u/SmartLadder415

Wife and I struggled to conceive for 6-8 mos. I'm 45 so I'm an older guy so we checked in w/the clinic even though it hadn't been a lot of time. To make a long story short a number of SA's and procedures later and the doc tells me that I have no seminal vesicles. Without them he says our chance of conception naturally is close to 0. Said best case is single digit percentages over the course of an entire year. We're getting ready to go the IVF route and I'm struggling with the pain/discomfort/inconvenience I'm about to cause my wife. She is not only fine with it but eager for it but it bugs me all the same. I'm just having a hard time with the fact that it's a failure on my part that's putting her through all of this.

This is my latest struggle and honestly it has been a struggle for us the entire time we've been married. My wife (dx-non-medicated) struggles extremely hard with ADHD. I had no clue she struggled this hard until we got married. She has a hard time just making dinner some nights because tracking multiple pots on a stove and dishes in a sink and a microwave beeping at her is all too much on some days. She has more or less refused to help with the finances which makes it difficult for me.

We are married so we have a joint account that we both spend out of. Who buys what sometimes varies. I'm doing the grocery run this week but she'll do it other weeks. She has issues with impulse control IMO so she'll buy a number of little things throughout the week it seems. I'm at the point where I have no clue if we have enough money to cover all our bills and groceries this week because there are about 20+ charges out there that easily add up to more than what we have in our grocery category but she won't sit down with me and tell me what they all are.

I've been brainstorming and coming up with ideas. I could maybe add her credit card to my Walmart account so anything she buys would show up in my purchase history. That would probably screw things up on her end though. There may be other things I could try logistically. I ask her to sit down with me and once a week and it's like pulling teeth. She finds other things to do. She forgets. She will deliberately not come to bed 'til midnight because she knows I have to get up at 5 am so I'll already be asleep. It's very frustrating. We are struggling to get ahead financially because we cannot get on the same page because she won't even talk about the money. Says it's too many things to track and it's just too much. Her solution was that I just give her an allowance every week/month/whatever. That feels so infantilizing that I just can't. How can I get my wife to just sit down with me and talk out what she spent this week so I can track it?

When my wife and I were dating we talked about kids obviously and agreed that we only wanted one. She has kids from a prior relationship who are all awesome. I adore all three of them and love being their dad when they're here and miss them when they're not. We agreed we wanted one of our own and at this point it is looking like IVF is our only option. We're working w/the doc to work through that process.

I mentioned to my wife yesterday that once we have this baby and we're all home and everyone is healthy that I want to get a vasectomy. I even talked to my urologist who recommended it if we decide that we are 100% done with having kids. Wife got extremely upset which was not a reaction I was expecting. Said I must NOT get a vasectomy and if I did it would "permanently damage our relationship." She said that we should not use any form of birth control and if we get pregnant then we should just accept that it's what God wants. None of my arguments have worked on her. I pointed out that I'm in my mid-40s and she is much younger than me so even with our low chances of conceiving naturally (less than 10% according to my doc) there is still a possibility that I become a dad again in my early 50s. I don't want to have to work until I'm 70. She says it's unlikely that happens and she rejects any other argument I manage to make. How did you sell your wife on a vasectomy?

Edit: It sounds like my real problem here is timing and I'm broaching this topic at the wrong time. Bringing this up during a time when we're struggling w/infertility is not a great plan on my part.

I'll also add that my wife has never had an issue with birth control on religious grounds.

Long story short my wife invited a friend of hers to spend the holiday with us. I had never really met this friend before but she seemed like a nice person. She stayed over the weekend and we had a nice BBQ for the 4th with some other friends of ours. Found out she is extremely socially isolated. She is married but her husband lives in another state and works there. She sees him maybe once a month and they're separated now. She is a SAHM with no income other than what he gives her and he is very stingy with what he gives her and threatens to cut her off if she doesn't do what he wants. She has a couple of kids who she home schools. According to her, she has no friends at all except my wife and the kids have no friends of their own that they interact with at all.

At some point in the conversation, conspiracy theories came up and she's really into them. I'm not talking about "the CIA killed JFK" type conspiracies (which can be a fun diversion) but she is deep, deep, deep into some super, super dark stuff. A buddy of mine and his wife were there at the BBQ and he and I ended up talking to this woman. The conspiracies got dark enough that I walked away rather than offend our houseguest but he stayed and listened and said they got darker than that. We're talking about ritual child abuse, Satanism and forced cannibalism type things. Also, the earth is flat and "they" are covering it up. It's way, way, way off in the deep end and she sincerely and truly believes all of it. I've honestly never met a flat earther IRL before. From what she says she spends a lot of her time going down these rabbit holes and believes that all of them are real.

