Oh God, yes. Vacation from spouse and kid(s) is the best.
This year I’ll have logged four business trips (most two days, one three-day). Best times of the year, leaving the Little One and daddy and dishes… clean sheets every day without having to wash them… being able to wake up in the middle of the night and check my email without worrying about waking someone up… not having to negotiate shower time with my husband so that the Little One isn’t stuck without someone watching her… yeah.
To pay him back (this year he hasn’t done any business trips himself), whenever my parents come to visit the Little One and I go off on a long weekend with them. Mr. hunter eats pizza, sleeps late in the morning, plays video games (and, to his credit, gets stuff done around the house that needs to get done but really needs several hours’ worth of time instead of five minutes here and there, which is what we normally get).
Seriously, little kids are tough (darn them, the cute fuzzy bastards). This morning my husband told me that he’s going to stop by a buddy’s house for an hour after work. I stay home with our seven-month-old daughter, so that’s an extra hour I’m alone with her.
I got to the grocery store before the misery hit me. I couldn’t decide which I needed to do more: cry, throw up, or sit down in the middle of the aisle and pretend nothing existed.
Just re-quoting this, because it is right on the money. Especially this
You sound like you are in a low-conflict marriage. Statistically speaking, if you divorce, in five years you will not be any happier, and your child will be measurably worse off. Financially, you (and therefore your child) will take a major hit.
Divorce in your situation is like cutting off your foot because you have an ingrown toenail.
I can say that some people are better off. I can say that my ex is in a much better situation now then she was with me. She can go away on vacation every other weekend, which she does.
Granted she does have a good job and makes a lot more money then I do, but it is possible that the OP could get something similar. That said I can say that my children, 5 and 3, are much worse off, at least from what I’ve seen over the last 1.5 years. I think the OP should ask for some time off from the child and husband. I would have gladly given that to my ex to have my family around. I even offered, but she never took me up on it. I can also say that the husband will probably miss his child a lot and it will make the parents’ relationship even worse.
I was divorced when my daughter was 2.5.
You say you will split the custody. Sounds great, but you seem to forget that it’s very difficult on children. It’s hard to say: ok, now you need to go to Daddy’s house.
When they cry and say no it breaks your heart like nothing ever has.
Then, you say you are attractive. I don’t think I’m “all that” but I’m ok. Try going to school functions alone. A lot of times the other women will want nothing to do with you because you are viewed as a threat. You might steal their man! Believe me when I say, I do nothing to make them think I would. Other recently divorced mom friends of mine say the same. Family events suck but you go with your head up high just the same.
Time. What free time?? Now that it’s just me, I have to make every single decision on my own. My car breaks down? I have to deal alone. Appliance breaks? New furniture? General repairs? Any problem at all, the buck ends on me. There are many times I would love to have another help out.
Being busy with life in general, the stuff I volunteer at my daughter’s school and working… I don’t have time or a way to meet anyone. Dating is very hard. I’ve tried online dating but nothing clicked for me. Either I wasnt interested or I was told straight up: you seem really cool but I don’t date moms. A ton of men on these sites do not want single moms. They also very rarely list anyone in their 40’s. The only men that did, it seemed, were men that were way older than me.
Single dads are a great option, but then you have all their baggage to deal with. It’s not easy.
You’ll also have to consider that once he is free, he can date whomever he chooses. That person may or may not have a lot of influence in your child’s life. It might be in a good way or a bad way.
In short, the picture you are painting is delusional in my and my friend’s experiences. In my case, my ex and I are amiable and I still adore his family. I can’t imagine how much worse it would be if it wasn’t.
I went through something similar to this when my second was a toddler. Many details were the same, and I got the feeling my husband just wasn’t there for me.
My advice -
1 - You’re probably not mad at your husband. I’d bet not a whole lot has changed in the past few years. You’re tired and busy and irritated, but it’s the fault of your kid, not your husband. Even the most precious and wonderful child is a huge time and energy sink, but since you can’t blame the kid, you blame the husband. That’s what I did.
