u/Missing_Back

Curious about how other "non-traditional" couples handle this. My wife didn't take my last name (for multiple reasons, but one of which because she wanted to keep her heritage as she's hispanic as is her last name, which I fully supported). We also didn't hyphenate as both of our names are kind of long and it would just be a mouthful/a lot to write, as well as easier to not have to go through the process of either of us changing our names.

We now have our first child due in December and so far when we've talked about it, even before she was pregnant, we've said our kids would have my wife's last name. We don't really subscribe to the arbitrary tradition of the man's name being used (as is obvious in the case of marriage, but also for our kids).

We saw family this weekend and shared more things about the pregnancy like the gender, etc. and my parents, who are more traditional, asked about how we're doing the last name. I told them what we're planning and they gave some push back. One thing they suggested is, if anything, do a hyphenated name legally on the birth certificate, but day to day have them use just my wife's last name if that's what we prefer.

So it got me curious what other people in a similar situation have done?

For a couple years I had an HSA and would try to just let it stay invested and grow, but would use it for some things like prescriptions, etc. But this year we switched to an FSA, and kept using it for the same things. We noticed that there’s a lot more purchases that require added documentation to confirm the purchase was valid/eligible.

The institution or whatever it’s through is the same as when it was an HSA; it’s literally the same debit card whether it’s an HSA or FSA—just a different tab in the app.

Anyone know why it seems more strict for the FSA vs the HSA?

I've used YNAB since 2022, love it. It's the first system I tried for managing money/budgeting (I still lived at home at the time). Love the clarity it gives to money, love seeing the numbers grow.

My wife and I don't have the same types of brains, at all. So it's been a constant struggle to get on the same page financially. She doesn't really have any awareness of our finances other than a very general sense of things. I handle all the bills, investments, retirement, saving, budget, etc.

I've tried to get her involved repeatedly. I try different things. I ask her to look at the budget categories before making a purchase (this is the baseline of budgeting). Because she doesn't do that, our "budgeting" has slowly devolved to retroactively tracking expenses. So I try to get her involved in the "squaring up" process of making sure the YNAB accounts match the bank accounts, and then fix overspending in the budget (since this can give awareness of our spending relative to our budget). She gets irritated when trying to walk her through this. I've even asked her to do the minimal effort of adding a memo for ambiguous purchases (I'm not even asking her to categorize things, literally just add context to what the purchase is so I can categorize it). She'll do that a couple of times then stop.

Overall she says that YNAB just isn't a good system for her brain and it's too complicated for her. So I'm curious if anyone has suggestions for this. I'm guessing most people here are "left brained" and naturally enjoy numbers and ordered systems and tracking and all that good stuff, and therefore enjoy YNAB. That doesn't mean YNAB doesn't have a learning curve, though, which is something I've said to my wife (it took me a while to understand how to use it myself). She says she's a more visual person, and all the numbers make her feel like she's just looking at a spreadsheet.

Does YNAB only work for people who already have an inclination towards similar systems? Any insights or pieces of advice??

I'm on mobile and looking at the spending breakdown tab in the "reflect" section. I edited the filter to show just my gas and electric as I want to see how they both change over the months. For some reason, the filter seems to work fine except that my car payment also shows up, and I don't understand why...

Any ideas?

For context, I'm a SWE with 3 YOE.

This is a discovery I recently made about myself. I'm a relatively disciplined and focused person in my free time. But at work, I'm constantly distracting myself, watching hours and hours of youtube, scrolling my phone, etc. And it's because I have this constant hum of anxiety that's ever present. Even if I get back on task, I'll pretty soon feel an intense compulsion to distract myself again. Every once in a while I'll have a task that I'm working on that I can get lost in. These tasks are usually in some sense separate from the "software engineering" work. i.e. they involve learning about concepts and implementing something on my own rather than integrating things into the overall codebase/working with other engineers to develop something. I'm able silo myself off and work on it in isolation where it's simply a goal of "understand these concepts" rather than "understand this proprietary codebase and communicate effectively with others"

