Maybe I’m a weirdo, but yeah… I only really focus on one or two people at a time, and now that I’ve got a husband and kids those positions are filled. I have one friend in town that I exchange cards, emails, and gifts with, and even that level of friendship feels burdensome sometimes. I haven’t seen her in months, and that’s totally okay, because I have a lot of family obligations to interest me.
My husband took two of the kids on a camping trip this week, leaving me home with one. I think this is the first time we’ve been apart in about a year. The child left at home has to work tonight and I will be all by myself…will I fill these golden hours with the company of friends? Oh hell no.
Maybe just a little bit. Not until I thought I saw a contradiction, here:
Taking care of the kids is hard work, and also he won’t abandon his wife to go do something less fun. I’m not seeing how the hard work = more fun, but that’s why I’m not a family person and Dio is. To me, that sounded like a contradiction. The reason I didn’t have kids is because it’s damn hard work; I don’t see how there’s any fun in it (and no parent has ever been able to convince me there is).
Another vote for the "you-need-to-specify"camp. Your friends can’t read your mind - if you don’t tell them you want to hang out with just them, they’ll probably assume everyone is included, especially if it’s just to hang out.
On the flip side, as a working mother, it drives me nuts when my childless friends call me and want me to hang out with them with absolutely no prior notice. Yes, I make an effort to have alone time with my friends. But I need to know you want to hang out more than an hour or two ahead of time. I’m not talking weeks - a day or two will work. I can’t just drop the kids on my husband and take off without telling him in advance.
So, yes, if a friend does that to me and wants to hang out with only me, I’ll probably decline.
You’re saying that fathers who prefer to stay home with their families rather than go out drinking at strip joints with developmentally arrested retards are “unhealthy?”
Have you never had fun doing anything that was hard work? Painting a house, doing a tough jigsaw puzzle, working out? It’s not necessarily a contradiction.
Hilarious. People who choose to live their lives differently than you don’t cease to be individuals. That’s moronic.
It’s just as moronic as half the crazy shit Dio has said thus far. Going out with the guys is “abandoning your kids”? Way to rationalize your shitty social life.
I feel a need to clarify what I said earlier (and yes, that was addressed to **Leaffan **:rolleyes:). It’s probably going to sound like I’m trying to break up his marriage. Frankly, I don’t think I can break up something that’s already so fundamentally broken.
That said, I think people don’t realize for years just what they learned from their own parents. So there’s little way of knowing all the things you’re teaching your own kids, subconsciously or otherwise. And this part:
[QUOTE=Leaffan]
“frankly the kids wouldn’t really be able to tell that she’s controlling and I’m acquiescing.”
[/QUOTE]
I call complete and total bullshit. Really. If nothing else, give the kids you raised more credit than that. But in general, kids both consciously notice and subconsciously absorb way more than you seem to think they do.
That sentence just gets sadder and sadder the further it goes. I know you probably don’t want my advice, but Dio, you are neglecting your own marriage and the relationship you have with the most important person in your life. I don’t know why you’re doing that, but that is what you’re doing.
Like, you don’t even watch some TV program together after the kids are in bed? Do a crossword together? Nothing?
I tend to agree (being a husband and father myself), but there’s one thing you may want to keep in mind- your kids will see you not spending one-on-one time with your wife, or having interests outside of the family and them- is that the way you want them to grow up thinking the world works?
My plan is to show my children that parents are people too, and that we’re equal in this family- we all have things we like to do, and we all have our friends outside of the family, and that it’s ok for us (ALL of us) to do things with them without the rest of the family around.
That’s not to say that I’m going to strip joints, or doing anything like that, but it may be as silly as grabbing a beer and a hamburger with friends of mine who I’ve known for 20 years who I don’t see so often, or it may be going and hanging out with my brother when we’re in Houston to get a break from the wife and kids. Or it may be my wife going to her friends’ houses to make arts and crafts stuff and watch chick flicks for an evening.
Wanting to do those things and having the children seeing us do those things is healthy, and doesn’t point toward either of us abandoning the family or having skewed priorities or anything- we’re people too, and there’s more to us than just our roles as father and mother of our children. Obviously that’s our primary role, but it’s not the only one.
In all seriousness, you sound exactly like her–and now that I’m in my 30s, the fact that she’s still basically got no life outside of myself and my brother is somewhat grating, especially since Dad ISN’T that way. I can count on a two-hour phone conversation about gossip in a town I left over a decade ago every time he’s at a bowling tournament.
Your last sentence, however, made me do this: