Moses...we do as well. We understand the importance of friends, activities, etc apart. Had she said "I'm gonna hang around late", she knows I wouldn't have had any issue with it. But implying that she was leaving "right behind me"? I went home, read a bit and went to sleep within 45 minutes and was not concerned. But I was when I woke up at 3 a.m. and she wasn't at home and only a missed call at 1230 a.m. with no message I became concerned. She could have taken a $10 cab ride if she didn't want to drive and we could have picked her car up today.

I'm at a loss...especially when she seems suprised at my anger over the inconsideration. She truly feels she has nothing to apologize for....she has apologized but it is insincere,

Mike, you're a poet! I'm pretty sure I'm no angel, but my wife is pretty close. She's the kindest woman I've ever met. She is unselfish, honest and loving. If I tell my wife I'll be home in an hour, I'll be home in an hour.

I feel for you. I'm not sure I'd have the strength to make a relationship like that work. Life is too short for this kind of insensitivity and selfishness.

Your marriage is supposed to be that safe, wonderful place where you escape these kind of torments.

I had a very similar experience in my first marriage. I never doubted her fidelity until I got Chlamydia.

Thanks for the counsel, Doc M. I guess at this juncture I just need to disengage for a while and revisit it later. Perhaps I am overreacting to a miscommunication. I don't think what she does is intentional...subconcious maybe, but not intended to be inconsiderate.

Oh well...thanks all

Well, if I was you I'd kick that b!tch to the curb. My wife (then fiancee) pulled that on me once.

ONCE.

Sorta like what do you say to a woman with two black eyes?


Nuttin'. You already told her twice:eek:

*sigh*

you didn't click my link, did you?

Best of luck...you're going to need it. Denial is a beautiful thing...

Nope. We had a good sit-down talking to (after I got some Dramamine in her to stop her from puking).

I think she truly just "didn't understand" and on top of it her "friends" were enabling that night's behavior. Never had a repeat since.

The link on Passive/agressive behavior?....yes I read it and told her that's what it appeared to be during our argument at 5 a.m.

Denial...isn't that a river in Egypt?;)

As angry as I am about her transgresssion, I'm perhaps more angry with the fact she doesn't "get it". Or atleast she is just paying lip service to my concerns so as to not provoke my "anger or control issues."

I would be disturbed if this happend repeatedly. I have done this to my wife on rare occasion, and she quiet rightly raised holy hell.

Its inconsiderate.

OK guys...you've had the big blow out fight. Nothing has really been resolved. What now when I go home tonite? Leave it alone?

well, if she doesn't get it then she won't do anything about it. First step is admiting that you have a problem. 5 times in 9 months? To me that is a pretty serious issue. Were I in your shoes, I would put my foot down and head straight to couples counseling.

No change, she needs to learn. Some folks don't get it. If she can learn then fine, but if she doesn't/won't, then that's a problem.

From my point of view, with only about 30 years with the same woman.....is there any chance that she just did a stupid thing, while under the influence, while with a bunch of party people and now she can't step down from her ego enough to say that she messed up.

I think if you see a pattern over the next while, maybe there is an issue, there is no real detail as to how well the two of you are getting along.

What would I do? The heat is over, make your point something like - "Hon, I love you a lot, I care for you and when you told me that you were right behind me and then didn't show up or call, I was worried there was a problem or you might be hurt. You scared the ***** out of me and I think it'd be good if we found a way so that we can keep that from happening again...can we work on it together?"

Yeah it sounds sucky, but maybe taking the "I'm right/you're wrong" out of it might be more productive.

But then what do I know....30 years, one woman...still in love.

Find a way to let her out of the corner she got herself into...and then discuss it.

Dennis

Get with your religious counselor or a shrink. The one who stayed and left the other waiting has ZERO respect for either party. Oh, it just gets worse. Look at my ex.

Oh, and the infidelity comes sooner than later if this is not addressed. Total lack of respect.

+1 on that!

I guess this is the root cause of 50% or so of all marriages ending in divorce....

Dueller? Perhaps you need an honest talk with yourself about your relationship with booze...

you're right. lack of communication and people thinking that the other person is the reason they're miserable.

self awareness is pretty painful. most people avoid it like the plague...

yeah, my ex was miserable, she thought it was me, after we ened our relationship, she still looked pretty miserable to me.
I was doing alright. then I messed up big time.
I might tell you about it some time.

I gather from this and past posts of yours that there is little place in your thinking for having a person's self awareness leading to changing of attitude and behaviour to make a relationship work? Or do I misread your concepts?

I am pretty self aware and know of the painful part. I guess the idea I would put forward is that sometimes you have to give up something to get something.....

A trivial example...early in our marriage I learned my wife is pretty content with an untidy house, I am a bit of a neat freak. Led to some friction and unhappiness, could have led to WWIII.....the communication part you mention was the right way out in that case, we ended up getting a housekeeper in every couple of weeks to keep the cooties from taking over the world, we both put out some extra effort, my wife on tidying a bit more, me on tolerating a bit of untidiness and doing it myself when it gets annoying. Been no problem. I changed. She changed. It works.

So, in this case. Husband was upset (with justification), wife does some stuff that most of us would be annoyed with but she seems to be OK with it. What to do?

I am surprised when a lot of people go immediately into....lets start getting the divorce lined up rather than maybe just getting together and talking. How about a couple of bottles of wine, 4 hours in bed alternatively knocking the guts out of the problem and screwing each others brains out? How about maybe not going home early? How about agreeing that both of you will leave at the same time, all the time....and then working at having a good time longer in his case and shorter in hers?

