Well, for my parents, and I think a lot of healthy, happy couples, it goes both ways. Mom fixes lunch for Dad everyday before he goes to work. Mom does the laundry and most of the cooking, Dad washes the dinner dishes. Dad mops the floor. Recently, Mom had a convention for an organization that she’s involved with, and Dad attended Lunch and Dinner events, with his camera, and will put in umpteen hours putting pictures on the web for the enjoyment of others in the organization. He would have been much happier not attending the events, but for Mom’s sake, for the sake of their relationship, he went. Later this summer Mom will probably go provide care for her mother who is having surgery. Dad will cook and clean for himself without complaint, as long as she is gone, but he will miss her.
Some of the dynamics of their relationship are no doubt shaped by the fact that Dad brings home 95% of the bacon, (Mom was a Stay at Home Mom, there are no longer children in the house, but she still is employed only part time, and mostly for the social benefits.)
Still, even if you can’t add it all up in a balance sheet-- they both help each other, support each other, take care of each other. When Mom had a hysterectomy followed by 6 sessions of chemotherapy (ovarian cancer, since cured) Dad took her grocery shopping when she needed it. He spent many a night at the hospital, getting less sleep than Mom did–and when he had health problems, she spent the night there in her turn.
By the way, Excalibre, I don’t know that the amount of time featherlou’s husband wants to spend coaching baseball is fair, or compatible with a healthy relationship. I just don’t feel that–given the information thus far provided-- it is fair or good for their relationship for her to ask him to give it up. Ask him to pick between baseball and his wife, he’ll be miserable either way–and she may not win. Given the assumption that he can’t or won’t change (and not recognizing that it seems to be the feeling of betrayal and being taken for granted that are the biggest stumbling blocks to featherlou’s being content with this usage of his time); suggesting that she find other better ways to use her time seemed reasonable.
I still don’t think it is bad advice, even though I’m less sure that it is applicable to this situation. And certainly, I never meant to suggest that if he spends 20 hours a week coaching baseball that she should spent 20 hours a week doing other activities. But if boredom or loneliness were her biggest complaints (and they seem not to be), more activities for her might be a better idea than “make him give up something he values above almost all else for the good of the relationship”.
The thing is, though, that this has evidently been going on for the entirety of this relationship. Which is not to say that things cannot change; it seems to me that anything not dead must change. But I haven’t seen any suggestion that this has een an ongoing problem which has finally come to a head; it looks more to me like a non-problem, or a relatively minor problem, which has recently assumed great importance. When this happens, it is good to think about why that might be – because often enough it turns out to be a mere place holder for something else entirely.
F’r instance, his coaching schedule might have been okay when they had more money/had a great sex life/he spoke of an otherwise showed his appreciation of her sacrifices in this regard/he worked in a different place/they lived in a different place/she had similar commitments/one of their children from a previous relationship was on the team/insert situation here/ but now that this has changed, it isn’t okay any more. Or possibly it was never ok but she has only just reached the place that she is willing to admit this. Or maybe she has just changed her mind; that can happen, too. Please see, anything not dead, above.
Dearly Beloved and I certainly reserve the right to say that some thing the other does and has always done is making each insane and to ask one another to stop it as a personal favor. Sometimes they have been fairly large things also – heck, Dearly Beloved gave up a MUDD for me once and that was major at that time in that place.
But in that case it seems to me that you have to own what is yours and have the guts to say that – that it is yours. And not try to make it belong to the other person. And also to deal with the fallout like a grown up; my own spouse is not an automaton and I expect he might be pissed off as a result of my asking such a thing. Thanking him now and again is not out of the question.
Also, this hobby is not taking place in a vacuum; there are other people involved, too. My best guess is that, if the problem were presented to those other people, they might bust their behinds to find a way to meet everybody’s needs – good comitted coaches are not exactly a dime a dozen. However, this option has not been presented nor even considered by either party involved which suggests to me that there is less problem solving and more position taking going on here.
Nothing wrong with that; I see power struggles under every rock and tree because they are there. But that dynamic suggests that possibly the reason the problem is insoluble is that this is not the problem. Not the real problem I mean.
