Aarrrrgggghhhhhhhhhhhhh, this man drives me insane! He says that he loves us but refuses to put us first in his life. His friends and going out are more important to him, it seems. It took me threatening to take his child away from him for good for him to finally wake up and see that this relationship is in trouble. Yet he refuses to go to counselling…he ‘doesn’t like to talk to people’…yes I know asshole, you won’t even talk to me about what’s bugging you.
On another note, can anyone recommend a good book or two to help us stop fighting and pushing each other’s buttons instead of counselling, since he won’t go?
Of course, you can always go to counseling alone. I’ve done this in a previous marriage. It didn’t fix the marriage (we divorced anyway), but it left me with an awareness of what my part of all this was, and it left me feeling less like a victim and let me take control of my own life and my own destiny. I also learned some things to improve future relationships. YMMV, of course, but it’s worth it to at least consider it.
Divorce Busting by Michelle Weiner-Davis was a big help to me when my Hubby and I were having trouble getting along.
And I agree with the pp - going to therapy yourself will change the dynamics of the relationship. When one person changes, the other has to.
Good luck! I have 9-month-old twins, so I can relate to the extra pressure kids put on a relationship. Some days I feel like a cavewoman - I’d rather spend my time with my women kin & let my Hubby just stop by to drop off a hunk of meat every few days . I suspect there are times when he feels the same way!
This is an excellent question, and one which you should think about seriously. There’s nothing wrong with waiting to get married until you feel that you’re both 100% ready to make the other person a top priority in your lives. I think it’s tempting to view marriage as a concrete symbol of relationship success, i.e. “marrying me proves he loves me”, but at the end of the day it’s still the same relationship. Marriage won’t make your relationship better, it won’t make your love stronger, and it won’t make him treat you and your child better. It won’t guarantee that he’ll stay with you, it’ll just make the breakup more complicated and expensive.
I would like to 3rd the idea that you should seriously consider whether it is a good idea to go through with the marriage with such large issues looming. Speaking as someone who is currently going through a divorce, it’s not that simple to get out of a marriage, especially with a child involved. I also think you should talk to a lawyer about your custody rights in case this whole thing blows up. I don’t want to come across as negative, but I think the one thing that has kept me sane is the idea I’m covered legally and I can concentrate on everything else. Including my run-on sentences.
Oh gosh, believe me that the whole marriage thing is being rethunk (is that even a word…lol). He still wants to get married, but then he doesn’t really think there is much of a problem. He gets to do whatever he wants, when he wants, and I get to stay home with the kid.
I have ordered two books off Amazon…the Divorce Busters and another one by the same author about How to Talk to the Man you love etc etc. He has agreed to read the divorce busters book and hopefully we can sort this out.
The problem is that we work opposite shifts so we don’t see much of each other during the day. He is pushing for me to quit my job and be a SAHM and get my own business up and running, but I’m a bit afraid to do that for a number of reasons. My job has really good benefits, his has none…I also tend to be quite lazy and I don’t even know if I could motivate myself enough to make enough money working from home. I would much rather spend time with my daughter. My job gets me out of the house as well. I am afraid that I would end up festering at home and getting even more depressed than I am now.
What I do know is that my life needs a change…I’m not sure what it is. I have been focusing on him, my job, my child as all being the problem, but I don’t think any of them really are (although he really does have a priority problem and he knows that)…I think that possibly I am the problem and I need to get off my ass and make some changes in myself…get out more, do some excercise, lose some weight…it’s just so difficult to do because I’m so absorbed in this mom thing. I mean, I know what I used to do before I had my daughter when I found myself becoming introverted and spending too much time alone. I used to go out and party and meet new people and have fun. I can’t really do that now that I have Cat so I need to find alternatives. Unfortunately there are no mommy and me playgroups anywhere around because that would be ideal.
We are moving house soon and his dad will be coming to live with us. Hopefully then I will be able to get out without my daughter and go to the gym. I really think that will help a lot.
We have been talking about taking a vacation as a family too…maybe a cruise. I really think we need some time to reconnect as a family. I am cautiously optimistic that making some of these changes will work to fix our problems.
The problem is that a relationship takes time. And a kid takes even more time. Throw in a job, and you barely have time to sleep, unless you neglect one of the above.
Ask him to list his priorities, and put them in order. Ask him to do it very honestly. That will be a good starting point for discussion.
oh, and listen to HelenTroy. Very smart woman.
And come here lots. We’ll always be here, and you’ll always get a load of smart people applying themselves to you problem.
He probably needs to get counselling, he at least needs to grow up. The most effective thing you can do is create consequences. Threatening to leave is good but I think you should tell him he needs to go to counselling with you before you’ll get married. You may even want to consider living separately for a while.
Don’t do it. This is a really bad idea, especially because your job has the good benefits. You think you go stir-crazy now…
I dont like that you say this. The problems come from both of you, and any changes need to come from both of you.
This is setting off alarms, and I can’t really put my finger on why. Perhaps it’s that you’re expecting that to change things. I don’t think you should. After all, where did your boyfriend learn how to be a husband?
