Who broke the vows first?

[mercy]

What about a SAH spouse that faithfully performed their duties as a SAH spouse, raising kids well, feeding them well, homework, the whole nine, but he/she didn't keep up their end of the bargain sexually? He/She should not have their fair share of the marital assets?

 

Here's what a SAHM is worth!

 

What is a Stay-at-Home Mom Worth? - Salary.com

 

And she needs her money now!

[Got it]

While I can see the merit in these, I had neither, and now after 25 years of M, would have to say some of what I might have thought important for a prenup would no longer be important. To me what matters the most is continual open and honest communication. For people that have difficulty with that, then counselling would be important. But if both people want to and do communicate openly and honestly, I wonder what counseling would add. In my own case, I'm sure it would not do harm, but given all the things one wants to do with our short time here, I don't think it would have been worth my time.

 

However, in some cases I do think one or both of these would help.

 

Because unless you are perfect at communicating and conflict resolution, both parties can always improve.

 

Have you ever been in counseling? I think it is rather obtuse to think it wouldn't be of value if you haven't had any interaction or education regarding it.

 

A prenup would and should cover the financial pieces of a marriage which tend to not be focused on when two people are marrying. It is about LURVE and so they don't sit down and figure out what each party feels about who is making money, what happens if both parties can't or don't, distribution of assets, debt, expenditures, etc. There is little focus here and finances is one of the top reasons why people divorce.

 

Secondly, counseling will help with the above and go into how the two parties communicate, handle conflict, childhood tendencies, etc so it isn't a shocker that OMG my spouse has ALWAYS been a conflict avoider with a madonna/whore complex. Therapy, in the beginning more so than in the end, can help strengthen and develop the couple's foundation instead of trying to stick a thumb in the dam at the very end. Most couples don't go into therapy until it is too late and too much time and damage are done.

 

The above would help address, acknowledge, and minimize areas where someone could do a bait and switch or at least make it a much clearer example. I tend to think most people have good intentions so few people do things with the desire to hurt another. But we humans do tend to be self centric and sometimes can't see the woods for the trees.

 

While I do think it is wrong to misrepresent oneself I do not think there should be financial or custodial treatment or penalties unless it is to the detriment of the minors and/or is unreasonable and harmful.

 

Ultimately life is a gamble and tying yourself financial to someone and especially with the bearing of offspring you are rolling the dice that they will spent their remaining decades acting in your best interest. If one looks at it analytically it probably isn't the safest of gambles but one we take every day. The best one can do is protect themselves with the prenup and the counseling, and then just take the plunge. There is no way to prevent the possibility that your spouse won't one day decide that they are Elvis reincarnated and need to bring music to the world leaving you to pick up the pieces on the home front. Life is a gamble. Either sit on the sidelines or jump in.

[Radagast]

I'm sorry to drag the thread back on topic, but I would actually like to discuss the issue of "who broke the vows first?" rather than the tangents about assigning value to having kids or staying at home to parent them.

 

My ex-wife and I had been cohabiting for several years before we got married, and our decision to marry was prompted by a change in tax legislation that made it prudent to do so. At the time we had clearly established agreements for our relationship. These included that we would both work full-time, that we would both contribute the same agreed amount each month to a kitty for household expenses but that beyond that, our income was our own, that we would not have any children, that we would share household tasks equally, that we would do our utmost to remain attractive to each other, that we recognised sexual exclusivity to be unnatural but that as long as we fulfilled each other's sexual needs reasonably well, we would not complicate matters by involving other people. (For those who are perplexed by that, it must be mentioned that this was a long time ago, during the time of "free love" and that many of our friends were involved in polyamorous arrangements at the time.) When we decided to marry, it was on the understanding that the marriage would not change our underlying agreements with each other, that the marriage would simply serve to put us into a more favourable tax bracket so that we could afford to continue to live to the standard we had become accustomed to.

