Marriage review, 2012 to 2013

It's been two years since I started this blog and over five since I got married, and it's time to review another long year of marriage:

Fights

There were 22 times that my wife or her mother started a fight with me. Last year, the two started 32 fights with me for no good reason, so it seems like things are slowly improving, but the truth is that things have vastly improved from last year. Clicking on the "Problems" tab on this blog and reading back through those posts, you will see that fights with my wife came to a screeching halt after November 25th last year, which was over five months ago, and the fights with my mother-in-law stopped immediately after I came back at her a little later, which was detailed in my Fights post on January 25th of this year.

Trying to apply a logical mind to an illogical concept like marriage led me to the situation I was in for the previous five years, where I gave so much, but received nothing but the punishment and disrespect of hostile dependents in return. I have a coming essay in mind to explain what I learned about the primitive mind and how it applies to marriage, but for now, I'll just say that following the advice of other men in my position put a stop to the disrespect:

- I first responded to my wife's attempt to start a fight with me by ignoring her.
- Later, I responded by destroying her twisted logic, refusing to let her continually change the subject, refusing to back down while she dug herself deeper and deeper into a hole, ignoring her as soon as the fight was done, and refusing to apologize later when she said I "scared" her.
- On January 25th, 2013, I shouted at my mother-in-law for openly and fragrantly disrespecting me, and gave her a glare that said I was two seconds from decking her.
- A little later, my wife tried to start another couple of fights but I ordered her to stop each time, then ignored her after.

No other drama has happened since then, from either of them.

S*** tests passed. And I never would have had to act like an ape if I didn't get married.

Chores

I've cleaned up the floor and table almost every night for the last year, around 350 times, and I've done the dishes and done the laundry about 220 times each. Though this was less laundry and dishes than the last year, the extra house cleaning more than made up for the difference in wasted time. Again, 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. The most striking thing is the number of days off I had last year without some kind of cleanup waiting for me:

3.

Yes, once every four months, I got a one day reprieve from the chores, and every other night, someone else's messes welcomed me back from work, where I make money that just gets co-opted and taken away by everyone around me.

When I was single, I got a day off of the chores every single day, except for Friday night, when I took care of everything together. Even the times I had to do dishes, it was because I rewarded myself with a delicious meal that I wanted to eat.

Sex

When we were dating, my wife and I used to have sex three to five times a week. Now we have sex once every a month or two. This year, I was denied sex for four months in 2012, and two months from the end of 2012 to 2013.

The sex life problem is now the reverse of what it was last year: before, I was unhappy that my wife and I only had sex about fifteen or twenty times that year, because it wasn't enough for me. Now, I don't want to have sex with her at all. The few times she plans a night for sex, and actually follows through, is something I'd rather she leave me alone about.

I can't take her overweight body, the fact that she takes advantage of me by spending too much money and nagging me about the same things every day, and the fact that the sex is usually over in about fifteen or thirty minutes, then it's back to another month long wait for something that's mechanical and boring anyway. Plus, most of the time when she tells me she's ready (it's been about a year since I stopped asking her first), she ends up cancelling or forgetting.

When she actually does want it and is ready to go, I go along with it and pretend like I'm enjoying myself (which is not at all how she treated me in the last five years), but most of the time, it doesn't matter. Everyone knows the story of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." My wife is "The Wife Who Cried Sex." And it's been many months since I've believed her, or even cared, if she was telling the truth about having sex. She's really to blame for opening my eyes on this one through several stages of me not wanting, then actively despising, sex with her:

Stage 1 - Until about a year ago, I was still practically begging for sex with her, and being disappointed every time. I was unhappy at this time because we hardly ever slept together.

Stage 2 - After the half a dozen plus sexual deserts where I waited for months for her to finally say yes, I decided that I would stop asking her first, and just wait for her to be ready. She very rarely initiated, and I started to lose interest in sex as the frigid weeks dragged on.

Stage 3 - By the time a month or three had gone by and my wife suddenly noticed I hadn't asked first for such a long time, it was too late. My drug dealer had strung me along for too long, and I had begun detoxing. She started ramping up the sexual overtures to once a week or two, and promised sex over and over. Her failure to follow through on most of her promises made me lose interest in it, and her, completely.

Stage 4 - It's kind of sad how desperate my wife is for attention now, and how she tries to nuzzle me or touch me with her attempts at a sultry "Tonight?" I give her the same apathetic "Ok" every time now because it seldom happens, and I'm glad when it usually doesn't. When she asks me to wake her up before I play video games, I don't even bother and lie later that I tried. I'm happy to hear when her period runs longer than expected or when she has some kind of excuse, because that means I have another day without sex. But if I ever get cornered and I have no way to escape, I just go along with it, finish her up as quickly as possible, fake the end so I don't have to clean up anything, then go back to the computer so I can pretend to be someone interesting and important.

When I was single, sex averaged out to three times a week with a girl I wanted to sleep with. 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 $55,000 to charity by now. That's a lot of children that I could have helped.

Time Off

This year, I had 55 days off of work. Although that can be averaged out to six work days a week and Sunday off, the truth is that for the first six months, I was working every day for weeks on end, with chores waiting almost every single night. And again, I kept very little of the money for myself. Despite this, this was also the time of my marriage that my wife was at her most disrespectful.

As a single man, I would have had two days a week off from work, and five days (at least) off from chores.

Travel

I've lived in four cities.

As an unmarried man, I would be living in my ninth 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 1500 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.

If I were still single, I could have written over 800 Then and Now posts on my great life.

Summary

The basic themes of 2012, as they were every year since 2009, were escalating disrespect and the constant biting of the hand (mine) that feeds. The second half of this married year, 2013, was me setting very clear boundaries for the two main stressors in my life (my wife and her mother), and returning to a mind-numbing, day-passing, wasteful life of monotony.

Were it not for my son, I would consider every year since 2008 as a married man a shameful, disgusting example of nothingness, eroding away everything that I've ever held dear.