Just thought I’d share my story with you. It seems way too familiar. I only have three children though and one on the way.
My husband works 40 hours a week. I am grateful to him for making a living for us. I work 168 hours a week though. I am in charge of the kids’ EVERY need. I feed them, I bathe them, I do most of the playing and teaching them. I do all the diaper changing and am up with them at night. They aren’t school-aged yet but I still teach them often. I am in charge of all the household chores. All the grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning dishes, laundry washing, folding AND putting away! I take out the trash. Take the trash bin to the curb and back to our house again. (Thank GOD we no longer have to use the alley dumpster) I do all the sweeping, mopping, toilets… I am also a full-time nursing student in fall and spring. (thankfully I get summers off to recoup!)
And this man still expects me to have the -]energy/-]… the DESIRE for sex?
Wait a minute here. Is there a reason why your husband works 40 hours per week and you work 168hours? Why doesn’t he help you? Is he on call while he’s at home, and unable to leave his computer or earbud to help you with various chores and child-rearing actitivies? I’m not asking this facetiously. When my husband is on call at home, he is on the computer and on the phone almost constantly, and he honestly can’t get up and come help me with the trash. And I bring him his meals and set them down on his desk because he can’t come out to the kitchen to eat while he’s trying to get a server back up again.
Or is he just a selfish man who doesn’t believe in doing woman’s work? If this is the case, my suggestion is to let everything go that is not directly related to child care. The trash can sit out for weeks (until the City fines you, of course). His laundry can sit in the basket for weeks. Floors don’t have to be spotless unless you are eating off them. Use paper plates and cups, and throw them away. You get the idea.
If he’s just parking his butt in front of the TV, he’ll eventually get the idea that maybe he should get up and help, especially when his co-workers tell him that his dirty clothes smell bad.
Don’t enable him to be lazy! The more you do, the less he has to do. Don’t give him that opportunity.
And make sure that you are actually asking him for help. Many men have not been raised to “see” the work that needs to be done in a house, and he may honestly have no idea that you need help. After all, everything looks beautiful to him, and the food’s good and the trash is mysteriously gone, just like when he lived at home with him mommy to wait on him. You may have to re-train him a little to “see” the chores that are necessary to keep a household running. Don’t get mad at him because of his upbringing.
Again, if he’s doing 40 hours and you’re doing 168 hours, that’s not right. BUT…if he’s doing 40 hours in an office or site or factory, and forty more hours on call or at a second job, then that’s a different story and I’m sorry, but you’ll have to suck it up with the home chores because he’s swamped, too, and in the current economy, he has to work his rear off to keep that job.
Maybe this isn’t the best time to do nursing school. You think it’s hard now to do all the chores–wait 'til you try it without a husband (and no money) after you’re divorced. The marriage should be your Number One Priority, even before the kids. After all, what good will all the child-rearing do if parents get divorced?
The best thing that parents can do for their children is stay happily married.
As I said in my posts above, desire is not necessary to give yourself to your husband. If women wait to have sex until they have desire, most women would never have sex (except when they’re teenagers and unmarried and burning up for for any male who looks at them).
A woman’s desire for sex often does NOT happen BEFORE sex. It happens once sex has actually commenced.
And it’s not all up to the man to create the desire in the woman. That’s a Hollywood/Harlequin myth. The woman must work at becoming aroused. What I’ve found helpful is to “pretend” that I’m terribly aroused, which means moaning and sighing and posturing in suggestive ways. This drives my husband wild, and more often than not, it will also create true desire in me.
Like I said, try Quickies. They’re not a permanent solution. They’re kind of like Slim Fast meals. You wouldn’t want to live on them forever, but they’re good for a short term diet.
–but sex provides validation to men, while women like to be valued/validated BEFORE sex, to be more in the mood.
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