Unfortunately, society doesn't give a SAHM much sense of worth since you aren't paid, and their aren't necessarily benchmarks for success as a SAHM, so when I stopped getting the "support" from the one person who's support meant the world to me, I started in turn to build resentment back.
Chris, I think that society's valuation of the SAHM is one of the big problems in my situation. I always tried to be very supportive of her, and told her often. But, I don't think it was enough. I don't think I could have done enough. So, she has transferred all of her resentment of society onto me. She has said that she wishes she'd never quit her job, though for the first 15 years, at least, she never said that.
She also holds a lot of resentment for her perception of a woman's role in our society in general, and again, I get the blame, being male. She has complained to me more than one, and even relatively recently, about high school classmates telling her not to go to college, because she'd never find a man that way! That was before I even knew her, and I still get the blame!
I've always supported anything she wanted to do, and she never said a thing about going back to work until just a few years ago, when she made the plan to go back to take care of helping the kids through college. Which she also resents, because she thinks it is my fault we hadn't saved enough. So, she resents me because she stopped working, and she resents me because she went back. Sometimes it feels a bit like a Catch-22!
Thanks for your thoughts. I appreciate them, and I think there is some, no a lot, of truth to them. The problem for me is that it seems that her resentment of "society" is transferred to me, no matter what I do!
