Wow - stressful time for everyone. I'm sorry your wife didn't handle it well - kudos to you for keeping a perspective.

Have you guys try FLYlady? Your wife could really benefit from her outlook. I'm a big fan.

Well if Amys suggestiion doesnt work then

Dude, get divorced NOW.

Its obvious your wife has no respect for you as a person and even less for you as an ATM

Get divorced before you land a job and she quits hers and for gods sakes dont have kids with her

This is very sad, but it's no reason to get divorced, unless that's what the LW's wife wants, and is going about it in a passive/aggressive way. Which sucks for the LW.

To be fair, if he was neither contributing to the finances, nor to the housework, I can see why the wife was upset. If she had to earn money AND clean the house? That sucks big time.

The fact that she's complaining now that he HAS a job, however, is another story. I like Amy's advice.

Well, i feel sympathetic to the LW as being myself on the second month of unemployment now.
The difference is that for several reason, I don't think she'll be bitching to me.

Now, I know that there is a slight economical downturn out there, and life is not as easy as in the past, but seriously 10 months, you think you are in France or what.

Now i don't want to rub your face, but how the average american can complain that there are too many wetback around, and be on staycation for 10 months?

It remind me the guys complaining about the arab/turk/east european while on welfare when I was in several countries in Europe (including france, belgium, and the netherlands).

When I married, I am pretty sure there was a sentence I said (but my wife too) about supporting the other in good time, and er, less good time.....

By the way, I don't think the wife is a bad person, or divorce should be seriously considered (an option but not the main one). But, she seriously need a reality check, or a slapping therapy, or that someone who know how to bring back people to their sense, to speak to her (not the LW, as he lost all credential).

On a last note, dude, if you are at home, you are the househusband (like me), so housecleaning + shopping + cooking + dishwashing + other chores, that is your job (think about your mom).
By the way, I join the housewives of my neighborhood for a weekly poker (I know like the desperate housewife): lot of fun, plus you get to learn a few trick for the kids that are not in the book.
try that, it's a good relief.

Stress reveals character.
No….there is no hope, get out now!

Sounds like LW's wife is trapped in a lot of negativity about her life not panning out the way she'd hoped, like that's his responsibility. Not something immediately divorce-worthy, but it could get really ugly.

I remember when my ex-husband was unemployed for a year and a half, found a job, then lost that job and was unemployed for another year. That was bad enough. Rubbing Napalm into the wound and setting it on fire was that I'd have to come home at 10 pm and make dinner because he refused to so much as heat up spaghetti sauce. So I can understand the resentment at a partner not working AND not doing housework (or, at least, the perceived lack of housework).

I wonder whether she was always this negative.

Sounds like he is helping out around the house, but his wife thinks there's a right way and a wrong way to dust ... .

I'm going to quibble a bit with Nico on this.

The floor, here, is unemployment at $405 a week. So one needs to take a job paying at least SS witholding over $10 an hour not to lose money.

At some point, you have to consider moving if there is no hope of a job in that location. That is tough if one is married, tougher if one owns a home.

We couldn't survive on MrsD's income alone; we could on mine, and I have some options (early pension, 401K withdrawals) that others don't, plus at least the option of early SS in 1.5 years. (Old isn't all bad.)

It is an ugly mess, and I wish them well. I won't comment on the housework. He knows if she's right and he's doing a poor job, or he's right and she's the type who thinks my former DI was a slacker.

Ok while I understand thats its stressfull when you work and your spouse does not, its seems to me like hes doing more than his fair share. And I'm sorry, but I'm a neat freak and I would never tell my boyfriend that he dusted wrong, I'd just be happy he actually knew what pledge was!!

It's pretty easy to tell whether you dusted wrong. If there's still dust, you're doing it wrong.

I think Amy did well here to recommend a way to help the marriage rather than making a judgement on who's right and wrong. After all, the LW's question was whether there was hope for them, not if he should leave her or not. A typical advice column a la Ann Landers would have recommended marriange counseling. I'm curious as to Amy's opinion on marriage counseling - is it usually a waste of time? In a way, I think it would be good for an impartial third person to tell the wife that her attitude needs to change (as nico mentioned).

