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Dragon's triage
Dragon72
Mexico CityMember Posts: 77
Question One – Basic Questions
We're both mid-forties. I'm a couple of years younger than her. I’m British and she’s Mexican – we met a few months after I moved from the UK to live in Mexico. When we first met my Spanish was basic and her English extremely basic. 4 and a half years into our relationship and her English is still very very basic and my Spanish is fluent (although I find it frustrating not being 100% able to express myself especially when I am emotionally agitated). We communicate only in Spanish. This is my 1st LTR but I was not a virgin. She had had a few boyfriends previously but was a virgin when we got together.
We met in February 2012 and were engaged to be married by September 2012 and we married in January 2013. Our son (now 2y9m) was born in October 2014. I would have liked a longer courtship but we both wanted kids and she made the tick-tock of her biological clock sound very loud. She was bossy and emotionally manipulative from the start, I have been very beta from the start.
Before our marriage we would have sex more than once a week. Now, and especially since the birth of our son, we have sex approximately once every 1 to 2 months.
My wife sleeps with our son (2y9m) in his bed in his bedroom. I have tried many times to persuade her to sleep in our bed. I have used the arguments that he should be learning independence, he should have a better view of his parents as a married couple and that I want to be with her. She insists on staying with him and in fact goes to bed at the same time as him 7.30pm every evening, leaving me to spend the whole evening alone with no adult company. My wife and I spend almost no time at all alone as a couple.
Her argument for sleeping with our son is that he continues to wake in the night and that she feels the need to feed him milk from a baby’s bottle intermittently as he wakes in the night. She also adds that she enjoys being with him and wants to take advantage of it while he is little. She cites other examples in her family where sisters/sisters-in-law sleep with their kids.
Comments
Question Two – Rule Out Medical
I am very fit for my age (a 21 minute 5K runner, just ran a half marathon in 1h37m). Not bad for a 44 year old. 5'11". 187 lbs. Cycle 15 minutes uphill to work every day. Rarely ill.
She had trouble conceiving our son, due to my wife’s age (42 at the time of conception). We had to use a donated egg with my sperm. The baby was born very healthy by C-section.
She has some circulation problems in her legs, but nothing major. She tends to be a bit hypochondriac and sensitive to cold/heat.
I periodically suffer from depression and I strongly suspect my wife does too.
Originally I thought that she went through phases of being a psycho bitch towards me, then at times I thought that she might have borderline personality disorder, but now I think that her behaviour was simply fitness testing that I didn’t recognise as such, and her bitchiness was a reaction against my beta behaviour which predominates my personality.
Question Three – Rule Out Structural Attraction Issues
I am a schoolteacher and she is a SAHM since the birth of our son. Before that, she was working as a secretary on a very modest salary. I earn a modest income as a school teacher, which I have supplemented by taking on extra responsibilities for a small amount of extra pay and with a view to gaining experience and making a good impression for eventual promotion. I also moonlight by giving private lessons after my day job which gets a little bit of extra cash every week.
The family car is ageing and was hers before we met. I did not have a car when we met, so her one became ours.
I did/do not have any investments or savings.
I took over the mortgage payments on a house she had bought a number of years previously and now we have managed to pay it off completely. However the house is a very modest one in a not very attractive place and we don’t live in it. We live in rented accommodation whose rent my employer pays as part of my benefits package.
She bullied me into agreeing to hand over every payday all my take-home pay in cash for her to manage. She then divides the cash into different envelopes so that the expenses can be paid / savings can be made. She has a different envelope for utilities bills, for food, for gas, for saving for a car, for school fees, loan repayments etc. I do not believe she is mismanaging the money but is very resistant to me having any input and rarely updates me on our financial situation unless pressed, and then it’s written on the back of a napkin in round numbers.
One month, I decided not to hand over the cash. I made a spreadsheet showing where all the money would be going, including a small allowance for each of us to spend how we liked. I wanted her to cooperate with me and share the financial planning with the use of the spreadsheet which would be on Google docs for us both to access at any time. However she straight out refused to cooperate at all. I need her to help as my work hours prevent me from making certain transactions, so i felt bullied into giving all the control back to her each payday.
