Is it time to divorce- just not working out.... been 2.5 years. (marry, loving)

[shelato]

Originally Posted by Ruth4Truth

The thing is, though, the OP said the first 18 yrs of marriage were fine. No paranoia, no schizotypal behavior, apparently. Can that sort of thing have a late onset? Can it be triggered by a major event, like Covid?

Stress can make symptoms more acute.

Additionally 60% of those with schizophrenia have religious grandiose delusions consisting of believing they are a saint, God, the devil, a prophet, Jesus, or some other important person. There is this element of religiousity that often presents in this disease. My brother has at times thought he was Jesus, and has claims to have talked to deceased relatives and sometimes angels or demons. But this behavior also goes away when he takes his anti-psychotic meds.

Now schizotypical disorder is not schizophrenia. But they are related and there is a spectrum of related symptoms at work often just at lower thresholds. In families with high levels of religosity some of these low level symptoms of this spectrum can be overlooked as evidence of religiosity. So the person who spends a lot of time talking about engaging in spiritual warfare against Satan is viewed in these families as really devout but not as exhibiting low level paranoia and the families rule out that it could be both here, but that doesn't mean that is the correct interpretation of events.

Additionally some of the ideas around holistic health can also mask symptoms too. The OP's wife claim that the Covid vaccines are somehow making her sick is an incorrect interpretation of events, but her continued belif in that despite the lack of evidence for that claim. That cam be a symptom too.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-...s/syc-20353919

[SeminoleTom]

Originally Posted by H8t3rs

Marriage is not easy. I've been married 30+ years; it's been a struggle. I don't get a divorce because we both acknowledge that we are Type A's and difficult to live with. That's probably the only thing we agree on. I don't do counseling because they need help more than me. I just work with what I have. Sometimes acceptance is the right answer. Just accept it and move on!

Is divorce the right call? Don't make hasty decisions especially in the heat of moment. If divorce was like the easy button, I would have been divorced million times already.

Can you afford it? Now your divorced but you're driving a Pinto and living in a shack.

Is she the love of your life? Mine is! I would be lost without her. This is the biggest reason that I deal with her sh1t and she deals with mine.

This is a very interesting point of view and perspective. Thanks.

[SeminoleTom]

Originally Posted by MKTwet

Unfortunately politics has infected many people today. It's completely unnecessary and it's important to tune out politics within a marriage. I've dated some women that were openly vocal about religion and politics, glad they did and I walked away from those that are addicted to politics and ideology.

In an organic relationship, you should worry about each other's well being and politics is something you should leave out or try to abstain from.

I've dated some women that made a huge deal about identity politics and ignored those conversations because no matter what I say it would be detrimental to the relationship. Because often people who are seriously into politics struggle and are forever conflicted until they can pull themselves out of political tribalism.

Good advice.

[SeminoleTom]

Just a quick update:

We are still together. Tempers are ceasing. I talked to some friends and its apparent that our situation has come down to this: We are just different. People change over time. So what does that mean? Well, the real question is can we stay together? Neither of us have the answer to that. I want her to be happy and she wants me to be happy. I love her; she loves me. I'm not sure either of us are "in love" with each other though.

Now we need to figure out what to do. If we get divorced we instantly are put in a pretty poor position - both financially and with our kids (19, 17, 15). There is also the position of our faith that tells us we shouldn't get divorced (although several friends of mine who are of the same religion and have said it may be best for mental health). We will need to see how this plays out. Our goals and what we want to do in the future are different as well. Can we be happy with being "sort of married". Again, I don't know. Time will tell.

If anyone has any thoughts on living the "fake marriage" persona I'd love to hear it. I'm sure we could co-exist in the same house.

[shelato]

There is a therapist named John Gottman. He has a strong track record of being able to successfully predict who will and won't get divorced and his approach is to give couple the better tools of the couples who don't divorce. Here is a good fairly short introduction to how it works.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...-after/372573/

If you like that, you can read more from his books and I would start here.

https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Princip.../dp/0553447718

If it were me I would probably look into by getting a Gottman Trained Therapist here.

https://www.gottman.com/couples/find-a-therapist/

Surprisingly as it might seem right now, if both parties are actually willing to try to work on the relationship in a goodfaith manners your odds of success are pretty good of saving this relationship. People have came back from much worse. So I wouldn't automatically assume that your only options are either divorce or a fake marriage persona. The Gottman method is very successful.

[recycled]

Originally Posted by The Dissenter

I’m going to be straight up. While I would see if she would be amenable to trying counseling, the fact that she has converted to the religion of conspiracy is a clear sign to me that her ability to reason and the presence of logic is not there. The whole problem with conspiracy theorists is they think they know every damn thing. This is a self-delusion and from my experience they go down this hole never to return.

Again, I would try counseling but I’d adjust my expectations and emotionally prepare to not invest too much time and cut bait.

Pretty good advice above. I met a woman like this here in Germany. We played tennis a few times, went for a hike, went swimming and went out to eat a couple of times. That was as much as I could handle, because almost anytime we got to talking, I realized just how far "out there" her conspiracy theories were. Somewhere along the lines of QAnon. The latest conspiracy was the "Tartarian Empire" and doubting the moon landings or thinking 9/11 was planned by the US Government. I cut bait and cut the fishing line.

[kamban]

Originally Posted by SeminoleTom

My wife has a genetic blood disorder- too much iron in her blood and it needs to be dumped every so often. She is convinced her situation has flared up because I received the vaccine. It hurts me that she believes this. She doesn't get what this is doing to me. She is studying to become a holistic health counselor- she thinks she's an expert. I tell her you can take any topic and prove both sides on the internet with all of the BS on the internet. She will only look only at her side (confirmation bias).