I get where the wife is coming from, although I'm not saying it's fair.

I've always been employed. It started when I was 16 working in fast food and to the present where I have a relatively cushy and very well protected job. So right off the bat, I'm speaking from what some would consider a fortunate position, which I'm aware of.

In the past I've had roommates who lost jobs and then seemed to start to depend on me. I would come home, they would be lying on the couch watching TV and something about that brought out the less than reasonable person in me. I just hated it, even though I knew I wasn't being completely fair.

On the other hand, I remember working for really poor pay, in the field I'm in, in my early 30s because it was a way into a better career. I lived on 800 dollars a month (it was only part-time) and I was surrounded by people who thought I was selling myself short. I saw it has me being willing to roll up my shirtsleeves and get to work. I've taken the "joe jobs" when necessary.

But this economy is clouding the issue. I know that good people are out of work and telling them to roll up their shirtsleeves isn't exactly great advice, especially if they are already doing that as part of their search.

Anyway, I don't know what the answer is, I can only say that the few times this happened to me (having a roommate out of work), it put me in a permanent state of irritation. I felt put upon, I felt I was their entertainment when I got home (just what I needed, a second job), and I felt they were draining my resources (they wanted to spend less on things like cable so I ended up footing the bill).

Remember those vows for richer or poorer in sickness or in health? Apparently someone forgot them.

Abusive husbands hit their wives with fists.
Abusive wives hit their husbands with words.
The former victims get all the sympathy (rightly).
The latter victims are considered deserving of it (wrongly).

My roommates were women and I experienced a lot of the same feelings this guy's wife did, so I don't think the love issue is central to this problem.

Of course marriage vows are important, but an underlying feeling of disgust (however unfair it might be) is very difficult to get past. It seems to me that that's what the wife is feeling, but is unable to express it directly. Not a surprise when one considers how hurtful that's likely to be to her husband.

This poor wife is not going on as many cruises as her friends are. Wait till the womyn at Jezebel hear about this!

The guy dusts, sweeps, and was looking for a job, which he finally found. Seems like he's acting reasonably.

And the wife is complaining about cruises?

I mean, if she complained that he never did any laundry or never did any dishes or the dishes were filthy afterwards, well, to me laundry and dishes are crucial, dusting and sweeping less so.

Or if she complained because they were making a hole in their savings or were nervous about the mortgage, would be much more understandable.

But maybe she's just seriously freaking out.

I just ended a bout of unemployment. I tried to stay busy, but on some days the hopelessness ate me alive. My boyfriend, however, made me feel loved and wanted.

So, yeah, this letter just makes me sad. I loved the stuff about the candle-lit living room in Amy's response. While living frugally (me just recently employed, him trying to get a business off the ground), my BF and I have a BLAST just being together. One of my friends was just telling me how he and his GF went to Vancouver on a lavish vacation. But he had a rotten time because she's an awful, shallow, nasty person. He wants to break up, but doesn't want to be alone. I imagine the LW wouldn't enjoy a vacay with his wife much, either...

>> But maybe she's just seriously freaking out.

I'm guessing that there's more to the story, because whining about vacations and cruises seems like a very weird response to their situation.

But it's not uncommon for a job loss, or financial setback, to ruin a marriage. For some women, lifestyle and marriage are the same thing. If their lifestyle declines, their marriage will as well.

"It seems to me that that's what the wife is feeling, but is unable to express it directly. Not a surprise when one considers how hurtful that's likely to be to her husband. "

I fail to see how her response could have been any more hurtful than it was. The wife made it absolutely clear that it's all about her and she only regards her husband as a wallet on legs. It's true that feelings are what they are. However, feelings and behavior are two different things. One always has the option of checking one's own behavior.

Amy usually has more information available than what gets published here, so for us commenters to speculate on the nature of people referred to by the LWs is always hazardous. But with reckless disregard for that, I'll jump in: from what we see here, the wife is a Cluster B (narcissistic/borderline personality disorder). With a Cluster B, life never gets better. Ever. It always gets worse. If I were the LW and there were no kids involved, I'd head for divorce court and not look back.

