A letter to my wife

A letter to … my wife, who won’t get a job while I work myself to death

"I’ve asked, and sometimes pleaded, for years with you to get a job, any job. Many of my free hours are spent helping with the house and the kids, and I recognize that traditional gender roles are often oppressive, but that cuts both ways. I would feel less used and alone if you pitched in financially, even a little.

That’s not going to happen. It has become clear that you are OK with my working myself to death at a high-stress career that I increasingly hate, as long as you don’t have to return to the workforce."

I am the guy in this article but I am not the author. The article perfectly describes the situation I find myself in with my wife. It’s like Mr. Anonymous has been spying on me for years and wrote this article about me except for the profession.  My old lady flat out refuses to get a job. I have even paid for her to take college classes to help her find a job. She even has come up with excuses why she can’t finish her associate’s degree. She has held jobs in the past but she always finds excuses to quit. The longest she has held a job was when we were first married. So this begs the question, why don’t I leave. Well that’s complicated but it can be boiled down to the welfare of my child. The have been numerous studies that conclude children fair better than children from homes of divorced parents. Children with both parents in the home do better in school, engage in less risky behavior, and generally turn out better. Hell, I remember the girls I went to school with whose parents were divorced. They were the biggest leg slingers in the building.  Not to mention that I don't want to spend the rest of my life paying alimony and child support so high that I have to live in my truck just to make the payments while she gets to keep the house. 

There is also this to consider.

So what is the answer? That will be discussed later.