I disagree. No, life is definitely not kindergarten. Which is why this immature bitching about a family member’s wife–to her own husband (someone who took a vow to stand by her side) is completely inappropriate and disrespectful. Her in-laws don’t have an obligation to love her, but they do have an obligation to respect their family members’ choices and to act like civil human beings. Her husband needs to tell his family to keep their feelings to themselves.
On the first issue I can completely understand your point of view on this one. I had a SO who would sleep in until midday on the weekends and it would frustrate me beyond belief. You have one day together and it’s reasonable to want to spend the entire day together. However, you didn’t say to what time he slept in. If it’s 9.00 - 9.30am I think that’s entirely reasonable. If on the other hand it’s 11.00 - 11.30 I think you have some right to complain. Why not get your housework done on Saturday, get the kids organised with a DVD or something if they wake early so you can have a relaxing morning as well. Then you wont feel any resentment that he is not up at 6.00am helping with things. If you are a stay at home mom I don’t think he needs to be helping with housework on his one day off but it would be nice if you all could spend a family day together on this day.
I’m in total agreement with everyone else here on the second issue.
As to the sexual problem, the best time to discuss this is at a time other than in the bedroom. Your husband should not be insecure about your previous boyfriends after all you did pick him above all others. It is strange how some men think they know what we women like and want more than we do ourselves.
I’m gonna dodge the main three questions here and offer a suggestion and an observation:
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talk to your Doctor about some medication to help stress…there are a few out there. Lexapro helped the wife and I a world of good dealing with twins, money, a flaky job situation and unstable income
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pretend one of you has six months to live.
Now, what’s really important here? An extra hour of sleep? An extra day of work?
The sex is incidental, the stress is additive, and the little sh*t just keeps adding up without a release.
Oh - male, 34, father of twins, married 8 years, knew her for 14 years
Has my wife been carrying tales again? sigh I said it would never happen again, you know.
Okay. Male, 26, married w/2 stepkids and a bio-spud.
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I think that he deserves to get some sleep on his day off. If you don’t like the arrangement, I guess that he could cut back/find something else, and you could go to work as well. I assume it is a decision that you worked out between you.
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My wife and I have struggled with this. My folks were cold at the beginning of our relationship because they are Catholic, and she was divorced. It was hell getting between my old family and my new- I just wanted there to be peace. I regret not being more forceful with my folks, even though things have smoothed out lately, because I know that it hurt my wife to have to endure their crap.
The way I see it, we are a unit- whether parenting, socializing, etc. We are lucky- she is my best friend, and we have the same interests (we’re one of those ‘joined at the hip’ couples) and I’d feel bound by love, honor, and just common courtesy to back her against any sort of aggression, verbal or otherwise. -
I don’t claim to be the best lover, but I’m pretty sure that it’s not supposed to be uncomfortable/ hurt (rough play aside). If he doesn’t care about your feelings (I’m seeing this as a recurring theme) and is just using you for release, then you’re doing yourself a disservice tolerating it.
I love my wife. I try to make sure that the actions that I take reflect that at all times. I find it odd that others’ conception of marriage is so different than mine.
If he won’t defend you to his family, stop seeing them.
He seems to be suggesting that your relationship with his sisters is somehow completely independent of his relationship with you or his relationship with them–as if it’s just a coincidence that you happen to spend time with these people who just happen to be his family, and as such your relationship is your business.
Now, I get the impression that the only reason you sustain the relationship with them is for his sake, and that if the relationship were truly independent of his, you’d sever it–why continue to be friends with people who mock and belittle you? Maybe if you explain it this way to him he will see that it is NOT an independent relationship, YOU have no relationship with them, the two of you AS A COUPLE have the relationship with his family, and as part of that couple, he shares part of the responsiblity for the whole relationship.
If he refuses to see it this way, then treat it as you would an independent relationship–don’t be a bitch, don’t make a scene, don’t make any grand proclamation about how you won’t darken their door again, just stop going over there. Don’t prevent your husband from going, don’t prevent him from taking the kids. Let him come up with excuses–it’s not your job. Have faith that if they say nasty things the kids will be smart enough to draw their own conclusions. It won’t really fix the problem, but at least you’ll have the time to yourself.
If your husband complains and asks him to come, say “Look, you were the one that said my relationship with your family was none of your business. If you want it to be your business then you help solve the problem of them treating me like crap. If you aren’t gonna help me solve this problem then don’t bitch about the way I solve it.”
As far as sex goes, I think talking about it outside of the bedroom is a good idea. You might also pull up some of the various sex TMI threads on this board and let him read them–if nothing else, they make hte point that women vary eourmously in their preferences and that there is no real way to predict what a woman likes.
