I’ve seen bigger excluded middles, and I’ve seen bigger wooshes, but I’ve never seen both put together just this way.
Living your lives completely for your kids and not ever allowing yourself any time without them and not allowing yourself any interests that they aren’t the centre of is not simply a different lifestyle choice - it’s unhealthy for everyone involved.
And people are calling ME judgmental. What the fuck do you know about my marriage (or anyone else’s)?
Don’t be obtuse. It’s not that extreme. I meant that we don’t get, like, a whole day together or a night away from the kids. Of course we have some time together here and there after the kids are in bed. I’m talking about significant get away time.
While I don’t live such a lifestyle, I doubt seriously that it’s as unhealthy as you think. You’re basically describing the vast majority of families that existed prior to the early 20th Century. Additionally, I’m not seeing anyone in this thread who is saying they have absolutely no interests outside of their children and spouse. Even Dio watches football, reads books, etc.
**Dio **- Since it doesn’t seem anyone else has said so, I wanted to chime in to say that I feel almost 100% the same way about spending time with my family as you do.
Do I enjoy some alone time now and then, or time with my buddies? Sure I do, as does she. But it’s very very rare that either of us actually want to do those things. There’s just honestly nobody else I’d rather be hanging out with than my family a vast majority of the time. If that means I have an unhealthy and co-dependent relationship… then I embrace those labels.
Exactly. And that time is important–the fact that I have a close relationship with my parents as an adult is mainly due to the one-on-one time we spent together when I was a kid. Almost everything I know about them as people I learned when it was just the two of us because that was when there was time and quiet and privacy to have the deeper conversations, and if I had only known and appreciated them as parents rather than people…well, the relationship would have dwindled along with my need for hands-on parenting. And let’s face it, part of what made them interesting people I wanted to be around was that they had a life outside of the family.
Then too there’s the practical aspect of it: your kids will eventually grow up and form lives of their own. If you’ve let all your friendships and hobbies and even your romantic relationship with your spouse fall by the wayside, what will you have left besides your job?
Thank you.
I also have a job, and I interact with people outside my family in a variety of ways online and off. I’m not some shut-in who never sees the sun. I’m just not that much of a casual socializer anymore.
Once in a while, I’ll still go do something with a friend (or my wife will). There aren’t any control issues. We’re both just essentially introverted people anyway and prefer to stay home.
The whole point of raising children is to give them the skills to get the hell out of your house. What exactly are you going to do with yourself when that happens if you’ve let everyone else in your life fall away?
I have no idea what you’re asking. Why does it take “skills” to get out of the house?
Of course, if you take the kids with you, they’ll you getting out of the house firsthand. I actually don’t have kids, and I do hang out with my friends (not generally alone, as I mentioned), but I know plenty of people who do nearly all of their socializing with extended family and old family friends, kids in tow, and they don’t seem to be unhealthy or lack interests and hobbies. Not continuing to hang out with one’s single friends sans family does not doom one to the life of an antisocial shut-in.
Travel the world, take up new hobbies, make new friends, rekindle relationships when the kids hit middle school, enjoy being introverts, etc.
It isn’t much different than a couple that moves to a new city.
Considering your first paragraph there, I’m going to take the second one as a compliment coming from you.
My family works the same way. My husband is away from us all week while he’s at work. He loves spending time with me and the kids on the weekends and it’s rare, even though I encourage it, for him to make plans without us.
We have a lot of friends, though - they almost all have kids and we do stuff together as families. The alternative to lots of guys (or girls) nights out is not total social isolation.
I have lived my life more on the girls night out side of the equation in this thread. I have annual vacations with my two closest friends, sometimes with kids but generally with only adults. We also have what used to be monthly dinners but are now somewhat more sporadic.
Unfortunately, our social life is declining anyway, not because of our children but because of our jobs. Between the three of us in the last 2 years we’ve had two new jobs and two significant promotions. (One of us is very very good and very lucky too. Not me sadly)
However this:
Quoted for truth.