2 - “Whining and bitching” is the absolute worst way to talk to anybody, let alone your spouse. Men shut off when they hear it (and rightly so) and you become more resentful, and it just spirals. Seek some counseling and actually start to talk to your husband. I have not seen in this thread where you’re tried to talk to him, just examples of bitching. Why would he want to listen to that? You’re just driving a wedge in further and further.
3 - Immediately start making time for you and him, alone. Date night, sex time, just hanging out. No kids, no talking about the kids, no talking about the housework or the jobs or whatever. Guess what - your kid is going to grow up either way, and you can be left with once you once thought was a wonderful man, or you can be alone. And not “woo-hoo free time!” alone, but “I have no one to talk to and I feel worthless” alone.
He was there in your heart first, and you owe it to him to honestly try to communicate what’s going on, and to work it out. You also have to step back and give him an honest effort, which I don’t see from you. I eventually figured out I was misplacing frustrating about my life position onto my husband, and I was wrong. If I went about it in the way you describe, I would have lost the one person who has always treated me with respect and made me laugh and be happy.
Also wanted to reinforce the above poster - is there any thought in your heard about your son’s needs? Very, very selfish of you.
There’s a toddler in the equation as well, have you been breast feeding until recently? I know my wife went through hormonal hell for about 9 months when she stopped breast feeding. Any suggestion I made about seeing a doctor usually lead to my head being bitten off so I just put up with the mood swings. It was like really bad PMT that lasted for 9 months and she just couldn’t see it.
I dunno, guys, what I see looks a lot grimmer than what you are seeing.
It looks to me like there is no emotional connection to this husband, and there pretty never was. They are living like roommates who hook up now and then, and he’s one of those kinds of roommates that leaves his dishes in the sink and never leaves money for the tip when splitting the bill. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of emotional support or even jut everyday enjoying each other’s company- it’s mostly just minor squabbles with a near stranger that you don’t particularly like.
Sounds really, really rough. That sounds like no fun at all.
That said, you are in this too deep to get out easily. You have a kid. You have a marriage. It may have been a bad idea to get into this situation, but it’s not really fair of you to get out of it before you’ve tried every other option, including given counseling a fair shot.
As usual, I have no clue about anything, especially you and your marriage, but for what it’s worth:
Your idea of what life would be like if you divorced - everything would instantly fall into place the way you want it to, and life would be perfect - makes me wonder if you’ve got into a loop of thinking ‘If this one thing just happened, *then *I’d be happy!’ If I was just with the right guy, then… If we were married, then… If we had a baby, then… If I lost the weight, then… And now all those things have happened, and you’re basically the same person, you’re not ecstatically happy, life isn’t perfect. So you’re looking for the One Thing that you need to change, and then… And, because your marriage has some problems, you’ve settled on that.
Again, I could be totally wrong - it’s just that I’ve seen a couple of friends get into the same loop. And changing that one thing never did make them happy, because the problem wasn’t that one thing; it was their attitude towards happiness, their belief that it’s a permanent state achievable only through creating the perfect life, rather than being a fluctuating process that happens with all the imperfections.
I guess I’m saying that, if I’m right, then leaving your husband would make you happy for a couple of months, max, before you started thinking ‘If I could just find the right guy, then…’ or ‘If I just had a different job, then…’
I’m usually all in favor of moving out and moving on, because I left a terrible (second) marriage and am SO glad that I did. Truthfully, I’m better off in nearly every way,(the only drawback is I lost myhealth insurance) even financially in spite of the fact that my income is about half what it was.
However, I also left a fair-to-middling first marriage that sounded somewhat like yours. (Actually, my husband left me, but still, similar complaints, etc.) I had a four month old baby and a four year old son. My sons bore the brunt of that breakup. The baby was fine–he never really knew life with his dad around, so he didn’t have to deal with the emotional issues my 4yr old did. But I’m still heartbroken when I think about that little boy and how much he missed his daddy and all the thoughts that went through his head. It’s a terrible thing to even think about–it still makes me feel like the Worst Parent Ever, even after 21 years, and even though his dad initiated the breakup so he could move in with my best friend. If I had known then what I know now, I would have put on a happy face and worked a lot harder to save that so-so marriage, or at least to have extended it’s lifespan a few more years.