Based on what you said you spouse has hemochromatosis and requires periodic phlebotomies. Flare ups occur when blood is not taken our sufficiently at regular intervals to keep the iron levels and iron stores ( ferritin) in check and rarely when too much blood has been taken out and the person is exhausted from lack of iron. Sometimes flare up of symptoms occur even when the blood parameters are perfect. She needs to see her hematologist to have this discussed and see why the flare up occurred. Rather than disagreeing with her theory of your vaccination causing her worsening, it would be better to say that let us see the physician and see what he thinks the cause is.

I see lot of couples where one is a strong vaccine disbeliever and would rather get COVID many times than take the vaccine and the other is a believer and has taken the initial set plus maybe 2 or 3 booster doses. Each believes they are right but what makes those marriage work is that they agree to disagree on vaccines and COVID but have other things in life they can agree on and work with.

Good luck.

[SeminoleTom]

Originally Posted by kamban

Based on what you said you spouse has hemochromatosis and requires periodic phlebotomies. Flare ups occur when blood is not taken our sufficiently at regular intervals to keep the iron levels and iron stores ( ferritin) in check and rarely when too much blood has been taken out and the person is exhausted from lack of iron. Sometimes flare up of symptoms occur even when the blood parameters are perfect. She needs to see her hematologist to have this discussed and see why the flare up occurred. Rather than disagreeing with her theory of your vaccination causing her worsening, it would be better to say that let us see the physician and see what he thinks the cause is.

All spot on.

Originally Posted by kamban

I see lot of couples where one is a strong vaccine disbeliever and would rather get COVID many times than take the vaccine and the other is a believer and has taken the initial set plus maybe 2 or 3 booster doses. Each believes they are right but what makes those marriage work is that they agree to disagree on vaccines and COVID but have other things in life they can agree on and work with.

Good luck.

Thanks for this feedback. It gives me a lot of encouragement that we aren't the only couple that disagree on this topic.

[Three Wolves In Snow]

Originally Posted by SeminoleTom

No its called "shedding". A lot of holistic health people believe this theory. That it can go off of me and onto her. Crazy I know.... But that is what I'm dealing with. You can look it up on the internet.

Give her something to look up. This is FACT, and I'm totally, 100% against these 'Covid vaccines', so not someone who just accepted whatever the main stream said about it all.

Have her look this up:

The mRNA 'vaccines' do NOT use a weakened virus. That is why so many say that they are not 'vaccines', (including me).

She can find all kinds of alternate media telling her that, and even the CDC will say that.

There is no weakened virus in these 'vaccines'.

Why is that important?

BECAUSE, while it IS possible to have viral shedding after a vaccine, it requires that a weakened virus be used as the basis for the vaccines. That's not the basis or science behind any of the vaccines that are currently being used for COVID-19.

Vaccine shedding occurs if it comes from a live attenuated vaccine - meaning it contains a weakened virus.

These shots do not!

Examples of shots that do:

Mumps
Measels
Chicken Pox

NOT Covid.

Further, the majority of the time, none of these 'shed' enough to affect anyone else in any way. Every once in a blue moon, it can happen, but again, only from a vaccine WITH a weakened virus contained within, AND only rarely.

So, what is happening is what happens to a lot of people:

Some people believe everything they hear on local and main stream news.
Some people believe everything they hear on alternative news.

Both types are doing the exact same thing.

These media, main and alternative, do the same, exact thing: Scare the crap out of people, tell half truths, and rake in the money from all the clicks and views.

Hardly anyone ever takes the time to follow the story all the way back to the very beginning to find the actual truth, not the half truths, or sometimes flat out lies, pushed by both medias.

She simply switched from one propaganda machine to another.

Both require that people use critical thinking, deep research, and skepticism.

Tell her to look up how 'shedding' happens - from an actual scientific paper, done many years before Covid ever came along.

Tell her to look up how these shots are made. No, we don't know all of the ingredients, but none of them are claiming that they used a 'weakened Covid 19 virus' to create the shot, (because they never isolated it). No, not even J&J. According to the CDC, J&J

"contains a harmless version of a virus unrelated to the virus that causes COVID-19."

Pfizer and Moderna are mRNA shots, not your typical shot like we used to get. It's an entirely different science. Again, per the CDC:

"...The mRNA vaccines do not contain any live virus..."

You can't shed anything if you have nothing in it TO shed.

Tell her to start there. Let her realize it on her own, not by some idiot who is lying to her or spreading 'information' that they didn't even look up before spreading it around.

And definitely agree on counseling. The reason is because these propaganda mouth pieces operate on spreading fear. None of what they say would be taken seriously if they didn't scare the crap out of people. Your wife has fear. Get to the bottom of that.

Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...nes/facts.html

[adamexe]

To be honest, I found that the best way through this stuff is to learn to detach yourself from these subjects. It's hard to get away from it when they are pontificating about it, but basically what works for me is just not engaging with the subject at all. If they start trying to recommend something, or try to get into the debate, you can either explicitly mention that you should both agree to disagree on this, and respect each other's right to their own opinion, or, if that seems to cause friction every time, just basically be a very boring sparring partner.

Basically, don't debate. And maybe have a discussion with your wife about how you two should handle your disagreement about it. You can ask her, eventually. Is your opinion about COVID worth destroying our marriage? If not then let's find ways around it.

Because I'm telling you, this isn't a debate that can be won once either side has dug their feet in and committed too much of their ego. So you want to stay away from the substance of the subject. There's no point debating. The worst thing you can do when dealing with people who have fallen into conspiracy stuff is to get emotional or smug. The only thing you can do is remain as respectful as possible, but signify your unwillingness to engage further.