What I've realized is that I really enjoy *programming*, but *software engineering* is a lot more complex and therefore more anxiety-inducing--not that it's not enjoyable, but it's just... harder. Programming is simply writing code. The scale and scope is usually small. Working on a little project at home on the weekends, or learning a new technology because I'm curious. Or a solo project that has no stakes. Software engineering, on the other hand, is what I do for work. It's about being a member of a larger team and an even larger org. It involves working with code that is much more complex and that has been around and maintained (more or less, lol) for years and years and years. There's different people and personalities you'll interact with (some that click with you, some that don't). There's colleagues to compare yourself against (a common thought for me is, "do these other people with similar experience as me understand what this person/presentation is saying??? Because I'm lost"). There's the art of communication/explanation--something I think a lot of people struggle with (or is it just me?? I can never be certain, lol).

Overall I'm feeling more and more anxious and insecure about my abilities and skills, and the best way I've found to put it into words is: programming is fun, but software engineering can be overwhelming.

Does anyone feel the same way? Any advice for improving this? I want to be effective and skilled when it comes to my job. But there's just so many components and pieces involved that it's easy to get bogged down and in my head about it.

I've finally set up an appointment to see about getting medicated for my anxiety. For a while I felt like I was just anxious in the sense of social anxiety--I get anxious before simple things like appointments, work things, and bigger social events. I more or less am still be able to push myself to go for it and try it (my wife is a big help because I'd often go just to avoid making her go solo) but I usually stay in my shell.

Within the past year (or more even, but my awareness has only increased recently) I've felt more generalized anxiety--just kind of a constant low hum of anxiety that makes doing things more difficult because it feels like I have less RAM available for tasks. My wife and I are also doing more things socially so maybe it's because there's more things to be anxious about. Either way, I'm feeling more and more hindered by my anxiety. A big part of it as well is that when socializing, it straight up feels like my brain just... isn't generating thoughts. It even happens with a lot of topics when chatting with just my wife. Like I just don't have anything to contribute. This is a problem with people outside of her though because that's a big part of small talk and getting to know someone. So it feels really awkward to not have anything to say as a reply when talking to someone. My awareness of this happening then feeds into the social anxiety and it's a whole cycle.

So I have an appointment in a month or two with a psychiatrist to see what they say. But in the mean time I'm curious if people can share their experience with getting medicated and especially how it played into social anxiety.

My main lunch currently is crockpot salsa chicken thighs. It's over rice and I usually have some carrots on the side but lately I'm wanting more food with the meal. I reheat the chicken & rice so would prefer something that doesn't involve an extra reheating step, but that's not a total deal breaker.

Only thing I've thought of is elote, or some sort of salad (no idea on ingredients or recipe tho)

I experience this often. A lot of the time it's some form of "I'm currently doing something hard that has long term benefit, but I want to be doing something 'fun' instead." or the inverse of "I'm doing something 'fun' right now but should be doing something that contributes to long term goals". I know in reality that both fun activities and "hard" activities are important in a life of balance. But this awareness doesn't get rid of this constant ambivalence

Not books about fathers who literally aren't around, nor really books about abusive or outright neglectful fathers. But rather fathers who aren't very emotionally attuned with their children and don't really pursue deep relationships/connection with their children.

https://preview.redd.it/fehaqc9eyn8h1.jpg?width=4284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d51091a2f26837f49675033edd957dbac5bc2ac2

Trying to learn more about lawn care and whatnot. Currently know nothing. There's lots of growth at the base of this tree. Should I get rid of all of this? Does it matter one way or another?

Did a lot of googling about this and looking at reddit posts asking about crib mattresses. The thing I kept seeing was how great the Newton is because it's washable. But the Graco says it's washable as well. For some reason I didn't see that mentioned anywhere on Reddit. Am I missing something? Is there a difference? Is it like the entire thing is washable for the Newton while the Graco just has a removable washable zipper cover or something?

