Do you mean you’re fairly satisfied about 95% of the time, or do you mean that you’re unsatisfied a lot more than that, but complaining more than that makes you feel bad in some way? If it’s the former, and you still want a divorce, I don’t know what to tell you. If it’s the latter…well, as much as I hate to say it, bitch at him more. A lot more. If he has that clueless “she’s not yelling at me or crying, so she must be tickled pink” think some guys do, he’s not going to realize how much of the time you’re unhappy unless you give him a pretty minute-by-minute accounting of it.
Glad I could help.
It doesn’t say anything about you other than you want to relax for a while. I get the sense that you don’t feel relaxed when your husband is around. That’s common enough. Lots of women kick their husbands out of the house for a day so they can get some peace and quiet. There’s nothing wrong with it.
I’d like to hear your husband’s take on things, too. I’m willing to bet that he feels the same way you do- tired, stressed, and always out of time. When you come to him and complain about your situation, he probably thinks “You think you’ve got it bad? Let me tell you about my day.” That’s what happens when you have kids. They suck up all of your free time and leave both parents feeling worn out.
So I have two suggestions for you: This weekend, tell your husband to take your son to the park or for ice cream for at least four hours. Then don’t do a damn thing but sit on the couch for those four hours. But next weekend, it’s his turn!
Second, hire a babysitter for a night and go on a date. Go to a dinner and a show or see a band. Fall in love with your husband again.
Remember, the enemy here is not your husband. It’s stress. Fight the stress, not your husband.
I don’t so much feel that a midlife crisis is wanting more out of yourself as looking around you and being intensely discontent at where life has brought you around this part.
Go to counseling, and see if there isn’t some way you can take time off from him. I’m afraid you have no right, really, to take time off from your son. You had a kid, now he is your responsibility. (I mean - a day or an evening, yes. A month? hell no.)
I looked back at your OP and there is a line in it about both of you taking care of yourselves…and you doing 100% of his share of the communal responsibility. Can you share what that is? Because whatever it is, you should stop doing it entirely. Don’t do his laundry, don’t do his chores, just don’t. You’ll have to school yourself to ignore it.
Private question - I assume you’re sleeping separately? If not, can you put him in a separate bedroom or move into one yourself? Then pile all of his laundry and stuff in that room.
Rest assured, this will have an effect on your son, and it is your job to make sure your son understands adults have disagreements sometimes but it’s not his fault.
In the end, your husband is going to have to listen to you, and I think you need to be a little bit more strident in telling him. Got a place the kidlet likes to go for an afternoon? A friend’s house? Send him there and have it out with your husband. I think there will need to be shouting, since he doesn’t seem to listen any other way.
It is wrong for any part of a couple to not acknowledge when the other side is not happy. I don’t know whose fault this breakup is and I don’t care, but when the chips are down both people must come together, and it’s sad to see such a young marriage fall apart.
After five years of being together with my SO I had similar feelings, too. But thankfully I have an SO who listened, and we both worked together to put the bloom back on the rose.
We’ll be together fifteen years in March.
Either way, hold on to your little boy and go and see a counselor on your own. I would also start demanding evenings off, say, once a week, to go out with your girlfriends. Start cultivating outside interests.
And for heaven’s sakes, stop thinking about another man! You are going to need recovery time if you do split up with this man, and how is your son going to feel if right after you kick Daddy out (in his head) you bring another man home? Take care of yourself, first.
It says that you’re tired and you want a break. I have a husband who I love dearly. I also have two young children, and I can tell you this is a thought I have quite frequently. I think it’s particularly typical with women like us who had kids later in life. You’re used to having time, to being able to read a whole book before it has to go back to the library, to keeping your house tidy and comfortable, to getting an hour’s extra sleep on the weekend, to being able to sit and and think for a bit without anyone needing anything from you.
I remember the first day I sent my younger one to preschool. I came home, my older one was at school, my husband was at work. I was alone in my own house, and I couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. I just sat and listened to the quiet for the longest time!
Things will get better, but I agree with everyone who says maybe you should get some counseling, even if your husband doesn’t take it seriously, just go on your own. I think you would find that being divorced will not help the problem, but exacerbate it by bringing more complication to your life and your child’s. I would try every possible avenue of making things better before resorting to that.