What is the best way to help someone like this? It seems clear to me that she had kind of lost touch with reality.

Wife and I finally were able to get an appointment to get our 11 (almost 12) yr old daughter tested. I'm just trying to get some input/reassurances of what the testing actually involves. We've been told that the kid needs to be sleep deprived and they're going to wire up some kind of EEG cap to her for the testing. Beyond that it's not entirely clear. What do we need to prepare for?

My wife (DX - non-medicated) struggles hard with ADHD. I know it's all on a spectrum but she's pretty far on the spectrum. For example, if she's cooking dinner she will shut down sometimes because she doesn't know what to do next. Should she handle the pots on the stove, the dirty dishes in the sink or the beeping microwave? Or should she get plates out to get ready to serve? She can't decide and just shuts down and gets overwhelmed. She needed my help the other day just to follow a recipe because she lost track of what ingredients she had added and what step she was on.

I'm starting to get worn down. She's a SAHM with a part time job. She works maybe 15 hrs a week but usually much less than that. Still I come home and have to run 2-3 loads of dishes every evening and manage our dogs and run laundry, and chase our 11 yr old around (who also has ADHD), etc...... It's exhausting and she complains that she finds it overwhelming and frequently schedules things or volunteers for things that take her out of the house so she's not home all that much. If I don't take the more active role our house descends into chaos and we eat off paper plates and have no clean towels. She's asked me recently if I can do more and I'm just exhausted. I know if she managed her ADHD better it would make a gigantic difference. Just putting a load of dishes in the dishwasher while she was waiting for her coffee to brew in the morning would help but she can't multi-task like this. I also know that she gets overwhelmed by the stuff around the house and just can't handle it. Short of pressuring her to get on medications (which she is kind of resistant to) what can I do to help her manage things better?

Due to financial reasons my wife and I probably won't be able to take an anniversary trip this year. My thinking was that instead I'd get tickets to Les Mis (which is playing around our anniversary date) and a nice hotel room somewhere. Problem is I live here so I have no clue what hotels are considered fancy and my wife is super picky. Ideally one with a nice soaking tub or whirlpool tub in the room.

Edit: told the wife my big idea and she veto'd it. Says a hotel room is a waste if we're in town and I had to talk her into letting me get an overnight babysitter for our kid at least. I will keep these recommendations in mind if she changes her mind though.

My wife has two kids from a previous relationship (6 and 5). They are here on the weekends and now are here a couple of days longer since it's the summer. It has always been a struggle to get these kids to go to bed and now it seems even worse. They want to stay up way past midnight and will not simply lay down. If you tuck them into bed, read them a story, say good night and turn out the lights they will get up 5 mins later and come banging on our door because they are thirsty/hungry/bored/have to go to bathroom/heard a weird noise/had a strange thought/are curious what we're doing tomorrow/want to talk about something we did today/etc...... They simply will not sleep.

We went back to their dad and asked how he gets them to sleep at his house and what their bed time looks like. Found out that his routine is this - at a random time each night (sometimes 9, sometimes 11, sometimes in between. It's whenever he and his girlfriend decide they want to go to bed) he tells the kids it's bed time and sends them to their room. In their room they have a Switch, a TV and an iPad. They entertain themselves in their room for as long as they want and he and his girlfriend go to bed. They are downstairs and the kids are upstairs so they can't hear them. He said sometimes he wanders up there past midnight or even 1 am and the kids will still be up watching tv or playing the Switch. At that point he says he will tell them to go to bed and then go back downstairs himself but he doesn't know if they actually go to bed or not. Most nights he says he doesn't do that though he just lets them do their thing. This obviously does not work at our house with a more strict "everyone is in bed at X time" thing and the expectation that people might not sleep but you gotta at least lie there quietly.

So we're struggling and looking for tips. Dinner time is another place we have issues as we do the family dinner thing where we all sit around the table and their dad just makes plates for the kids and they all eat separately. He and his girlfriend eat in the living room and the kids eat in the kitchen or in their room or just where ever. They struggle to sit at a table and eat with us as they're not used to it.

