My [32/m] wife told me she only sleeps with me to fulfill her duties as a wife [31/F]

My wife has suffered with anxiety her whole life. She has done a lot of work to manage it as well as medication. I understand that medication can have an impact on libido. So, I have learnt to dampen by own libido to help support her. We maybe get intimate once or twice a month and this has almost always been the case for the last decade.

The other night She cried and revealed to me that she has only sleeps with me in the past to fulfill her wifely duties. She does enjoy it when it happens but is never truly comfortable due to her anxiety. She told me that this is something she is working on and that I should ask for it whenever I want it. In the moment, I said it’s fine because she was crying and I wanted to support her.

However, I now feel disgusting. I feel as if I’ve done something wrong by enjoying sleeping with her while she has been forcing herself to do it with me. I now feel like everytime I try to initiate, I am doing something wrong and terrible.

I know she meant well by telling me, but I don’t know how to get past this feeling. I think I am also starting to resent her a little bit and I hate that I am feeling like this.

I don’t know what to do or what to say to her without her feeling terrible about what she has told me.

Sorry for the rambling. Any advice?

My spouse (29M) and I(30F) have been having a troubled marriage since we found out we were pregnant. We had communication issues and just became disconnected.

He asked for a no contact break because he said he is “not in the right headspace to give me the support I need” and “would like for us to really work out but we need to do it right by taking time off”

Fast forward to now (almost 2 weeks of no contact), I found out he has been active on social media messaging and liking pictures of random girls.

It’s not the first time it happened, I caught him during my first trimester when one of the girls he messaged actually messaged me about it. I told him to clean up, he said he would and will work on earning back my trust.

He assured that he never really acted upon it (like physical) but this unhealthy coping mechanism of his to seek external validation is a pattern that I think he needs to address. I told him only he can decide that for himself.

He reached out to me a few days ago to ask how I’ve been. We talked casually about my health and then a little about gaming (video game is one of our common hobbies).

I didn’t mention anything about how I know he has those hidden social media (he hid it from his family and me) where he talks to random girls.

It somewhat reminds me of someone having a midlife crisis.

My question is, especially for the men out there. Is this phase just a phase? I want to understand where he is coming from but all he’s been telling me is he is sorry for it, it’s “immature, dumb, he was seeking validation”

A little bit of background about us so maybe you can provide other insights:

We never got a house together, I stay at one of my parent’s rental houses to help manage it and also where I get some income. My spouse lived with me until October of last year because he left home from having constant disagreements with his family.

I was working full time management in retail until less than 2yrs. ago. Then I worked part time, so I can finish my bachelor’s degree (which I did right before I got pregnant), and will be starting my Master’s degree online when my baby is past 6 months. My end goal is to be able to work (with a good pay) at my own schedule and remotely because my priority is being present for my family.

My spouse has a good stable job as well with great benefits and pension. He actually just recently got promoted to the position he’s always wanted and told me that’s one of the reasons he is overwhelmed with my pregnancy because he needs to focus on his new position.

What’s with boomers and upcoming boomers obsession over “I pay my taxes!” as tho they’re the special few?

“I’m a taxpayer!” “I pay my taxes so I should be given priority!” “I pay your salary so you should listen to me and respect me” “Increment? It’s all the taxpayers money!”

Same words from different mouths. Statements that you hear and see oh so often on social media sites. Civil servants too face it daily on the job. FYI civil servants are not exempted from taxes and the taxes we pay is in accordance to the guidelines set by IRAS. Unless you pay $90k in taxes, I don’t think the “pay your salary” line works.

Every government development, you’ll see at least one boomer commenting “What a waste of taxpayers money”. How much do they actually pay to feel that pinch? Just curious as to why.

Netizens’ comments

1. My perception: people who talks about paying taxes (and thus feel entitled) are people who actually don’t pay that much taxes
2. “Sir, if you’re the taxpayer that’s paying my salary, you certainly don’t pay enough for me to deal with this bullshit.”
3. Most of these people I know who say that don’t pay much taxes ironically. The ones that are taxed heavily are multiple property owners, own cars or c suites. They aren’t that low ses to pull the “I pay taxes so listen to me” kind of BS.

I just want to know if this is a mental illness or real paranormal activity.