@cousin dave: I take your point, and I agree we don't have all the info. But what about a man who gets disgusted by his wife for putting on weight? (And after child-bearing, this is often the case.) If he feels disgust, he feels disgust. It's that simple. I think you're being a bit hard on the wife. The guy is probably reporting things in a way that puts her in the worst possible light because he's feeling defensive.

Also, the cruise thing may have been a single thoughtless comment. I don't feel comfortable armchair diagnosing her with a major mental illness based on that.

@ ie- if newly-big-wife is doing all she can to get healthy, then husband is expected to support that, not complain.

I see that as the difference - he's doing what he can, he's helping out at home and he's trying to get a job. She's not supporting him in that. If he just slubbed about watching soaps, that would be different.

I agree, we only have what he says, so who really knows ... .

I know what you're saying Antonia, and I agree, a husband should support his wife through that.

I think the woman's feelings here--which I identify as disgust--may also be about fear.

I just had my mom moved into a nursing home and gave our live-in notice that his job was over. He started looking for another job quite diligently, but there was a strange sort of dependency that made it's way into the atmosphere between us. I didn't like it, but didn't know how to stop it.

When I gave him the date of his last pay, he looked upset--naturally--but then spent the next week trying to convince me to keep him on in one capacity or another. He looked for work online, and so he wore his pajama pants (with a T-shirt) most of the week and kept coming up from the downstairs apartment to have these discussions with me. It got SO uncomfortable.

The thing is, there's a huge demand for his kind of work where I live and after a while, I started to just feel yucky abut our conversations generally. I started to feel like his mother and/or someone he could look to to support him. It's not a role I want to play with a grown man. The LW's wife may be feeling this too, even with all the effort the husband is making.

When our caregiver got several job offers--which I knew would come down the pike if he kept looking--I actually encouraged him to take one out of the city, which meant he would have to move out of my basement apartment. I didn't want him around anymore, a feeling I couldn't have predicted a couple of months ago since we always got along so well.

Maybe I'm just not as nice as I think I am?

Disgust is such a strong and unpleasant feeling, but it's real. The wife may be feeling parentified and that's where the disgust and antagonistic comments are coming from.

I'm just writing from my own experiences, though. And the roommates I described, and my mom's caregiver, were obviously not intimate partners with me. But maybe that's what's freed me up to be more blunt about it.

I agree - this situation brings out strange things in people and we just don't know enough to know what this brought out in him that made his wife think 'wow' - thats not the man I married.

"Remember those vows for richer or poorer in sickness or in health? Apparently someone forgot them."

Would you say the same to a man who wrote in about his wife gaining 50 pounds?

I agree with markD with what he said, only as long as you are covered. I have no clue how long you can be covered, since i cannot claim unemployment, but I'll be surprised that you can be on for 10 months.

For the 50 pounds, i told my wife before wedding, that sex would not happen if she got that much, or then not with me. And even pregnant, thought she tried hard, she did not manage to gain that much... So yes on this one, I am rather quick at making a definitive first impression, and you are glad not been able to listen to what I think, independently how my hypocritical smiling face may look.

No sympathy for the LW here.

My BF has been on and off unemployment for almost 2 years now--had a couple of temp jobs and the one permanent job he had was a total nightmare (every single manager of this location walked off the job)--this after 14 years with the same company.

It's not the struggle to find a job I have an issue with (I'm underemployed myself), it's the fact that *I'm* doing not only most of the housework, but the grocery shopping and cooking as well. Plus being his therapist when he's depressed about the situation (I told him just this morning that I'm tired of being everybody's emotional garbage can. He didn't understand what I meant. I clarified that *everybody* I've ever attempted a relationship with, even on a friendship level, loves that I'm so 'strong' and dumps all their problems on me while not giving anything back or allowing me to lean on *them* once in a while.)

It's.Too.Much.

And, Amy, LW *says* he's doing his very best, but is he really? Is he signed up with all the temp services and willing to take day labor? Is he going to the job center in his town? Has he invested in a professional resume? Is he being a diva?

And, LW, when you were courting your wife, was part of that courtship your flashy car, fancy dinners out, your big screen tv, and, yes, cruises? You cannot now turn around and say she was only with you for the money if you used it as a selling point. Is she about an 8 and you are a 4 without money and a 7-8 with money?

