I’m fed up with my wife’s behaviour, can I change her or should I leave?

Q

My wife and I have been married for almost 15 years now but I am really fed up with her. When we got married she was bright, vivacious, slim and very attractive. But soon after we got married she gave up her good job and she has rarely worked at all since.

Even when she has taken on a part-time job she always leaves very quickly because “they don’t appreciate me”!

We have two kids and her excuse at the beginning was that she wanted to be at home for them. But all she did was watch television and complain about how exhausted she was with their constant demands.

So when I got home from work I would have to look after them until bedtime, often including making the dinner and always doing their homework with them and then trying to tidy the house which was always a mess .

I was doing an extra degree at night when they were young and she complained about that too. She has also put on about four stone, never does any exercise and has almost no friends outside the house, apart from a school friend who lives down the country so she is on the phone to her twice a day moaning about me, the kids, her life etc.

I just feel like packing up and leaving but I can’t leave the kids. I really adore them and they are bright and the light of my life. I am writing to you in desperation. Can I change her — or should I just leave?

A

I read your letter with mounting disbelief that anybody could put up with this lifestyle for so long. But you have done and so your wife’s behaviour has continued without question. So what happened to the lovely attractive woman that you married? And why did she change so much? These are questions that only she can answer but whatever the reasons you have been colluding with her in maintaining the status quo.

This is a hugely negative way of life for your children to experience. It is also very bad training for them to learn that the male does literally everything both inside and outside the home and the female does as little as possible.

Not exactly the role model that you would want them to follow as they grow up, but if you don’t do something to change things then that is exactly the pathway they will choose.

You have three options. You can keep things exactly as they are and incredible as it may seem this is often the option that people choose. However it is the least desirable.

Secondly you can separate, live in two different places and share the parenting, and try to get on with having a life. This of course has all sorts of problems, not the least being financial and is not one that you would enter into without a lot of thought. But it may be the only way forward for both yourself and the children.

Your last choice is to have a talk with your wife and explain how profoundly unhappy you are with how things have worked out for you both. There must be some reason — depression perhaps — why she has changed so radically.

Tell her that you are seriously considering separation and as you need things to change if you are to stay together you will have to ask that you seek help in the form of relationship counselling. Her refusal or not engaging in counselling if you do start will mean that option two is the route you will have to go down.

All of you deserve a better life than the one that you currently have. You can contact Mary O’Conor anonymously by visiting www.dearmary.ie or email her at dearmary@independent.ie or write c/o 27-32 Talbot St, Dublin 1. All correspondence will be treated in confidence. Mary O’Conor regrets that she is unable to answer any questions privately