I think my marriage is dead

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Well that's an interesting way to live.. modern day homesteading!

Do each of you work a job in order to have an income? Hope so so you can save a few bucks for survival supplies & materials.

Yeah, we both wanted to do homesteading for years before we even first met.

No, we had been planning to make money from farming, and craft things like candles, we did make some sales, but not anywhere close to break even and we haven't really sold anything in a couple years.

I have been looking for a job for months now, but I don't really know how to do that. I talked with the career center about a month ago, I need to go back and talk with them again, especially now that I have a phone.

Would you want to be with a woman who sees you as a child though? Can't imagine it'll be good for self esteem.

It sounds like you might be better off without her.

Last edited by Nades on 08 Sep 2022, 1:48 am, edited 2 times in total.

I've been with a woman who was emasculating and shaming. Much better off without her!

To be fair I can see his wife's perspective too but as you get older it's better to just cut anyone emasculating out of ones life ASAP.

I had my fair share of emasculating people and one day realised that those very people have low end/mediocre jobs, don't really look very good and haven't achieved much. The desirables they once were when younger had been replaced with McJobs and beer guts. I wondered what the reasons were to take them seriously and couldn't find any.

Not that his wife is like that of course but it's actually worth considering if she's putting her money where her mouth is seeing she's so critical of OP. Nothing is worse that criticism coming from those who don't even have their own house in order.

You just described my ex haha. All a good lesson in what I will and won't put up with in future.. rather be alone than with someone who resents you, what a life that is! Weird thing about relationships is you think you can't live without them which is not true in the slightest. It's just an unremarkable human with their own issues that they can't deal with too. No matter what qualities you lack that you may project on to them.

The best revenge is doing better than them.

It seems to me that perhaps a couple of lessons learned over the last 2 years or so are:

1. Maybe neither of you are cut out for homesteading.. in 2 years you haven't done the work to begin building your home if she's just getting started digging out a foundation hole now.

2. Maybe neither of you are cut out for entrepreneurship.. if over the last 2 years you haven't sold anything at all.


I'm not trying to be insulting here, just pointing out what I think are some obvious lessons. I myself have had failed entrepreneurial ventures, as well as some with relative success when I put any time or effort into them. Overall I'm a better employee than entrepreneur, though, as I've learned about myself enough to realize that I'm simply not a 100% self starting person. I have skills and knowledge that could earn me a living solo.. and sometimes I contemplate just throwing myself into solo work and just givin' 'er until I get enough repeat business & referrals to make more money than I could at a job.. but then I don't take action and actually do it. I tend to be better suited to work a scheduled job for guaranteed income and then work side jobs for extra cash - some sort of balance like that. I still haven't ruled out going full tilt on my own business while times are good, though.. and then go back to a union job when times are tough. But I have the luxury of significant savings to float me while I piss around and waste time.

None of my business, but have you at least had some sort of unemployment or welfare benefits over the last couple years so you have money to buy food? Or have you gone strictly hunter-gather & subsistence farmer?

All said, you've at least both managed to successfully survive in spite of all these hardships.. and that's a big win that counts for something.

Indeed, she seems to have significant short fallings in her own right to be fair. I wouldn't say this is a relationship where one is carrying another on their shoulders but rather one in blinkered to their own inability. I'm honestly surprised that his wife is complaining yet hasn't managed to take any initiative herself.

Years have gone by and she's done nothing herself to improve the situation.

While you have a point, I'd imagine that given their living situation she's been a little too preoccupied with daily survival to put much focused energy into improving much of anything.

Sort of like when people are Actually homeless (a fair comparison, this couple is not far off!), it's very easy for outsiders with the Comforts of stability to criticise people and ask why they don't just get a job or do this or do that to better their situation.. and knowing several actual homeless people personally, I can tell you that it's not that simple. It's rather complicated and a whole lot of daily time & energy goes into the basics of surviving from day to day, leaving little left for unassisted situational improvement. It's not impossible, but it's very, very difficult.

Imagine being dropped off downtown with no money, no access to money, no ID, no fixed address, and only a backpack containing a change of clothes and a toothbrush. No cell phone, either. How quickly and easily are you going to be able to get back on your feet? My best guess is that it takes a lot more time and effort than most think it will - even if you start from a position of health and sobriety.

My advice, based on my own bitter horrid experience, is to move out and put her behind you. As bad as it is to grieve alone, it is infinitely better than grieving while living with a spouse who wants to see the backside of you. I know.

Her taking the initiative means that she will be the bad guy. And she can’t have that. Better she wear him down and demoralize him to the point he says uncle.
And then it is “his” initiative that ended the marriage.

My ex wife would say she loved me like a brother. Still does tell me that. I finally told her that if I were her brother she could call me when she is in trouble and I would unconditionally help her (she has a brother, and he would). I won’t, so don’t bother loving me like a brother.

Thank you for the replies. Today she changed course on me helping her. When she woke me up she asked for my help in digging. We talked some about our relationship.
I asked her if there was any chance of saving it, since with no chance I didn't really have the motivation to do anything; even talking to my mom, who called on sunday and I still need to call back. She said that our romantic relationship is over, but as far as if I can win her back, "we're still breathing and we're both still here, so I suppose it's always possible." She showed me a few videos on youtube of what she is planning and talked about her thoughts on the design. I didn't end up getting started till 17:00 or so, but I dug at least four times as much as she had done so far by the time she said I should stop because the sun had set and she didn't want me to get hurt. She sat a few feet away and played music on her phone and we chatted. She thanked me for helping to dig it out. It did feel nice working on a project and chatting with her.

