A
male
age
51-59,
anonymous
writes:I have been with my wife for 30 years now, married for 21. For the first 10 years I knew her she held a full-time job and was very responsible. After we got married we bought a house together that needed a lot of work. An older lady owned it and there was a lot of deferred maintenance. Also, it was an older house (almost 100 years old now) and in need of updating. When we bought it we agreed that my salary would cover all of the household expenses and her salary would cover the upgrades and repairs. She upheld her part of that bargain for maybe 5 years, although a lot of what she spent money on was more cosmetic stuff like shutters, furnishings, and new appliances. She also paid to have the house painted inside and out. I paid to have the plumbing redone myself, but we were still left with some major projects left such as the electrical, the windows, the air conditioning/heating, brickwork, and so on. After that time she said her job was stressing her out and I had gotten a big raise so I told her she could quit her job and take some time off. The idea was that she could recharge, maybe even go back to school to finish her degree (she is only a couple of classes short), and figure out her next steps. Instead what has happened is that she decided not to go back to work anymore. We don’t have children so she has all day to herself. The pandemic showed me how litttlebshe does with each day while I am off working. She doesn’t even do basic household chores like clean the bathroom or mop the floors - at least not more than once every few months. Meanwhile, the unfinished household projects are becoming bigger problems. For example, there was a little roof leak over the garage that over time is becoming a big roof leak. The garage is detached so it is not our living space but we used to use it for storage. We can’t now because it gets wet when it rains which where we live in California is thankfully rare. There are other such things going undone and it has been long enough now that even some of the things we took care of will need to be done again such as painting. I cannot manage all of this on my salary alone. I keep telling her that and that she needs to get a job but she says she doesn’t know where to begin, can’t motivate herself, is depressed, no one wants to hire a 50 year old woman, and so on. She said she needed a new computer to update her resume. I bought her one. She hasn’t touched it. I told her to contact old colleagues to network, but she says she is too embarrassed to let them know what she has been up to. I suggested she just get out of the house and work retail or something and she gets indignant about it. I suggested she volunteer but that didn’t go anywhere either.I don’t know what to do anymore. She is obviously depressed, but our household has been running on inertia for some years now. I am starting to accrue debt to fix things that HAVE to be fixed such as when the water heater broke and I am unhappy with my living situation. I am a manager for a large engineering company and I draw a pretty good salary. I have seen some of the houses my colleagues and even underlings live in and they all have a much better lifestyle than I do on a smaller salary because their wives work. A lot of them have kids, too, which is an additional expense and adds to their duties.I am not saying I am jealous of what other people have as much as I just feel deeply disappointed that my wife knows all of this and yet refuses to help out. I am convinced she would let the house fall down around her before she got a job. At this point so am seriously contemplating divorce, but in some ways I feel that will just reward her behavior because I will owe her alimony. The truth is that I don’t want to leave my wife but she is making it very hard to remain married to her. We have broken windows and screens that aren’t fixed, an old car in the driveway (it broke down and we could not pay to fix it and we had two others anyway), a lamp post on the front yard that won’t light up, and overall the house is in worse shape now than when we bought it because of the neglect. I have considered selling it, but I won’t get a good price with it in this condition and then where would I go? To me the solution seems simple. My wife needs to get a job, even if just for a year or two, so we can work off the backlog of items that needs to be fixed and get our finances straight again. However, that seems beyond her capability even though a simple minimum wage job would help us so much right now and she has made a lot more than that in the past so it is possible for her to work maybe just half-time if she can’t do 40 hours. She claimed she was looking but the pandemic showed she is not which is when she admitted she was depressed. The situation is depressing me, too. I feel like life is too short to be putting up with this. I want her to “snap out of it” and get a job like everyone else if only for her own sake because sitting around at home in her own filth seems to make things worse. What would you do if you were me?
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debt, depressed, divorce, jealous, money Reply to this Question
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male
reader, anonymous, writes (3 January 2023): I am not going to write an essay on the subject which no one will have the time or the patience to read so in a few words . cut your loses. Sell the house, share the money and divorce.
A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (1 January 2023): You are fed up with your wife and her problems.
Honestly it seems that you tend NOT to see the real picture.
You bought a fixer upper without really having a solid budget! And years later your house is still not fixed.