I’m afraid that this will be overly blunt, but I’ll echo what others say about finding guys. You say that you’ve been married for 4 years, so you would have been 39. I presume though, that you were exclusive for a few years before, so you would have been in your mid-30s, without a child, the last time you were on the market. Believe me, it makes a difference for many, if not most guys.
The other problem is that if you are counting on meeting someone to help with the finance, it will come through loud and clear.
You are great looking, but it’s unrealistic to believe that even the best looks in the world are going to help you catch a Prince Charming in a short time frame.
If you aren’t happy with your husband address that problem, but separate it from the fantasy that there are ships full of potential partners waiting for your arrival. There may be someone out there who is great, but it’s not a certainty.
Whatever these communal responsibilities are–I presume upkeep of the home–can you hire some help with them? An awful lot of people, some on this board, find hiring help to be preferable to a divorce.
All of us moms get the exhaustion thing. But a divorce is not the way to get rest and free time and more income. Nor is it really OK to daydream about a divorce in order to get several days a week off from your kid; that says depression to me. I definitely agree with the suggestion to get counseling for yourself–at the very least you can get help with figuring out ways to communicate your unhappiness better to your husband.
This is fantasy. It is fiction. And it is not actually healthy fantasy either. The reality is more like this: most men do not want to take on children who are not their own, even if they are in a shared custody agreement themselves. (Sure, some men do it, but not because they think more kids are a plus.) By the time you find a guy willing to take on a 43-yo woman with a preschooler, your kid will be older and more capable of entertaining himself, and you will balk at the idea of taking on a couple more kids who will resent you for not being their mother.
I know the days seem kind of endless when you’re this tired. But you have a little boy who is growing fast. Pretty soon you’ll look at how big he is and wonder where the time went, and where your sweet little boy went. Don’t try to get half a week off from him every week–figure out ways to get what you need and still enjoy this time. It will be gone sooner than you know, and you will never, ever get it back.
Many, many women who love their husbands dearly also want some time off from them. That’s what afternoons off, weekend retreats, and girls’ nights outs are for. Go ahead and insist on a regular afternoon off, and trade it with your husband. But don’t throw the whole thing away just because you’re tired. Get some counseling and some help and really think this through.
You mean they are all like that? :eek:
Huh. We do? Now I am determined to spend my next vacation that way instead of the classic: “family travels abroad” vacation. I swear, that idea of vacationing must be a conspiracy of travel organisations, camping gear manufacturers, together with all those strange people who actually really *like *travelling. Me, I’m not one of those travellers. So next summer, it is kid in daycare, husband at work, and me two weeks home alone. Then me and husband can switch places and he can have his two weeks off. Cool, a separate staycation. We should make it a trend.
Yes.
Yes.
Well, yeah, I’d say you do. Can you take a long weekend with a couple of friends, leaving him and the kid alone, and if you come back to a messy house “do like the Englishman did” until the next cleaning day? Or, conversely, what you said: kick husband and kid out and put your feet on the table while they’re out.
I know many women who’ve gone on vacation without their husbands for years; in most cases, it’s because the husbands are the kind of person who hates travelling, while the wife and her friends love it. The husbands get to put their feet on the table for a couple of weeks, the wives get to Go See Places.
“Like the Englishman did”:
An English businessman was putting his jacket on a Friday afternoon when a telegram arrived. He signed for it, dropped it into his in-tray saying “I’m going to have such horrid news come Monday” and left.
Gotta be honest here - to me, the OP is saying that she married beneath her station, and she’s capable of doing better. ‘Financially self-reliant, good looking enough, have enough to offer to attract someone decent’. What a slap in the face to the husband, who isn’t able to present his side of things here.
Guess what: Raising a family can be hard work sometimes, even for the happiest of couples. You get out of it what you put into it - and if you’re scanning dating sites looking for possible hookups, doesn’t sound to me like you’re really working at your marriage. Sounds to me like you’re blaming everything on him (‘he doesn’t appreciate everything I do around here, he doesn’t help out at all, he doesn’t appreciate how I feel, etc etc’).
I don’t understand this part: “will this come out of your of mine paycheck/me time”. I understand having personal accounts, but isn’t there also a joint account that all household stuff gets paid from? Why would ‘which paycheck’ be something to argue over?
Which is it? Either you’re financially self-reliant, in which case you and your son don’t need your husband, or you’re not, because ‘no one can support a family and home on a part-time job’.
I assume you’re not expecting any alimony, just child support. Do you think being a single mom with a small child will be -easier- than you have it now?