Whether fiction or nonfiction. As a software engineer I get anxious about asking questions that make me seem "dumb", and feel imposter syndrome because I don't see other people ask similar questions. Logically I know other people may very well feel the same way, but it's still a hard thing to change.

I remember I once saw a podcast of a guy who's played a big role in Apple and other really cool software engineering things, and overall a really smart and talented guy. And in this podcast, he said that asking dumb questions is incredibly important to learn. Hearing someone like that say to ask dumb questions is a big comfort, so I'm looking for books with a similar message

I’ve mainly been listening to two books in ABS but only one of the two books is showing up on the home page. I have to go to the downloads page and seek out the other book when I want to play it.

And it’s not like it’s always showing the single most recently played. It shows a specific book regardless of it was the last one I listened to or not.

Any idea how to fix that?

Identity plays a huge role in weight loss and really any sort of habits or changes in life. I think there's two main types of identity: negative and positive. Positive is who you are, negative is who you aren't.

In my experience, it's been really helpful to try to develop positive identities eg. "I'm a person who exercises" or "I'm a person who eats healthy". Not that exercising is just something I do, but I am the *type of person* who does it. It seems like a minor difference but it can be really helpful.

A big roadblock to getting healthier is believing that you're not capable of doing something, like "I'm not a runner" (so therefore I'll never try running to see how I like it) or "I'm not a gym-goer" (so, again, I'll never try it).

I'm curious how this latter type of identity has played a role in your journey? Did some form of negative identity keep you from making changes earlier? Were you only able to make significant progress after working through those mental roadblocks about who you are?

tl;dr wife avoids doing hard things. Some things are life values that I wish we were aligned in, some are genuinely affecting her mental/physical health. She's now pregnant so these things are more important from a "modeling behavior" perspective as well as because she's carrying a baby. As a result of these struggles, for a while our sex life has struggled because I've lost interest due to frustrations & little resentments. I've found Gottman's Seven Principles book, which seems really helpful. But if my wife struggles to do hard things, then how can I expect us to read it together and work through the issues?

We're both 27, married for 2 years. She's currently pregnant with our first child, due in December which we're both really excited for. Her pregnancy has brought more of these issues to the forefront for me. Overall she struggles to do hard things and to take care of herself. She has some childhood trauma that makes it hard to address things, but I also think she uses some of this as an excuse. I'll try to give a quick rundown of the issues/dynamics.

In hindsight we have some differences in life values that probably should've been evaluated more clearly early on, but at this point we're here and she's my favorite person in the world, despite the differences and frustrations. If anything, I think our differences will be good for our kids, lol. Variety and all that. But there's still some things that need to be figured out IMO

My wife has adhd (diagnosed, prescribed multiple times but has never taken medication regularly). I'm likely on the spectrum and crave routine and working towards goals and building habits. Examples of what our evenings look like to illustrate how we're different. She'll melt into the couch and stay there the whole evening. Occasionally she'd work on a craft or some creative project but it's mostly TV & phone. I like to exercise and read and I try to practice piano a little, I've started running recently and try to structure my day around self improvement and growth. I'll also play video games sometimes which I struggle to moderate, so I can relate to her feeling of being glued to the TV or her phone. That's behavior that I've had to work really hard to improve in myself so it's hard not to project that onto her.

For a while I've been trying to encourage her to join me on more of these enriching activities. We moved into a house (rental) and have a homegym which I thought could be a good way to start exercising together (she thought so as well) but she doesn't push herself to. We always talk about finding a book together to read (and in fact have started a couple, but 99% of the time I continue on with it and she stops). Even recently with the pregnancy she suggested a book about babies which I downloaded and sent to our phones, but she hasn't opened it while I'm about a third of the way through. I invite her to go on walks, to try playing pickleball, really I try to find any healthy activities we can do together. Otherwise, the main things we do together are eat food or watch things. It makes me feel disconnected from her and I've shared this with her.

It's also hard because she struggles with stress from work and her lack of healthy coping mechanisms is hard to watch. I understand the pull to watch tv all night when you're low energy, but you'll feel far better if you get some sunlight and move your body a bit. Add on top of this the unmedicated adhd and it's a vortex.