Listen, I am the child of an engineer and then I went and married one so I really, really knew what I was getting into, which contrary to common wisdom does not make a damn bit of difference when my feelings are hurt.*
For me in any event the way to get taken care of was so simple it was almost embarassing. Okay, it was really embarassing. Here is what it was: tell him what to do. This may be the aforementioned, let’s call it the engineer factor. But Dearly Beloved loves me. He wants me to feel loved. He was in his own way ahem letting me know that. Evidently. That’s what he said anyway, and he is a terrible liar. What can I tell you, I missed it.
In the end the really real solution was to tell him what to do to show me. So I did. To my surprise, letting up requiring my spouse to read my mind did our relationship no harm and did not cause what he then did to seem empty or less sincere. Because it was sincere, only this time on the mark.
And nota bene, I am not at all convinced that objectivity is a good thing in this kind of relationship problem. It does not matter a fart in a hurricane whether this is objectively unbearable; the only thing that matters is whether it is unbearable here and now to you.
*Nothing personal engineer type persons. How could it be, I love at least two of you to distraction and it’s looking like # 3 whom I adore will be pulling down his engineering degree in about, oh, call it seventeen years from now. (Don’t quote me on that, if I had any mathematical aptitude I would have gotten an honest job). But you know, there is a t shirt out there from American Scientist I think which says "Engineers think as well as humans but not exactly like them"so I know I am not making this up.
Just my two cents, after careful consideration;
I feel the reasons** featherlou**'s husband gave for putting in a little less coaching hours are rather vague. Just one or two nights more at home would make a lot of difference. I don’t think it’s unreasonable in the slightest that featherlou wants her husband to want to spend more time with her. On the contrary!
The trouble with asking for attention from a loved one, that asking for attention somehow belies the purpose. If you have to ask for it, then, even if you get more attention, it feels like hubby’s doing a chore, and that is the last thing a woman wants. That’s why having to ask for attention is doubly frustrating, and that may be why featherlouhas put it off too long…
I think you are right, that this is how we think of it. And I have long chalked it up to gender differences, though I am open to the possibility that it really is the Engineer Factor (or the Dutch thing, I am american and Dearly Beloved is dutch and I therefore gaily drop random annoying differences of opinion into the Cultural Gap and wave goodbye to them in that way. So howdy neighbor, from bucolic Brabant.).
I was personally pleased to discover that in practice it did not feel like he was doing a chore, even though I expected it would feel that way. And there is something to be said for the notion that it is unfair to expect another person to read your mind and figure out what it is that would please you, or that if he really loved you he could just tell.
Your husband is a lucky man. To have all one’s quirks seen as charming cultural differences… Gotta remember that.
Glad it worked out well. I guess it’s just something one has to try, but it is good to realise where the reluctance to try it comes from.
This thread struck a chord with me, featherlou, because my theme a few days ago was: “Damn! How powerless I feel when I ask hubby for something, and he said no the first time. How can I make him see how important it is to me, without being too vulnerable?”. Which was why I posted This thread..
I think Mr. Featherlou is dead wrong. Your family should be your first consideration, certainlynot your “hobby”. His behavior is selfish and irresponsible and if she should die before him, he’s going to be a very sorry fellow, if he really loves her as much as he says.
Someone mentioned that he probably gets paid for coaching, I’ll bet that, if he does, it doesn’t come close to what he spends on his “hobby”. Add to that the debt factor. Why isn’t he working a second job to address that problem.
This guy gets no slack from me, he’s taking her for granted and simply paying lip service to her desires.
That he’s doing something that seems to be noble doesn’t matter a wit either, he could just as easily be sitting in a bar or have a girlfriend on the side, the result is the same.
If I have any criticism of her, it’s that she’s let this go on far too long. If I had a spouse who cared so little for me, she’d be my ex.
If it was a calling, he’d have made it his profession. If he does it after hours, it’s a hobby. Nineteen years isn’t an unusually long time to spend on a hobby, is it? I’ve been playing PC games, avidly, for 22 years; it’s not a calling.
Hell, I’ve been involved in baseball for 26 years. Now that I have a family, I limit my involvement in it to an amount of time such that I still have lots of time to spend with my family. There are opportunities to be involved in baseball, even coaching baseball, that do not require a commitment of six days a week. You can coach a fairly high level all-star rep team and not spend six days a week on it.
