Take notes and be thankful you are not married!

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/relationships/comments/2xgqbt/i27m_cant_stand_my_stay_at_home_wife25f_but_also/

A little background here:

My girlfriend and I lived together for a few years before I graduated and got a job as an engineer. When I moved for work, she relocated with me and worked at the local WalMart. Shortly thereafter, we found out that she was pregnant, and got married ASAP so she could have insurance -- we had been talking about it for a while, and it seemed like a logical next step.

She stopped working because pregnancy.

She had twins.

For the first few months, everything was chaos. Sleep schedules were all around the place because with two babies, nobody sleeps. Unfortunately, I work a lot (four ten hour days, and an occasional half-day or even full day on friday) so naturally, our apartment got out of hand. Rolled-up used diapers, half-full bottles, and dirty laundry were our new carpet. I expected this to happen. She's got more than a handful at home. Being a parent takes some getting used to, after all.

Fast forward to today: we're in a new house, she doesn't work, and one of my twins (2M)is in a speech therapy daycare-type establishment for six hours out of the day, so essentially she's just taking care of one kid (2F) plus the house (57H) while I'm gone.

Here's where it gets bad.

I don't have any clue what she does all day, because she says "I'm busy taking care of YOUR daughter" when I bring it up. However, I have singlehandedly taught our daughter 90% of the words she knows. Laundry goes unwashed, her cat's litterbox (she begged me for it, I'm uncomfortable with cats in the house. sorry, reddit.) hasn't been cleaned out since the last time I did it, dishes fill the sink, every room in our house is a disaster, my new carpet is full of grease stains, cat fluids, juice, playdoh, and crumbs aplenty. She drives to her parents' house once every few months, for a week or so. They live five hours away, so she and the kids don't get to see them very often. When she is gone, I spend 80% of my time playing house-duty catch up after work.

I know that she reads a lot (fanfiction) when I'm here, and I can only assume she watches netflix/hulu on her phone for the rest of the day. She is staring at her phone (youtube and netflix) for 80% of the time I am here.

I had to pay $60 in overages on our home internet. We have talked about this time and time again, but she doesn't do a thing about it. Her phone data plan has gone over every month we've been in the house, and she refuses to take responsibility for it and admit that she's done wrong, or correct her behavior.

She doesn't cook or even attempt to make sure my kids are fed after 3:00. I'm not trying to force her into the homemaker role. She chose this. I actually like cooking, and I do for every meal on the weekends for the entire family, but when I come home after 10 hours on the job and I have to cook for myself and my twins, I'm very frustrated.

She is lackadaisical in her parenting. Recently, our daughter was diagnosed with a severe ear infection. We got two medications for this. Yesterday, she was pulling at her ear, so I asked my wife if our daughter was done with her medication (if not, we need to take her back) and she said she hadn't been giving it to her. WTF. Every day, I get back from work, and all of a sudden "it's my turn" to take care of the kids until bedtime. Which, by the way, they don't have a bedtime, because she won't work with me in getting them up at a specific time every morning, because she stays up all night on her phone watching videos.

I bring stuff up to her (will you please do the dishes, will you please do laundry -- I'm polite about it) but she gets very irate and yells in front of the kids. I even sat down with her and made a very detailed schedule for all of us to follow that evenly distributes the workload, so we're all able to spend time together as a family and still get stuff done. She stuck with it for one day.

I'm at my wits end. I would like to divorce her, flat out. I've considered the impact it's going to have on my family (I'm sort of antisocial, and I don't speak with most them too often, but they all LOVE her) and hers, and I'm willing to deal with that. The only problem is my kids. As stated above, her family lives five hours away. If I leave her, she's going to go live with them, and this has two major side effects on my kids:

  1. I won't get to see them. I feel like I'm the best role model for them. I'm hard working, I'm moderately intelligent, I'm well-liked at work and outside it, I'm running my own business on the side, I'm slowly building something with my life, and I have a desire to impart this onto my kids. I didn't have the luxury of having a strong guiding force in my life, I had to figure everything out on my own, and I want my kids to have it better than I did. Aside from that, she rarely plays with them (at least when I'm home) so they need me as a playmate, if nothing else.
  2. Her mother, I now see, is just fucking like her. I used to stand in awe at how terrible of a parent she was. She berates her poor husband for the most mundane of offenses, and she sits in her room and watches videos on PS4 literally ALL DAY. Even when we bring the kids over (when she hasn't seen them in months) she rarely leaves her bedroom to say "hi." She was a terrible mom to my wife when we were dating, and I now see that she must have learned the behavior, and I don't want my kids wrapped up in that type of behavior. It's bad enough to methat they have to spend the day with her and grow up in a house that she manages. Her Father is a poor defeated guy who just plays wow and writes on forums all day. Doesn't work, doesn't really do anything but "keep house," which is his primary duty, and he really doesn't even do that. He's a nice guy, but I think years of being married to his beast wife has just pummelled him in to the ground. Their house is constantly trashed, and falling apart because they refuse to do any upkeep on it. The two of them received upwards of $100,000 from a lawsuit recently -- all of it is now gone and they have NOTHING to show for it. They have the same broken down car which my wife's grandpa gave to them, the same broken down house which my wife's great grandmother gave to them, and they can't even pay their bills now.

I will not have my kids grow up in that, but I also can't take care of them by myself, because I work full time and run a business. I can't stay sane much longer.

Help, reddit.

TL;DR - I have a piece of trash for a wife, and two non-trash (yet) kids. I can either stay with her and slowly go insane, or leave her and lose control of my kids' direction in life.