So recently, I was driving down the road probably around 11 PM with my daughter in her car seat (under 2 years old) to pick up her mother from work. While driving down the road with music playing and one window down, I am always glancing in my windows and mirrors just to be aware of the road and everything around me.

Regularly checking my windows and mirrors i glanced twice at my rearview mirror, and the second time what I saw almost made me swerve off the road into a tree. I looked in my mirror and saw a ghostly woman, with long black hair,fair skin, and dark eyes looking down at my baby in the child seat and then her one eye (side face towards me hair covering half her face) looking right at me in the mirror.

After almost swerving off the road i regained control of the car and looked straight ahead and told myself inside my head “Don’t freak out, Don’t freakout, dont look yet dont look” after a couple of seconds I glance in the mirror again because my childs back there and shes gone. I instantly look back ahead and I’m scared but glad she was not there,

Then instantly i turn around and feel around my back seat flooring to make sure its not a real person hiding behind the backseats. There was nothing there and i returned to driving to pick up my wife at her job.

But surprisingly this is not the only thing that’s been happening lately, there are even incidents my wife has been having around our house now too.

Things are moving by themselves at home, and being found in a different place from where we left them. We hear voices coming from rooms that are empty, and get mysterious scratch marks on our bodies.

What makes me question if its a mental illness is the fact a year ago, while i was driving down the road morning time around 8am it sounds like a woman in my backseat had just yelled into my ear while i was driving down the road almost causing me to swerve into the oncoming traffic lane.

But after regaining control I instantly grabbed the volume nob to turn it down incase it was my speakers but my volume was not even at 10. instantly i realise it wasnt my music and look around the car to see if there was someone else outside and there were barely any cars around. Instantly im on edge now and paranoid while driving to work and worrying if i was going crazy.

“To all the girls, if you read this, I hope you won’t be like me – a woman who unintentionally destroyed a good man’s career, motivation, and confidence.

It all started 3 years ago when he was in australia studying for his final year of bachelor degree, while I already graduated and started my job. If I were to evaluate him now, I would rate him at least 9/10. He never cheated on me, he never once talked about or praised other girls in front of me, he was extremely focused on his studies and was a good example to his fellow course mates and younger siblings, his hobbies were mostly about self-improvement, career advancement, and learning new skills, which can be boring to most people, he would have Skype video call with me a few times a week when we were in LDR, and he was a caring boyfriend too. However sometimes things in life just didn’t happen in the way it should have happened. Back then he was just maybe 4 or 5 out of 10 to me, because I failed to appreciate him, and thus destroying both our relationship and his career.

Just like any other girls, I get jealous too, but it’s not because my ex was very good-looking or attractive to other girls, but because of 2 things, first is he was being too helpful to the point where his female course mates would study with him, second is he treats everyone very nice, and I felt that as his girlfriend, he should treat me much better instead. So due to these reasons, we fought quite a number of times, despite being together for close to 3 years. He is also a person who doesn’t know how to defend himself or use the most appropriate words or sentences to explain himself, so during our fights, I was always the winner. And also I tend to go against his interest like programming and coding, because at that time I thought it was useless, why not just focus on your studies and be an expert in your own field, instead of wasting your time on something else that you might not even need in your future career, so we also fought about it, especially during some weekends where we visited each other’s place, and he just spent hours to learn those computing stuff. I mean it wasn’t actually that bad, but at that point of time I was already quite pissed with his interest, so seeing him spending so much time on it just got on my nerve even more.

Tho he only had to be in Perth for a year, I felt that it was actually quite long, especially back then I was still a pretty needy girlfriend, so eventually I started to be more suspicious, more jealous, and more insecure too. As usual, we would fight, but it was all because of my silly and unreasonable factors, like he added new female friends on fb, and I went crazy and asked why he added them or accepted their friend request, and some are even angmohs. He did explain to me that the reason was because of group work, and it was easier to communicate and share information among group members through social media. Before our worst fight happened, this incident whereby his plan to return to Sg for a winter break was ceased. He decided to attend a workshop that he was interested in, and it only happened once a year during the winter break, and so he had to give up his flight back to Sg. I later found out that it was actually a web development course that costs a few hundred bucks. I totally went all crazy since I already disliked his interest in computing, and now he gave up on coming back to Sg just to waste his time to attend this rubbish course.