I don’t think anyone should necessarily be forced to stay married to someone they don’t love…but neither do I think we should condone divorce and breaking up a family just because someone was bored.
How did you do that, practically? Where did you stay? How did you combine it with your job and household? Did you take your kids? Was it a dramatic move, or just a “I need a cooling-off period, see you in two weeks, hon”.
As for the houshold strike Aanamika suggested, that might be a good idea. It is in te book "the Chore Wars, too.
I think you’re getting some good reality checks in this thread. Finding, dating, marrying, and blending families all take time, drama, energy, money. All the things you claim are the real problem right now!
You definitely need to separate your problems. Your husband is one problem. He is not being sufficiently supportive or responsive. So focus on that. Go to counseling (personal if he refuses to attend), stop doing his share of the housework.
Not having enough time, energy, and money is a completely different problem, one that most definitely WON’T be solved by divorce (in fact will likely be exacerbated by it). Trust me, we all want a month off, away from kids, away from the constant responsibility that grinds you down. You need to carve out some “me time” every week. Just an hour or two. But don’t skip it. Your toddler will soon be attending school for longer and longer each day and this will help take some of the pressure off. You just have to make through a couple more years.
In summary, you may or may not need to divorce your husband. But it has nothing to do with time, money, or responsibility for your kid.
Sometimes I feel really bad that after my kids have been home for 10 minutes I think “I haven’t seen you all day and missed you so much, and now that you are home all I want is for you to go outside and quit fighting with your brother!! And use a coaster!”
Yeah, we all want a mini-vacation from the everyday crap. Just don’t make it a permanent one. I’ve been a single, divorced mom of a 1 y/o. It’s definitely harder - financially, emotionally and mentally. I remember calling my mom and just crying because I was tired and just wanted someone to watch my son long enough for me to shower alone.
I’m now in a LTR with someone that loves me and both my kids and I consider myself very, very lucky. It can be incredibly hard to find a partner when you have kids.
in a way, yes. Not that he should be better, but that he should act better.
Yes, we do have separate accounts and a joint account. I pay all things related to the house and insurances, so, bills that can’t wait or go unpaid.
He fills the joint account with a fixed amount that is slightly too little, which we use for groceries and small expenses. When the joint account is empty, and it always is before the month is over, I usually pay groceries and other household expenses out of my private account.
It is one of the things we fight over, but neither of us has the time and energy to really find out who is right when we both feel we contribute factually more money more then the other, financially. We both make about the same.
This might or might not be true; all we have is the OP said, and it doesn’t exactly come across as unbiased. I’ve known couples where both would swear up and down that they do everything while the other person never lifted a finger. Turns out that were too busy fuming over how much ‘I’m doing’ to take the blinders off and realize how much the partner was doing.
Wow, OK, I don’t understand this at all. If the joint account doesn’t have enough money in it…why aren’t you both contributing a bit more so that it lasts the full month? Especially if you’re both making the same? 
Why are you paying money out of your ‘private’ account? Maybe you should do it the other way around: Have both paychecks go into the joint account, at the start of each month you each take out your personal ‘allowance’ for the month. All other household expenses are paid from the joint account. Problem solved.
Weeeellllllll…let’s just say it’s not a trait unique to your husband and leave it at that.
I think you need to take some time off and chill out a bit. I think every working mom who has a small child (or children) would like their husband to do more, or to be able to do less. Getting a divorce will not make this happen.
In fact what will happen is you will really be doing everything - all the things that your husband does that you don’t think about, or don’t occur to you will now be on your plate. Taking care of the car. Clearing the gutters. Taking out the garbage. etc.
Also, as much of a catch as you feel you are, a 43 year old single mother of a toddler with money issues is not that appealing. Honestly, I would be worried about any man who wanted to jump right in to move in with you - specifically that he may have not so nice ideas about your son.
As I see it, a big part of the problem is the fact that your husband isn’t taking your unhappiness seriously, if he’s dismissing it as fleeting and hormonal. That must leave you feeling somewhat lonely.
Some counseling by yourself can help you figure out and develop a plan for what you want to do next. You’ve written above as to what you might like to do differently, but a lot of that seems like just thinking out loud over all of your options, centered around the basic idea that you want something about your life to change. Counseling can help you identify which of those options suits you best and plan for how to make it happen.
It can also help you think through how your changes will affect your child (and to identify how your child may be affected if you don’t change and just keep on living the life you are now. )