Pickme: a cautionary tale (long read)

I thought I would share the story of my relationship for the women out there who might be curious how a pickme relationship plays out.

I was in my mid-20s when I met my now husband. He was in his early 40s. I had just emerged from another relationship with an immature porn-addled scrote who I had dated all throughout college, and was finally able to shed that man-sized load. So what did I do? Of course get involved with the first man who I thought was mildly attractive.

We shared a hobby and I asked him out. I came to find out that although he's trained as an engineer, he technically never completed his bachelor's degree (one course short he claims) and was working a seasonal job. I was in graduate school at the time. We were both poor but I had not registered that I had every reason to be, while his only reasons were personal shortcomings. However, my self-esteem in relationships was so low that the fact that he did some nice things for me, including detailing my car without me asking and cooking a few meals for me at my apartment were enough to convince me that he was head over heels in love with me.

I overlooked so many red flags. He didn't have a bed in his apartment. His apartment looked like that of a minor hoarder. He wanted us to move in together after four months. He quit his next engineering job on a whim and we were almost not able to pay the bills that month but he was too proud to go on unemployment benefits. We started arguing intensely within the first three months of dating and I suppressed my very real urge to discard the man because the first three months were not supposed to be this hard because I thought that "any relationship that's worth having is hard." He pulled me in with his backstory of becoming an orphan in his pre-teens. I attributed any and all personality flaws to the fact that he didn't have loving parents to raise him and elevated the fact that he was a functional adult (as in: could cook, seemed well adjusted) to an achievement on his part.

We had great chemistry and I was very sexually attracted to him, but sex with him always took a REALLY long time. It would take two to three hours for him to orgasm. He was ok with stopping early and didn't demand to orgasm every time, but the hit to my ego was pretty severe. I chalked it to his age and made excuses for him instead of addressing the issue. In fact, I did that a lot during our relationship, make excuses for him instead of asking him for an explanation, because conversations or arguments with him were impossible. He would shut down, become defensive, argue about how I did the same thing or was holding him accountable for something he had no control over. Once he left the yard gate open and my dogs ran off. In all the time I had my dogs, they had never run away. I was super worried for their safety and yelled at him for forgetting. He sulked and accused me of raising my voice and being angry for an accident. He never apologizes to me first for causing me emotional pain and anguish. I later had to apologize to HIM to restore the peace. I did that a lot in our relationship too. I knew early on that he watched porn and asked him if he considered that his porn watching might be contributing to his delayed ejaculation. He brushed me off by saying that he can get himself off in a matter of minutes so it can't be that. He also portrayed hims of as being very prudish with sex and very uncomfortable talking about his wants and desires so I chalked it up to a conservative upbringing.

From very early on in our relationship, I took on the responsibility of providing for our household. He worked two jobs after the seasonal one where we met. He quit the first on a whim and quit the second after about a month. Then he decided that he wasn't going to keep looking and that was it. I remember it being a big struggle for me and I even talked to my friends about it, saying that I never thought that I would be the breadwinner in a family. Even though I was on a great career track, I always thought I would be part of a couple where both people worked. But, I was so in looooove that I thought it reflected poorly on me as a person if I couldn't accept the role of provider, so I suppressed my own feelings and allowed an able-bodied man to mooch off of me. He took a few odds and ends jobs here and there, but never held a full-time job from that point onward.

A couple of years into our relationship, I got pregnant. At the time, I knew that I wanted a child, and gave him the option to stay and raise the child together or walk away and not take responsibility (I don't know wtf was wrong with me). He chose to stay and we decided to get married after I had hinted several times and basically explicitly asked that we get married. There was no proposal, no engagement, and I bought both our rings (14k gold bands). We were married at the courthouse with a couple of friends as witnesses. He did write me a song, which we played on a loop during the fifteen minutes ceremony.

We had our first child who turned out to be on the autism spectrum. As I look back on our relationship and a lot of his behaviors, I think he's either got ADHD or is on the spectrum himself. It's not an excuse for him and the low effort behaviors I've let him get away with during our "courtship" and I think if I had any understanding of the challenges associated with raising a pretty severely autistic child, as well as the risks associated from having an older dad who may be on the spectrum himself, I would have never chosen to go ahead with continuing to date him.

By this point I had accepted the dynamics of our relationship, and still thought quite highly of him because he genuinely seemed to care for me. He took good care of my while I was pregnant and during the entire birth and aftercare process. We were pretty happy together for a while even though we were new parents. When our child was diagnosed as being on the spectrum, I was in a really good place in my career and we were able to afford the necessary services, so it didn't seem like too much of a difficulty. He also started to be the primary caretaker for our daughter, so I didn't object to him not working anymore.

