To help with this situation, the first thing I must do is to apologize for the things that I have done tonight. Next, I have the simple task of figuring out what exactly is positive in our relationship right now. Then I must tell Jill how I feel and what I think we need to make right in the short term. This is the most important step because it is our future. Finally, we must discuss the long-term goals and how we need to reach them. This part is tough because it can be so vague, but to make it less hazy is to set ourselves up for disappointment.

That is what needs to happen tonight. Personally, I have a set of goals that exists on a longer term. My primary goal is to move my life forward. This involves getting a position that I can call a CAREER rather than just a job. An important caveat of this goal is that I need my wife here with me when I accomplish things, which leads to my second goal of making US happy. Neither ME, nor HER, but US. Happiness is another hazy term that can gum up the works, but I think it can be accomplished.

I have a fear. My fear is that, at some point in the future, I am going to have to choose between my wife and being happy. It seems that that point has come once already, and that, though I hesitated in my decision, I have chosen my wife.

I am here in Chicago, living a nightmare of a life in my in-laws basement. We are making my own nightmare into something much worse than it actually has to be. Jill refuses to get along with her mother, and as clear as this is, and as often as I point it out, she refuses to change how she acts. This sums up the problems I have with her. When something is suggested to Jill, her stubbornness causes her to make her own predicament worse. I can hide in the basement all day when it comes to dealing with her mother, but her stubbornness is what I point out to her as the major flaw that frustrates me, but she cannot adjust.

However, this is not about her anymore, now is it? This is about me. That is the core of my problem, and it always has been.