Things I wish I had done differently with my wife before things all went wrong

[Centuris]

OK, I don't know where to post this, but I have regrets. My marriage is going south and may never recover. My wife has lost respect for me. Whether deserved or underserved is for another thread. I have a list of regrets that I would like to air and I don't know where to put them. I would not tell her these things.

 

1. I regret that I started looking at porn when I was 17, before I met my wife. Porn just became available and I scarfed it down like twinkies. Without obsessing over it, I wish it had never been a part of my life. I remember watching some with her early in our relationship, it never added anything positive. I wished I could have approached sex with more of a blank slate as far as porn is concerned. Not an uneducated slate (I don't regret Joy of Sex, other books). I wish I could have explored her after marriage with no expectations and then learned as we went along.

 

2. I regret that I waited so long to marry my wife. She did not really have the approval of my parents (who knows, maybe they could tell she was going to be a psycho), but I see no problem now if I had married her back then after only a year. I drew it out over four years partly to get more of a seal of approval from my folks. I wish I had not felt the psychological need to do that. I wish I had distanced myself more from my folks, maybe even living in another state, rather than the same town like I do now.

 

3. I regret never having taken good care of my body growing up, as far as exercise is concerned. I am trying to address that now later in my life.

 

4. I regret not having learned all the things I know now about relationships and marriage, after the last few years of difficulty/hell with my wife. I should have started educating myself about this stuff when I was 15. There is still time for my son, I can help him.

 

I know there's no turning back the clock, sometimes I dream about it though.

 

I have started to try some reverse psychology on myself. After a particularly bad shot of verbal abuse from my wife this weekend, I briefly and vividly imagined I was already dead. That everything in my life was gone and that there was no coming back. Then I imagined that I had been resurrected and placed back in my body, even with all of my issues (financial, poor physical shape, etc). I imagined that I had been placed back in my body and told - "you have been given this day to live and choose what to do with it. Remember, the dead envy you." I started to feel better about things despite my wife's coldness. I felt through my imagination that I had some secret advantage over or special insight that my wife didn't have because her (normal, complaining, nagging, everyday) perspective. I have taken more risks in the past few days, in small ways, reminding myself "I have the chance to live today". I know all this means nothing to her. It could be as simple as throwing out an old shirt and buying a new one.

 

Because I am forcing myself to have more of a perspective that my life is "borrowed" time, I feel more urgent to teach my children the things they need to know, as best I know, based on what I've been able to learn.

 

I feel something like a secret agent, on a special mission known only to me. :-P

[anijanoki]

you should tell you wife does thing. At least for me I need to know what is going on. You may be surprise at her response. Good Luck