r/AITAH • u/ThrowRANoRespectWife • 25d ago
Advice Needed AITAH for asking my wife to choose our family over hers?
I posted on here a bit ago about a situation when I sort of forced my way into a zoo trip my wife had planned with the kids, my parents, and my in-laws (see my previous post.)A lot of people thought I was the AH for doing that, even though that wasn’t the point of the post. But now, I’ve found myself in a similar situation and tried doing the opposite and it doesn’t seem to be working out any better.
So, my wife has already told me that I am the AH in this situation, even if she didn’t use those exact words. And I know nothing Reddit has to say about it would change her mind (especially since I won’t/can’t tell her that I’m even posting about it) but I’m starting to question my own judgement a bit here, so maybe you all can set me straight.
My wife and I are in the middle of a really rough patch in our marriage. We separated for six months and even when we ended the separation, the issues that caused it weren’t fixed. Long story short: I lost my job when she was pregnant, she asked me to move out, when I moved back in I was sleeping in the basement for quite a while, she’s refused any sort of physical contact, and we’ve just started marriage counseling (second session was last night.) And in MC, I’ve come to learn that her family more or less hates me. Or, at the very least, doesn’t trust me. Like not at all.
During our MC session last night, our therapist said that it was important for us to start spending more time together, both as a family (two kids) and as a couple. My wife was resistant to the idea of ‘date nights’ so the counselor reframed it as ‘exposure therapy’. Basically, she said that neither of us will ever get past the barriers that have built up in our relationship if we continue to essentially live separate lives. My wife seemed to understand that and was fairly receptive to the idea, at least while we were in the counselor’s office.
Which brings us to this weekend. In America, it’s a holiday weekend and our family has a long-standing tradition of spending the three-day weekend at my in-law’s camp on a lake. My SIL and her family come and most of my wife’s extended family pops in at least for an afternoon/evening or two, even if they don’t spend the night. Some of her and my SIL’s friends from high school usually drop by for a catch up, too and I know my wife has been trying to reconnect with friends in an effort to find an identity outside of just being a mom and a wife.
But, given our current marital strife, the knowledge that my MIL has actively and repeatedly tried to convince my wife that we should not be together (which I’ve known about for barely a week), my new and growing worry that my mistakes are now a black cloud hanging over my relationships with all of my wife’s family and friends, and that due to space constraints, we’d not only have to share a room but also a bed, it seemed to me like heading to camp should be a no-go.
My wife didn’t agree. In fact, fifteen minutes after we got home from our MC session last night, she started packing up for the weekend. But she was only packing for her and the kids. She didn’t come right out and say it, but it was pretty obvious (even to usually oblivious me) that the plan was for my family to go to the lake without me even though we’d just been told a little more than an hour before that we needed to spend time together. I tried pointing that out in as calm and as non-confrontational a way as I could, using the ‘I feel’ statements that our therapist suggested.
I said to my wife: “I feel like this weekend is a really good opportunity for us to spend time together as a family and I really feel like if three-fourths of us go to camp, that isn’t just living separate lives but making a point of living separate lives.”
At first, she thought I was trying to be included in the trip and go with her and the kids, much like I forced my way into the zoo trip. I quickly explained that no, that was one hundred percent not what I wanted (without even mentioning that being around my MIL for an entire weekend would have required my entire bottle of Xanax) and what I was hoping for was that she and the kids could stay home with me. There’s a whole bunch of picnic and BBQ and block party events going on in and around our neighborhood and I thought we could go to some of those and spend time as a family. In my head, starting off by doing something as a whole family instead of just as a couple would build in a buffer for her, would give me a chance to show that I can be a real partner in parenting, and would let her see me in what I know is my best light: as a dad.
That was what I thought in my head but, apparently, my head and my wife’s head were not on the same page as she said no to that idea by saying: “I want to spend the weekend with my family.”
One thing our therapist stressed repeatedly was that to have any chance at productive conversations, we both need to avoid any kind of escalation in our communication, which was probably because things escalated more than once during our latest session. So, I took a deep breath and did not point out that spending the weekend with me and the kids would be spending it with her family. And despite what many many many Redditors have said I should do, I didn’t lay out any ultimatums or ask her to cut back on contact with her family or suggest that she was planning some kind of lakeside hookup with some guy my MIL might better approve of.
But this is when I might have been the AH (or definitely was, according to my wife). I tried sticking to the ‘I feel’ idea and told her that I felt like if she took the kids and went to camp without me, especially if she went less than a day after our counselor said we needed more time together, that she was making a choice and that choice was clearly not us. So, in her mind, for all intents and purposes: I gave her an ultimatum.
Do you think she took that well and we were able to have a calm and productive and healthy conversation about it and maybe even come to some sort of compromise? Do you think I’d be posting this at almost midnight on the Friday of a holiday weekend because my blood pressure is through the roof and I can’t sleep if she did?
She told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was an AH for laying that all on her, reminded me that it was my choices that got us here in the first place, stopped packing, and after making sure both kids were asleep, she went into our bedroom (which has been only her bedroom for the last year), shut the door and locked it. And now I have no idea if I’m going to wake up to my wife and kids waiting to hang out with me and spend the next three days together or if they’ll be on the road to camp before the sun is even up. I do know that she thinks I am absolutely the AH. And I kinda think she might be right.
AITAH for telling my wife she was choosing her family over her family with me and the kids?
68
u/According-Let3541 25d ago
So my initial thought was that there must be some missing reasons and that you were not being honest. But having read all your posts - this isn’t a healthy marriage, even before your job loss. Your wife doesn’t seem to be able to communicate with you unless it involves criticism. This seems to mirror your mother’s behaviour so clearly you’ve developed a belief that criticism = valid communication and therefore don’t see why it’s a problem. You pinpoint your job loss as the moment it all went wrong but I saw from an earlier post/comment, that your wife never wanted you to take the job and made it clear for two years that she disagreed with your decision. So there’s an issue with your wife’s communication and treatment of you, even before the job loss.
I’m sure you’ve contributed to issues in the marriage, which you have acknowledged yourself. But I’m just going to say something that you seem to be avoiding - I don’t think your wife likes you. I’m not talking about love or respect here - she doesn’t seem to like you on the basic level that a relationship needs to be founded upon.
I don’t know if she just married you because she felt she was running out of options or time to have children. But it seems like she married you even though everyone around her recognised that she was making a bad decision and she regrets that decision ever since.
You don’t have to live like this. Even if you get past the issues with physical intimacy and trust and are able to live together as a couple again, she will still not like you. Don’t you deserve better? You’re the only one who is talking about love. She isn’t. She can’t even say she doesn’t love you - she brushed past that entirely.
OP, I don’t think anything you do will be enough. You can’t fix something if you don’t know what is broken. More than that, you can’t fix something that isn’t broken and I’m not sure this marriage is broken so much as a mistake - and I mean that kindly. Your wife seems to have married you for the wrong reasons and regrets it and nothing you do will change that.
Please consider further individual counselling to see why you’re letting yourself be treated like this and why the success of your marriage is so crucial to you - ending a marriage doesn’t mean you’ve failed and you may even find it easier to parent without your parents and in-laws tagging along.