Look, there are only 168 hours in a week. A grown man has to spend at least 50 on his job, counting commuting and such, 50 sleeping, and twenty taking showers and eating and whatnot. There’s a limited amount of time left, and how a person spends that time tells you what their values are. If he would prefer to spend his time on baseball rather than with his wife, then he loves baseball more than his wife. Which is his decision. But featherlou doesn’t like that, and I don’t blame her. She’s entitled to ask him to either reprioritize or rethink the sitution.
You don’t get a pass on not spending time with your WIFE because you call your hobby a “Calling.” If coaching baseball is more important than your wife, you should have the decency to say so and arrange for a divorce. If he doesn’t want to do that, he should cut back on his coaching time.
I don’t disagree that it’s important to him (though I have trouble with the description of coaching amateur baseball as a “calling”), but I think featherlou’s desire to spend time with her husband is just as important here - it’s certainly no more fair to ask her to remain unhappy than it is to ask him to give up his interest. I think it’s less so, as I think he has certain responsibilities to her as his spouse, and I think spending time with her is one of those.
Obviously having a life outside your marriage is important. But having so much of a life outside of it that you don’t have any room left for the marriage itself is a bit different. I simply don’t think it’s fair to tell featherlou to try keeping busy when what she wants is time with her husband - and that’s something she deserves.
Obviously there are no specific rules, but a husband who is absent four to six nights a week is far outside the normal range. Obviously with certain couples that could work. If she had something she was just as passionate to do during those evenings, it might be ideal. But very few people do, and you’re asking featherlou to try to be happy despite seeing her husband far, far less than most spouses see each other. If this marriage was working, then their arrangement would be cool. But it’s not. And her husband has a hobby that engages his time far more than most people’s - what he’s doing is not normal at least in the sense of being “usual” or “average”. And she’s unhappy in that situation - as many people would be. It’s not wrong of her to feel this way and it’s not unreasonable - many if not most people would feel lonely if their spouses were gone so much. I simply do not buy that this is a problem with featherlou, as you and others have suggested.
featherlou said it was, actually. That he told her he wouldn’t be absent nearly as much as this.
I don’t think of marriage as a contract anyway (well, it is in the legal sense, but you know :)) - which means that I don’t know that I find the “you read the document before you signed” argument terribly compelling. I think it’s a priori unreasonable for a husband to be absent so much, except in the rare circumstance that both members of the relationship are so busy with other things that they can build a marriage like that. Most people want to see their spouses, and there’s nothing about that desire that is unreasonable or wrong or should be changed.
I always hated that aphorism.
From a literal perspective it’s true - but sometimes the others need to change. He needs to change some. I don’t know if any compromise is possible - I certainly would hope it is. But if they are to be happy together, a compromise is absolutely necessary, and for a compromise to happen, he will have to change some, as will she. It is not wholly unreasonable to expect your partner to change to some extent, and obviously sometimes it’s important for you to change as well. Compromise means give and take and it’s what relationships are built from once the initial starry-eyed constant sex period is over.
But is it good for their relationship for featherlou to remain unhappy because her needs aren’t being met?
I couldn’t agree more, and I don’t see why there isn’t some compromise between him being gone five nights a week for six months of the year and him not participating at all. I hope featherlou and husband try to work out some arrangement involving more time for the two of them and him continuing to do what he enjoys.
[ At this point I would like to insert one or two pithy sentences which would embellish and clarify my point and allow me to have the last word. I haven’t yet figured out the right sentences, so I’ll quit here.]
And that’s where you’re incorrect, the idea that there’s a one-size-fits-all pattern to marriage. There are plenty of couples who survive such an arrangement, there are plenty who don’t.
It’s not as if this is something he started doing post-marriage - I am assuming that their dating and engagement lives were also affected by the baseball commitment. A baseball coach was who she dated… why should she be surprised/upset when she finds out that is also whom she married?
People keep harping that he shouldn’t have to change, since he was involved in baseball when they married, missing the point that he promised it wouldn’t interfere. Well, it has. She is unhappy, and if he cared more about her needs than his (or at least as much), he would work on a way to compromise. Someone upthread said he loves baseball more than he loves his wife, and I agree that his behavior demonstrates that, but with a twist…I think he loves himself more than he loves her, so his wants and needs outweigh hers, even though she is unhappy.
I can’t imagine keeping doing something that made my partner that unhappy, no matter what it was, without trying to find a compromise. People have said “baseball makes him who he is” but right now who he is, is selfish. Whether or not some couples are happy with that much time apart doesn’t matter. His behavior is making her unhappy, and he is continuing it. Do you do that if you love someone?