You deserve some rest, happiness, and peace in your life. But please look into therapy before you make a decision this monumental–divorce can certainly be a positive solution, but it’s better as a last-ditch solution.
(I’m so happily divorced from Husband #2 that it’s really hard for me to even write this…)
To me things don’t sound so bad that you can’t come back and make this marriage a good one. You’re in the same slump that most families find themselves in when they are bogged down with mundane childcare and housework.
One thing to remember is that marriage problems are rarely one person’s fault. You are who you are because of being with him and he is who he is because he is with you. Get to some sort of counseling, and I would recommend the type that moves you forward instead of dwelling on the past.
Lawyer up. Speak with a few family lawyers to find one who will listen to your concerns, inform you of your options, and work well with your husband’s lawyer to resolve the issues that each of you will face when separating and divorcing.
No offense, but that’s probably because you’ve never been married with a small child or two.
Yeah, marriage doldrums are no fun, that’s for sure. But I disagree that the husband is a near stranger, or that she doesn’t particularly like him, or that there’s no emotional support. That might seem to be true right now, even to the OP, but it’s not necessarily the story of their entire marriage.
Yeah, I’d say that the OP isn’t thinking too good here. She says that she wants to live alone in the first line, and then talks about immediately finding a roommate and the possibility of living with another man. That doesn’t make any sense.
I’m going with husband here. This seems a lot like a marriage hitting the doldrums and the facts of raising a toddler hitting, and the OP freaking out a bit. Get help before considering divorce.
You say you are mildly depressed. It doesn’t sound mild to me. When I was depressed it wasn’t so much that I felt unhappy all the time, just that most of the time I didn’t feel much of anything at all. It took me a long time to seek help, because I figured depressed people were sad all the time. Anti-depressants allowed me to start feeling again, and as I came out of the depression I found the will power and ambition to start exercising enough and doing CBT, that I didn’t need the meds any more.
This is well said. The OP is better fed, better housed, less stressed, and has more leasure time and brighter prospects than most of the world’s population. Sure, many of those poor, stressed people are miserable, but a good number of them are a fair bit happier than the OP.
The OP is working from a classic western “do-get-be” model for happiness: “I’ll divorce (do) so I can get a better man, so I can be happy.” If (when) she finds herself still unhappy, then it must be that the new man isn’t good enough either, because it is just assumed that a good enough man would make her happy. People do the same thing with cars, jobs, where they live, etc.
Some eastern traditions start instead with the being. If you want to be happy, then be happy. I know, easy for me to say. Work on being happy with things exactly the way they are. Acceptance is part of it, but you don’t have to accept it forever. When you are happy, it is easier to change things and people to how you want them to be. Hell, you might become happy and still decide to divorce. And there is some real power in being positive. We poached* an employee from our janitorial service company mostly because we knew if she could stay so positive while mopping floors and cleaning toilets she’d do well at damn near anything and she has.
My advice is to work on being happier. Not fixing the things that you think are making you unhappy and not faking it (though a little of that at first that can be useful…there is truth that it is harder to stay unhappy when you smile)
Though I hate to speak ill of the dead, my brother was far (FAR!) worse than the OP’s husband, yet his third wife was a pretty happy woman. Plenty of people have apparently awesome mates and don’t seem to be satisfied…Hough Grant was caught paying a skanky hooker for a blow job when he was dating Julia freaking Roberts!
Other people have mentioned your age and your kid as barriers to finding a new man, but another huge barrier is that you are unhappy. I’d take a chubby, happy, over 40 woman with a kid, before I’d have an unhappy drop dead gorgeous 30 year old. The rush of a new romance might cover your unhappiness long enough to get serious with someone, but pretty soon the shiny will wear off, and you will find that the new man doesn’t make you any happier than the last one, because you are the only one who can put the happiness inside your own head.
You may find that if you are not unhappy, your hubby might not look so bad, and it is also possible that if your husband finds himself married to a happier woman, he becomes a better husband. You are currently blaming him for your unhappiness, and expecting him to fix it. He doesn’t know how to do that because it can’t be done.