You should have cut your losses years ago!
What are toy getting out of your marriage?
How could.you have let things get where they are now? By ignoring the reality.
People who have issues are burden UNLESS you love them. Then you help them and not ignore them.
So you either cut your losses there too and divorce your depressed probably menopausal wife or you get her going (therapy, organising her days...) and then you both find a solution.
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A
female
reader, anonymous, writes (1 January 2023): You need a good life coach - neither of you are good at making plans or working out the best options available, you need someone there ready for when you need to make a big decision to make it for you so that you do not make such enormous mistakes again. You clearly bought this house thinking it would be a bargain, trying to take advantage of the old lady who was selling it, and instead of it working out to be a get rich quick scheme it turned out to eat up money. Serves you right. You get what you pay for. People don't sell terrific houses cheap because they want to line the pockets of bargain hunters. You are grown adults who were blinded by your wish to make money out of someone else's situation.
Your wife is now 50 and has no interest in work yet you say she should finish a degree. Why? What use would it be to her? What use has any of it been to her? Once again you are looking to waste time or money on something just for the sake of it - as if there is some special reward at the end of it.
Most people shy away from fixer uppers. Because it is so much hassle, time and money. I was shying away from such properties when I was twenty, now I own eight houses outright, all paid for cash, because I don't expect other people to finance my future and work hard.
It sounds very much like you think the World owes you a nice life, strangers owe you a nice life, and you are entitled. Yet you live beyond your means. You talk about the wife paying to have the house painted inside and out. My husband did that. He also worked full time at the same time - and he was in his sixties. Stop being so lazy. Most people who buy a fixer upper do some or all of the jobs themselves. Those things are man's work not womens. You could have done some of these jobs yourself instead of paying other people to do them and then complaining. Lots of people paint their own houses - in or out. Even those who have never done it before and learn as they go along. If you were working a normal week you had weekends and evenings to do it.
You say wife has not bothered to do much housework, she leaves a bathroom for ages. Hardly surprising. She is bored, she is tired, she is fed up with the whole thing. Why would she think it important to clean up a house that is never as it should be? She sees that as a fruitless waste of time.
You bought the house thinking you could buy a sows ear at a sows ears price and then turn it into a silk purse without the necessary money, skills and time needed to do that being put into it.
I am quite sure that if you could have transformed your bargain house into a gorgeous palace quickly and cheaply you would not have been here moaning. It seems very much like you want your wife to be the scapegoat who gets blamed for everything as if you have behaved impeccably and not put a foot wrong.
Fixer uppers are for physical guys who are willing to get their hands dirty - and be patient - sometimes it can take years - or have a big bundle of cash ready to pay others to do it for them. Sometimes the project is not worth the time and money other times it is. You pay a professional to work that out for you before you decide whether or not to buy the house!
Your wife is right about not wanting to reach out and tell people how things are for her now, she would be embarrassed.
For some ridiculous reason you think if she reaches out to these people that will help. Why? Are you once again expecting other people to solve your problems for you and make your life better for you? These other people have their own lives to lead, their own issues. They are not going to come to your rescue and put themselves out to improve things for you.
I employ a lot of people, mostly women, and have done for years. If a woman comes to me bleating about her life not being happy that would put me off of employing her.
I look for staff who are capable at making intelligent and wise decisions - as this is what they would be doing for their clients - if they cannot do it for themselves they would be useless to the clients.
Somewhere along the line with this your wife should have either put her foot down - insisting that the idea of buying this money pit was a huge mistake and refusing to. Or walked away from you. She has been far too timid in allowing you to dictate too much when you do not have the wherewithal to be able to make good decisions.
Women who are good decision makers do not even marry such a man or stay married to him. They realise they are better off single.
You have not mentioned it but I suspect she has gone off of sex with you because she has lost faith in you and your behaviour. Sometimes a wife turns to her husband to be the leader and the main breadwinner, and then sees that the husband is a paper tiger no fit for purpose and goes off him.
Her biggest mistake was in assuming you should lead and you know best simply because you are a male.
Now she realises this and regrets it big time.
And that is your biggest problem. Not whether you stay in the money pit of a house which turned out to be far less of a bargain than you hoped. That is down to merely money and legal documents and can easily be changed. How she feels about you now may never be able to change and is not good.
