At the end of my rope with my wife

My wife and I run a small business together. If you must ask, it’s a travel agency. I enjoyed working together with her on this together and we make good money but it’s extremely stressful work. Some of our clients are irritating and morally dubious too And I don’t feel comfortable working with them. I just want to cash out and get a normal job.

We have two children. Our daughter, the eldest, is probably the biggest cause of our stress. For one, she is constantly trying to pry into our lives. We are away from home frequently enough due to work that she started to accuse us of both having affairs. This is despite her constantly violating our privacy. She recently walked in on us in a compromising position which really doesn’t help any of this. On top of it all she‘s become born-again and is going to some dumb hippie church with the most obnoxious and pretentious pastor you’ve ever met. My wife and I were both raised to be pretty anti-religious but my wife has been especially angry with this development. I don’t like it either, but she’s just making it worse by opposing her so much.

My wife is also obsessed with bringing my daughter into the family business. She wants her to take it over for us after we retire. I want my daughter to have her own life and Im not so sure our line of work will be around for much longer to boot. We have constant explosive arguments about this.

We both lost our parents very young and my wife has never stopped to think about her feelings or emotions ever in her life. She has the emotional IQ of a guinea pig. Im not great either but recently my neighbor has been taking me to some seminars and I’ve learned a lot about myself. My wife has zero interest in introspecting at all or thinking about the decisions we’ve made. If I ask her about attending the seminars with me she just stares blankly and if I try to get her to talk about her feelings or memories she completely shuts down or becomes actively angry with me.

I also learned within the past year that my ex girlfriend I hadn’t seen in over a decade apparently found out she was pregnant with my son right after we broke up, never told me about it, and has apparently been raising my son in another country. I haven’t been able to see him at all because of work or even let him know I exist (complicated, my ex is really, really crazy). My wife is really mad about me having another son I didn’t know about. it’s not as if I cheated on her since he was conceived long before I met her but she seems to act like I just went and had a child out of wedlock yesterday without her permission.

The sex is amazing still but her lack of self-understanding makes it impossible to connect with her more deeply. Sometimes I think of just quitting my job and leaving them all behind but I do care about them still.

My other son — the one I had with my wife — is not worth mentioning, he’s pretty much regarded and just plays video games all day and hangs out with my neighbor.