 

Once we were married, however, some things began to change. Sex became infrequent. She fell pregnant "accidentally", miscarried, and was incensed when I was genuinely relieved about that. She then fell pregnant again, "accidentally", and refused to abort, despite our agreement to have no children. Yes, I should have left at this stage as she'd clearly broken an agreement, but even so I would still have been legally and financially responsible for a child I did not want and we had agreed not to have, so I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't. And because duty and obligation matter greatly to me, I stayed. She wanted to be a full-time parent but I flatly refused to consider that, so she returned to work very resentfully and has never forgiven me for that. At that point she also decided that remaining attractive to me was no longer a priority, and let her self go completely. She also became very lazy around the house, finally insisting that we hire domestic servants to take care of the household tasks for which she was responsible (funding for this came from the shared kitty, not from her discretionary money). I was still responsible for my household duties, and found myself taking over more and more of the cooking as she simply made sure she was not around at mealtimes, and of course children had to be fed.

 

Eventually she was hardly lifting a finger around the house, was expecting me to do all the ferrying around of children, and our sex life basically dried up. Additionally, she would shop compulsively from the shared kitty and would demand that we put more and more in each month to finance her spending - much of which was not on shared household buying but on things that benefitted only her, or on yet more expensive junk for the kids that they did not need, like yet another electronic gaming gadget when they already had a cupboard full, or a year's worth of music lessons which they would give up after a single class.

 

She refused to discuss anything. Any attempt at discussion from my side was "bullying" and would provoke abuse, anger, tears and mayhem. She was angry all the time and there was no nurturing, no physical affection, no love, no give and take (just all take, from her side). I tried my best, kept myself in good physical shape, tried to make her happy, twisted myself into a pretzel. As I've posted elsewhere, she refused to consider marriage counselling, considered the marriage perfectly sound and any fault must lay with me.

 

Eventually I gave up trying, and later was vulnerable to the attraction of an affair and the rest is history, as they say. Do I consider her to have broken her vows first? Yes, most definitely, on several fronts. At that point of my affair I was deep in denial but to be honest we did not have a marriage to desecrate. We had a shared house, children with both of our DNA, and a marriage certificate, that is all.

[Got it]

AnotherRound, again remember that the men on here complaining that they do most of the housework, etc. are probably exaggerating just as my husband did. Oh no! The poor poor abused souls have to pick up their socks or maybe run the kids to practice. Oh the horror!

 

My ex husband thinks I pulled the bait and switch because by the middle of our ten year marriage, sex was nearly non existent. What he refused to face is that I didn't want to have sex with a man who berated me, called me names, and just generally treated me with zero respect. I went into that marriage with good intentions, but it didn't work out that way because of his abusive nature. But according to you, the poor hardworking man should have walked away with everything, including my children.

 

My current husband treats me with respect and we have no issues in any aspect of our lives.

 

So remember that when these men are complaining...they may be treating their wives in a way that is not conducive to sex.

 

I think the converse is true here. I think whatever anyone posts needs to be viewed as it being a filtered and biased opinion.

 

What is the saying, there is what she said, what he said, and the truth.

[eleanorrigby]

I guess I shouldn't even be in this thread. Sex in my marriage has always been good and is getting better. And I don't know anyone that actually plotted and planned, years in advance, to trick a man into marriage.

 

I just got interested in the thread because of the hard, cold-blooded, stance I was reading against SAHM's (which I'm proud to say I was for a few years and am currently a WAHM)

 

But it's still an interesting thread. I'd like to talk also about spouses that stay years and years with a spouse that plotted to trick them into marriage and children. Do they still get to claim all the assets in that event? Seems to me that the percentage should go down as each year passes.

Silence gives consent, right?

[waterwoman]

I am quite prepared to agree that women (or men) who perform this sort of deliberate ande malicious about-face after marriage *have* broken their vows. I don't think there can be any sensible objection to that statement.