Lastly, both of you need to quit worrying so much about what we think. I get the feeling that you guys are too wrapped up in what is “reasonable” or “normal” --every couple is different, and what is reasonable and normal in 99.99999% of marriges may not be right or applicable for you guys. You have to decide what you want, what you value, what is important to you and what you are willing to give up for the sake of other stuff. It’s ok to use other people are barometers, but ultimitly, it’s about what matters to the two of you.
On a side note, this is my over all thesis on relationships:
married 5 years, dated 3 years before that. 1 kid, 10 months old. She quit working about 2 years ago (went to school part-time before having the kid), I only work occasional boughts of staggering hours these days.
Problem 1) It doesn’t matter what the fuck we think. You currently have a situation that one of you thinks is unfair. The one that thinks that the situation is unfair has proposed a solution that the other person thinks is unfair. Therefore, it’s up to one of you to come up with a solution that you both think is fair. This is called compromise, and learning how to do it is going to help keep your marriage together. There have been good suggestions so far in this thread (personally, I’m in the camp that says you should let him sleep, but put off more chores until he gets up.)
Problem 2) I don’t even let my parents voice opinions that are critical of things that my wife feel are important. My folks recently flew out for a long weekend, and on day 2 I found myself uttering the phrase “My life would be a whole lot easier if I didn’t hear the phrase ‘Sometimes babies just want to cry’ for the rest of the trip.” (we’re doing attachment parenting). He totally has to take your side, that’s part of the deal. Tell him not to worry, his family has to love him even if he does stand up to them.
Problem 3) I wanna hear his side before commenting. He’s coming off really bad from your side, though.
-lv
I have serious qualms about the wisdom of this one. They aren’t just based on my own dismal, prolonged experience with divided parents. Too many of my contemporaries and younger friends-with-kids have gone/are going through the same things. And the children always lose.
The smartest, loving kids don’t know, much of anything. They’re mostly impressionable sponges who’d prefer for responsible adults to filter messy stuff among themselves, leaving relatively clean stuff for kids to absorb. Kids don’t have the perspective, experience or responsiblity to make sense of what adults can’t or won’t solve. They shouldn’t be placed in that position. If adults can’t behave with control and kindness among themselves, as peers, children shouldn’t be tossed into their midst. If the adults can’t resolve their differences respectfully, kids stand absolutely no chance.
Being a kid means prolonged, croggled puzzlement with almost everything “grown ups” do. Nothing makes much sense, much less pressing familial demands for loyalty.
Sheltering kids from such frays isn’t always wrong. You don’t have to badmouth anyone to justify the separation, just not permit the conflict to splash over the kids in the first place. Children are powerless, utterly dependant on adults. If adults can’t resolve their differences decently, kids stand no chance at all.
Veb
I am unclear on exactly what you disagree with: given that the OP cannot make her husband stand up for her, are you proposing that she ought to continue to socialize with the snippy, insulting aunts, or that she ought to withdraw both herself and the children from their presence?
If the former, I am assuming that the OP has tried everything she can think of to resolve the situation with the in-laws by herself. But there is only so much that she can do by herself, and the fact is that if people are really hell bent on being jerks, it doesn’t matter how nice or sweet or reasonable you are–you can’t fix everybody, or make everybody be nice to you. It seems to me that if the in-laws are being insulting and the husband refuses to stand up for her about it, her choices are either to
- put up with being insulted
- not go over there at all or
- leave the relationship.
I gather from the OP that she’s not thinking about leaving, so it really comes down to whether or not she’s honor bound to go over there and be insulted. I don’t think she is, and I think that the sight of seeing Mom snipped at and belittled by Auntie 1 and Auntie 2 while Dad watches is at least as confusing and disheartening as the idea that Mom doesn’t get along with Auntie 1 and Auntie 2 and so doesn’t go over there.
If you are suggesting that she ought to withdraw both her kids and herself from their presence, the problem with that is that it isn’t entirely her choce to make: they are his kids, too, and if he wants them to see his sisters, making it an issue would put them in the center of a power struggle that is not of their making, and I think it is important that they be spared that.
Male geeezer, married 20+ years, 2 kids.
- Let him sleep on the single morning he can.
(On the other hand, there is no reason that I can think of that he cannot help around the house on the days that he works. I have done the majority of cooking, dishes, and laundry since we’ve had kids. Deb has done the morning-breakfast-and-off-to-school bit exactly seven times in 11 years–each time when I had to be out of town. With other efforts she expends, I would not think of demanding that she get up to do the morning schtick. If his work day is 12 hours, I would say he gets a pass, but there is plenty of time with an 8-hour work day to help out with something, even if you’re the only spouse working.)
