My situation

First off please be respectful. This is kind of a rant I wrote and figured I would share it to see what advice or thoughts some people would have. My wife has made things interesting. She just told me a few days ago from what feels like it came out of the blue that she thinks we should see other people(I also saw afterwards that she was talking to a guy that she blew off but she referred to me as her roommate I was very angry about this and confronted her and she apologized which for me is a red flag and further complicates the situation). I am just having trouble seeing why she decided to create a train wreck. I feel like she just wants to be like everyone else. She doesn’t want to be different. She wants to go out and live a “How I Met Your Mother” life and go out and be with her friends and ignore the fact that she has a family. There is a reason it is a TV show it is not reality. Real life is not like that. She has these strange ideas in her head and she won’t open up to me. I wonder what this strange creature is and what happened to the person I married. The person who wanted to have kids. The white picket fence with a dog kids a nice house nice cars and me with a good job providing for the family. Now I know she wants to be an have a career, have kids, go to school and have life be about her not us as a unit it feels. I may have been a little short sighted and didn’t let her do all the things she wanted to do when it came to advancing herself but the question that plagues me is would it have made a difference? Would this still have happened? I don’t know. Would she not have been satisfied anyways? The bomb she dropped saying she thinks we should see other people was crazy. We were trying to have a kid a few weeks beforehand. How do you do a 180 like that? I cannot understand how you to from being committed to having another kid and not try to mention or address the situation before hand. She says also that she feels she got married to young and blah blah blah. It is a load of horse shit. Pardon my french. I feel like now this creature is just coming up with excuses to leave. To leave me. The only bright spot through all of this is my daughter. She is always so happy and no matter what is happening she can make me smile. I never thought that this would happen to me. She is my world she is my light in all of this darkness that is around me in this situation. She is what keeps me going. I would do anything for my daughter. Part of me wants to fight tooth and nail for full custody if my wife and I don’t make it. Is that bad? I want her to be with me and if it hurts my wife that I would do that to her I feel like if we don’t make it I won’t care. I feel like I would want to latch onto the one thing that brings me happiness and never let it go. What will I do if I can’t get custody? What will I do if she takes my daughter and moves away with her? So many questions and so few answers it would seem. The only answer I can come up with is to try and make it work. If things work out all of these questions don’t matter but if they don’t that is all I will be left with questions that I cannot answer.

I think she may not feel fulfilled as woman. She may feel that there things she's missing out on in the world. Sometimes it is hard to open up to a man whom you have spent a lot of years with, some men do not understand this feeling. Instead of fighting the way she feels, ask her if she would like to go back to school in pursuit of getting a better education, then preschools or babysitters for your daughter. Let her have a girlfriends night out or even you suggest taking the daughter somewhere over night, and letting her have lady friends over like slumber party. Not all feelings from a wife are this dramatic. It is not good if she speaking to other men. Suggest a marriage counselor, a priest, family intervention, and try looking from outside of the relationship rather than in. Good luck, When children are involved this can spiral out of control.

I am in the process of getting her to maybe open up to her family and am looking into speaking with a priest or counseling. What is concerning to me is she has been going out with a friend and she has been going out without her ring on. She told me that part of her wants to stay together and part of her wants to "see what is out there". I told her I need to know if she wants to make the relationship work and she says she doesn't know. The only course of action I can take that I can see is give her some time and space. I am having a hard time doing that though. I told her I cannot wait forever and I need to know if she wants to make things work or if we need to look at other options. This is one of the hardest things. I don't know if I am doing this right but I am hoping for the best.

It's a shame that your wife didn't sit down and discuss this stuff with you, rather than running off and talking to this other guy and lying, and all that. I guess I'm a bit confused about whether your wife wants to completely end your relationship to start seeing other people, or continue being a couple while swinging with others. I'll assume it's the former. Well first of all, I think you need to accept that all of this - the good, the bad, the mysterious - all of this is your wife. The woman you "thought" you married, as well as this "creature" that hurt you. Like it or not, you have to accept her for who she is, all of this. Maybe she was always a bit like this, maybe she has grown and changed. People change. And that's not necessarily a bad thing! The woman you love is still there, and likely some things you loved about her are still there. Also, maybe you still want things to stay the way they are... But when your partner doesn't share mutual feelings, maybe you need to examine the situation and let go of them. If she wants to move on, you can't tie her down and keep her from doing what she wants to do. She is her own person. It takes two couples working together and communicating and making plans to keep a relationship going. Sorry, but you have to realize that maybe she doesn't want the same things as you do. It is a tough situation whenever kids are involved. I can't really say much on this matter myself, but I realize that you are probably all over the place emotionally with kids in the picture. One moment you don't want that "creature" to be anywhere near your kids. On the other hand, she is their mommy, and probably loves your kids as well. If your wife wants to leave the state, or move far away, then you probably should try for full custody. Otherwise maybe you should consider trying to make partial custody work. Unless your wife feels like the situation would be better if you had full custody, anyway. Have you discussed what would happen with your daughter yet? If your daughter is old enough yet, have you discussed it with her? Your wife, by going out frequently with someone else, without a ring on, has made it pretty clear that she is having major insecurities with the marriage. It makes me want to say that maybe you should end things... But then, I think you owe it to your relationship to sit down and have a mature conversation with your wife about this, and then maybe your daughter as well. Moving on isn't easy, but you might have to do it. And at any rate, starting over or moving on is probably a lot easier than staying stuck in a difficult rut.

Thanks for your advice and insight ALTREAL. I am also disappointed that she didn't trust me with these feelings or issues months ago. The real root of the problem I feel at this time is she feels betrayed by me in the sense that I recommended that she take a few years off from school to take care of our daughter and to help us at home since I work full time and am going to school full time and our daughter is now only 1. She feels that she has wasted the last few years of her life and say that I am being selfish by not letting her do what she wants but I am doing what I want by going to school. I tried explaining to her that I don't even like school but I do it so I can get a better job so I can better provide for her and our daughter so I don't feel like I was being selfish. I am trying so hard to make our relationship work and she doesn't even acknowledge my efforts or even appreciate them. I feel like what another person posted is correct in that she is just trying to drive me away so I will do the tough thing and end our relationship. I think what she said earlier in thinking that I am a roommate is probably genuinely how she feels. She will hardly let me touch her anymore as in give her a kiss, a hug or anything. I think at this point our relationship is leaning towards us splitting because as you said I cannot make her want to make our relationship work and I can't tie her down.