I cannot tell you the number of men who have asked me out *and* mentioned their sports car, big screen tv, or boat. These I turn down flat. Then there was the guy who was showing me around his house and talking about all his expensive stuff and then turned on me, angrily, wanting to know why women are such gold-diggers. I high-tailed it out of there. So ask yourself exactly how you reeled her in.

To field the inevitable "Why are you still with your BF," well, my ex-husband abandoned me with a thousand dollar mortgage with no notice--and I wasn't working because I had been laid off and he suggested that I just stay home and be a housewife. So when he left I was forced to take the first crappy job that came along. (No, I didn't sue for spousal support or whatever. I'm not like that, and I know he can't bitch about his ex wife who bled him dry. The high road is my favorite place in the world.) I'm not doing that to anybody else, especially since when my BF was working he agreed that I could just work part time. When he gets back on his feet I'll reassess the sitch, but right now we're in crisis mode.

I do have to wonder about LW's actual housekeeping skills. I know others in similar situations and despite the husbands claiming to be doing the housework they were really doing very little around the house and the wives were doing most of the house work and working fulltime.

MissFancy...I can appreciate your comment about the emotional garbage can. I've felt that way on occasion too.

I set limits now. I usually give a brief time period at the start of a conversation I know I'm not going to enjoy much. I didn't allow the caregiver, for example, to stay up in my part of the house for too long. When he knocked at my door, I cut him short with comments like, "I only have a couple of minutes."

Now, when you are living with someone, I can appreciate that that's not always going to work. They can and will follow you around the house!

But set limits in one way or another...you sound like someone who has the potential to make yourself ill with the difficulties of your situation.

I'm writing from Canada, and thanks to really conservative banking policies here, we were spared the worst of the economic downturn. But I do feel for some of the people who post here about their difficulties. It's got to be very tough. I remember what it was like to live on 800 a month (and that was in Canadian dollars).

MissFancy I do see your point about expectations and about being everything to everyone. You had a view of how life with you boyfriend would be and it's not working out that way.

At the same time, explain to me your decision not to ask for a financial settlment. You keeping the house was valuable - he'd have had to hire someone else otherwise. You are also forgoing moving up in you career. I'm not exactly understanding why you would let him put a mortgage upon you and then impoverish yourself by not seeking a financial settlement. It seems to me not so much standing above the fray as letting him take you for a ride.

Do you think it plays into how you draw boundaries with people ..., like ie is saying. Why can't you give boyfriend grocery lists etc? Why not, as ie says, give him a set amount of time to lean on you and then the subject is off the table for the evening?

Given how common this situation is right now -- on my block (14 homes), every wife or GF has a job and all but two of the husbands/BFs are unemployed - I wonder if there is some kind of significant cultural/gender shift going on, i.e. some kind of dampening of the male psyche on a large scale. What do you think, Amy?

My BF has been mostly unemployed for 6 months now. He does some house projects, cooks dinner and does the dishes. If you look at the household/relationship as a partnership, both partners should make "equal" (at least in theory) contributions of whatever nature they can.

His stress over the situation and the fact that he feels somewhat crappy about being somewhat dependent on me is manifesting as a significantly reduced sex drive. He feels like less of a man. But as Christopher Ryan, author of the book Sex at Dawn put it in an interview recently, and I'm paraphrasing, "A genuinely loving relationship is about so many things other than - or in addition to - sex." So I'm taking the approach that right now our relationship is about being supportive and loving and sticking this out together. I'm super appreciative of the things he does and I absolutely gush when he has dinner on the table when I get home from work. However, I'm not willing to support him to the extent that he can just sit around all day watching music videos online. He has to make some kind of contribution, and we had to have that conversation early on to get that squared away, to make sure we were on the same page w/the issue.

I agree with markD with what he said, only as long as you are covered. I have no clue how long you can be covered, since i cannot claim unemployment, but I'll be surprised that you can be on for 10 months.

With the federal extension, I could have collected unemployment for almost 2 years if I had not screwed up my status (declared a student, rather than unemployed even though I could have worked).

I also wonder about house work standards. Living with my parents, my mother's standards meant that I worked 4x as hard for my house hold responsibilities then when I lived alone - living space outside of bedrooms only slightly smaller.