Another area is finances. I'm a budget nerd and try to get her involved with the finances in some way. I would be ecstatic if she could simply refer to the budget before spending, but she won't. This is where the excuses come in: she blames her parents for never teaching her to manage money, but as an almost 28 year old, she's had 10 years on her own to learn it herself. We're overspending every month (in the sense that we're spending more than the budget says, not that we're adding debt--her variable income + extra paychecks help). This is concerning as we'll be parents soon and she will work less/not at all, so frugality will be vital for our security. Her inability to talk numbers at all is worrying.

There's also health things, like her untreated sleep apnea. She's quite overweight and her dad and grandpa have sleep apnea, and it's concerning watching and hearing her sleep. She chokes and shudders constantly. Now that she's carrying our child, it's even more scary. But she won't do anything about it. I brought it up in our last prenatal appointment, and the doctor said in a very matter of fact way that my wife should talk to her primary doctor about getting a referral because it's something that will only get worse as the pregnancy continues. The OB also mentioned that due to my wife's weight it's considered a higher risk pregnancy, and that she should only gain a minimal amount of weight, etc. My wife left the appointment feeling stressed about "all the things I need to worry about now" which then causes her to avoid dealing with any of it.

So these types of issues have been on my mind for a while. My thought process has been, "it'll be much harder to make changes in ourselves once we have kids, so let's try to make changes before that point". Her avoidance with dealing with these issues has caused me to feel disconnected from her: my life value is taking care of my mental and physical health, yet she won't even see the doctor about her sleep apnea, let alone go on walks or to the gym with me. Or read books about managing adhd, learning healthier coping mechanisms for dealing wtih work stress, etc. This has caused me to feel resentment and frustration which has caused a decrease of interest in sex. This is the most "direct" way she's felt impacted by these issues. She doesn't acknowledge the health effects, the lack of her healthy coping mechanisms, her unmanaged adhd, etc. But if we're not having sex, that's a big challenge for her. But it's not exactly a solution for me to communicate, "I think I'm feeling less inclined because we're not living and growing together and working on ourselves as a team". She gets sad by that, understandably, and kind of just wants me to snap my fingers and be more interested in sex.

She also struggles to talk about any of this. She shuts down or gets defensive.

I've suggested we try couples counseling because our communication is struggling and we're not making any progress. In this research I've found Gottman's Seven Principles book and have started reading. I've shared parts with her and asked if she would read it with me, but I know she won't. Why? Because she struggles to do things she doesn't want to do.

So now we're in a gridlock where we don't have anything we do together, we don't grow together in any ways, we don't really work towards long term goals together. And we can't work through the issues because that requires doing hard things... which is where this all began. Yet we're going to be parents soon. I'm worried.

I'll try to give a succinct run down of my wife's financial history and how it's affecting us as a team today. We're both 27, married for 2 years.

She's always expressed frustration that her parents never taught her how to handle money. All they would do is say cliches like "you need to learn the value of a dollar" but never actually teach her skills. She never budgeted and before we moved in together, she had no savings and was fairly often in a place of "do I pay for gas or food this week?". She missed bills, got her electricity shut off at least once (that I know of). Fortunately no debt, as she knew a CC would be a bad idea. Throughout knowing her I tried to help her budget (and I myself only started properly budgeting about 7 months after we met). When I tried to show her how, she would get frustrated that "this system doesn't work for my brain". She essentially would try to just mentally keep track of when bills were due. There were details like the fact that she had to deliver a paper check to support this claim that a digital budgeting app wouldn't work. We moved in together and that helped, but she still made no effort to save (IIRC?). We then got married and I encouraged us to combine finances. To be honest, this was a practical step because whether we were married or not, her lack of personal finance effort was going to affect me. At least if we pool our money and I manage it, I can kind of force her to save. This was 2 years ago and since then we've just fell into a routine of me managing the money and her trying to be somewhat conscious of the finances, but in a very abstract way--never about raw numbers, never in terms of expenses vs income vs savings. It's more about if she subjectively feels like she's "doing good" with spending. She doesn't look at the budget, she doesn't consult it.

