re: Do you feel like you sacrificed your personality for your wife, family, career?

Married life, and marriage is fluid. It changes, we change, they change. The secret is changing with it, discovering new things together.

For about 10 years we were the way you are now. Spent about 5 years like your Dad.

The last 3 we just became like old friends. We do 99% of everything together, yard work, house work etc. Currently building a house mostly the 2 of us. We switch up shows, and if one of us doesn't much care for whatever we are watching we just clown about it.

In a 20 year relationship things ebb and flow, you gotta roll with it. We have more fun now being "middle aged" than we had in our 20's.

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But looking back, I don’t know if my wife and I have a lot in common. We have great chemistry and built a life around it. But in terms of hobbies? Personal interests? Definitely different.

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Do you think my wife likes to build models and is really into study of military history? Of course not. While I’m working on my models, she’s working in her garden or doing something like going shopping with her mom and our daughter.

But that doesn’t mean we have nothing in common. We both like to take a Saturday and just go somewhere. We call it galavanting. We both enjoy cooking so a lot of nights we’ll cook dinner together. Or we might just hang out and watch movies. The key isn’t that you both line up perfectly in interests. The key is that you genuinely enjoy just being with each other.

A great example of this is a few weeks ago there was a big model show close to us. My wife and daughter cares nothing about models. My son, who was days from shipping off to basic training isn’t really into models either. But did I go to the model show alone? Nope. They came with me. And they did so because we, as a family, genuinely enjoy being together.

And on the other side of the coin I’ve gone to countless thrift stores, antique stores, nurseries that I personally care nothing about. But I still did it and even wanted to do it because I enjoy just being with my wife.

Sometimes we do things she wants, sometimes we do things I want. But we do it together. Doesn’t mean we have to be right up under one another 24/7. But we do just like being with each other. That’s the key.

I think a lot of people, especially in the south, think about when they were young wild and free in undergrad or like immediately post-grad.

Such a different life that pretty much cannot be replicated outside of the university/student setting.

Even if you are a diligent student you're probably only spending like 25-30 hours on "school" in your average week. Less if you are normal. After graduating you are spending probably a minimum of 40 and an average of 45-50 on "work". That's 20+ hours per week that you used to hang out with friends or pursue hobbies gone.

In college, everyone else had roughly the same schedule and all of the social events, hobbies etc are right at your door step. You practically have to try to not be social and have fun and participate in hobbies when you are in undergrad. If you were an LSU student, you could just roll out of bed and walk/bike a few mins and be at the best college gameday atmosphere in the country and you probably had solid tickets to the games as well. shite that a lot of us probably looked forward to more than anything back then. Now it's a fricking ordeal driving in to BR, parking, paying crazy ticket prices, either lugging around kids or paying a babysitter etc etc. That's just one example.

It's 10x more effort once you get out of school and it's 100x once you have a family.

That's just life. If someone had found an accessible and healthy way to keep that undergrad lifestyle going we'd have heard about it by now.

Just take up golf. That's 4+ hours of alone time a week and you get to be yourself around the boys.

Nah. My wife’s supportive of everything I do. I may not do something’s as much in the name of spending time with her but I don’t view that as a sacrifice because I want that time with her. If the person you’re with is worth it then what you’re giving up for the relationship shouldn’t be that big of a sacrifice.

Now the count I was with before my wife she made me sacrifice a ton of shite that I didn’t want to give up.

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quote:so there’s little time for anything outside of hanging out with the wife and getting ready for bed. By no means am I an expert, but this sounds very unhealthy.

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You’re right. It is.

I’ve posted before about my situation here. My days start at 4am, have to be at work by 530. I try to leave by 530pm, and I have an hour commute home. With my kids activities schedule lately, I usually have to pick my daughter up from dance, so on most nights I don’t get home until after 730.

I technically work 4-10s, but over the last two years I’ve ended up either working on Friday or on the phone all day more often than not. I can’t remember the last time I truly didn’t have a bunch to do on a Friday. For example, my wife was gone this weekend for work. I got 27 phone calls over the three days I was “off.” I never got to work remotely during Covid. I was busier than most people.

Weekends are packed with stuff. There’s always a birthday party, or somewhere to go, or family wants us to come over, or whatever.

I haven’t played golf since last spring. I haven’t been fishing this year. Hell it’s a struggle just to find time to squeeze in cutting grass. Nevermind leisure activities.

I’ve started to accept that this is my life now. It’s the same thing every week. Part of me wants to find a job in another state, and just pick the family up and move somewhere where we won’t have to live away from work, we won’t have to pay for private school, and we actually can have relationships with people outside of work. I know not having family close by will be a challenge, but I also won’t have people trying to compete for monopolizing our time. I often wonder if we would be happier.

Interests change as we age.

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Weekends are packed with stuff. There’s always a birthday party, or somewhere to go, or family wants us to come over, or whatever

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Your kids will start ignoring you when they are about 13 and you'll have a lot more free time again

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Also, a lot of people hate to look in the mirror. Sometimes a wife doesn't want to have sex with a fat person, which, just statistically, there are probably a ton of obese people on this board.

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It could be that and/or a bunch of other things. A man needs a time and place. A woman needs to feel an emotional connection. My wife likes to talk and recap our days when we get home from work. That's not something I care for, but I'll take an hour or so out of my day to do what she likes. Some guys just come home, plop their asses on the couch or go straight to their gaming room and maybe say a few words to their wives and complain "WHY WON'T SHE SLEEP WITH ME?".

Now, if your wife is on any sort of birth control, that may throw her libido all out of whack. My wife was on an IUD after our second child and if we had sex 10 times per year, I was lucky.