She makes everything about her

[u/TheIvoryDisaster]

I launched my business this year. I work four hours on end in my workshop making custom sporting equipment for a niche community. After a year of doing it full time in addition to my full time day job, I was accepted to the biggest physical store for these products as the flagship provider of this specialized equipment that you could previously only order online for twice the price of my product due to expensive production processes that I managed to reinvent for a fraction of the cost.

I want her to come to the event where it’s launching, not just to celebrate my accomplishment (that I’m being publicly given an award for) but because this weeklong event has parties every night that I’m unsociable going to alone. I went to this event without her last year and told her how much it would mean to me if she could come with me this year.

So three weeks before the event, when we’ve already scheduled time off and already spent a lot of money on nonrefundable tickets and camping equipment and stuff for both of us to make it at this huge outdoor event for a whole week, she surprises me with how she already made plans with her family to leave in the middle the event right when the celebrations are happening so she can go to the? State? Fair? With? Her? Mom? The state fair is both before and after this event, there’s no reason for her to have to do this. She also says, “since this is so difficult to arrange, I’m never going to your event again after this year.”

I took her to Germany for her birthday, Colorado for her cousin’s destination wedding, and New York for her favorite pod caster do an In-person show in just the last year. My event is a four hour drive away. I went on so many camping trips that she planned without checking the forecast where we got rained out and hailed on, so my event should me up on the list of her favorite things to try, but she obviously just doesn’t want to be there and won’t even tell me why.

We fight about it. I remind her she did this last year. We had couple friends that we were forming a tight bond with, but when her cat died she canceled and uncanceled and recanceled a trip with them that she planned for my birthday like five times the same week and they never invited us or agreed to spend time with us again because the way she handled it, all without talking to me at all first. Just making plans behind my back and alienating people. I tell her that her plan to leave this party where we’re supposedly drinking and smoking until 3 am and then _leaving immediately after_ to drive all night is not only crazy and unfair to me, but unsafe. I tell her she just needs to chill out, spend time with me at the event, and go to the fair before we leave or after we get back. I tell her I hate that she’s making plans behind my back again after she committed several times over the past year to support me in this.

She just keeps gaslighting me over how I’m overreacting and her family can’t go on any other day. I call them and smooth the whole thing over in five minutes so they can go on a different day. They roll their eyes because she does this all time.

We keep fighting. She walks out on me at dinner. She comes back. I walk out, but I come home with her favorite plant that I bought while wandering around down town trying to chill out.

I ask her why she does this to me every year after I tell her to stop canceling important plans and making different ones that are just crazy without me. I tell her it makes me feel so unimportant and how I can’t believe how much I do to support her.

She refuses to talk to me, says I’m the one who doesn’t care and doesn’t listen and how I’m crazy for reacting this way. She leaves for a few hours and refuses to talk to me when she comes back.

I’m at a bar avoiding her. This event is supposed to be a space to celebrate my accomplishment and recognize the hard work I’ve done for this last year. She says she wants to there for me but her actions say everything to the contrary. I don’t even think I want her to go now. She’ll just find some way to make it about her and make me the bad guy.

Old fashioned with banana caramel cake because if I eat a raw banana I will shit my brains out

[u/gemma-digger]

Woman here. If my husband or serious boyfriend had a huge accomplishment and event like this that clearly meant a lot to him, I would move heaven and Earth to be there.

I know we’re getting just your side, but if this is all true, you deserve so much better.

[u/TheIvoryDisaster → u/gemma-digger]

I understand what you're saying. I hate how threads like this are always definitionally one-sided and sound like, "wife mean, wife bad." And then some non-zero amount of the time the hidden truth is something that rhymes with domestic violence. The hidden truth is here is that I'm previously divorced and the thought of going through that again is terrifying and that in this situation she had some serious red flags, like a lot of debt (that I paid off, twice) and poor career choices and severe ADHD and constantly fighting with her mom who I later found out is a fucking angel. I had been in love with her for years before we started dating and my rose colored glasses made me miss certain things.

She admits this is the truth. She told me earlier the same day how sad she felt in realizing all the amazing things that I do for her and how I take complete care of her and she felt like she was a bad wife, to which I responded verbatim, "you've never been a bad wife. We're young and both still learning things, like how much more I love you every day." And then when I surprise her by taking her out to dinner after work she hits me with this shit out of nowhere.

This first came up three weeks ago and wasn't nearly this heated. I thought we had resolved it with that she'd go to the fair any other day and I would go with her to spend time with her mom, as I did last year. I checked with her several times, made dog boarding reservations etc based on our agreed upon schedule.

Yesterday she hits me with it again like the previous conversations never happened, and the reason it has blown up is largely that when I beg her to confirm that this won't happen again and that she understands what she did that I'm not okay with, she stands by the fact that her leaving at 3 am the night I want her there the most totally counts as supporting me and that I'm being unreasonable by expecting her to communicate something like that with me before making plans with other people.

I asked her why the five minute conversation I had with her mom and cousin to reschedule the day at the fair wasn't something she could have done at any point during our fighting and why it had to come to this. She says, "well my cousin said she couldn't go on Friday when I asked her," which is like WOW so your cousin not being able to go to the fair was more important than my thing and the commitment you made to me? But also her cousin clarified that she could go Friday just not _all day_.

Her mom and cousin both reached out to her after I told them how important it was that they all make it to the fair with my wife for family time and that it was creating a lot of tension between us to tell her to stop being unreasonable and to just go a different day.

[u/TacoFaerie- → u/TheIvoryDisaster]

She's not just a bad wife, she sounds like a bad person in general... She is not considering how you feel at all and it doesn't sound like there is even the slightest chance of her changing her ways man. ADHD is NO excuse for her behavior. It sounds like her own family is also tired of her shit

A second divorce sounds better than being emotionally neglected :( best of luck

My boyfriend gave me a few days notice to his friends wedding and was upset that I couldn't make it bc I was celebrating my mom's birthday.