The last straw came after a big misunderstanding. Now as I recall it again, it wasn’t actually a fight, it was just me being a big idiot. We were having a video call and he told me that he was heading to bed after we finish talking, and I legit thought he would go to bed like he always did, but a few days later when I was scrolling through fb, I saw his friends posts on another friend’s birthday celebration, and I saw him in those pictures and videos too, which he didn’t mention to me at all. After that, I took quite some time to compose a very long message to breakup with him. Right after sending him that message, I blocked him wherever possible where there was no way he could reach me. Some of our mutual friends tried to contact me too, but I thought they are much closer to each other, so they will help him cover up his lies, so I ignored them too. I went through a hard time by myself because I don’t have many close friends.

After he returned to Sg, he came to my place to look for me to explain to me, but there was nothing that I could do about it because I was already attached to my then-fiancé. During his explanation, he said he was really going to bed, but that night was the birthday and farewell of another exchange student, and his friends were celebrating at their dorm and invited him too, so he just went down for a short while to say goodbye to him, and then went back to bed. He didn’t know that he had to share with me such 5-10 min activity that wasn’t so important. Regarding his winter course, it was actually a rare opportunity because some of the speakers were famous profs from ivy league like MIT, Harvard, cal-tech, and he said it is very rare to have such course in Sg, that’s why he chose to stay back instead of returning to Sg. At that time, I was already attached, so even if his explanations were valid, I could no longer accept him.

It was only in the recent months I found out that my actions have severely impacted his life. He was an excellent student, but because of me, he failed to focus on his final sem, and did very badly in his final exam tho he still passed. He previously wanted to study an MBA and CFA too, but little did I know that he had stopped pursuing his dream. With his resume and degree, he can easily find a decent job with around $3-4k as a fresh grad, but from what I heard from our mutual friends, he is doing a $2k+ job that only requires a diploma. Honestly I’m not that close to our mutual friends too because of that incident, but they did say the breakup had significantly caused who he is today. Tho we have stopped talking, my friend actually passed me a hefty red packet on his behalf during my wedding solemnisation. Knowing how little he earns, I felt bad to receive it, but I still did receive it as his form of blessing. I honestly have no idea whether he has any future plans, but apparently he has been working for the same low-pay position in same company for two years with little to no opportunity to progress.

If you ask me, will I be with him again if I wasn’t attached, the answer will always be yes. Right now there is nothing I could do to rebuilt his confidence and motivation to pursue his dream anymore. I’m married, and I can only devote to my husband, but I feel deeply sorry for what I’ve done to him. If only I was mature enough to understand his situation, if only I knew he was happy doing what he enjoyed, if only I could resist the temptation to meet new guys before he returned to Sg, if only I could be more understanding to walk through difficult path with him. It only took me a few minutes to block him from reaching me, but these few minutes was what resulted in who he is today – a poor broken soul with so much potential to succeed in life. All he wanted at that point of time was just one very simple thing, which was my time to listen to his explanation, but I never gave him any chance to explain himself and ended our relationship when he was still studying overseas.

So once again, to all the girls out there, if, if you ever happen to come across similar situation, please, please never be like me. Your ignorance to a guy may just be as easy as you thought, but you will never know how much of an impact on him you can make. There is no harm listening to explanation, especially when a guy is trying really hard, finding ways to reach you just to talk to you. It is easy to block a guy with just a few touches on your phone, but you will never know that you’re indirectly killing him from inside.

Once again, I’m really sorry for what I did to you JL. If I could return to where we were 3 years ago, I would have listened to you, and you would have been much better than who you are today. I’m really sorry.”

“My mum has a son, who is the black sheep of the family in Malaysia. He got addicted to gambling since Dec 2020. But the way he gambles is much more worse than anybody in the real life I have heard of. He obtained the gambling “funds” via loans from multiple groups of loan sharks to gamble. When he lost the money, he took every single valuable piece in the house and sold it to pay the loan sharks. That’s the first time of him gambling in large amount. It’s covid lockdown time and we never got a chance to go to Malaysia so our house was “emptied” in Dec 2020. Then he continued the same way of gambling, lied to every person (family, relatives, colleagues, clients) to get the money unscrupulously for gambling or paying back to loan sharks.