Long story short, I married a single mom about 18+ mos ago. Other than our honeymoon and a 3 day weekend we took for our first anniversary there have always been kids around. Just something that has been normal since day 1. Now our kid who was 10 when we got married is now almost 12 and wanted to go to a summer camp. We approved it and she's hyped about it. So we now get an entire week of just me and mom and we are both excited and also kind of freaked out because we've never done me and her at home for a week with just the two of us. I'm honestly not even sure how to interact with my wife without kids around or talking about kids or something kid related happening. What do couples without kids do for a week. So far we planned a 4 day weekend at the end of the week (that's all the time I could get off) and there will be plenty of sexy times as well but I'm honestly not even remotely sure what to do on any of the evenings. Usually it's us chasing another human around.

My wife has been pregnant before in past relationships so I always kind of knew it was my fault we can't conceive. Been working with a urologist. My SA showed my sperm count was super low, volume was low and all the heads were misshapen. He looked for varioceles and found nothing and recommended a prostate ultrasound. That was super fun. Turns out I have no seminal vesicles. Apparently was just born without them. They apparently are also responsible for making up 60-70% of the stuff that is in semen so without them you're kind of infertile. So not only was it my fault the entire time there is nothing we can do about it other than do IVF. This worries me as IVF is harder on my wife than it is on me obviously. I've also been told that due to having no seminal vesicles they may choose to extract the sperm from my testicles directly. According to the internet this is no big deal and it just feels like being kicked really hard down there and that pain sticks around for several days. No big deal at all.

As a side note, apparently (and I gotta call the doc about this now) people born with no seminal vesicles commonly have only one kidney. So now I have something else I gotta check out. I'm very frustrated right now and full of questions for the doc. I've apparently been using birth control for no reason. I have to put together a whole list of questions for my doc now as this all came out of right field.

We had planned a road trip of about 6 hrs or so. We had talked to the kids and mentioned this and some of the stuff we were thinking of doing. Basically asked their input on whether they wanted to go to destination A or destination B. Our idea was to get them involved in planning some of the elements or at least get a say in it.

Then some life stuff happened. Wife is involved in a custody battle w/her ex. We had a court date in Jan but he stalled and now he is stalling again. We now don't have a court date 'til August so we likely won't even have her kids for a week during the summer (which is part of what we're asking for in court). This means our legal bills are going up and we are almost certainly going to need an unknown amount of money to pay the lawyer's boat payment. End of the day our vacation budget is going to the lawyer now and we won't have the kids anyway. My wife and I have turned our anniversary trip later this year into a 3 day weekend a couple of hours a way and I think we realize that that is probably not going to happen and it may turn into us just pawning the kids off on a relative overnight.

How do we explain this entire thing to the kids? We can't really tell them anything about the legal fight and their dad dragging things out. All we've told them so far is that we're trying to work with their dad to get more time with them and it takes time to work these things out. They were and are kind of hyped for a vacation this summer.

Edit: Kids in question are 11, 6 and 5. Also, I hate camping. Wife does love it though but she's been miserable and cranky every time we go.

Long story short, we're trying to get a custody order modified with my wife's ex. He is extremely opposed to it. We filed around early summer last year and we still don't have a court date which is frustrating but it is looking like we will have one soon. I'm struggling because we offered to go to mediation and the ex said we could see him it court.

My anxiety stems from the fact that we are fighting him over three basic points in the agreement. I don't want to get into more details as I don't want to doxx myself but two of the three points our lawyer says are complete losers for him or he'll have to accept a compromise that we propose. The other point was we wanted a 3-4 week block of time w/the kids during the summer (we currently only have every other weekend and he's the custodial parent). Our lawyer suggested we ask for 10 weeks and negotiate down but that any judge would rubber stamp a 3-4 week ask. He has decided to fight on that too. My anxiety is telling me that he has some kind trick up his sleeve if he's willing to fight over two things he is sure to lose on and one thing that he'll have to negotiate on (more time during the summer). I am terrified because neither my wife nor I have any clue what that is and him digging in his heels with no surprises for us just makes him look bad to a judge. I have no clue what he could possibly argue on any of the three points. Even talking to chatgpt from his perspective (admittedly not the best legal advice) advised him to compromise on all three of the points to look reasonable but he's refusing.

I was listening to some podcast recently from Maggie Freling (I might have that name wrong) where she mentioned a previous podcast where she investigated a man who was falsely convicted and came to the conclusion halfway through the podcast that he was 100% guilty. I cannot find what podcast this was and she mentioned it as a passing comment. I've found a bunch of other podcasts from her but none that seem to fit her description.