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“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” There is no excuse for not defending one’s spouse from the kvetching of one’s birth family. As far as I’m concerned, even if Deb and I ever divorce, (unlikely–we’d both take the murder option over the divorce option), I would be the only one in my family who had the right to criticize her. The occasional question of an action is permitted. The periodic expression of a specific complaint might be allowed. General criticism is forbidden. (By the same token, I would never criticize the spouses of any of my siblings. They made their choices and they live with those choices. I am not there and it is not my business to gripe about them.)
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This one can be difficult, since I don’t know how (the manner in which) you are expressing your objections. An objection based on a particular discomfort at a particular time can be confusing if you usually like the activity. If your only expression is “STOP THAT!” or “I DON’T LIKE THAT!” (particularly when you have (seemed to have) enjoyed the same thing in the past), it can really ruin the moment.
On the other hand, the whole point of being there is mutual pleasure and a guy who simply does not want to hear any corrective suggestions and never wants to know when he has (inadvertantly) caused discomfort is a cad and a bounder.
I dunno about the other two issues, but on this one your husband is wrong. It is not his job to stay neutral. A married couple is a team; you can disagree behind closed doors but in front of anyone else, EVEN HIS OWN FAMILY, he should be on your side.
It’s a tough situation to be in, no doubt. But he did promise for better or for worse.
Let me scale these back a bit: “things my wife feel are important” should read more as “things my wife has told me she doesn’t want to hear any criticism about” and less as “nobody is allowed to disagree with my wife about anything”.
And in front of his family, he totally has to take your side. If, personally, he thinks you’re off your rocker, he can inform you of that later, in private.
Dangerdad checking in (I love it when dangermom calls me that ). I’ve been working on a software project for a while now and it’s been crunch time for too long. This week I worked Monday (Memorial Day) and today, simply because I needed to. I got to sleep in while dangerbaby #2 got fed, but then I got up and made french toast for the rest of us. We’ve found it useful to talk about our schedule and figure out ahead of time what it will be. I’ve tried to spend more time with the kids in the evening and help out with the dishes more, etc.
When I know that it’s an effort for my wife to let me sleep in, it means more to me when she agrees to it. It feels like a gift to me. And I try to give gifts back to her. We’ve always worked on sharing the work and decisions in our relationship, and I think that’s helped a lot in getting past rough patches.
Also, I make a conscious effort to never say anything negative about my wife–unless it’s just between us–nor do I sit quietly while someone criticizes her. My response to a relative or friend who would badmouth her would be, “You are forcing me to make a choice between you and her–and it’s an easy choice. Do you really want to do that?” Your husband may not realize it, but that’s what his sisters are doing. And the evidence you have is that he’s choosing them. The other comments suggest he’s not terribly considerate, and counseling does sound like a good idea.
One additional point: he may be thinking “I have a right to sleep in on the one day I can, and it’s unfair for her to begrudge me that one indulgence.” I strongly suggest you make the choice to tell him you want him to have that time, but it is difficult for you, so you’re going to make the sacrifice for him to sleep in, since he’s bringing in the income. It shouldn’t really be a question of rights at all, but I can see how he might resent the current situation, just as you resent it. Giving it to him as a gift changes the dynamic. Then ask him to help you get some downtime since you’re taking care of the family mostly by yourself 6 days a week.
dangermom’s point about the regular date is an important one. It’s really been nice for us to get some time to ourselves again. I highly recommend it to rekindle the feelings you had when you were dating.
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Absolutely, withdraw the kids from the conflict zone. They aren’t’ “his and/or hers”. They’re completly powerless, vulnerable beings in their own right, utterly dependant upon adults to look out for their welfare. Adults who can’t resolve their own conflicts have no business using children for surrogates.
Any adult–male or female–who can’t or won’t place priority on providing a safe zone for children, even from toxic family shit, is not acting as a parent. Period. If adults can’t manage to treat one another with even surface respect, it’s grossly unrealistic to expect kids to sort out the conflicting loyalties.
They aren’t “his” kids, or “hers”. They aren’t poker chips. They’re just children, and somewhere along the line somebody has to protect them against shit they aren’t remotely prepared to handle.
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That makes absolutely no sense. The power struggle exists, to the shame of all adults involved. In this scenario it’s inescapable, a reality. The only question is the degree to what the children should be exposed. If adults can’t treat other fully empowerd adults well, within their own family, do you honestly think children will be exempt?. If a father won’t speak out against familial bullying, what chance does a child have? Absence of an outspoken, embattled adult on the opposing side won’t help anyone, the children least of all.