I think you guys are being too harsh towards the boyfriend. It takes time to learn how to be a Daddy, as well as a Mommy. And if biddee & boyfriend are at least passionate enough to fight, then they have a lot to work with.
If the guy is being a bum – drinking too much, spending all the money, never engaged with his daughter, cheating, lying – that’s one thing.
But if he’s just pulling back and being closed off, but is mostly behaving in a loving manner, then there’s a lot to be hopeful about. He may just need to develop the tools to deal with this situation and new responsibilities. I don’t think living apart is the answer. How was your relationship before the baby?
Re: your job, for me, with twins, I’m a SAHM and don’t work. I miss working & would do it part-time (weekends only) if Hubby could handle the kids for a whole day. Once he can, I will. I can’t imagine how someone who’s a SAHM of a 1-yr-old could possibly get anything else done. Who’s watching Cat while you work? I’m surprised your boyfriend wants you to be a SAHM - what’s the advantage?
One other thing - have you considered that you might have PPD? You sound down in general, and really down on yourself. Becoming a Mom is such a mind-blowing experience, it makes most of us wobbly.
Wait a minute–you say you can’t go out and meet new people, or even go to the gym…but you said your husband likes to go out. So, does he get to go out and you don’t? Does he avoid watching your daughter?
And you say that you think you may be able to go out when your father-in-law moves in? So Grandpa will watch the child, but her own father can’t be bothered?
Or do you avoid leaving her in her father’s care because you don’t quite trust him enough to leave her alone with him?
These are hard questions, I know. But I think they’re important ones.
Ok, this is how it works most days. He works from about 6am - 2:45 and I look after the baby. Then he comes home and I go to work at 3. He looks after the baby from 3 til I come home and bathes her etc…I come home at around 5-6 and breastfeed her and make dinner (he cannot cook, but does do all the dishes). I then go back to work and he puts baby to bed and (usually) cleans the house, tidies up, does the dishes etc. I get home around 11 and if he’s awake we will spend a little time together. He usually goes out on a Tuesday and a Friday night after I get home from work. He will go out til around 4 am. He is a recovering alcoholic so he doesn’t drink or anything, but of course, he is really tired the next day so not much gets done on a Wednesday or Saturday. The past couple of months it’s been getting worse and he has been going out more, sometimes up to 4 nights a week. Of course he then wants to sleep all the next day. It has started affecting his going to work too, and he has ended up missing quite a few days, which means shorter pay.
I certainly have no problem with him spending time with his friends, in fact, it is necessary…what I have the problem with is the fact that his spending time with friends means that he is usually sleeping all weekend so the only time we really have to spend together is spent with me looking after the baby while he sleeps and that makes me really mad. Now he has started working on the weekends too (to make up for the time he sleeps in when he goes out the night before) so now our time is even more limited. I just really think his priorities are a bit fucked up.
Don’t get me wrong, he loves me and Cat, but he is having a really hard time trying to juggle work, home and fun and he doesn’t seem to realise that we should come first in his life. I think he still wants to have all the fun of a single guy (like all his friends are) and doesn’t realise why it’s wrong to be doing this. I’ve tried over and over to explain it to him, but he just doesn’t get it.
He is a great father and I have no problems leaving her with him
My Hubby still wants to stay up until all hours, too, farting around on the Internet or whatever. So on the couple of nights when I really NEEDED his help, it was difficult for him and he wound up missing his sleep. It takes a lot of adjusting to learn to put your family first.
I hope that your lifestyle will change soon. The way things are set up, it’s kind of impossible for you to get the benefits of being a family. If the three of you could do things together, it would really make a huge difference. Whether they’re fun things or just errands. Being out in public with you and his daughter would help him see himself as part of the unit - especially when people remark how cute she is, as I’m sure they would. And seeing himself as the father in your family will change his behavior - he’ll begin to measure himself against other fathers, instead of other single guys.
It also needs to be known just how much time he wants to spend ‘out with his friends’ rather than with his family. If it’s something like a ‘once a week I want to spend a couple hours with the guys’ then maybe they could work out an arrangement where each one of them has a ‘time with the friends’ period once a week. That’s kind of the arrangement that momsix and dadsix worked out. One day a week he went out for a couple hours in the evening to be with the buddies and play darts, and then another day she’d go out to be with the buddies and bowl.
Early on dadsix was the kind to avoid watching the kids, and it took much effort for momsix to find out that dadsix wasn’t so much trying to avoid his family as that he was afraid he wouldn’t know what to do to take care of catsix and sistersix. There could be a lot of reasons for what’s happening with bidee and boyfriend, and the only way to find out is communication between the two of them.
This doesn’t sound good. It sounds like something is going on with him, maybe an actual problem that he needs to discuss with a counselor. It may not be a very severe problem, but it’s obviously a serious issue that needs to be brought to light, even if it’s something like ‘Things are changing for me really fast and I don’t know how to deal with this new life I have’ kind of thing. It may take talking to a professional to help him realize what exactly the problem is and how to come to grips with it.
. I suspect there are times when he feels the same way!