 

But I would suggest that the number of women doing it in the manner you suggest are vanishingly small. And the one-sided posts by disgruntled husbands on LS about their (in their unconfirmed opinion) useless. lazy, sexless wives hardly counts towards that total in my opinion.

[underwater2010]

So, when thinking about affairs, and why they happen - I think we all know why they happen.

 

Please do not assume that you know why all affairs start. Each situation is different.

 

But what is this phenomena?

 

It is a phenomena because people are being raised with poor bounderies and a sense of entitlement. I should be happy therefore I can do whatever I have to in order to be happy.

 

The idea that (and I'm going to use women cutting out as opposed to men here for simplicity) a woman can "pretend" to have a huge sex drive, then gets married, and reveals that she has NO sex drive at all?

 

I believe that is rare instance. Just for clarification a woman's sex drive will change according to what is going on in her life. Kids, stress, an inconsiderate partner, low hormone levels and/or bad health.

 

That one or two times a year is MORE than enough for her tastes. But, she waits until after she has everything else a marriage entails - the children, the house, the vacations, etc. And then she expects the man to keep doing his husband part - making money, taking out the trash, helping with the kids - but is convinced that she doesn't have to do anything more than be a mom and a housekeeper. ????

 

That is a sad situation, but remember that there have been many life changes.

 

Wouldn't that be breaking the vows?

 

Yes it would.

 

When you get married, you promise to forsake all others, right?

 

Which is why an affair is never okay for married person.

 

So, you are signing up to be that man's ONLY sexual partner, emotional partner FOREVER - til death do you part. So, how do women that check out justify this?

 

Actually most women turn towards masturbation prior to checking out. A woman not having sex with her husband does not give him the right to cheat.

 

How do they explain that they think the H should keep being a husband, but they don't have to keep being a wife? And they expect the H to keep HIS vow of forsaking all others - but they refuse to participate in the most intimate part of the relationship? Did they believe that the man would willingly sign up for no sex for the rest of his life? Or, did they KNOW he wouldn't, but they wanted to be married so badly, that they manipulated and tricked him so that they could get what they want, and then stopped holding up their end of the deal?

 

Again you are talking about a rare occurence. But I would expect him to masturbate or divorce me, not have an affair.

 

I'm a woman, and it frustrates ME just thinking about it! That after some women get what they want, they stop respecting their marriage certificate (the one they bleat about 24/7 when an affair happens, and how important those vows were) and then say - well, if he isn't happy now that I refuse to hold up my end of the marriage, he should just leave! Really? He should just let you have 50% of everything he has worked for bc you don't want to hold up your end of the marriage? He should give up seeing his kids daily bc you lied or changed your mind? He should give up his house, and half the lifestyle he has lived bc you have decided to take away one of the most important connections that he has in this world - the one you AGREED to that day in front of your family, friends, and god (isn't that what I hear all the time here?)

 

Yep. He should file for divorce or enter marriage counciling. If his wife not fullfilling their vows is worthy of an affair, he should leave.

 

Thoughts on this? For those OW/OM or WS, did this happen to you or in your situation to your MM/MW? If so, do you see it as I'm seeing it? As manipulation and dishonesty? As an attempt to secure social status (marriage) by being dishonest about who you are and what you want/need? And am I the only woman that sees this?

 

I said in another thread, that this should be grounds for divorce for men. And if this is their grounds, they should get 100% of the assets and the kids full time.

 

Then in turn, I should get 100% of the assets because he chose to have an affair with another woman without me breaking our vows.

 

Because entering into a contract with someone under false pretenses should make it null and void - and the victim shouldn't have to forfeit everything they love and own bc someone else failed to meet their end of the agreement. Thoughts?

 

And yes, I need to stop reading on the marriage threads, it's so depressing. I swear, every day, there is a new thread about a woman doing this to a man. And the responses? His recourse? Work harder (some of these poor men are running themselves ragged for these entitled women), or divorce. WTF? No wonder men don't want to get married - sheesh.