I'm sorry this is so long.
Oh gosh. First, yes, there's an age difference. It just works. I dunno. I've been in many relationships, almost got married, but things never worked out for me. In part because I've dated many broken people (one ex was schizophrenic, another was raped/abused etc) and in part because I'm pretty broken. My current GF, whom I do love deeply, has stuck with me and convinced me to finally go to therapy and I've been diagnosed with PTSD and major depressive disorder, shit which I've been dealing with alone my whole life.
Currently we're engaged and getting married soon. I don't know if I'm freaking out because the marriage is stressful, or because I'm about to leave for a month for some military training, or because I'm aggressively applying for a promotion at work, or if there are real issues here concerning communication.
My GF is pretty messy and lethargic. For most of our relationship, she's done no chores at all. I have done all the cooking, all the cleaning, everything. I also handle the budgets (we live together now and keep everything in common at this point). However, we've talked about it and she agreed to be the one to do the dishes. I'd stopped cooking for a while because it's such a chore to cook and then clean everything all the time. So, our current arrangement is that I cook and she cleans up. I also clean the litter boxes, sweep, tidy up, take out the garbage, etc.
However, I still don't cook a big meal every single night. My MO is to cook a big mess of food and we have leftover for a few days. I just don't feel like I have the time and energy to cook every. single. night. I like cooking OK, but it's not my hobby (plus we have a small kitchen). For a while that was an issue for her because she doesn't like eating leftovers--or rather, she forgets they are there. We talked about that and I think it's resolved as far as that goes. So I try to cook maybe 3-4 nights a week and we fill in the rest with leftovers and some prepared food from Costco.
The problem now is that if I don't cook, she won't do dishes. Even if I don't cook something, dishes are used. We might make a sandwich or have hummus with pita or something, or drink some juice from a glass. Things will accumulate. Laundry and dishes are never-ending chores. My problem is that, if there are dirty dishes at all, I don't want to cook. This is because we don't have a lot of counter space, so in order to do any prep work I have to move a bunch of dirty glasses and plates out of the way, but where to put them? In the sink? Then they are in the way if I need the sink! (We don't have a dishwasher in the house we're renting.)
We got into an argument of sorts last night and she threw this in my face: "I didn't do the dishes last night because you didn't cook."
The argument--maybe it wasn't an argument, I was just ranting--started because I said I'd wanted to cook but there were all these dirty dishes. I was explaining that with all the stuff in the way I don't want to cook because it's a pain in the ass.
I should explain that we have slightly different schedules and I always eat dinner before she even gets home--I eat around 5 pm (I get up very early for work) and I'm often happy to just eat a sandwich. In order for me to eat a nicely cooked meal, I'd have to rush to get it done before 5. I can't wait until 7, 7:30 because that's too close to bedtime. I know, I sound so old.
So, in my mind, the dishes need to be done prior to cooking. You need a clean slate to work. Plus, dirty dishes are disgusting. It's literal filth. You should do them regardless. It's equivalent to cleaning the litter box and taking out the garbage: it shouldn't be contingent on me cooking. But she threw that in my face as though doing dishes is only in a quid pro quo basis, and honestly that really hurt.
Also there's just the fact that she just doesn't do them sometimes and I have to bring it up. I HATE this. I hate it because I want our relationship to be a PARTNERSHIP. But I have to ask her to do them often enough that sometimes I feel like she's an employee or something. This makes me extremely uncomfortable. It's the same when she would leave dirty laundry all over the bedroom floor. I want her to actually care about our living space and about us, and every time she decides to just do the dishes later or blow them off it feels like she doesn't care. (It also really bothers me when she doesn't do them that night because the first thing I see in the morning ( I get up several hours before her) is a dirty kitchen and that makes me depressed---I know I'm neurotic and have issues but don't know what to do about that. It literally makes me sad-feeling.)
So that's the first issue: the one and only chore she has to do, the one chore she volunteered to take ownership of, she won't do consistently, and acts like her doing even that is a mere contingency. Am I overreacting? Is this just a mental illness issue on my part? In a sense, it's just one little thing, but it nags at me and we talk about it, but I feel like it comes up all the time.
Second issue: career/job. My GF has a degree that doesn't necessarily translate to a specific career. That's fine; neither do I. I don't use any of my degrees at work. Through mainly luck but also patience, I've gotten a job which has decent pay, awesome benefits, and rock-solid stability. My GF has a pretty bad job. It doesn't pay great although it could be worse, she doesn't like it, and they treat her like shit.
But she doesn't seem motivated to try for anything else, or take courses to learn new skills, nothing. When she gets home she just sits on the couch and plays games on her phone, or watches TV/Movies. That's it.
For a while she said that she wanted to see a therapist and get treatment for ADHD. Well, that's happened. She sees a therapist and is receiving medication and by all accounts she's gotten a lot better. I personally have noticed that she seems more focussed and aware, etc. But she's not making any effort to find a better job. She still doesn't seem interested in anything but TV, at staring at screens. Occasionally she'll go to a bar (I go sometimes, but again we do have different schedules and I'm in bed hours before her.)
Why do I care? One, I'm actually worried her job is going to fire her. This might just be my neuroses; but they've been fucking with her lately. Two, it's a shitty job and I want her to be happier and lead a more fulfilling life. Three, I want her to make more money. Since I do all the budgeting, I'm constantly thinking about stashing away money to have funds ready to buy a new car when one of ours craps out; I'm projecting for buying a house; I'm thinking about how much we can spend on vacations. And yes, I make pretty good money, but we could do so. much. better if she were able to contribute more.
I have no idea how to be supportive in this area. She hates her job, but I think that whenever I mention that she should be looking, it upsets her. I bring it up probably once a week. In my mind, I'm keeping a bug in her ear, trying to prod her into action. But I think I just come across as an asshole. She works in a call center, spending all day staring at a screen, then comes home and stares at a screen, then goes to bed. It can't be healthy and I don't know what to do. I haven't seen her take any action at all toward finding another job or anything.
Currently, I'm on the look out for better job opportunities, hoping to move up in my organization. However, applying to jobs is pretty stressful for me. applications often send me to a dark place--they can be a trigger for my PTSD--don't ask, it's complex. This is the case despite the fact that many people I work with are in my corner and I probably will be able to move up and make more money. (That's the rational me speaking.) Although I do make good money now, I consider myself EXTREMELY under-achieving: my original path was to finish in a PhD program and become a professor; a combination of financial woes, and unsupportive family, and suicidal depression brought that dream to an end.
I'm in this state of fear that I'm going to keep pushing to make more money so that we can meet our life goals of buying a nice house, vacationing in Europe every summer, etc, while my future wife will continue to work low-wage jobs and not do any chores at all. Sometimes, it feels like I'm doing all the work to move us forward. She says she wants the same endgame as I do; we've built a picture of our life together; but I wonder if she secretly just wants me to do everything and provide everything.
I don't want that because I want an equal partnership; I want to be reassured that she is working toward it as well. Honestly I detest many traditional gender roles, including "man-provider", I don't like power hierarchies, I want equality to the extent it is possible. But I know I have a lot of flaws and in many ways don't have life figured out.
tl;dr: I think she isn't equally invested in moving us forward. Is it an age difference thing? Am I just too neurotic?
Submitted January 31, 2017 at 05:58PM by Rymbeld http://ift.tt/2jAngSW
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