Sometimes when your life changes it seems like the right time to stop hanging out with people who have gone in a different direction than you. It’s not you, it’s not me, we’re just different people than when we were kids. It’s like divorce but for friends and it doesn’t always mean that the new spouse or kids have changed them, sometimes they changed and that’s why they have the new spouse or kid.
I’ve been fortunate that most of my friends either chose not to have kids, or I met them after their kids were grown enough to not be an issue.
This sounds so sad. Since your kids are getting close to moving-out age, can you start pulling away more now? Going out for a beer or three after work without telling her ahead of time? You know - call and say “hey wife, so and so and I stopped at such and such a bar for a couple of beers so I’m going to be a bit late”. Not every night, or even every week, but as a start?
Yes, I thought the point of having kids was because you like them and want to be around them. When my husband travels, I don’t view it as being “stuck with the pets”, and vice versa.
This!
Going out with guy friends doesn’t have to mean strip joints - I’m not sure my husband has ever been to a strip joint, but he doesn’t lack in guy friends or time with them.
In other words, your situation is different, in that you are an introvert and don’t really want to go out anyway.
My first thought was, “That’s actually a pretty good suggestion,” but my next thought was “… but will it be worth the inevitable shitstorm he’ll come home to?”
People don’t get this controlling by not flipping the holy fuck out when you do something “wrong.”
Are you my brother-in-law? About the only difference is that he and my sister don't live in a rural area.He avoids conflict so -- she can't possibly go to the library within walking distance, he has to be available to drive her to the further one, because she won't drive. She has a license, but she just won't drive. She doesn't like his friends, and doesn't have any of her own so he can't hang out with his. She doesn't like to be with the extended family, so when there's an event her husband and kids can't go. The can only do what she likes to do- she doesn't like amusement parks so her husband and kids can't go. When she lived next door to me, her husband and son came over to watch a football game, and had to go home because "she didn't know how to use the microwave" and on and on and on.
Because he avoids conflict , she believes he'll never leave, so she sees no need for counseling. If he's not going to leave, there's no reason for her to change her behavior.He won't leave - yet. Because his parents got divorced and his father essentially abandoned him, and he won't do that to his kids. He doesn't have the imagination to look at other divorced fathers he knows who spend time with their kids, or to realize if he divorces her and gets custody he'll have less work or even to realize she probably wouldn't *want* custody.
He's going to leave all right- the day the youngest kid turns 18, he says. Meanwhile, he's miserable, the kids (now 13 and 16) can't stand her, and she'll probably become suicidal when he does leave. The worst part is the kids don't have a lot of respect for him, and I think they blame him for giving in to her. If he had stood up for himself a long time ago, and refused to be a doormat ,she might have changed her behavior and everyone would have been happier.
Only what you tell us about it.
I wasn’t being obtuse. See above. Perhaps we have a different idea of the word “significant,” that’s all.
And I wasn’t being judgemental, not the way you think. It’s just that I’ve seen so many marriages self-destruct after the kids go to college: the husband and wife have spent little/no time together, outside their roles as Mommy and Daddy, and suddenly they’re staring at each other in an empty house (cue cricket chirping noises) and thinking, “Who the fuck IS this person?” It would be sad to see yet another marriage go down that hole, and
is how that hole gets dug.
I suspect that they are referring to general life skills that your kids will need when they leave home. Not that anything you’ve said suggests you’re not teaching them that.
Separate posts because the above was addressed to Dio, and this is for Leaffan:
As I grew up (late high school, early college - basically, late teens) I gradually but thoroughly lost every shred of respect I ever had for my father. I still maintained affection, but respect? He lost it, by caving to my control freak of a mother and neverever standing up to her: not to defend himself, not to defend me.
If you maintain the status quo with your wife while waiting for your kids to grow up so you can divorce her (:rolleyes: but whatever, I already addressed that) you may very well find the same thing has happened to you. Even if you never know it: my father does not know what I just wrote, because he’s incapable of understanding it.