When to Discuss Contentious Issues With Your Spouse

[kptrs]

Thanks all.

Things are still not great. DH agrees that we need help but keeps coming up with reasons why specific steps or plans of action just don’t work. It’s infuriating, because he can then look agreeable to change but not end up actually changing anything. If I were on the outside of this, I know I’d be able to say, “Well, pensmama, then you need to do x or y to get his bottom moving or at least make him know that you mean business,” but in the situation it’s hard for me to see what to do or what to feel besides helplessness.

I know that I can’t put this all on him. I’ve been backsliding too into old bad habits. The past couple of weeks I’ve been making sure I go to bed early, taking good care of myself physically, etc. and that has helped a lot with my outlook and ability to care for the kids and the home. But that doesn’t help me with DH. Part of me just wants to give up. Not to separate, but just keep on sharing living space. DH seems mostly content with it. I don’t seem to have much I can do to make him want to change, and anyway he’s not using drugs or pornography, blowing tons of money on anything, etc. He just…doesn’t seem interested in his own wife and kids. I can’t make him and he doesn’t seem particularly inclined to try.

Yeah, this is how my mom and I felt about my dad. Even when we were doing fun things together as a family, it was evident that he wasn’t “all there.” Not sure what he would have rather been doing, but it was clearly an exerted effort to enjoy an afternoon with his wife and daughter. It stung. For both of us.

Regarding everything else…as Xan said, parents simply don’t get a whole lot of “me time.” That’s just the way it is. When you have young children, “me time” entails going grocery shopping without the kids, a nice long shower, or, if you’re really lucky, an afternoon nap when Grandma is in town and wants to take the kids to the zoo by herself. But it’s a 24/7/365 job. No days off. No vacations. Lots of sacrifices. This is going to sound quite harsh against your DH, but…if a person must block off the hours between 5:30pm and bedtime as “me time”, he/she probably shouldn’t get married or have kids…simply because you can’t do that when you’re married and have kids.

 

[pensmama87]

Maybe try asking him, “What do you think a good, involved dad’s weeknight schedule would look like?” and ask him to help you write up what the ideal night looks like. Not as an actual plan for what every night has to look like (stuff comes up) but as an ideal to work toward.

It sounds like he’s probably really needing more down time with his new job, but blocking out 5:30-his bedtime as “me time,” which is not acceptable or sustainable long term. Parents of three little kids do not get that kind of “me time” unless they don’t live with their children and they microwave all their meals.

You might also ask him what a reasonable work schedule for you looks like.

If I were you and he doesn’t make any forward movement between now and Christmas, I would start figuring out how to squeeze monthly cleaning help into your budget.

With this in mind DH and I sat down and he wrote a “time budget” with some cushion in it. He gave himself two hours every weeknight for blogging or hobbies, but also an hour for me and an hour for the kids. It would also get him to bed earlier. So I’m all for it.

As far as encouraging him to stick with it, I don’t know. Our router shuts off at midnight. He gets prickly with reminders. But this is still small progress.

 

[Xantippe]

With this in mind DH and I sat down and he wrote a “time budget” with some cushion in it. He gave himself two hours every weeknight for blogging or hobbies, but also an hour for me and an hour for the kids. It would also get him to bed earlier. So I’m all for it.

As far as encouraging him to stick with it, I don’t know. Our router shuts off at midnight. He gets prickly with reminders. But this is still small progress.

Very good.