As far as her not having done things to fix the situation, we both got overwhelmed, burnt out, and dropped the ball in serious ways. We have both tried together and independently to fix the situation multiple times, but it is difficult. As mentioned by another person, daily survival takes a lot of work and energy and morale is also challenging. We very much do live a similar life to actually homeless people. We have no indoor running water for instance. Not being from this area is another major hurtle as well as my suseptability to being scamed or otherwise taken advantage of. a lot of people see me as an easy mark. We both also have disabilities and both ended up being sent to non-public SPED schools as kids. I even had a "teacher's assistant" assistant assigned to me in elementary school. I also have multiple physical disabilities.


I ended up failing in my responsibilities far more so than she did, especially in terms of our relationship. I didn't treat her properly and attend to her needs adaquitly. I also failed to fulfill some of her rather basic requests such as being more discreet with hygiene stuff. Part of this is I think due to me having never been in a relationship before and also having never lived independently before.

My plan at this point is to try to improve things in general and with her. I am going to then try to win her back since we are going to be living here together at least until spring even if not under the same roof. We also still very much need and rely on each other.

i think that we can succeed in homesteading and euntrapanurialship, but we got overwhelmed with everything, especially all the struggles of day-to-day survival. In winter it literally got cold enough in the bedroom to freeze drinks not under the covers.


Edit: I forgot to answer someone's question about financial assistance. We hare not on any government aid, other than I think I may still be on Medicaid from when they signed me up last time I went to a hospital a few years ago. We have just been burning though saving and inheritance. I started tacidly looking for a job a year ago because the funds were getting low, but they have now run out, so the need for employment is critical. When I told my mom about a month ago that I was looking for a job, she asked if we were "strapped for cash" I sheepishly admitted that we were and she sent a check as well as cookies and jellybeans. I ended up using a large part of that to buy a new phone to replace mine that died over two years ago. We had been sharing my wife's phone, but when her old phone was about to die she stopped letting me use it except for phone calls and that continued over when we bought her a new phone about a week before we got mine, even though I had to pawn something to buy it. She even ended up getting unlimited data after her mom updated the family plan, but she only showed me a few videos that she had already watched and wanted to show me. We used to curl up together to watch the few video we could and would take turns picking. I still only have 2gigs a month, so I have to use data sparingly even with a new phone. Also, she has been going out with me when I drive to the stores, so I can't just watch some videos and stuff while on public wifi because she is already sitting there while I am in the store and the truck doesn't have a/c.

Physical work feels good.

Maybe you'll manage to build a structure/shelter. Maybe you'll manage to salvage your relationship.

Entrepreneurship seems like the one on the list that'd be most unlikely to accomplish. If you haven't managed to sell anything at all in the last 2 years, what makes you think you're going to somehow manage to do things significantly differently in the future? If everything is overwhelming and you're unable to plan the work and work the plan.. how exactly do you foresee building a successful business of any sort? Some people really should just work a job for someone else and have a guaranteed income.

But hey, if you're determined to keep trying all of the above then don't let me stop you. It's not impossible to be successful at a small business.. just very, very, difficult if you yourself are your own worst enemy standing in the way of productively getting things done & making sales.



Also, I'm curious where in the world you are located. I'm kind of intrigued how two people with no jobs and not a lot of wealth managed to buy a piece of property. ?? Where I live, you have to be WILDLY successful in finances in order to buy a piece of property as even an empty piece of land one could build a shack on is worth more than a Million dollars. I comprehend that there are inexpensive pieces of land out there in the world.. just definitely not anywhere near here.

Well, I think that once we have a better and more habitable/sane set up, it will be easier to do things like working on a business, but the plan is for me to get a job and work that for now.

As far as where we live, we purpously moved a couple states away, in part because of land prices. It would have been a lot more challenging if not imposible to do in our crowded and expensive state. Land is about $1000 per acre here. We still needed a chunk of change to buy the place, but nothing compaired to where we are from. We are in a Appalachia.

Edit: Also, we've both had jobs before, I resigned a few months before we moved so we could focus on finding a place, buying it, and other things important for the move. However, my job was not ful time and didn't pay much. We used long-term investments that my Grandma left me to buy the place and live off of. We also used inheritance from her Grandma to live off of. Both of my parents have also sent us a considerable amount that we have been using to live on as well. Our expenses are relatively low other than animal feed, bills, and food.

$1000/acre? I see. Almost makes me want to buy an acre just to say I own land somewhere.

Land is more like something R-worded like $10,000,000.00/acre-ish here, depending on location around the city and suburbs, of course - it varies a fair bit. Condos in the city can easily cost more than a million bucks kind of craziness.

There are still areas in Canada with super cheap land, too.. but there's a reason it's cheap: No one wants to live there. Places in Northern Manitoba, for example. One could buy a piece of property there for $5-10k.. but in 50 years it'll still be worth nothing because it's in the frozen North where people aren't for a reason. But it's technically possible to buy super cheap land in Canada, too.. just not really useful or easily inhabitable land that's anywhere near civilization.

Yeah, where we came from land is expensive, but it is nowhere near Vancouver prices. I think san fransisco has a similar problem to Vancouver with completely unafordable property.

It's funny a lot of people don't seem to realize that Canada's population is almost entirely on the US boarder and mostly in a few areas like BC. All that land, but very little to actually live on. A lot of the larger countries are like that in one respect or another such as russia with siberia, Australia with the outback, and the Gobi desert in china and Mongolia.

A surprising amount of the earth isn't very hospitable.

You could always mount a yearly summer expidition to your land holdings in the far north. You might even luck out and find a mammoth tusk hidden in the permafrost.