Asklemmy

I prefer strongly to date women who have a full-time job.

Every time I have bent that rule it has ended in tears.

One, my ex-wife never had a full-time job the entire time we were dating or married. She relied on me for all of the money which to a certain degree I was okay with, but also all of her entertainment.

To her, me coming home from work was an opportunity for us to spend time together, an opportunity to alleviate her boredom.

And of course, I was working hard so that we would have a happy home, so I get it, but because of that it required me to be "ON" 24/7.

I couldn't come home and relax or play video games or have personal time to de-stress because she had been bored all day and wanted company.

The more I tried to explain this to her, the more upset it made her, the more it made her feel like I thought she was a problem, or that I resented her for not working.

I tried repeatedly to tell her that she was my wife she was the person I was working to make sure she was happy just that I needed an opportunity to recharge my battery so that I could give it my all and with the current system I could not recharge my battery and I was flatlining.

I put up with it for years bringing this up on a regular basis, and I guess because I was not a total asshole about it, she just let me keep bringing it up rather than agreeing that something needed to change.

I wanted her to have a job because when you work it gives you purpose in your life. I wanted her to have a job because when you work it brings extra money into the household, which would have been all her money but she would have had money to spend.

I wanted her to have a job because it gave her an opportunity to talk to other people and to interact with other human beings and also so that we would be generally at the same energy level when we got home from work.

A lot easier to recharge with someone who's also recharging instead of attempting to charge someone who's depleted while you're depleted.

Ultimately it led to our relationship falling apart.

There were other factors on top of this but we couldn't address those because the bear in the room was I was completely exhausted and she was fucking miserable and I did not possess the wherewithal to both be a full-time provider for the household and a full-time caretaker for a fully grown adult woman and a good and loving husband and a good friend to her.

She wanted the Moon and the Sun and the stars and the asteroid belts and the planets and the kuiper belt and the Oort cloud and I made it to the Moon and the Sun and the stars and I just couldn't make it any farther.

So yeah, got to have a full-time job to be in a relationship with me. You got to have your own shit going on so that you're not 100% relying on me to be your end all be all for your entire life because I'm only barely enough for myself and I don't have enough to take on an entire additional human being on top of that.