Question Four – Rule Out Critical Moments and Neglect
I’m not 100% certain what to write here. I really think that my neglect has been in the form of not confronting my wife’s domineering behaviour more and stick up for myself. If anything I’ve been too attentive of her needs, for fear of angering her, and neglectful of my own.
For example, I don’t go out with my coworkers for a Friday evening beer because I know how she has reacted in the past when I have done that sort of thing without her. Failed fitness/loyalty test.
I do housework like crazy in my free time, not because it needs to be done, but because it will anger her if I don't. I can't relax in my own house without being told to get up and do something. I'm no slouch. I do more than my fair share, so I should be able to sit down with a book every now and then and relax for a bit without a guilt trip.
Crirtical moments? Not sure either. Once I stormed off and spent a couple of days in our empty house in a nearby city because I just couldn’t take her domineering, condescending, self-centered and emotionally neglectful behaviour. Or maybe it was that I couldn’t take my acceptance of it.
The other critical moment was the birth of our son, when I was no longer a husband and I became the ATM/housemaid/babysitter/breadwinner.Question Five – Rule Out Outside Sexual Sources
I do jerk off to porn with about the same frequency as what I reckon a couple in a healthy relationship would be having sex - not quite every day but at least twice a week. That’s the only outside sexual source I have. If I was getting it regularly from my wife I'm sure I would not be in the slightest interested in looking at porn. I don't think I am at "addiction" level.
My wife doesn’t have any outside sources. I’m pretty much 100% certain.The budget thing is interesting. Maybe someone else who's been married later in life (and their spouse was older too) can chime in about how to work with two ingrained systems. Assuming she's not mismanaging or putting some aside for herself, was this the system she used for 20 years of her adult life? Not having a checking account (I think that's how I understand it) sounds extremely annoying (plus not having you have a say in any of it is wrong). An easy solution is direct deposit the check (you can just arrange this), automatic payment for utilities and transfer to savings. The rest (grocery, clothes, gifts, even utility money if she wants to personally deliver it to the company, etc) she gets in cash to put in her envelopes.
I can see if her system works, and you're both keeping to the budget, she doesn't know why (and might be suspicious of your own ulterior motives) you would want to change it.
Your son should not have milk at night. He's going to get a ton of cavities.
Obvioudly your wife should not go to bed with your son and sleep with him all night. Because this is her one and only baby, she's trying to make the baby years last as long as possible (and maybe to avoid being alone with you). But I don't think you can force this issue at this time.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think that she is at all to blame for rush to conceive. I also really wanted kids and we were not getting any younger, fast.
My objections with our financial situation are these:
Firstly, if there is a fire in our house, every cent could go up. It's more secure in a bank (even a Mexican one!).
Secondly, I like to know how much money we have and if it's squirrelled away in her secret hiding places, I have no clue.
Thirdly, she's made savings for things we did not agree on. For example, we have a car that works fine, most of the time. But she's saving my money to buy a new SUV, which I personally think is an extravagance on my single income teachers salary.
Fourthly, I get no money for me at all. If I want to go buy a can of soda, I have to ask her to make a withdrawal of MY money from her secret cash hiding place. I feel like a kid asking his mother for his allowance.
If I be all alpha and retake control of the finances, will things improve elsewhere?
As for the night time situation, you say I cannot force this issue, but I feel like something should be done otherwise my son's oral health, his emotional development, not to mention MY mental health and that of our marriage are steadily and progressively being negatively impacted. If nothing happens, these negative habitual behaviours are going to be more and more ingrained.
Where will it stop? When our son is 3 years old? Doesn't look imminent. 4? 8? 18? The longer she leaves it the harder it will be. This should have been nipped in the bud like our pediatrician and I were urging when our son was less than a year old. But the more I express my opinion on this the less she listens.
I think the nighttime situation is the biggest issue in our marriage. A wife who never sleeps with her husband, only with her toddler son? Every evening, at my son's (and wife's) bedtime, I say to her that I would like her to come down after she gets him off to sleep and spend the evening together with me. Every evening she declines with some excuse or other. For many, I think that it would make their marriage intolerably dysfunctional.
Question Six – When Did the Sex Go Bad?