And you’re missing the point that it’s she who has changed her expectations and feelings, not he that’s changed his activities (if I read the history aright).
And conversely if she cared more about his needs than hers (or at least as much) she would work on a way to compromise. But as we’ve clearly seen in this thread she has no interest or intention of doing so, he has to do all the compromising or it’s all over. And if I’m guessing the genders of the respondents correctly, nearly every female here agrees that’s what should happen.
[unhelpfully bitter comment triggered by similar behaviour by ex-wives deleted]
Wow, it’s almost like I didn’t specifically say that some couples could easily be happy with such an arrangement! The trouble is that, in this case, featherlou is not happy. And while you can argue that it’s “not fair” for her to feel the way she does, what does that matter? She’s not happy. That’s how she feels. And she should not have to suffer in silence.
That’s why I hope they can come to some sort of compromise, like I said.
Well, he did promise her it wouldn’t be like this, remember?
Right. What the fuck ever happened to two people trying to form a life together and compromising their own desires to do so? That’s what a relationship is. Obviously none of us know an easy answer here. Maybe he can reduce his participation to four days a week, and both can work to make the time they spend together special. Maybe he can coach baseball with someother organization where the demands will be less. There’s almost certainly some possibility for them to work something out. But featherlou simply being unhappy is not the answer to the problem.
And you’re missing the point (referenced in the bit you quoted) that he promised it wouldn’t interfere in their relationship. And you’re missing the point that featherlou is unhappy, and her feelings matter. Emotions are not always fair, you know. Whether or not she has changed her expectations - and I still think that there’s no evidence that she has - she’s unhappy and he ought to be willing to make some concessions to her feelings.
Wow, that’s both completely unsupported by what she has said in the thread and really, really mean.
That’s funny, because actually, it’s almost the opposite.
But her behavior isn’t making him unhappy. His behavior is making her unhappy. Therefore, much of the change may have to be on his part (not all, probably, but much). I would hope that if she were doing something that made him unhappy, she would change. That’s the way things work, if people value their marriage.
Of course, she can’t change him. All she can do is ask him to change and seek a compromise. If he won’t, then she has to decide if she can tolerate this, and find ways to make it more tolerable, if she does decide to tolerate it.
I haven’t finished this thread yet, but had to jump in here and post. I am divorced, and my main problem was he didn’t want to spend time with me. This is a female thing, I believe. Women see a simple thing like spending quantity time together as special.
When my husband didn’t, well, I found someone who wanted to spend time with me. Then I left my marriage.
I think you should just be frank with him, and tell him exactly why and how it bothers you. If he says he will not give it up, then you will know that is more important than you.
I know zip about how the business of baseball runs, so this is probably worthless, but…
It seems to me that the situation is that Featherlou’s husband is basically working two jobs, one for income and one that fulfills other needs (wanting to make a contribution, the pleasure of teaching, the fun of the sport, etc.)
Is there any way for him to get BOTH income and the psychic rewards from one job?
Even if the pay from the baseball related job wasn’t a full income, he could use that money to allow him to work fewer hours at his ‘regular’ job, and then THOSE hours would be freed up to spend with Featherlou.
I’ve done volunteer stuff, and so has my wife, and in my experience no volunteer job expects someone to put that much time in. Pretty much all consider two days a week a big sacrifice. How about other coaches? Are they doing six days a week, or only your husband? How are the kids he’s coaching doing their homework with this amount of time? I’ve been trapped sometimes by the thought that I had to work longer and longer and longer - and then found that the world went on if I cut back to a sane schedule. I bet if your husband did that, no one would think the worse of him for it.
I’m not sure if this is an engineer thing or a guy thing - since I’m an engineer.
But more to the point, there are engineering jobs that people think take 13 hours a day to do. I was in one, in an organization with a director who was famous for missing the birth of a kid in order to go to a meeting. That kind of environment was the reason I tried to transfer to a more sane group in the same company. When they wouldn’t let me, I quit. I’m doing better than I would have if I stayed, and, more importantly, the stress in my marriage is no longer there.
I decided I’d rather stay married than have a part in designing this microprocessor (which turned out to be a flop anyhow.) No one, outside of the military, is forced to work all the time, and no one is forced to spend this amount of time on a hobby. Sometimes we have to make choices.
