I am endlessly amazed every time I come here

[MJontheMend]

I require only three things in this world to make me happy. 1) A tidy home, 2) Insignificant debt and some money set aside for a rainy day, and 3) a loving and passionate physical relationship with the woman I promised to be faithful to for the rest of my life. I have now accepted that I will likely never have any of these three things again.

My first thought when I read this list was to ask you about your priorities. Would you be happy living with an LD wife if she was a spic n span housekeeper and fiscally conservative or would you tolerate a spendthrift slob if she was HD? It reminds me of the old saying "If she ain't cookin' in the kitchen, she must be cookin' somewhere else.". This saying points to the conventional wisdom that most men want wives who do both, but may be willing to settle for one or the other. You need to ask yourself why you are willing to settle for neither. I suspect the amswer has to do with your self-esteem and some other benefit that you do receive from being married to your wife. Is she very attractive so it boosts your ego to be seen with her? Is she more socially adept than you so she protects you from loneliness? There has to be some way in which you are benefiting from this relationship or you wouldn't be in it.

The other thought your list brought to mind was the old "the grass is always greener' argument. For instance, you say you want a woman who is passionate. What if you found yourself married to someone as HD as me? One of the interesting things my H revealed to me recently is that he is sometimes jealous of the fact that I enjoy sex so much. Your self-esteem might suffer if you were married to a woman more HD than you.

You don't like being married to a spendthrift. What if you were married to someone like me who was pretty much completely LD about money. My H had to coerce me into buying some attractive clothing and paying for a gym membership and my children are mortified to be seen in my piece of cr*p car (I suspect that I paid too much for it, so now I am determined to drive it until it dies.). My H likes to drink Evian but for a long time I refused to buy it for him because tap water is free and one of our bathrooms has been out of commission for over a year because I did a terrible job trying to fix it myself and I can't bear to pay a plumber. Because I get no joy out of spending money, I don't much care about earning it or saving it either. I could pretty easily get a job paying 4x what I make as a rare book dealer, but I have no motivation.

Your wife is a terrible housekeeper. What if you were married to the kind of woman who sprays Lysol on the kitchen chair as soon as you get up from it? (This isn't me. My housekeeping is minimalistic/frugal. My babies were usually naked except for a dingy gray cloth diaper and tattered rubber pants. If an item of clothing needs ironing or a gift requires dusting, I will sell it or give it to charity. I'm a good cook, but if it's August and I planted too many eggplant and you expect to be fed by me, you better like eggplant.). This might drive you crazy too. Perfection is hard to find.