Our first child is due in December and we're still not quite sure what she's going to do as far as work (we'd both prefer her to be a SAHM). Regardless, expenses will go up and income will go down, which means being on the same page financially is vital. But this is hard when she has such an aversion to numbers, nitty gritty details, budgeting, etc. She kind of does personal finance off of vibes. If I say, "hey, we overspent on X this month". She'll say, "I thought I was doing good!" -- she doesn't ask or talk about the objective numbers. I tell her, "It's not about good or bad, it's about having a certain amount of money and staying within that budget". Eg. she wants a nice chair for the nursery. I also want this chair, and I know we'll need a chair. But that doesn't mean we can just like that drop over $800 on a chair while we have other things we need to plan for. There was also a sale from some online baby clothing site. She wanted to buy an $80 PJ set for herself that kind of matches a baby outfit she likes. She also wanted to buy multiple $30 sets of newborn outfits. At this time, with us needing to practice frugality to see how well we can handle it, I have a hard time agreeing that those are good uses of our money. Because she refuses to look at the numbers, we can't have a meaningful conversation where we evaluate if buying this chair or those clothes is realistic right now. It's just based on vibes: "we need it eventually so let's just get it now".

Yesterday I tried to go through the budget balancing process with her to pull her in more and help her have more awareness about our finances (maybe if she sees the process for covering the constant overspending it would help create awareness?) This process is monotonous but not that hard if we do it weekly (it's something that up to this point only I have done; I think I've tried to do it with her in the past but it never sticks). It involves squaring up the transactions in the budget with the bank's transactions, then "rolling with the punches" and moving money around in the budget to cover overspending. Which, unfortunately, is a constant thing with my wife. Usually in the form of eating out. Which, to be fair, she's currently pregnant so that's expected.

When doing this with her, I tried to start by having her do the process. I would walk her through each and every step since she's a very visual learner and budgeting is unfortunately not very visually stimulating. I figure we all learn best by doing. She got visibly frustrated and was irritated by trying to walk her through it instead of just doing it and having her sit there passively. I know this isn't the first time I've shown her so I thought she could handle doing it with me guiding (I know she can, but she thinks she can't therefore she can't).

At one point she said, "My brain doesn't know the difference between this and something like public speaking". It's like budgeting triggers her fight or flight.

At this point I don't know what else to try. She refuses to be involved in the finances. She budgets based off of vibes instead of numbers. She doesn't look at the budget before spending. If I didn't take over the finances, she wouldn't save. She blames her parents for not teaching her how to handle money, which is fair, but she also makes no effort to teach herself now that she's an adult.

I’m not looking for books in the flavor of self help. But instead the history of psychotherapy, like for example what “therapy” may have looked like 50 years ago, 25 years ago, etc. What trends or ideas have come and gone our fashion as more research and learning has been done by the experts in the field. Kind of a book saying “this sort of thing used to be the state of the art technique. But now it’s widely refuted as ineffective” or along those lines.

My wife is a notorious veggie hater. She eats mainly foods that taste good and won't force herself to eat, for example, plain steamed broccoli (meanwhile I prefer boring veggies most the time). One thing she really likes is this tomato soup recipe I found that has some veggies in the soup and it all gets blended up at the end. So she gets some veggies in without noticing it. We're looking for more recipes like this or really any sort of tricks to sneak veggies into a meal.

Any suggestions??

My wife is a notorious veggie hater. She eats mainly foods that taste good and won't force herself to eat, for example, plain steamed broccoli (meanwhile I prefer boring veggies most the time). One thing she really likes is this tomato soup recipe I found that has some veggies in the soup and it all gets blended up at the end. So she gets some veggies in without noticing it. We're looking for more recipes like this or really any sort of tricks to sneak veggies into a meal.

Any suggestions??