Beginning of the End
This past week, my wife made the decision to sell some of her collection to make some money to pay off some of the debt. After some calculations she estimated that she could get between $4,000 to $5,000 for the items she was planning to sell. She promised that this money would be used to either pay bills or kickstart our baby fund and I was ecstatic. Finally we would be making big progress to our dream. Our dream. That’s what I thought. I kept asking, again and again if she was sure she was fine with parting with some of her collection. I know in my heart that she loves her collection and that at the end of the day it was going to be a sacrifice for her. She assured me this is why she wanted to do and as worried as I was, I was so proud and excited that we were going to be taking a big leap towards our goal again. The spark inside of me was lit again and I started looking up the baby videos and planning to start building a small surplus of diapers. But today, as we were driving to my in laws house she asks if she can take some of the money from the sales and use it to buy a new piece of her collection. What? I’m taken back for a moment. “No.” Was my answer. The minimum price for these statues was $500. What was the point of selling these items if the money was just going to go back to a collection? A argument ensued and of course she resorts to putting me down by telling me to just shut up. Every time it comes to her being able to use money for her collection I’m always just supposed to shut up and stay out of her way. She becomes a martyr, where she acts like she has to make the big sacrifices in order for us to get out of this mess. I remind her that she just told me yesterday during her “good wife” streak, that she was the one who created the mess so it made sense that some of the stuff could be sold to undo it. She finally resolves and sighs that she’ll just sell her stuff and possibly never get it back so we can have our family. That’s when I had an epiphany. It was such a small, passive statement but it finally opened my eyes. We were on two very different paths. She wanted and needed things, but things had no meaning to me. Family had meaning to me. Here we were; her resentful for having to sacrifice the material things she loved so much, and me resentful that the material things meant more to her than having a family with me. Neither of us are wrong in wanting different things. But now, I cannot foresee us having a future. If we have a baby, she will be unhappy and unfulfilled because it will keep her from wanting to have what she really wants. I cannot be happy and excited to have a family knowing that she’ll resent it. I won’t bring a new life into this world only to have our family break apart. As of current, I don’t see a family in our future. In fact, I’m not sure I can see us in the future. I have worked for so many years to get to this point, I have struggled to get my degree, me home, my career and now that I’m finally supposed to be comfortable and ready to start my family, my own wife has become my biggest obstacle. I hate her for it. We scratched and scraped our way to this point and I stood by her even when we had to give up our apartment to live in a single room with my in laws for two years so we could pay off prior debts. I never thought the one person I trusted so much and worked so hard to build with would be the one person that would be the person that would take away my dream. I love my wife, I have never stopped loving her. But I must finally make the decision to walk away or to stay and hope that maybe one day she’ll change. No matter what she does now, there is no way we can have a family.