Kids aren’t poker chips. They aren’t “owned”. There’s absolutely no obligation to expose them any situation where adults put their welfare second, and that includes extended family. To put it bluntly, a husband who passively hears his wife abused by relatives can’t be trusted to magically shut off the badmouthing just because she’s absent. The wife/mother stepping out the picture doesn’t change anything, just shifts the incomprehensible burden onto the kids.
Adults have an obligation to shelter kids from their gonzo, pissant disputes. Anyone who doesn’t, for whatever reason, set those differences aside when kids are present aren’t responsible, healthy influences. Period. Kids don’t belong in adult combat zones, even if it means being high-handed in removing them to safety.
Veb
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I too am a SAHM (well really a “work part-time at home mom” which ends up being basically the same thing) and god knows I like a morning off too, so I completely see where you are coming from. Can you two find a compromise like he sleeps in 3 weeks and you sleep in the 4th - or at the very least he gets up early to help even if you can’t actually sleep in? Even if your kids are up at 6 AM, lets face it that is still a bit of a sleep in for him. If he simply must have this time to sleep, then 2 hours of your own time, (either a weekend afternoon or some weekday evening) would be a fair swap. And remember, the goal here isn’t for you both to feel thrilled about whatever compromise you come up with, just that you are both end up equally miserable…or something.
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Your husband is absolutely wrong. He must take your side.
Before I got married I sat my not-yet-husband down and had a very serious talk with him. It was just after he had ditched me at something I wanted to do because his sister had asked him to do something with her. I explained to him that married means that you have found a person to hold above all others - even family. I told him that (god forbid) if both I and his mother were dying at the same time, his butt had better be by my bedside. That for this marriage to work there should never be any question of where our first loyalty, attention and comittment is. Same goes for trashing on me. His mother is actually wonderful, but he’d never for one second put up with a negative comment from her about me or our life together.
- I’ll ditto others - the bedroom isn’t a competition, and gentle direction can do wonders…make the difference between OK sex and eardrum-bleeding, toe curling, goosebumps on your arms, blow-the-roof-off SEX. Someone said above to talk about what turns you on outside of bed, which is a great idea. If you can’t talk about it write him a letter describing what you’d like.
Good luck!
Twiddle, female, married 4 years together 6, one kid age 2.
Well, I doubt the kids are getting up at 3am (or much before 6, to be honest), so I’m not quite seeing why he can’t both sleep in and get up and help with the kids. YMMV, but three extra hours certainly counts as sleeping in imo. He might not get to sleep just as late as he wants, but what parent ever does? You want to sleep as late as you want, don’t have kids. If you’ve chosen to have kids, well, you just gotta suck it up. Being a grownup sucks that way sometimes.
What I think is a bigger issue is his apparent inability to separate a statement of opinion from an order. There’s a world of difference between “I wish you’d get up and help me out,” and “You WILL get up and help me with the kids, and you’ll do it RIGHT NOW.” You shouldn’t have to apologize for telling him how you feel about something; everybody is entitled to their opinions and feelings, and a couple who can’t discuss opinions and feelings maturely is a piss-poor couple. Like I said in your other thread, discussing how you each feel about any given thing is what married folks do.
I noticed this in your other thread–it seems like the pattern is that you say, “It bothers me when…” and he responds with “You’re not the boss of me!” The whole “nobody tells me what to do” attitude is unproductive and immature, and it would last about 45 seconds in my house. After that, he’d either be getting an attitude adjustment right upside the head, or he’d be getting his ass out. If I wanted to be in a relationship with a teenager, I’d be cruising the high schools. I married an adult, and I bloody well expect him to act like one.
I’m sorry, he simply can’t stay neutral. By keeping his trap shut, he’s giving his sisters his tacit support. His silence tells them that it’s okay by him if they treat you like shit. I mean, if it wasn’t okay, he’d say something, right?
We don’t have this issue, but if my family were to treat Dr.J the way his family treats you, I’d cut them out of my life. Yes, they’re my family, but so is he. What’s more, they’re the family I got through the luck of the draw, and he’s the family I CHOSE out of everyone in the whole wide world. As such, he’s my first priority, assuming he’s not the one starting the shit. Bottom line, it’s not acceptable for anybody to badmouth someone I love, or to treat them with disrespect. Ever. Under any circumstances. You mess with somebody I love, you mess with ME. (And to be perfectly honest, I’ll probably stay pissed about it a lot longer than they will. I’m like a pit bull with this kind of thing. An attack-trained pit bull whose dinner is late.)
