DEAR JANE: My husband’s annoying New Years resolution is ruining MY life… so I’m sabotaging him

Dear Jane,

January has become my least favorite month in recent years due to my husband’s excruciating New Year’s resolutions.

We have been happily married for 15 years and have two children. Now that our children are teenagers, we both have a little more time on our hands should be a good thing.

But for the past three years, every time the new year rolls around, he’s made a bold decision to improve his health — and it’s ruining my January.

My husband has high blood pressure and his doctor always tells him to change his lifestyle. So the first year it was all about fitness.

He went to work out every morning before work. And his alarm woke me up at five in the morning, even though he barely got out of bed.

As if that wasn’t annoying enough, he also spent a fortune. There was the $300 a month Equinox membership, the Peloton in our garage, and a whole closet of Lululemon gear.

Last year it was even worse. He decided to follow the ‘keto’ diet.

It became Mine responsibility to buy all his high-fat, low-carb groceries. Family dinners became a hassle because he could never eat what the kids and I ate. He accepted defeat about three weeks into the new year and grumpily went back to his “bad” diet.

This year my husband decided to try avoiding alcohol, cold turkey. But this time he went too far.

We’re certainly not alcoholics, but our social lives revolve around going out to bars and restaurants with friends, or inviting people over for drinks. And I’m looking forward to enjoying a glass of wine with him after a hard day.

So far this year we haven’t attended dinner parties or gone out to socialize because he “doesn’t see the point” if he doesn’t drink.

My decision is to sabotage his decision. I will drink for him and come home drunk and happy from drinks with friends.

He will never change his behavior – why should I suffer too?

By,

Resolution Realist

Dear resolution realist,

Happy New Year, even if it sounds like 2025 hasn’t gotten off to a great start for you.

I understand that you feel that your husband’s good intentions have a negative and unfair influence your life, but as I read your letter I can’t help but think how important compromise is in a marriage.

Every relationship is filled with small and often big compromises: we do things for people we love, but who are not always good for us.

You’ve clearly made bargains in your marriage, supporting your husband’s previous fitness obsession and dieting, despite being annoyed. But you see, problems arise when we don’t communicate clearly about how we feel.

Maybe these are just awkward conversations that we don’t want to have, or maybe we have an unconscious fear that if we say something, they will leave us.

So we cook the keto food, or put up with things that make us unhappy, thinking that it will all work out in the end. But inside we store resentment that can turn into hatred. You haven’t quite achieved that yet, but sabotaging his intention is certainly not healthy.

As for your drinking, it needs to be addressed. If I deliberately defeat his purpose by drinking alcohol in his presence, I think you are carrying a tremendous amount of anger, and it sounds a bit like alcohol abuse.

Maybe that’s why this is such a sore subject?

You both need to realize that you can enjoy social life without alcohol. Organizations like AA provide exceptional support and can help you both understand that the purpose of socializing is human connection.

There are plenty of ways you can both participate in drinking events without drinking. I spent New Year’s Eve with dear friends, one of whom has been sober for decades. He spent the night drinking non-alcoholic beer and we danced all night.

So there’s definitely fun to be had, and the sooner you find a way forward that works for both of you, the better.

Dear Jane,

My life was turned upside down when I discovered twelve years ago that my pilot husband had cheated on me with an 18-year-old student. He was appointed as her ‘mentor’ when she started training to become a pilot. The affair began shortly afterwards. We were both in our late thirties at the time.

I only found out because he had to confess after the girl had an abortion, which he paid for.

I decided to stay with him for the sake of our two daughters, but fast forward ten years and their affair has continued on and off. She is now a pilot “influencer,” working at the same company as my husband and uploading videos of her travels in which he sometimes appears, much to my humiliation.

My daughters, who are now teenagers, have watched the videos and I’m afraid they have found out that their father cheats on me when he is away for work.

This woman promotes herself as ‘an inspiration to girls’ because she is a woman in the pilot industry, which I find extremely infuriating as she has destroyed my marriage with no regard for me or my girls.

Every time I tell my husband I’ve had enough of his cheating, he insists that he wants to stay together and raise our daughters as a “united force,” and although his extramarital affair at work is no secret, he is furious. I told my own mother and sisters because he “looks bad.”

I was planning on divorcing him as soon as my daughters leave our house, but I’m not sure I can wait until then. I’m at my wits end.

Should I confront his mistress and tell her to leave my family alone, or should I divorce my husband and risk harming our daughters…or should I persevere until the girls are out of the house and then let karma take its course?

By,

Fling lethality

Dear Fling Lethality,

I am so sorry that you are going through this and that you are in a marriage where you are not respected.

It’s easy for women to blame the other woman in these situations, and while we may not condone her behavior, in reality it’s your husband making one bad decision after another. And it is you who chose to live with it.

I guarantee that sweeping this under the rug and putting on a brave face will do more damage to your psyche, and probably to your daughters, than you realize.

You deserve to be loved, appreciated and respected, and a man who consistently has affairs is not showing you respect or appreciation.

Appearing in his mistress’s videos is another slap in the face, and you simply deserve better.

Before you make a decision about what to do, I would like you to find a therapist who can help you discover what has led you to believe that you deserve only breadcrumbs. Why put up with unacceptable behavior?

As for your daughters, children are much more observant than we give them credit for.

I don’t know how old your daughters are, but I guarantee they know a lot more than you think. They may even have their own psychological scars from your husband’s infidelity, which will affect their relationships in the future.

Focus on healing yourself and finding a sense of self-worth. Nothing sets a better example for daughters than a mother who finds the strength to walk away and build a life surrounded by people who treat her with respect.