Marriage review, 2011 to 2012

It has been about one year since I started my blog, and now I would like to compare my life now to what it could have been if I hadn't married:

Fights

There were about 30 times that my wife (or a few times, her mother) either:
A) Dumped some sort of inane, "easily solvable in a week but I prefer not to do anything despite your advice" problem on me and cornered me for a lengthy diatribe, or
B) Was in a nasty mood for no good reason and started shouting, or giving the silent treatment.

My wife started exactly two fights with me during the three months we were dating (fights which I ended immediately instead of having them drag out for hours or days), an average of 8 fights a year before we got married, compared to the 30 now. As an unmarried man, I would have broken up with any girlfriend that treats me the way my wife does now, and happily been in the "honeymoon" part of the relationship with all of my girlfriends for the majority of any year.

Chores

I've cleaned up the floor and table, done the dishes, and done the laundry over 250 times each. In other words, five out of every seven days of the week, I'm wasting almost an hour of my life doing a complete set of chores. Applying the fact that I never needed to clean the floor at my apartment, I spend almost ten times the amount of time cleaning the house now than the once a week I did everything before. In addition, during the last year, I only got a handful of days off without a messed up house waiting for me to come home and clean it up: 27 in total. Most of these days were bunched up during my brief vacation between jobs in the middle of the year. Every other day, all 300+ of them, involved me coming home after a long day of work, only to be welcomed home to a dirty house that needed to be cleaned.

When I was single, I did the dishes when I wanted to cook something (no more than two times a week, often never), I swept once a week for two minutes, I did the laundry only once a week, and I never had to clean up the floor and table because I cleaned messes as I made them. All in all, it took me about fifteen minutes a week to finish everything, not fourty minutes a night.

Sex

I have sex once or twice every month, and I had a sex drought that lasted for three months.

I used to have sex three to five times a week with my wife when she was my girlfriend. Even including the time I was single, it still averaged out to three times a week. And with up to twenty potential girls that I could have slept with by now, that's a lot more variety and quantity than what I get now.

Money

I've saved nothing that isn't going towards family expenses or pending college bills, and I've donated $500 to charity.

As an unmarried man, I would have saved $5000 for emergencies, and donated $45,000 to charity by now. That's a lot of children that I could have helped.

Time Off

The schedule I have now is pretty telling of the overall difference between before I got married and now: this past year, I got an average of one day off for every two or three weeks of work now, with classes or tutoring waiting for me every day for weeks on end.

When I was a free man, I once had a day where I had to do neither chores nor work. It was a magical, wondrous day, but it required a sacrificial chicken, that the stars align, and for God himself to smile down upon me. That day's name was Tuesday (but sometimes it was tricky, and called itself Sunday).

Travel

I've lived in four cities.

As an unmarried man, I would be living in my eighth city, and I know exactly where I would be living right now.

Friends

I've made two hundred friends, none of whom are still in regular contact with me.

As an unmarried man, I would have made about over a thousand friends, and been in regular contact with about 20-30 of them. All those people I could have helped or learned from, all those experiences I could have had, all that potential, gone.

Fun & Adventure

I haven't had a single adventurous or all day fun day since I got married, because even on the days I took my son out for a trip, my wife never went with us and ruined the trip with phone calls and rage when I returned with him.

Since I have written over 30 Then and Now posts, all of which detail a day of fun, and I have over twice as many planned for the future, I could have averaged out about 150 fun days per year as a single man.

Summary

The basic themes of this last year, as they were every year since 2009, were escalating disrespect and the constant biting of the hand (mine) that feeds.