So he wants you to sit there and let him hurt you because he’s supposed to know exactly what feels good to you? That’s some fucked up shit right there. For one thing, unless he has nerve endings in your body or is bloody psychic, he cannot possibly know how something feels to you. If either of these things is true, then he’s doing the world a disservice by not letting scientists study him. For another thing, if you’re not enjoying something, how in the world does he expect to know unless you tell him? I mean, presumably he wants to know about stuff you don’t like, so he can eliminate them from the repertoire. If he expects you to grit your teeth and think of England, he can’t possibly be serious about wanting to be good at this whole sex thing. That’s just not how the whole good in bed thing works.
And that’s just if something’s not fun. I simply cannot fathom a man who claims to love you not wanting to know that he’s inadvertantly hurting you so he can stop immediately. (Unless you’re into that sort of thing, of course.) He’s hurting you, and he wants you to just sit there and take it. The mind just boggles, frankly.
Relationships take work but BOTH partners need to be working on it for it to remain a healthy situation.
I’m female and I’m a stay-at-home mom. That is the hardest job there is, no doubt. You need time away from the kids, even if it’s just an hour. Your hubby works six days every week and his one day off, he wants to relax… which is a valid point, too. First off, does he enjoy his job? Would things be better off if he got another job that let him spend more time with the family? I’m just bringing up different points, not suggesting anything. You two need to solve some major issues without trying to hurt each other in the process. The “holier-than-thou” attitudes kill any chances of seeing the other person’s side. You both are tired, you both feel like you pull more of the weight (in different areas), and that the other person has no idea what you go through. At least that’s the feeling I’m getting from your OP.
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This first point is such a no-win situation. He needs time off (i.e., “sleeping in”) and you need a break from your kids. How can you both relax? Could your own family help you out in any way on those days? Hire a babysitter? There isn’t anything really wrong with him sleeping in since he works so much but you DO need help. Again, I bring up the job situation… maybe it needs changing.
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He married you so he shouldn’t tolerate his family putting you down. That would hurt me to the core, it says a lot about his feelings for you, IMHO. They can think however they want about you but he needs to tell them to keep it to themselves. He wants to keep things neutral, eh? Your hubby needs to tend to his wife’s feelings, as well, since his wife is the person he shares his life with (hint).
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He does NOT know what feels good to you until you tell him what does feel good. You don’t know what feels good to him until he tells you what he enjoys. Why are some men threatened by a woman who speaks up for herself? Why does he feel bad when you tell him what you want regarding sex? Personally, I think it’s a control thing… he wants you to let him do what he wants because he is the “man”. Something is NOT right with this. He needs to understand that women are allowed to express themselves and he needs to understand he isn’t in competition with your past. He doesn’t need to know everything to be a good lover. Learning together is the fun part! You need to learn how to communicate your needs (sexual and otherwise) in a way that isn’t nagging, hurtful, or cold. Men pull away when they feel nagged or belittled.
Talking without judgement is the best way to learn about each other. You both need to understand how the other feels in a way that won’t end in a fight. I do wonder just how well you both knew each other before you got married. How long have you been together anyway? It sounds like your husband won’t really take the female responses to heart, that’s just the impression I get. I wish you both the best with this situation.
I seem to agree with the general consensus, so I won’t go over the same things that others have said before me. Basically, you should let him sleep in, he should stand up to his family for you, and he shouldn’t just have this “I’ll do what I like and you can’t say a thing” attitude towards sex.
But honestly, the thing that keeps leaping into my head is what in the HELL are you doing with this man, still? He seems to have no respect for you whatsoever. I can’t see why you’d want to stay if it’s even HALF as bad as you say. Is it really good for your kids to see their mother being treated like dirt?
Oh, forgot to say, I’m married (second marriage), 33, have 4 kids altogether (yours, mine and ours) and female. Why do I have the suspicion that my opinion won’t “count” in your husband’s eyes because I’m female?
My husband does help with the kids, even when he is tired, which actually makes me a lot more amenable to letting him sleep when he is tired. His sisters hated me at first, and he stood up to them. He told them pretty much what someone else said upthread… “If you keep saying bad things about my wife, you’ll be forcing me to choose between you… and you won’t win. If you want me in your life, you’ll shut up.” My sisters-in-law and I actually get on fairly well now. I only met his father once (he lives far away) but he seemed to think I was, at the least, a big improvement on wife #1. I still always wonder what they are saying to each other behind my back, but they are tolerable.
As far as the sex thing goes, I find his attitude utterly repugnant. If my husband had had a similar attitude, well, we wouldn’t have ever gotten married.
Too many problems. Give it a miss and split. When the difficulties get past insurmountable, it’s over.