I have never heard of an American wife who was truly happy with her husband.
The sniveling is part of the package. Get used to it.

BOTU, you make North American women sound so terrible. There is a show up here in Canada--an investigative hour long show--and it did an entire segment on foreign marriages, marriages where the one partner immigrates to Canada via marriage to a Canadian. The vast majority--something like 80%--were Canadian men who had married foreign brides.

They did the show because some of these Canadian men were lobbying parliament to make it easier to end these marriages, or at least abdicate any sponsorship responsibility for these partners. They wanted to do this because a lot of them came to the realization they had been used only to provide their brides with citizenship papers.

These women often disappeared shortly after getting their papers, but according to Canadian law, the men were held financially responsible for any debts these women racked up. And they were responsible for the next 10 years!

The journalist went overseas and undercover to an agency in Asia that actually coached women on how to find Canadian husbands. And the woman at the agency was very conversant on this 10 year rule.

If these men are lobbying parliament, that means there are a lot of them out there. Do they sound like happy campers to you?

Hide all the assets you can.
Get a divorce while you are still unemployed and have a low income,in fact encourage her to get a job and then get a divorce.
Your wife obviously never gave a crap about you and was just sucking your assets and now that things are a little tough she is bitching like hell becuz the free ride has come to an end.
Did you have a traditional wedding, remember the bi about "in sickness and in health, for better and for worse", you were a sucker and tool that seriously, you your wife only heard the "for better" part.
Don't get sick dude, she does not sound like the type who is going to visit you in the hospital or support you while you recuperate.
What you got is a vampire who was sucking your life blood. How much you wanna bet she is out cruising looking for someone to replace you?
It sounds like you did all the "proper" things, worked your ass off while you could, took a crap job just to support your obligate parasite, and you get nada back.
If you were unable to save or invest while you were working and the money went to entertain her and keep her in the style she wanted, that is jsut another reason to bail out now.
I learned the hard way to treat women who vacation all the time ( and bonk a dozen cabana boys each trip) are hi maintanance plague carriers.
Hide what assets you have left (gold coins in a joint out of town safe deposit box in a childhood friends name),quit your job to reduce your income to nothing, DONT have kids, and bail while you can. You are married to pure ungrateful grasping poison.

