over the next year or two.

 

Mine's just the opposite. The one thing that bothered her the most early on in our marriage was that she felt really bad that she wasn't bringing any money into the household. I told her that I didn't care if she ever worked, that marriage involves two people doing lots of different things and that all but a couple bring no money into the household -- money was just one of the things that a household needed to function. As long as we worked out some division of labor that made the household as a whole work, that was all that mattered. It took her a while to accept that I really meant that and she settled in to taking on so much of the household tasks that it was unbelievable -- and I've never seen anyone that could pinch a penny the way she can. Where it really came out was when we were getting my old house ready to sell. It needed a lot of work and it was work I could do, but didn't have time for. So even though it was work that she had never even dreamed of doing (like painting, laying a paver patio, building a garden wall, replacing all of the light switches and outlets, retiling a shower floor) she just set about doing it. I didn't even know that she was thinking of painting the house until I went over there and she had literally painted the entire inside of the house -- every painted wall she had redone. It wasn't bad, but it also looked like it was done by someone that had never even tried to paint a wall before. I gently pointed out some of the problems and also said that I thought it was good enough for the market we were going for. She clearly wasn't happy to hear that, but she wasn't at all defensive about it. And she obviously paid attention (or really just gained an eye at how to step back and look at the job and ask if it was good) because the next time I went over there (which was only a week later) she had completely repainted the house again and this time it looked very close to a professional job.

Mine started out that way. In the begining her ability to make a dollar last was impressive but as her jobs improved that ability seemed to just blow away like fine dust. In the beginning I could give her a $100 bill to get groceries and she would come back with the back seat of my pickup loaded and still have change left.
In the end a $100 bill wouldn't even get her to go to town and back unless she used my vehicle with the fuel I paid for and she ran around town all day only to come back with 1 - 2 bags of high dollar 'health food'crap we wouldn't eat or would burn through in 1 - 2 meals.

As for our house remodeling and new house project I figured she would be helpful having a higher end professional degree plus years of experience in Interior Architectural design doing loads of work from small to multi million dollar jobs.
Hardly, what she did well was draw pictures and make demands that in her past work were fulfilled by a crew of 5 - 50+ experienced high end carpenters and other like professionals. For her skills she was less useful than a 10 year old kid. She didn't take orders at all and felt she was the defining expert on everything until called on to show how her views were more practical and workable than mine or anyone else's.

The same pattern emerged with most everything. If someone else was doing the work and paying for something there was no limit to her expectations but if it was her it was dollar store goods and had to be done ia less than 10 minutes or it was deemed undoable or not worth it for any number of excuses or faults of my own.
Mostly she was one of those people who did not accept failure or her perceptions of failure as being normal process of learning a new skill or refining a basic one you already have.

I never expected a painting job to look high level professional the first time around by either of us. What I expected was that we would probably redo it 1 - 2 times to get the details right and that was not a big deal being paint is cheap and labor is free if you are willing to make time for your own stuff.
An odd thing that in her views both her and my time were insanely valuable despite the reality that neither one of us had jobs that paid that level nor had the background or wants to get such jobs. Her jobs base pay was about $22 - $23 an hour base and mine was actually about a $1 less than hers but I made up for that with huge amounts of overtime and bonus incentives she didn't put in or get.

 

The topic is air conditioning, lawyers and NAWALT women.

Nowhere but AAC!
Carry on.

 

She isn't threatening to leave and take the kids to another country. She's threatening to leave, and she naturally assumes the kids would go with her. She has no other friends or family in this country so I naturally assume she would go back to hers. She skypes with her sister and parents every day (literally) and is always pining for home. I get that, I would to. But I've already experienced trying to track someone down in that country and it's impossible if they don't want to be found. I don't know if or why she wouldn't let me visit, but if she decided not to, I would be screwed. If she left and went there with them, and agreed to let me see them, I would have to fly literally to the other side of the planet to do that. If she left and took them there without my permission it would international kidnapping but her country is non-extraditionary and that's what I mean about being screwed. But I guess the silver lining would be no court-mandated alimony/child support. I would still support them with money but it would be on my terms and I know that the money would go a lot further in her country than here.

My best advise to you is get the kids and get out of the relationship first. Talk to a lawyer to find out where you would stand - shared custody for example would increase the risk that she could kidnap the kids.... But currently, at least in Canada, working fathers who are sole providers are very likely to get full custody during a divorce...

I actually remember your early posts about this and it sounds like your wife has never settled to live a new life with you and your own family which is very sad especially for your kids. I unfortunately have been a witness to something similar over the last 3 years and it is always the children that pay the price.

 

I've tried to meet her demands in earnest and I've also done absolutely nothing to change my behavior, and the result is the same. We go through a good period for a while and then the slow descent into madness.

This screams out to me, "Cycle of Abuse". Both males and females suffer from some internal turmoil that results in this cycle. It can be alcoholism, a real regret about being married, or even adrenaline addiction. I know a woman who cycles through peacefulness to red faced, screaming just to get her adrenaline fix. My point is, look up, "Cycle of Abuse".

Threatening to leave and take the kids. Then after the fight she says she would never do that. And when she says it, she tries to make it sound like a benevolent act. She says she is "holding me back" and there are things that I want to do that I can't, because of her. She says she just wants me to be happy and be able to do what I want. That really pisses me off and it turns my side of the argument from half-hearted routine maintenance into real rage and depression.

This part really sticks in my craw. Your wife wants to make you happy by destroying your family, that which you have the highest part of your investment, dedication, and love attached. This is the definition of bat-s7!t crazy.

As I said in PM, she has found your hot button and is hitting it like she is trying to kill snakes. This one hits my hot button, too. I would love to give you the answer, but I don't believe you can fix it. At this point, I have been herded into the camp which says, "Hire a lawyer".

 

Been married 4 times, my current wife is my best friend, lover, joy to be around. My 3rd wife would best describe the cycle of which you speak, it seemed as if though when she felt she was not in power over the relationship is when it went quickly descended into hell. Finally I called a lawyer, but she slept with him and took the house I didn't want to give her. Read your papers carefully before you sign and make sure it's legally notarized in front of you, having two or three copies one for her you and the courts.

kv

Edit: BTW, he put the house back in the documents and I failed to read them before signing, you can imagine what I wanted to do to him, freaking slime bucket I didn't care she did him but loosing the house made me have to move back in with my father until I could get back on my feet paying for it all. I gave her 20k and paid her house payment for 2 years $500 a month, no kids between us I did it because I didn't want her to have half my business, once the debt was paid I went to her saying time to sell the house and split it and start over. She let the house go into foreclosure, flushing the whole thing down the drain, Dumb B^*ch is all I can say. In the end she said, oh. You need to quick claim deed it to me, I said what the....... and she said you better read the divorce decree

Edit:Edit: Thats all I have to say about that..........Momma says life like a box of chocolates.........

This screams out to me, "Cycle of Abuse". Both males and females suffer from some internal turmoil that results in this cycle. It can be alcoholism, a real regret about being married, or even adrenaline addiction. I know a woman who cycles through peacefulness to red faced, screaming just to get her adrenaline fix. My point is, look up, "Cycle of Abuse".

This part really sticks in my craw. Your wife wants to make you happy by destroying your family, that which you have the highest part of your investment, dedication, and love attached. This is the definition of bat-s7!t crazy.

As I said in PM, she has found your hot button and is hitting it like she is trying to kill snakes. This one hits my hot button, too. I would love to give you the answer, but I don't believe you can fix it. At this point, I have been herded into the camp which says, "Hire a lawyer".