I’m sorry that your husband seems less supportive or involved than you would like him to be. I don’t understand why a man would seem to limit how involved he will be with his own children and his wife. I realize you are not frankly complaining about your husband, but if you did, I think that might be reasonable. Out of your love for your husband, I think it might good if you could get him interested in changing in some ways. I suspect that he is at risk of being very disappointed when he is old, disappointed that he is less close to his grown children, and maybe even you, than he wishes he was.
As I said, I am a mere uncle, but it seems obvious to me that direct involvement with kids, and lots of it, is how to build and keep a good relationship with them. It’s a no-brainer that the same is true for spouses. Taking care of children and spouses is the substance of family life in my opinion.
I won’t try to psychoanalyze your husband, but something you said seems extra important to me. You described him as viewing compassion as a sign of weakness. In a way that is very true. It shows that you know life can be very difficult and sometimes a bit overwhelming in some ways. The only way to know that is to have experienced feeling overwhelmed oneself. I think compassion comes in part from personal suffering and failure.
Compassionate people have suffered, failed to achieve some things, and felt personally weak and in need of help. That’s how they know others might need help. Because that is how people learn to be compassionate, I think most people know - at least subconsciously, that if they exhibit compassion they are telling others that they understand what it is like to be in need of help. Maybe your husband is afraid to suggest to you or anyone else that he knows what it is like to need any sort of help, to be a suitable focus of another person’s compassion. Maybe everything associated with compassion, even displaying it, really does make him feel like a weakling.
Your husband might limit his involvement with you and the kids because he doesn’t want to look incompetent. When he “helps out”, it might be important for you to accept his help in whatever way he gives it. I think it can be very discouraging to some men to be told they are vacuuming the floor wrong, folding the socks wrong, putting the dishes in the drain rack the wrong direction, and using the wrong brush to scrub the sink.
I don’t know if you do those things, but if you do, I suspect your husband just wants to stop doing anything about which you tell him he is wrong in his methods. A clean baby is just as clean if he gets his bath entirely with baby shampoo and no special bar of soap or anything else. Towels folded in quarters are in the closet just as well as if they’re folded in thirds. I have no idea if you criticize your husband about such things, but if you do so, I think it would make him want to avoid “helping out.”
I will remember you, your husband and your kids in my prayers.
Peace to you all.