Here is something maybe to try out for starters:
When you find yourself starting to get pissed off at something your husband did, try laughing at him instead…and while you are laughing inside, go ahead and ask him if he thought those dirty socks were going to put themselves in the hamper? (or whatever) It is hard to do, until you practice, but asking for what you want/need with a smile on your face is WAY more effective than doing it when you are angry. It is the difference between nagging and teasing. It is how I get my employees to do what I need without pissing everyone off.
But you have to be able to see yourself getting angry or sad. Many people don’t know that you can do that. They just find themselves angry without realizing how they got there and they didn’t have to end up in that emotional place. Look into CBT (cognitive behavior therapy) It provides a bunch of mental tools and techniques for managing your emotions. And, believe it or not, it is NOT faking it, or bottling up rage. You will probably have to experience it yourself to believe it though. In my case the meds helped get me kickstarted out of depression enough to do the CBT, but the real cure was the CBT and exercise.
Yeah, I still get pissed sometimes, but I have erased “He made me mad” from my inner vocabulary. It is now “He was a jerk, and I am choosing to be mad about it.” By mentally taking responsibility for my own emotions, I am not excusing the jerk, but I AM taking the control of my emotions away from the jerk. It is not bottling it up. It is just choosing how I am going to feel. And not blaming the jerk for “making” me mad, typically it makes it a lot easier to deal constructively with the jerk, and fix the problem.
*There was discussion and we compensated the janitorial company for the cost and trouble of finding a new cleaner…we don’t want them mad at us.
I have to agree. When my daughter was little that’s what I wanted all the time. Just some time to myself. Does his family live nearby? Can he take your toddler and visit them for a weekend? A lot of parents would like time alone with their children without the daughter-in-law or son-in-law, no matter how much they like them.
This post and Icarus’s one before that sum up my vague complaint beautifully.
I did that, I took a lot of vacation days (I have more vacation days then you guys in the US) so I had a three week staycation at home in which I basically led the life of a stay at home mom, but with my kid in daycare three days a week. While I looooved it, it didn’t leave me refreshed, it only left me pining for more. But there is no way we can afford that financially.
Pai235, good idea that family visit without the “inlaw parts”. In our case, all the parents live either a long way off or are uninterested in , or unfit for, babysitting.
No, I didn’t get married because I was pregnant; my husband was the one who brought up the subject and wanted kids with me. Then we had a pregnancy scare which told us that yes, getting pregnant was a real possibility. I didn’t have a child wish, and I worried and worried and decided to take the leap and started stopping my Bc and charting my ovulation. This kid was very much planned. We just didn’t get around to getting the legal paperwork in order untill I was five months pregnant.
But we never got around to actually living together before I got pregnant; we lived about two hours by car apart. So my husband hadn’t been pre-tested for bachelor habits…If I had been younger, that is what I would have done differently.
I’ve got a three-and-a-half-year-old as well. I love her more than life itself and dear God, I want a vacation from her. You need to negotiate some “me” time - either the spouse takes the kid out for several hours occasionally or a friend/relative/godparent etc babysits for long enough for you to get some mental downtime. It can wear you down after a while.
I’m glad you took some time, but this isn’t what I was describing. Every time I take a staycation, the time just gets filled with all of the home projects that I’ve been putting off. Sometimes, that’s exactly what I want and I enjoy doing projects that otherwise get put on the backburner. But more likely, I’ll feel guilty about “wasting” that time at home, so I do laundry, clean up, work in the garden, etc. That is only pseudo-me time. The guilty feeling is the problem.
For me, the only way to make the guilt stop is to not be at home. That’s why I suggested a hotel, even one in your town will do. Get out of the house so you can’t get sucked into the guilt of housework and mommy-hood. Even one Saturday night would be better than nothing. Your husband can watch the kid and you won’t have to take any time off of work. Check in early, do whatever you want for the day, sleep well that night, and (most importantly) don’t feel guilty about it! If you need to keep expenses down, go to a cheap hotel and bring in cheap food instead of room service. You need to give yourself permission, time and space to just shut down for a while. Personally, I can’t do that very well at home and it sounds like you can’t either.
If nothing else, I hope this thread is showing you that you are not alone in feeling this way. It doesn’t make you or your marriage a failure. Just knowing that should help alleviate some of the dread.