Speaking of services, he was perfectly content with me doing most of the emotional work and household managent. He's decent with chores, although can't keep our house anywhere near where I would like my house to look like. He took on all the outdoor chores and "man" work and actually did a fairly decent job of them, but he has really poor at planning and tasks that should take one month usually would end up taking three, or six, or sometimes never get done. I had to be the "mom" and constantly nag to get anything done, but if I nagged too much I was again being not understanding and ended up needing to apologize. I made all the doctor's appointments, knew who the teachers and therapists were, and was concerned about our child's future development and potential long-term care while he was convinced he could find a way to "cure" our child with vitamins, minerals, and fancy oils and waters. He never planned vacations or dates. Our calendars have a bunch of fun activities on them and it's all me. When we bought our house he was happy to sit by and criticize anything that I brought to him as options, but hardly contributed an idea or option of his own. It was the same way for where to go on vacations, what movie to watch, where to go to eat, every little fucking thing.

We thought our first child's autism was a fluke, and became pregnant with a second child a few years ago. Since then it's become pretty obvious that our second child is autistic too. During my pregnancy, my pickme self became 100x exacerbated by my biological changes and I took his reluctance to have sex with me as a sign that he doesn't find me attractive. I had always known that I wasn't exactly his type, but during this time I basically told him that if he wanted to we could open up our relationship. My formerly prudish husband suddenly became open to the idea of many things, mostly including fantasies of himself having sex with as large a number of women as possible and swinging. He wanted me to buy in to the idea and have sex with other men, so that he didn't need to feel guilty about the idea of having sex with other women. As we discussed these ideas, I realized that he had no concept of the dangers that women face in a casual sex scenario and that he didn't even consider that someone could hurt me, or infect me with an STD, or take their condom off midway, etc. We never went through with it but it has severely affecteed how I see him sexually. We also watched porn together while having sex. I cried a lot during that pregnancy. I asked that he stop watching porn, he told me he did, I found out he was still watching, he said he mainly wasn't watching anymore but slipped up and got pulled back in. We had a big fight over porn earlier this year, he's promised me that he's stopped watching, maybe he's just getting better at covering his tracks, I don't know, and I don't know if I trust him.

Since then, my career has really taken off. He's been generally supportive on that front and to be fair, he's a cautious spender and doesn't waste our money. As my job has become more demanding, I've basically told him that he needs to take on more household responsibilities and he now manages our money (i.e. pays the bills and does the taxes), does meals and cleaning (not great at either of those, tends to cook the same things and the house is often a mess), does all the groceries, and takes on child care as I work from home. Our first child's autism seems to be getting worse and it's causing a pretty big strain on us. I want to use pharmaceuticals and he's still on the vitamins and gluten-free diets, but doesn't execute them well or keep good records. I will give him credit for being pretty busy with tasks around the house most days. He is also good with the kids, not one of those gaming or TV fathers who aren't involved with their kids at all.

I find very little joy in being married to him. We hardly have anything in common, and because of the kids we can't even enjoy the few things we do have in common. He's a boring eater and my diet has become severely limited since we began dating, because unless I go out to eat on my own or with friends, I always accommodate his palate. He enjoys spending his evenings watching mind-numbing old TV shows while I like to read. I don't think I've ever seen him pick up a piece of non-fiction because he thinks it's "pointless." I enjoy "highbrow" cultural events and he has zero interest in them. It's very painful to share your interests with someone and their response is "that's nice" with no follow-up. Our vacations are exhausting because the kids can be tough, but he is also in the background moaning about how tired he is and how he doesn't want to do this or that because it's hard. He's a glass half-empty kind of person. He's obsessed with politics and it's one of the few topics we can talk about and actually mostly agree on, but he takes any minor disagreement we have on issues as a personal attack and gets super argumentative. We don't really show each other affection unless it's leading up to sex. He's getting older and doesn't work out, he hates being groomed professionally so cuts his own hair, he dresses poorly unless I'm picking his outfit, but to be honest it's hard because he's not attractive and in shape so he mainly wears t-shirts and jeans. He never "dresses up" so I haven't done so either for the past decade. Why I accepted a man who was such a poor match for me? I don't know.

We're coming up on being married for ten years and if it weren't for the kids I would've left a long time ago. I'm considering divorce more and more, each time we argue in fact. I haven't pulled the trigger and done it because I don't know if I can do it to the kids. I'm not sure if it's the kids and their challenges or if it's this marriage doing it to me, but I feel like I'm wilting from the inside. I feel like we'd both be less miserable if we split up, but thinking about handling another big life change right now feels really challenging. I believe in all the FDS guidelines but it's HARD to leave when there are kids involved.

Considering how my pickme relationship could have gone, things could have been so much worse. However, in my mind, this is the best possible outcome for a pickme relationship and it still sucks. It really does. You don't get over how much it sucks after ten years and all those red flags are still waving high and bright in front of you, except now they've simply become a part of your everyday life. Take the FDS advice. Run at the first sign of a red flag because all you'll get are arguments or lies and slip ups, and then you'll be stuck with kids and feel like you can't leave.