In case anyone had not noticed the economic downturn has hit men particularly hard in the US. Productive type jobs are being eliminated and outsourced and send out of the country while jobs whihc are selling US assets (sale and marketing)in return for short term profits are proliferating and typically held by women. And most of the women I have met in sale and marketing are little better than corporate whores, who are out the company door in their mid forties when their looks go. Then they get desperate and try to land a husband with bucks and squeeze a couple of kids from their dying ovaries in order to lock in an unearned income.
My field has been hit really hard and their are just no jobs, there is no point in looking for what is not there. Luckily I was close enough to retirement age that I am in a postion to just bag it, I also did my own investing and was not beholded to a company plan so I was not badly hurt by the stock market drawback and lousy interest rates.
This is not the case with my married colleagues and acquaintances. For the most part they were never allowed to save money by their wives. There was a constant drain on them to fnd non essentials and to keep up appearences. Except for the Asain families I knew, I was appalled at how little of the money spent went to kids education or real educational toys and not movies tie in crap. At parties the wives constantly dripped acid on their husbands publicaly belittleing thier earning ability and sexual performance. If one of my GF dates did that to me she got dumped on the spot. These "wives" also made little real contribution to their households but made a great show of their christian piety and how they praed for their husbands to work harder and own more. Screw prayer, did it ever occur to any one of them to do something real and substantive and get a job? Again except for the asian couples (where the wife was not americanicated or mail order bride), the wife typically used her undisciplined ill mannered children as a weapon against her husband, and as tools to assure her income in even of a divorce. Their actual care was farmed out to day care centers and undocmented workers. I have met more than a few upper middle class kids who talk like a gautemalan immigrant than their parents because they spent more of their formative years with the hold rather than their parents.
I have also seen unemployed engineers who are meticulous compulsive housekeepers, adequate if unimaginative cooks, and excellent bookkeepers, get hauled over the coals for trivial things by their wives for trivia. the wives are af course are still employed in sale and marketing and think nothing of late nights out or not even coming home if fucking a prospect will mean locking in a sales commission. They don't see anything wrong with it since it is just part of the job and since they are good cristians Jesus won't mind if they break their mariage vows to make a sale o have a little fun out on the town while hubby is out of work and able to provide the income needed to support their conspicuous consumption.
I hate being alone, I wish I could have had a wife and family, but when I look at the majority of my male friends, colleagues and acquaintances and see the utter inescabable hell their marriages have turned their lives into I am glad I am not locked into that kind of hell.
I am also fed up with the women who hit on me and try to make me over into their ideal of fre spending comsumerist nit wit whoose purpose in life is to spend money on them. Not one of them would think to make me a pan or cookies or otherwise return a favor for a night out. Not one would ever think to pay for her own food, buy her own tickets or take me out for a change. These sales and marketing women have enjoyed 6 figure incomes for the last 20 years, in many cases much more than I ever was able to earn , for "work" that is far less demanding, yet not one of them has any savings, they are all in debt and living on current income. What is it with women being spendtrift and not saving, this is not just my observation, a lot of financial articles comment on this aswell. Women spend a lot, on the cruises, dining out, very high clothes budgets, sets of three figure shoes, buying so called collectibles with no real long term investment value, and end up with no savings. I had women bitterly complain about my collectible purchases, and how it was junk: guns, coins,antique tools, stamps, instead of taking them out on a cruise, while they were stocking up on Jimmy Choos and beanie babies and spending the rest on fine dining and cruises. Their collectibles are worth nothing, I sold mine off and financed my ability to remain permanently unemployed.
Ok I have ranted enough.
The economy is changing and the work men did is o longer valued, the new economy is based on prostitution and favors women, once the US's assets are sold off these sales and marketing jobs will vanish as well. I don't see a lot of wives putting real efforts into either their mariages or their children or into assuring their financial future except by seeing how they can feed off the system or latch onto someone who has been productive. I feelsorry for their kids who have never kown deent love from their moms having een farmed out to maids and day care, and whoose education has been scrimped, in order to fund mom's fun and games. These mom's throw away money. I ave ad GF's throw away a 300 dollar blouse or dress rather than sew on a new button. And they curse me when I try to pull it out of the trash so I can give it to goodwill so that someone else might be able to use it.
I wonder how many of my unemployed acquaintances survive both the humiliation of feeling useless and rejected by the work world, and endure the constant venmom their wives and kids subject them to. Not a bit of residual gratitude for the 20 to 30 years they were employed and were working their butts off.
I would like to get married but cannot find a single 40 plus woman, who is not in sales and marketing or similar, has savings, has not spend all her vacations going on sex cruises and has had fewer than a dozen sex partners, and has some innate graciousness and compassion, and not the "I want it all for me, and screw everyone else"the attitude of the usual corporate employed American woman, and is not a christian who has bought into the selfish prosperity doctrines of a mega church, or have an imaginary friend in Jesus.
I feel sorry for the LW, he is married to a viper.

Jack - space between paragraphs, please!

Hit the character return a coupla times, will ya?

Looks like you have stuff of value to say, but it's real hard to read.

Women buy clothes to be attractive. Men like attractive women.

I know plenty of beautiful, talented, independent women over 40, but to say they can't have above 12 sex partners in their lifetime? And what's wrong with sales and marketing as a way of earning a living? Who goes on "sex cruises"?

Jack, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you've been disappointed recently, that a woman, or perhaps a series of women, let you down in some way.

I think all of us, from time to time, like to let loose on the opposite sex. I try to temper my comments, but occasionally the odd snipe will come out here or there.

Can I be blunt? You aren't making yourself attractive to women with your attitude. If I had a date scheduled with a guy and then read a post by him that sounded like yours, I'd be on the phone cancelling so fast it would make your head spin. Really.

Quality women aren't attracted to chronic anger and hostility. It's off-putting. And it doesn't augur well for a peaceful, non-violent relationship. Simply put, emotionally healthy women won't date someone they think might punch them in the face somewhere down the road.

Find a healthy release and stop seeing monstrous women everywhere. That's not reality, as I think Amy is trying to tell you.

