u/Extra-Blueberry-4320

Part of why I was so entrenched in my ED for so long was because it made me pretty invisible to men. I was going through a rough patch with my husband and I didn’t want him to have any reason to be attracted to me. I was pretty ok with just being invisible and living in my own world and not caring about anything other than work and my ED.

Now I’m in recovery, not fully there yet, but I’ve gained some weight and my hips and butt and boobs are starting to come back. And so have the men. Including my husband, which is I guess ok, but I just hate that as a woman in a STEM field, I’m not taken seriously. I feel like I’m only being valued for my body, which makes me so effing sad. Can anyone relate? I feel so much better now, but it’s so hard to just live my life and ignore the attention.

I need advice from (mainly) the breadwinner spouse. Are you resentful of your spouse if they don’t work outside the home?

I earn more money than my husband and this wasn’t always the case. When I wasn’t earning much, I did all the household chores and errands. Now that he has a MUCH chiller job than me, he does zero around the house.

We aren’t financially tied to each other, but I have to wonder if a lot of people who are in bad marriages are resentful of a spouse who doesn’t earn enough money. I know financial stress is a lot on a marriage, but my husband has never felt the urge to “provide” for me. I’ve always felt like I’ve fended for myself and it sucked when he thought I wasn’t “contributing” enough when I was a low earner.

TL;DR: Are you resentful of a spouse who doesn’t earn much money? And how do you forgive your spouse when they felt resentful of you for “not pulling your weight”?

Im this close to leaving because I hate that I’ve had a lot of grace towards him that he hasn’t reciprocated.

I am a scientist in an R&D role and a huge part of my job is investigating new materials for improving products my company makes.

As you may guess, I go to a lot of trade shows and conferences and I meet lots of vendor reps who get me samples, documents, yadda yadda. I’ve never had an issue until last week.

I was at a large trade show and stopped by one of the booths and talked to a guy about the project and gave him my card. He gave me the product catalog and his card and I figured it would work like any other show where I email later to follow up and ask for samples.

Well, I emailed him when I got back and my work phone number is in my email signature. He messaged me with his name and just wanted to make sure his number was in my phone. Ok. Kinda weird since I don’t work with him yet or anything.

Then he starts asking me what I prefer to be called (my full name or my nickname) and started commenting on my eyes (from my picture on my business card) and smile. Getting weirder, right?

After a bit more of this commenting on my body and my face, I finally picked up that he was like…flirting?? I told him I was married and didn’t he see my ring at the trade show? He said he was so mesmerized by me that he didn’t notice. Then he started making comments about how my husband was lucky to have me and that he should be kissing me all the time (????) Then he called me and I answered (I should’ve blocked him then) and he said he wanted to come to our facility in September and take me out to dinner and drinks and then bring me back to his hotel room for a massage. !!!! And THEN he asked if he could kiss my body all over. I was so uncomfortable that I hung up and immediately blocked him.

So now what?? Can I go to his manager or HR department and report that shit? My bosses have agreed to take over being the contact with his company so I don’t have to interact with him anymore, but I sorta feel like I’ve been violated. Am I overreacting to this?? I’m so traumatized that I don’t want to talk to another male vendor rep ever again.

Edit to remove any references to the R word.

I (44F) have been married to my husband (46M) for 21 years. He has a lot of untreated mental illness; this has caused a lot of animosity between us: I want him to listen to his doctors and take the medication that the psychiatrist prescribed. Not taking the medication makes him prone to abusing me verbally, but it’s not predictable. So I am basically walking on eggshells all the time. I am not happy but I figure that I should stay with him because he’s sick.

Well, I am the primary breadwinner and I had a trade show out of town last week and one of the people I met there has been messaging me and texting me frequently—I finally realized that he is flirting with me and I haven’t told him I’m married. It’s so strange that someone would think I am attractive and interesting after all these years. The attention feels good. And I don’t know if I want to tell him I’m married. I don’t want to cheat and I think I have a tough choice to make. I never thought this would happen to me but here we are.

Story time: My mother in law taught kindergarten for many years before she retired. She dealt with lots of kids and their parents as well.