We have been kind of like a financially below average family. Things got better when I graduated and started working here. My mum and I even had vision of settling down in sg for a better future. Then her son began to ask for significant amount of money on monthly basis since Jul 2021 (when he had tried all possible means of getting money without our knowledge, and my parents forgave what he had done prior to Jul 2021). My parents willingly believe his lies over and over again despite me constantly requesting them to come to their senses. However, it turns out that his “last time” is always more credible than whatever I say. Yes, it is indeed the last time, “last time of the month”. The same show is playing every month: If my mum does not give him the money at the beginning, he would just let the interest of the loans rolls, send harsh messages, make hundreds of calls when my mum is working or sleeping, and curse like a drug addicter.

I advised my mum to ignore her son in Oct 2021 so that he could be independent like any other 29 years old guy and be responsible for the mistakes he has committed. She didn’t. I also suggested to post on the newspapers to publicly cut the ties with their son as this is what the others did to their unrepentent family member who repeatedly borrowed from loan shark, and usually the amount the others could help with before reaching the breaking point is less than RM50,000. My parents did not bear to do so, thinking this may affect him finding a job and walking on the right path. It seems like they will be on debt for millions soon, if they still manage to find any lending source.

My mum is a night shift worker. For a year, she is unable to have adequate sleep, she does not have appetite to eat properly, and yet she works overtime frequently. I really worried about her health, physically, mentally, and pyschologically. She is depressed, far beyond sad, and recently keeps murmuring to herself. She does not sleep at night, sighs till morning. I want to bring her to the counselling centre but she always says she is not in the right mood to go, and she will approach the counsellor once “this time” is resolved. Then “next time” follows within a short time frame. My dad used to work as a freelance construction worker, therefore he has only little savings before retirement (the latter is gone, thanks to his son). He became severely sick in Sep 2020 but recovered, in a weaker state. He has recently returned to work as a cleaner for 6 days per week, to help to pay the debt that keeps increasing sarcastically. Their hopeless son has been jobless since Jan 2022 and his current full-time activity is borrowing money from many groups of loan sharks for online gambling then disturbing our life.

The sad truth is that their spoilt son does not become sensible after such a long time, and probably never will. In Dec 2021, he messaged that he wanted to die at the midnight so my mum bought expensive air tickets (SG >> KL >> JB), did expensive pcr test, went back to withdraw all the bank deposits, the last cash assurance of the family. My parents even knelt down and begged him to stop gambling. One or two weeks later, he started borrowing from loan sharks again. Almost every month he says he wants to die, but he is still alive and bringing troubled life to us. I have blocked all his numbers, but my mum’s phone is vibrating throughout the days and nights. To add on, my mum will pay for his phone bills, so it’s definitely not a problem for him to make countless of overseas phone calls when he fails to reach us via social messaging apps.

Previously, my mum received threatening messages and calls demanding her to pay the debts of her son. Therefore I don’t take unknown calls or read spam messages. I have removed my original social media accounts, I don’t mind if those acquaintances misunderstand I block them. As a genetically defective failure, they may not want to get in touch with me unless they see some values in me. I am useless now. My introverted circle is so tiny that there are only my mum, my dad, and work colleagues (somehow they are in because I have to be a socially functionable individual to earn money, however if they find out my circumstances, they will be so eager to leave the circle without any hesitation).

My aunts found a few refuges (It’s similar to gambling rehab centre) and my mum sent the contact details and addresses for her son so that he could hide for few months. The person-in-charge in the centre is willing to offer shelter and food to him despite him being wanted by loan sharks. He responded arrogantly that he doesn’t want to stay in the centre without freedom and he wants to make a comeback (This term for gambler usually means winning money through gambling when the debt is cleared and loan sharks want to borrow him money again). Not sure if he is too naive or lack of an organ called brain. Some are shocked when they learn that this gambler has already been given a significant amount of money. From this scenario, they should be able to understand one of the Einstein’s quotes: the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.

What should I do to help my pathetic mum? She doesn’t listen when every one says she should let her son settle his own problem. Until NOW she is still thinking of begging people to borrow more to pay for her son’s debt. Moreover, her shameless son told her to apply for loan / property mortgage, sell the house or renounce her PR to withdraw all the cpf. Loan application fails (fortunately), house is being sold (whether it is successful or not remains a mystery as there are too many variables), PR status is still fine (as of now). My mum has borrowed too much from relatives that even selling the house cannot repay all the debts. Rich relatives stay clear of us while 60-70 yo relatives take their retirement sum to help. The thing is, I am uncertain that the money will eventually be used to pay back to the kind relatives or to pay her son’s gambling debt, since my mum is programmed to devote every single cent she has (or she can borrow) to her son. Too many things can happen within few months’ time. I just hope she will make rational choice on the PR status, else our ways will be parted.