Well, it was a lot better before our marriage when it was about 2-3 times per week and I even used to get the occasional BJ, albeit very brief.
After we said “I do”, it declined to once every 1-2 weeks, then after about 3 months of her being pregnant, it was once every 4-5 weeks and then since our son’s birth nearly 3 years ago it’s down to once every 6 weeks or so, with no BJs at all since just after she got pregnant. Over all that time, she has become increasingly boring to have sex with. I do all the work. The last time, she was watching the news over my shoulder while I was doing it, even though it was she who initiated.
She has, at least, recently let me go down on her which until 6 months ago she would never allow. She said at first she didn’t like it too much (“it tickles too much”) but since then it has been obvious that she has been enjoying being on the receiving end of oral and has even said as much.
She’s still showing no signs of returning the oral favor.
Anal is not on the agenda either, but that doesn’t bother me in the slightest.
She doesn't like me touching her down there with my fingers ("it's like you're my gynecologist!").
She won't let me kiss her after I have been down on her.
If it gets any more passionate than slow and shallow penetration, I get told to slow down and not go so hard.
I used to come to orgasm very quickly at the beginning of the relationship. Now I can go on for hours because the lack of passion on her part is not getting me at all excited.
She really doesn't have much leverage here. She gives orders because you take them, and that is an attraction killer for her.
I highly recommend the Nice Card, Mean Card video series. You'll need the techniques in there if you're going to succeed.
After you watch the videos sit down, and think about what you really want in your relationship, and then start applying the techniques.
I wouldn't rule out that there is some mental health issues going on here, but you also need to start passing the fitness testing. The first and a big test is getting back control over your own finances.
Expect that you maybe facing a huge fight over this, but she doesn't respect you and if you want the marriage to work you have to get her respect back and that begins with standing up to her.
You're a British ex-pat; she's Mexican. You both grew up with ideas on what a "proper" marriage and household management system look like, but they are not the same ideas.
Is she doing things in a way that's common to Mexican housewives with young kids? Do you have expectations that she functions exactly like a UK mum?
We can't answer these questions for you.
What does seem to be universally true (and definitely in Latin countries) is that women respect and have attraction to male dominance and "machismo". The more you avoid her anger, the more you let her run you ragged, the less respect and attraction she has for you.
An example:
Right now, you give her 100% of your income, and she manages everything. But what if you cash your paycheck, then hand her a wad of cash and say "This is yours to run the household." You don't give her 100%, you keep the rest to spend any way you like, without her knowledge or consent.
If she questions you, "Woman, I need my own money. You have plenty to run the house. It's my income, I'll do what I please with it."
If she gets angry ... let it roll off you.
Enneagram 5w4. I'm researching what that means, before designing t-shirt art about it.
"I feel no shame in making lavish use of the strongest muscles, namely male ones (but my own strongest muscle is dedicated to the service of men - noblesse oblige). I don't begrudge men one whit of their natural advantages as long as they respect mine. I am not an unhappy pseudomale; I am female and like it that way." RAH
Just a highlight to the US participants here -- they're living in Mexico and she grew up there. So, there's very likely going to be a relatively high level of distrust towards institutional banking in general. Starting with automatic deposits into a checking account is quite likely anathma. That being said, the OP will need to wean his W off hidden cash piles and hand-to-mouth living. I recommend starting with a savings account and depositing a small amount in there every paycheck. Mexican savings rates should be over 5% in your area, given the central bank's decisions of late (like the HALF POINT INCREASE YESTERDAY!) to spur international peso demand, so you should be able to entice her with 'free money!' I'm sure you have 20,000 pesos among her piles that you could park and get back 1000 pesos per year, for free. What would 80p per month pay for right now? Entice her with the ability of interest to pay for some expense. Find something and just tell her "honey, I've found a way to make the water bill free", or whatever. Start there. Then, increase the amount in there, decrease the amount removed from there, and slowly you'll build more reserves. Walk her there step by step. Build her trust in financial institutions, as well as yourself. This is a great Leadership Moment for you. Seize it and capitalize on it! (No pun intended.)
Figure out how pervasive your NG tendencies are and attack those first. They will infect the rest of your process and prevent you from making any long-term progress if you don't attack and slay those demons first.
And welcome aboard!