I'm going to go out on a very short limb and say that the reason Jack can't find a woman he wants is because that, with his attitude, he attracts the women he gets. And the women he wants don't want him in his present state.

ie is right in that you see what you want to see in the world. Like women who desire babies see mommies and strollers everywhere, you see awful women. There are awful women in the world, but it's not that hard to find one that is sufficiently non-awful enough to date to see if you might want more. And, really, what kind of women have you been dating that go on sex cruises? Seems to me the type of women you date stems from your opinion of women, not the other way around.

Well, I was exaggerating to make a point, but it does seem like European and Asian women accept marriage with its flaws, while American women want their husbands to make more money and be more devoted to them.
I married a Thai national, have been married for eight years. She seems to come with 10 percent of the emotional baggage or mental problems of a similar American women. She is happy with herself, seems to want me around for company and to father children.
I am glad to hear there are examples of American women happy with their husbands.

soooo... "jim martim" and "jack" are both actually BOTU posting under different names?

A friend of mine married a Thai woman. There's a lot of cultural conflict. Awhile back, he seemed certain her family was going to have him killed and she was going to disappear back to her home with their son. Her family hates him because they don't think he makes enough money.

Foreign marriages are not a magic pill.

Well Jack is right about sales and marketing people, they're all whores ;)

American women do have a rep for being captious, but from what I've seen, this is indicative of certain cultures more so than American women generally. For instance, jewish women on the east coast are noticeably hard on their husbands. It's something that they're notorious for. You'd get the idea that all jewish women hated their husbands. But this seems to be a regional thing, because jewish couples I've met elsewhere are fine. It's just that east coast culture of jews.

Similarly there's a certain type of professional woman that I often meet when going out locally. Their distinguishing characteristics are that they're adversarial and will tell you things about themselves that you'd assume are intended to scare you away. Strangely this is their way of flirting. But it would be wrong for me to claim that all professional women are neurotic and argumentative.

Jack what I learned from your rant is not to date women in sales and marketing. But apparently you haven't learned that, because you keep dating them. I mean, it sounds as though at this point you could write a book on Red Flags to Avoid in a Potential Partner, so one would think you could apply your experience towards steering clear of women who display these red flags, but it sounds like you're repeating your mistakes over and over again.

My guess is that you are encountering very similar types of women within your professional and social circles, and maybe even the area of the country that you live in. But there are millions of women out there who don't go on sex cruises, spend 4 figures on shoes, or even work in sales and marketing. You don't have to go out of the continent to find them, just go outside your comfort zone a little-and maybe shed the bitterness that is sure to drive normal women away.

Also you should be honest with yourself and acknowledge that you wouldn't be dating the same type of woman over and over again unless there was something about that type that attracted you. Maybe they're all particularly attractive, or high-status or whatever. It's like if a woman complains that all men are cheating jerks who won't commit when in reality she's been exclusively dating alpha-male "bad boys." You probably need to be more realistic about who you are looking for if you want a relationship that works.

He needs to be more realistic about who HE is. With an outlook like his, he'll have no choice but to purchase a wife who has absolutely no other options.

Then there was the guy who was showing me around his house and talking about all his expensive stuff and then turned on me, angrily, wanting to know why women are such gold-diggers.

Was his name Eric, by any chance? A long time ago, I dated a guy with the longest name in the world. It was "Hi my name is Eric and I make well into the six figures and drive a cadillac and live in a really nice house on a bluff overlooking the river."

Then complained that women were all gold-diggers. I explained that if he stopped using his money as his primary (in fact ONLY) selling point, he might stop attracting gold-diggers.

I went out with him a couple of times - not because of his money, but because he was one of my only acquaintances who knew who Ayn Rand was. He turned out to be a disrespectful jerk though.

"...but it's not that hard to find one that is sufficiently non-awful enough to date..."

This gave me a good laugh, NumberSix.

This makes me think of a doctor friend of mine. He's constantly seeking out women who dress like they should be standing on a street corner soliciting dates from random men. Ya know?

It's funny because he himself dresses like a puritan--really buttoned down--so it's always really interesting to see him with his dates. I'm not a big fan of Freud, but there's definitely something Freudian going on with this guy.

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