Another domestic story: My lazy SAH ex wife via /r/exmormon

Sure, we were inactive, and probably wouldn't have claimed to believe to anyone except TBM family members, but we were Mormons born and raised, and when I knocked her up I couldn't conceive of any option other than getting married (by a bishop, natch) and making the best of it. She said yes, and we worked out a plan. I would continue working at my low paying but advancing career, and she would stay at home and raise the kid.

So we did that for a while. I got promotions and we had more kids. I worked long hours, trying to get ahead, but also took a share of child care and shopping and house cleaning and cooking duties. She spent all her time with, eventually, 4 kids born within six years.

We had money issues – we never could stick to a budget. She went to stores on almost a daily basis. I noticed what seemed like excessive spending on her part and asked her about it, and she would not be able to account for it, or maybe wasn't willing to, and I would ask her to rein it in, because we were racking up debt. She would agree, but nothing would change. Whenever I got a bonus or raise, it went toward trying to dig out of the hole.

We never had a clean house, and laundry piled high. The kids didn't get much involved in anything outside the home. We did pre-school with the oldest but kind of gave up on it for the other kids. She did some cooking, but not every day, not enough to take up much time.

We were pretty gentle to each other, for the most part. She didn't argue or complain, and I always tried to be calm and constructive when I had money related complaints. We spent time as a family on the weekends, and I would try to pitch in and clean and do laundry when I wasn't at work.

Toward the end, the spending was getting really bad. Not just shopping trips for no reason, but frequent big ATM withdrawals, and lies about why. The house got worse. I was killing myself with long hours and finishing an IT degree, and she kept the TV on all day and seemed like she was just doing the bare minimum to get the kids fed and the older ones to school and back. I was getting more and more frustrated, and drinking more and more heavily to mute my feelings. We stopped sleeping in the same bed, and discussions got less kind. We both looked outward and got emotionally involved with others.

Still, I was shocked when she said she wanted a divorce. I couldn't imagine why. I felt I was doing all I could to support and make things work, and from my perspective she was doing the bare minimum. She had it easy, I figured.

She refused to go to counseling. But when it came to the divorce, she had no plan. She told me to move out, and I said no, and she didn't know what to do then. It kind of stayed there for about a year.

It took months of discussions that seemed like they weren't going anywhere, but I eventually learned that she felt stifled and disrespected. I never treated her like an adult, I treated her like a teenage child. She did act like one, but I didn't give her the space to act like an equal, either. Our discussions about budgeting, and other things, in hindsight, were lectures from me to her. I acted like I was entitled to the tiebreaker vote. She hated this but felt powerless – she had been out of the workforce and didn't have any valuable job skills. Plus the kids needed to be taken care of, so she felt trapped where she was.

Lightbulb #1: I thought I wanted her to grow up and be more responsible and hard working, but I treated her like a teenager (from the start) and didn't do my part to figure out why our communication was failing. She didn't either, we both failed on this one.

I also learned that she pretty much hated her life, and needed 10x more social interaction and had been slowly dying inside without it. I am an introvert and I like to stay home. She went along with it, and got by with visiting my family (hers lived farther away and those visits were infrequent). She needed to go to work so she could be around people, but I had never supported this idea when she brought it up in the past, because I would make it about money – she couldn't make enough to pay for full time child care for that many kids – or about my own needs – I couldn't imagine being alone with the kids after my own workday; I was exhausted. I didn't see/hear what she really needed. She even wanted to go to church at one point, but I refused.

So lightbulb #2: She was depressed, desperately lonely, and this had a lot to do with her motivation or lack thereof to keep things humming along at home, and with her coping mechanism of going out to stores. And it was why she eventually escalated to financial sabotage. Again, we both failed in this communication.

Once I understood this, we agreed that she should work nights, and I would get home earlier to make this possible. She still wanted a divorce, but it took me a while to admit that things were unfixable between us. She couldn't be who she wanted to be around me, and had worn out all her goodwill faking it. She didn't want the relationship anymore, and I couldn't change her mind. I couldn't or wouldn't find a way to change myself enough to matter.

So I eventually planned out the divorce and made a plan to get the finances under control (cutting off her spending, mainly), and wrote a petition for divorce that would leave us with equal household budgets after alimony and child support. We split 50/50 custody. Moved out of the new/biggish house into apartments, paid for day care, etc.

And another light bulb went on. Being with the kids on my week was exhausting. Just existing with them without another adult took all the energy out of me, even if we weren't doing anything but watching TV. They demand SO much attention and intervention that I hadn't been doing my share of, up to then. Food shopping with kids is fucking hard. Getting them to and from school, doctors, etc. was extremely hard to coordinate with my job. Keeping up with their clothing needs as they grew out of things and wore them out. Homework, god. I had no concept.

I had up to this point had no idea how much I had taken for granted. I think I never had enough appreciation for what my ex's life was like, back when she wasn't going to a job.

Don't get me wrong – I leveled up – I got better at handling this stuff. I still tried to prove that I could keep up with housekeeping better than she had, and I had no choice but to run a tight ship when it came to money. I did all right.

I still resent the financial problems of my first marriage, and how I was blindsided by things she kept to herself for years. I think I deserved better than that, and feel like she didn't really try to make things work. But she also deserved things she wasn't getting. In hindsight, it was a bad match on a fundamental level. We weren't a good fit, and we never should have had so many kids while glossing over the problems. Should have gotten out sooner, or gotten into counseling sooner, or both.

I realized over time that my strong preference to have her be a SAHM came from my church upbringing and kept my mind closed to other possibilities. The idea that the earning parent should be in charge financially also came from that upbringing, I think.

I also realized that my stubborn descent into marital misery without contemplating other alternatives came from my parents' own decision to live the same way, because TSCC and the Utah LDS culture made early/foolish marriage nearly mandatory and divorce nearly unthinkable (as long as both parents were still faithful church members, of course).

I wasn't even a believing member during this failed marriage, but it took me a LONG time get some perspective on this stuff.

For her part, she learned to be a permanent dependent from her own mother, and TSCC made this OK since it was the husband's job to support her financially. She learned to go along with the "presiding" partner from her own family patterns, instead of standing up and negotiating like an adult.

(I realize not every marriage affected by TSCC's teachings fails in the same ways; I think mormons and exmormons in all degrees of belief can have good or bad marriages. And we weren't active, so the influence of TSCC was less than it could have been, but still real I think.)

In hindsight, we never should have married; split custody of the accident baby wouldn't have been the end of the world, and we wouldn't have gotten in so deep and been so miserable for so long. It wouldn't have been so daunting and financially stressful to split.

Things got a million times better when I remarried. My wife now is amazing, and puts me to shame in terms of sheer effort and discipline. The best part is that we do communicate really well, treat each other with respect (not just a veneer of reserved kindness), and both bust our asses trying to make things work. We now have full custody of my 4 kids as well as her son from her first marriage, since my ex wife struggled to cope as a single mom and couldn't keep it up.

If my ex had told the story around the time that first marriage was unraveling, I was controlling, condescending, and kept her isolated and powerless. If I told the story, she was lazy, dishonest, and passive aggressive. We were both right, and both to blame, and what we took with us from our Mormon upbringing made it much worse.

tl;dr: spousal laziness is sometimes exhaustion, resentment and depression, sometimes the hardworking spouse is stubborn and blind about the underlying problems, and sometimes people don't figure this stuff out in part because of how TSCC wired their brains.