I'm 32, she's 28. We married eight years ago. We have no children, by choice. We both graduated from college and were working in our chosen fields for about four years. I lost my job almost 2 years ago and am still looking. She lost hers not long after but found another job with a greatly reduced salary. I mention that because many of our problems, I believe, stem from a general dissatisfaction she has with her life. She has always had an inferiority complex and has always felt like she was a failure because she wasn't living up to the lifestyle expectations her mother placed upon her. That was when she was working in her field. Now that she's working just a job, that feeling is compounded and it has caused us to have arguments. These arguments are over silly things, but I believe deep down, they're really about her feelings of failure. She gets these ideas in her head, that one thing is causing her problems and there's no changing her mind it seems. Even when evidence suggests the complete opposite.
I'm not without blame in this situation. I own that and I accept that. I'm ashamed to admit it, but in January of this year I went into a drunken binge and became violent with my wife. I never hit her but I scared her badly. I don't drink at all normally. I drank that night because my grandmother, who practically raised me, had died and my father was hospitalized within a few days of each other. I didn't handle it well. I haven't had a drink since and I never will. I don't know if she's really forgiven me for that night even though she says she has.
I picked up Divorce Remedy, Sex Starved Marriage and Divorce Busting from Barnes & Noble.