One year, she had a set of twins in her class. These boys would probably have been diagnosed as neurodivergent these days, but in the 80s, they were just considered “problem children”. My mother in law said they were extremely hyper, couldn’t focus on anything, had poor impulse control. Their mom had 4 other kids besides the twin boys and she seemed very…distant. My mother in law was always sort of trying to get through to her about helping her kids, maybe getting them some therapy, etc.

One day, the twins didn’t come to school and my mother in law found out that their mother had committed suicide. She couldn’t handle 6 kids and especially not special-needs kids. My mother in law suspected that their mother had some serious mental illness herself and was just really good at hiding it from people.

Just another reason why I as a neurodivergent person will never have kids. I probably couldn’t handle them and I don’t think I would have made a good mother.

My mother in law remembers this woman telling her how hard it was to have 6 kids and a not so helpful husband and I bet it sucked. Yet another reason to not have any offspring…so much stress.

I am the main breadwinner in our DINK marriage. I make $130k a year and hubs makes $75k. We have always been extremely careful with money especially when I was working part time during school.

We paid off our house a long time ago and have been putting a lot of money into savings and retirement for the past 16 years. I don’t mind practical frugality. I am on board with meal planning and not eating out and driving used cars.

BUT: my current car is a POS 2007 Chevy Cobalt. It doesn’t have cruise control and the air conditioning only works in the winter. I want a different car. I could write a check for a better car tomorrow and my husband wouldn’t even miss the money. Yet he insists I “keep driving it until it blows the engine or something big”. Easy for him to say since he works from home and never drives.

Also, I’m into working out and I wanted an elliptical machine to use at home. We found a really old Precor for free and we picked it up because they are usually well-built but this one had been stored in a garage and had electronics problems. Now it won’t turn on anymore. I asked my husband if I could spend $100 to buy a better used one on Marketplace. He said he could “fix” the old one and he’s tinkering with it and can’t fix it.

I’m like, SO FUCKING SICK of going to work everyday and my money-traumatized husband not letting me spend MY money on anything other than my 401k and my IRA. I’m glad we will retire early. But DAMN. I’m so sick of him not acknowledging that I make a lot of money and I may want to spend a little of it once in a while. I know my mom had a friend whose husband was the same way and she divorced him. I don’t want to go that far, but I might have to. It gets really old saving $100k a year and using what’s left after taxes to buy myself a few extras here and there.

My husband has pretty severe money trauma from growing up poor and I GET why wants to hoard money. He refuses to get therapy for it. I got this high paying job to ease his anxiety and it seems like I only made it worse or something.

I have been at my new job for a little more than a year now. The company is full of people who have worked here forever: 15 years or more is normal. It’s a very niche industry so it takes a long time to get to know the process of how things are done and whatnot. I feel very left out—these people hang out after work together, their kids are friends with each other, they coach the town’s little league so they know all the other dads at work, etc. I don’t have kids and I prefer to keep work life separate from my home life.

I realized that it’s making me somewhat of a pariah at work. I get it, I’m weird. I’m autistic and I tend to focus on things and not people. I don’t know what to do—I feel like they are trying to get me to quit by purposefully excluding me from things. I will stick it out because maybe they will eventually accept me. I think maybe they still think of me as super new and not knowing anything. I’m not sure what to do other than start looking elsewhere for a job.

What have been your experiences working at a company where everyone is friends outside of work?

I switched jobs last year and had to reset up my 401(k) at the new job. Well. Something wonky happened to the contributions at my former employer and I wound up contributing more than the max allowed. I had to call the 401(k) company and explain what happened. They didn’t seem to know what to do since I didn’t catch it until tax day.

I had to have this conversation during the day and I work in a lab with other employees. I’m sure they all heard me explain to the guy that I accidentally put an extra $8k in a 401(k) account and it got very awkward after that. I’m one of those people who maxes out retirement because I’m retiring early.

I got a lot of really awful things said about me to my boss and he’s telling me I’m creating a hostile environment in the workplace. So yeaaaaahhh.

TL;DR: I had a private conversation in a public space about money and now work is super awkward.