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A
reader, anonymous, writes (31 December 2022): Maybe you should consider selling the house; and buying something requiring less repair work. You bought a fixer-upper, and it's literally falling apart; while you're blaming your wife for your poor choice of a real-estate investment. It was a poor choice, and whether she was working or not; you may have bought yourself a money pit of a house. You talk about finances, and divorcing your wife; but you don't seem to own the fact that perhaps you both may have made a bad investment in the house.
I am taken-aback at how nonchalant you seem about ending your marriage; and seeming more concerned about having to pay alimony! Not once in a very lengthy post do you even mention that you love your wife. You seem more concerned about the house, than the health and wellbeing of your wife. It's easy to write it off as laziness; but that is unlikely when she had a very rambunctious work-ethic to start with. She is a middle-aged woman, and suddenly being thrust back into the workforce; which is constantly changing with the economy and technology.
This says a lot:
"I keep telling her that and that she needs to get a job but she says she doesn’t know where to begin, can’t motivate herself, is depressed, no one wants to hire a 50 year old woman, and so on."
Depression isn't something you can just "snap-out" of. You didn't mention if she has been medically and mentally evaluated by a medical doctor and/or mental-health specialist; to determine just how serious her depression is, and what kind of treatment may be required. Some mental-health disorders in women are hormonal, some are physiological, some due to medicinal side-effects, and some are due to long-term stress and anxiety. Depression untreated over a long period of time, becomes all the more difficult to treat. You won't recover overnight. Though I can empathize with the urgency of your situation.
There was a great recession back in 2008, when the economy collapsed; and many people suffered on long-term unemployment. When you have extended gaps in employment, your job-skills become rusty; and sometimes your professional qualifications (or your profession) become(s) obsolete. Many people suffered distress from being laid-off from downsizing; then turned-down for one job after another, as being over-qualified or under-qualified. There was rampant age-discrimination.
Aging, and long-term unemployment, takes a lot of energy and ambition out of people who haven't been in the workforce for extended periods. Look how covid has affected many people who were working from home; who are now required to return to an office work-environment. They have developed anxiety and discomfort returning to a desk and cubicle, or an overly-structured work environment. Surrounded by all kinds of off-the-chain human personalities. You never stopped, she did! It's not as easy to jump right back into it as you may think; because she's unsure of her work-skills, and the relevancy of her training and experience. It's disheartening being told you aren't what they're looking for; or they have a another candidate in mind. Never to be called-back after an interview, or two.
Just taking any job, may seem fine with you; because you're not the one who has to do it; and probably wouldn't just take any old job! Not if you knew you'd absolutely hate it. Even if your finances demanded it! Be real, my friend! We all have some dignity and pride; even when it may seem inappropriate, or inconvenient. It's being human.
Have her get an full physical examination, with as many medical tests as your health insurance will cover. If her doctor recommends she sees a therapist or depression, then get a recommendation; or do your research to find a qualified psychiatrist. Who will have to do an extensive mental-health evaluation for depression and anxiety. Her fears and anxieties may be attributed to clinical-depression; and she won't just snap-out of it. We endured the worst of a covid pandemic, and we are now experiencing a serious economic flux; bordering on another recession. You thinks she's oblivious to what's happening, and may be feeling unable to cope. Yes, she may be lazy too; but you did say that is uncharacteristic; so there's some underlying reason for that.
Meanwhile, you may need to put the house on the market; and find yourself a place requiring less work and renovation. That was your first mistake, and taking her out of the workforce was another. You didn't have the foresight to realize a fixer-upper is an expensive undertaking, and a long-term project. Most often requiring a big load of cash; which may be difficult to come by, if you're not wealthy. Not to mention the rising cost of materials, and hiring of reliable contractors worth their salt. If you're doing it all yourself, you're prolonging the agony!
A home inspection prior to purchase may have saved you a lot of pain and money. You should have had an inspector do a visual examination of the physical structure and systems of a home. Give you an estimate of the costs of repairs. An inspection unearths problems, you can negotiate with the seller to lower the home's price, or arrange for repairs before closing. If you failed to do that, you have little right to blame your wife for being "lazy!" It made no sense to have her take time away from the workforce before the home repairs and renovations were complete. Your bad!
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