My mum, our relatives, my dad and I have given him [A HUGE SUM]. I gave reluctantly as my mum begs me too. The figure will only be getting higher because my parents refuse to give up on their son and keeps begging people to lend them money. They are all being so great but I feel it is like throwing hard-earned money into the sea, which is meaningless. My mum needs to change her traditional mindset that a mother should sacrifice everything for her son. Money always comes so easily for him. A mother is always there to help him pay for everything (gambling debts, penalty, car loan, phone bills, living fee). Mother love is not equivalent to blinded love. She is 60 and should escape this endless miserable loop to enjoy life.

The border has re-opened, people happily travel to Malaysia to reunite with their family or buy cheap commodity. We can’t go back as it’s dangerous to do so and the three of us are already here. People work hard to afford grandiose house, premium cars, and quality life. I work hard – to barely afford the room rent and instant noodles, to worry if the remaining dollars in the wallet can last till the next salary payment date when colleagues head to a cafe instead of a food court during lunch time, to doubt the meaning of life. While the people around us are busy having fantastic moments, achieving their goals, or excelling way ahead, we are stuck in a slump and I wonder if we will ever get out. Good days are always for others to live. There is no light in the end of the tunnel as the path of darkness keeps getting extended.

“So I just graduated and started working. My friends keep complaining about having to pay their tuition fee loans. I had a scholarship so I don’t face the same problem. But the thing is they kind of make me feel bad for not having to pay loans.

They will say things like I come from a middle/upper income family and so of course I don’t understand. They spend a lot of money on hair/facial/clothes while I have been saving since year one. Each hair perm/colour is $300-400! And they look fine but they still wanna do facial or buy expensive beauty products to ‘maintain their youth’.

I work part time jobs during the semester and keep my daily spending below $10 by only eating caifan and not buying drinks if possible. Yes you can say I am privileged cause i got a scholarship but I also worked hard for my scholarship. I never took any tuition lessons before, although my parents let me learn the violin. My parents didn’t give me allowance in uni and I paid for things like my driver’s license on my own.

I don’t have a sad backstory but I do have a disciplined approach to my money. Meanwhile my friends spend money on gym memberships (when NTU gym is free!) or non-essential things like diving lessons/expensive 21st birthday parties/too many short overseas trips/dining at expensive places.

Then they come and complain how I am so lucky that wah so good got scholarship then no need loan can buy BTO with boyfriend. And when I tell them that I worked hard to save my money and I work part time jobs in school during the sem/give tuition etc… they just don’t recognise the hard work I’ve put in to save.

Both me and my boyfriend wrote out a savings plan on how we would save for our BTO back in Year 2. But they think I am a ‘privileged elitist’ who can’t understand their problems or am out of touch. I have to prepare for tuition lessons and plan my time properly so that I can also achieve decent grades.

I found that one of the best ways to save money was to not stay in hall. I live in Bedok, it’s not like a live at pioneer. I leave the party at 11 so I don’t have to spend on a taxi and can just take public transport. I spent the time you guys spent drinking/partying in hall on my part time jobs/studying/internships.

I do understand that some people come from lower income families, and they become the main breadwinner of their family when they just grad, take on their parent’s debt, pay for their younger sibling’s tuition, some people have mental illness,family relationship problems etc.. To those people, kudos to you guys, dont give up, and all the best! I really respect such people and I know they will go very far in life. My favourite secondary school teacher was one such inspiring person. She taught me that its not about where you start or your past but what you do with the present.

But to my whiny friends who just refuse to put in hard work and save money and instead complain about how life is unfair, how all the good jobs going to international students (please lah these people have first class, speak 3 languages fluently and have lots more on their resume compared to you), I think you guys need to grow up and get your act together. I’m not going to lend you money. You don’t lack money, you just lack discipline.

That being said I think it’s completely fine to splurge on yourself once in awhile, as long as you can afford it and you know what you are doing.”