I guess I just don't get other people's approach to relationships...must be too stupid. Sigh.

Dennis

+1 on everything.

it's a game. It will always end up like this. I've dealt with this issue a few times and I've always sat calmly, and listened to the excuse, and inevitably the I'm sorry"

-When it becomes a pattern, I don't come back or end it shortly thereafter. A pattern like that isn't accidental, it's a setup.

Fortunately, whom I'm with understood what happened, and I haven't had an issue with it to that extent. If her getting intoxicated with friends means "that much" to her, then there's something else going on - no one misses their friends that much to wind up that way. It's immature and a sign of a greater avoidance problem- she's not home for a reason, hopefully it's not due to someone else.

If she wants to wallow in alcohol and misery, let her. Just don't go down with the ship. If it's at that point, it's too late to save IMHO.

rjp

you very much misread. I believe that self awareness, usually through working with a therapist, is the only way that you can change your attitudes and behaviors...and hence the only way to make a relationship work. If you don't know what drives you to certain behaviors, then you'll never be able to change them (assuming you want to). I see too many people who go through a bunch of failed relatioships then sit there talking about how screwed up their ex's were. Hello? What is one constant over all those failed relationships?

You are right that there are other ways to deal with this. We don't have enough information, and we probably shouldn't. But in my experience, if there are problems like this and people are in their 40's and have not embarked on some serious personal discovery, then there is little hope of much good coming of things. The best you can hope for is tolerating each other's crap and dulling the misery with alchohol, tv, food, etc.

I won't date a woman who hasn't done therapy. And I won't consider another marriage unless that woman is willing to go to couples therapy before the wedding. Just to help figure out what the issues are, where the triggers are, and start to address them. I do not believe you have to spend your life navel gazing, but it does help to at least stop and think about wtf is going on in your life and why.

nostatic? Don't qualify it. Just don't get married again.

naw, i'll get married again. I like being in a relationship. Hopefully I've figured out enough of my own crap that I'll pick the right one this time. 3rd time's a charm, right? ;)

Nice way to ensure that all the women you date will be "troubled".

I've never had therapy and neither has my wife. We've been married 25 years. Here's my alternative to therapy:

I know what my flaws are. I'm impatient, I cannot tolerate boredom and I tend to immerse myself ( a little obsessively) in things that fascinate me (the Porsche, flyfishing, golf) You name it. Not exactly a balanced approach to life. My wife has problems, too. But they are different. She's always late, I'm punctual. She can be moody. Bottom line? I accept her imperfections and she forgives mine. We love each other. I respect and admire her more than I can say. We find a way to get through life without focusing on the darker corners of our personalities.

Bottom line? Marry someone whose kindness and charachter you respect. Their faults will seem trivial. Not suggesting this is the answer for everyone, but it's worked for me.

1) I came to the realization in college that no one is perfect. I made a list of what faults I absolutely could not tolerate in a mate (the list is different for everyone). If someone displayed one of these, I ended the relationship. No fault of theirs, but continuing the relationship was pointless.

2) http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1177990787.jpg

troubled? yeah, but so am I :p

I would offer that you're both pretty self aware. And lucky. Many/most are not. I've run into very few people that couldn't benefit from some therapy.

LOL!

+51

Oh yeah Moses, I think we were separated at birth and our wives are cousins.....


Dennis

Back to basics.
When a party says "I'll be right after you" they wont. Its a cover line for wanting to stay much longer and it gets the other party on the way home.
So basically its a lie.
Next issue to cover is why did she want to stay in the first place? Who was it at the party that she wanted to stay longer with? Was it just the fun of the group or was it an individual?
Parties tend to dwindle down to a few drunks at the end - often with a bit of smooching on the dance floor.
Beware - the pattern you describe fits exactly my ex wifes behaviour when she was contemplating an affair.

The only thing I have to add is that before I read the post when you said you were both in your 40's I would have guessed you were both in your early 20's. That is some weird behavior for a woman in her 40's that wants to stay married.

Dueller -- so?

As it happens, you'd commented on a thread I'd posted several weeks ago about difficulty (read: "impossibility") of communication with certain members of the opposite sex.

If you want a little perspective on the current situation, check out your comments (which I appreciated) on the other thread. Search "grilf" and it'll pop up.

Having read everyone's posts, I still say it's time for a break. I don't believe in counseling. If it's susceptible to repair, you can fix it. The real key is to listen to that vox clamatis down deep that tells you when it can't be fixed.

From the brief dossier you've presented, she's given you nothing but reason to assume, and prepare, for the worst.

JP

Were you concerned enough to give her a call? I'm assuming either:
1. She has a cell phone
2. You know the phone number of the house where the party occurred.

I'm not saying what she did was right, but stewing for a couple of hours waiting for her to come home instead of actively finding out what's going on doesn't help the situation, IMHO...

Just another thought,
-Z-man.

That's the ticket. Although my corners are WAY darker, this works for us. Credit to us (well, mostly her, but whatever works).

Well, she must have killed him. Last we heard, he was going home to face the beast. No word since. Must've gotten gored.

RIP, Dueller. At least his suffering is over.

JP

Like my father told me, marry an ugly wife son. She'll be 50% less likely to leave you and even if she does, you'll be 50% less likely to care.

"Marry an ugly wife"? So you're supposed to wed someone that's already married? Your dad sounds like a hoot! :D

BTW, didja? And if you're married, did you share your father's wisdom with her? :D

JP

With or without makeup?