I get that this looks misogynistic, but what parent describes is exactly my experience. It literally describes my post break-up relationship with my wife. the meddling of her led to poisoning of my relationship with the kids. she was the one who was hitting me any time there was an argument, threw plates and glass, or became physical in other ways that I had no choice than call the police because I was scared of further escalation. When the police came to the house they said it was protocol to remove the male from the home for a night so that the woman can look after the kids. Once, when my son was playing with my daughter in their room and we were in the kitchen (I made coffee standing ~4m away from her) she started screaming hysterically my son's name and saying "quick please come your father is hitting me" (despite me never once raising my hand to her). My son until this day thinks I hit her. At other times (when I was severely depressed for months and couldn't get out of bed) my daughter asked why I wasn't at the dinner table with them she said to them "he is just lazy". Once I got sick and fainted so she left me lying unconscious in the bathroom for a whole night without calling 911 ... I have hundreds of memories like this, and later realized a lot of it was an attempt to implant memories on our kids that didn't happen. Once I was brave enough to talk about it to others I noticed there are many men like myself who refuse to engage in physical violence towards women and are actually at the receiving end of it.
I never spoke up because I was too embarrassed and nobody among my family or friends would have understood (and I knew that I wasn't able to give up my kids because this would have been the result of a break-up so I rather went to work with a bruised face claiming I fell of the bike or the snowboard - again!)
My problem was that she might actually be bi-polar or suffer from some kind of undiagnosed mental condition (at least to me this was the only explanation for such level of "evil"). In the end it doesn't matter what's the cause what counts is that I got out of it. Oddly having the responsibility of children was the reason I put up with this for so long. When I asked myself if this is the template I want to pass on to them I walked because I hope that if they ever find themselves in such a place they should walk regardless of how many kids they have.
I feel like there's a lot a brainwashing and manipulation even when spouses aren't physically abusive.
My wife tells me stuff that just doesn't make sense. When I sold my nice car and quit doing track days when we got married with plans to have kids, she kept telling me that I could've kept it and that the only reason I had it must have been to get girls. That simply wasn't true. And keep it? Using what money! I pay all the bills (and benefits, and retirement saving) except for her phone and car, while she spends as much or more every month on her hobby as I do on the mortgage. Or if I tell her that we should cut back on our toddler's screen time that day, she'll say it was only .5 hour, eventhough I witnessed 1.5 hours of TV time and .5 hour of phone/youtube time.
On top of this, she occaionally tells me that I'm mean to her. This is usually in response to me giving her instructions on how to properly perform some task. For example, she said I get the whites very clean looking when I wash them. I told her you have to pre soak them with bleach or oxiclean when they look dirty. Apparently this is mean to say? Or I mention that our toddler with a heart condition shouldn't be drinking iced tea with caffeine in it. Apparently this makes me controlling. I thought this would be common sense (drinking caffeine is the opposite of taking a medication to slow heart rate, which could lead to a bad outcome).
Many people have terrible social skills, and introspection.
There’s also the issue that many people choose mates because they want to have sex with them, or because they were young, or gave them attention, or were just around (or some combination of all these things).
People are awful at choosing long term mates and the discussion around this and the selection criteria is really bad.
If your partner has core value differences or just isn’t at some threshold of general intelligence the relationship will be filled with this kind of anxiety inducing misery.
This goes both ways too - I’ve known brilliant women who dated oafish/dumber, but very good-looking/fit men that were filled with similar insecurities. People should select more on core value alignment and intelligence than they do.
The brainwashing isn’t some secret truth of spousal relationships, except perhaps that people are bad at long term mate selection and select for the wrong things.
The values are mostly the same. The two big issued in this case are that she's never lived alone, so never learned many basic life skills. It's not terrible, but can get annoying when you're the one in a fulltime job and watches the kid on most nights and weekends, doing all the shopping, cooking, financial, legal, medical, mechanical, and property upkeep work.
The second thing is that she stated before marriage that she likes the country and wants to own a small horse farm. I, incorrectly, assumed that ment moving to a cheaper area. Who has $1M+ dollars for 10-20 acres in this area? Not to mention land in that amount is pretty rare as the county's population density metrics list it as urbanized.
Good on you for getting out and showing your kids that it is ok to leave a bad relationship (even if they don't realize that is what you are doing at the time).
My father married a woman (my stepmother) who was abusive and manipulative and it took him awhile to be decisive and leave.
I didn't appreciate how hard it was for him to leave at the time and blamed him for part of it.
Now (a couple decades later) I am just grateful we got out at all.
Your kids might not realize everything that is going on right away. From my experience, there is a good chance they will see all you did for them one day.
I get that this looks misogynistic, but what parent describes is exactly my experience. It literally describes my post break-up relationship with my wife. the meddling of her led to poisoning of my relationship with the kids. she was the one who was hitting me any time there was an argument, threw plates and glass, or became physical in other ways that I had no choice than call the police because I was scared of further escalation. When the police came to the house they said it was protocol to remove the male from the home for a night so that the woman can look after the kids. Once, when my son was playing with my daughter in their room and we were in the kitchen (I made coffee standing ~4m away from her) she started screaming hysterically my son's name and saying "quick please come your father is hitting me" (despite me never once raising my hand to her). My son until this day thinks I hit her. At other times (when I was severely depressed for months and couldn't get out of bed) my daughter asked why I wasn't at the dinner table with them she said to them "he is just lazy". Once I got sick and fainted so she left me lying unconscious in the bathroom for a whole night without calling 911 ... I have hundreds of memories like this, and later realized a lot of it was an attempt to implant memories on our kids that didn't happen. Once I was brave enough to talk about it to others I noticed there are many men like myself who refuse to engage in physical violence towards women and are actually at the receiving end of it.
I never spoke up because I was too embarrassed and nobody among my family or friends would have understood (and I knew that I wasn't able to give up my kids because this would have been the result of a break-up so I rather went to work with a bruised face claiming I fell of the bike or the snowboard - again!)
My problem was that she might actually be bi-polar or suffer from some kind of undiagnosed mental condition (at least to me this was the only explanation for such level of "evil"). In the end it doesn't matter what's the cause what counts is that I got out of it. Oddly having the responsibility of children was the reason I put up with this for so long. When I asked myself if this is the template I want to pass on to them I walked because I hope that if they ever find themselves in such a place they should walk regardless of how many kids they have.