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jsbach_gw

Married to her relatives, not me?

jsbach
16 years ago

I'm not sure there's a solution, but I'd appreciate some outside perspectives:

We've been married for a couple of years, no kids, and more and more it seems my wife (who has a full time job) has dedicated all her free time to taking care of the needs of all of her relatives. Some of the problems are legitimate family crisis, but mostly her relatives are lazy sobs, unwilling to lift a finger to help themselves, so any time they get in trouble my wife has to help them out of their jam. She hates it, but it's a close-knit family, who apply a lot of family pressure, and so she feels obligated.

I really did not know about this aspect of her life when we dated, as we met and wed in another part of the country and then moved here, close to her relatives.

As a result, our home life has suffered, we will watch a little TV or occasionally go out to a movie, but most evenings and weekends she's either running to her relatives or in bed sleeping, exhausted from work and helping all these leeches (you can tell what my opinion of them is). All the big plans we make about things we will do together have to be canceled or postponed because of "family troubles".

I try to help out where I can, and I take care of most of the household tasks and chores, but I mostly won't run errands for her relatives, since I see it as a never-ending time waster.

She says she wants there to be more time for the two of us, and she has started to tell some of the worst offenders to go away, but there seems to be a never ending supply of folks who want her time, and that she feels obligated to help.

Any thoughts are appreciated!

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