DH is feeling overwhelmed
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| Mon, 10-23-2006 - 8:54am |
I need some advice. DH and I have one DD, born in June 05. I'm currently PG, expecting in May. We've been married 9 years now (I'm 36, DH is almost 40). We both work full time.
I've noticed a recurring issue with him since Em was born. He will periodically lament that he doesn't have any time for himself or that we rely too much on him or that he does too much. They sound a little different, but I'm reasonably certain that they are just different manifestations of the same issue. Honestly, I don't ask unreasonable things - if he's out of the house working on a project all day, then I ask him to stop by about 6 PM (he typically starts long before lunch, and has spent the morning reading the paper). By the time he gets inside, eats, and cleans up, it's at least 6:30/6:45, and that only gives him 45 minutes until Em's bedtime. I don't "dump" her on him and disappear - we generally all hang out together in the family room. I just firmly believe that it's very important for her to have some time with him.
I am having a bit of difficulty picking her up and carrying her because of the pregnancy and she's just about 25 pounds, so I've been asking DH's help to get her on the changing table or in and out of the high chair. I've never asked him to come in from a project to do it - he's always been in the house. And, when he's working, I just do it myself, but it makes my belly ache a bit. The only time that I "dump" her on him on the weekends is for me to take a shower and shave my legs. I get about 45 minutes of Mommy Time to take care of that.
Well, Saturday night DH came in from working on his truck. He was *very* frustrated b/c it was giving him a whole lot of problems, and he's normally really good with it. (Rusted bolts broke off and had to be forced out, he whacked his head a couple times, etc.) I hadn't eaten much for dinner without him - just a little mac and cheese and some veggies with Em. Honestly, when she is in her high chair, I can run down and throw in laundry without worrying about her, so I did that, cleaned the kitchen, and only munched a little bit. Well, when DH came in, he was very angry that I hadn't had more at dinner time. He was barking at me about "You need to stop relying on me so much," and "I know you're all pissed off at me - what's YOUR problem now?" And I looked at him and said, "I'm not actually angry with you at all, but I don't see any need for you to talk to me like this." I was going to have a little more dinner with him later on after Em went to bed...
Honestly, my thought is that, since his father left when he was 8 and his mother never remarried, that DH doesn't understand that's just pretty much how it is to be the dad. His mother got her associate's degree and worked nights while he was growing up, so he never really knew what it is that parents do for each other and their kids. I'm reasonably confident that this is accurate, especially since his mother lived with us for 9 years. So I know all the parties involved and I just think he doesn't realize what families do.
Does this sound reasonable? Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can gently help him understand? Has anyone else gone through this with their DH? I don't think it's that uncommon...
DH adores our DD and is so excited about the baby. I know he loves me, too. But, I need to help him with this so that it makes our lives happier together.
Thanks in advance,
M2E


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I need some clarifications on a few things that I'm not sure I understand before I can offer thoughts that I can feel will make sense to your situation:
You said "if he's out of the house working on a project all day, then I ask him to stop by about 6 PM (he typically starts long before lunch, and has spent the morning reading the paper). By the time he gets inside, eats, and cleans up, it's at least 6:30/6:45" If I understand this correctly, he sits and reads the paper all morning before actually working? In "asking him to stop by about 6 pm", do you mean he's not through with his work day yet? I get the feeling he works from your home, is that right? What about you, you said you both work full time, do you have an outside job (other than caring for your baby and home, that is)? If so, who gets Em up and ready to go, who picks her up, etc.? How much child tending does he do when he's not working? Baths, feeding, etc.? If you're both home and available, does he actively watch her half the time?Thanks in advance for your answers, better understanding will help ensure the answers you get are appropriate for your actual situation.
~ cl-2nd_life"You can't control the length of your life,
but you can control the width and depth."
~ Author unknown
"Ignoring the facts
does not change the facts"
Sorry, 2nd_Life. I left that out.
DH and I both have FT jobs outside the home. We actually work at the same place (along with 15,000 others), so we carpool, drop and pick her up together from my parents' (she's with Gram and Grandpa all day). We get Em up together (divide and conquer method) during the week, but I am solo on the weekends maybe half the time. I try to let him get some rest whenever possible (he doesn't sleep well generally), but he does reciprocate and let me get some extra sleep from time to time, too.
So, this isn't his job that's causing friction, but it's his list of things he wants/has to do. Not stuff I ask for, but fixing his truck, mowing lawn (1.33 acres of it), hanging drywall to redo finished area behind garage, etc. General man stuff.
A typical Saturday would go like this - Em gets up anywhere between 6:30 and 8:30. I honestly try to keep her up until 8 ish on Friday/Saturday nights so she'll sleep in a bit. We change diaper, I make breakast for her/me, DH makes breakfast for himself and sometimes me. I sit with Em, she eats and I feed her when needed (yogurt doesn't make it into her mouth often) and I eat my breakfast. DH sits and reads the paper and eats. I will clean up Em, load the dishwasher, clean the high chair, put away stuff, then run to the shower while he watches her and reads the paper.
Some how, he usually lingers inside until 10:30, 11, 11:30 even when he knows he has a multi-hour project to do. Like the truck was a BIG thing - he had to take off the exhaust and drive train in order to get to the oil pan, which he had to remove and change out the oil pump, etc. So, before we had the baby, I'd let him go as long as he needed to. Sometimes he'd be outside until 9 or 10 PM working on something. But it was also a different area, he couldn't leave the truck taken apart there like he can at our house now.
DH didn't do a lot with Em when she was little. But, he has taken over most of the grocery shopping and that kind of thing, so I'm not dumped on in that respect. He also cooks at least 4 nights a week. I'll probably cook two dinners, and all the lunches we're home for, but we'll do take out once a week. I do all the dishes and laundry. I've been trying to keep that in balance. He is a very responsible person, which I have always admired, so he keeps up on maintenance around the house and really taking care of us in the larger sense.
Em is pretty much with me nonstop all weekend. My schedule revolves around her meal times and nap times, etc. I squeeze laundry in while she's in her high chair eating or asleep b/c he's generally working on something. Since I'm PG again, he's helping me a lot more with her baths and lifting her whenever he's in b/c it's very uncomfortable for me. I still do stuff (lifting and bathing) alone when he's busy and it needs to be done. Ultimately, though, in response to your question about whether he does half the work for half the time we're both available, probably not.
Part of the reason I want him to stop around 6 PM (after work and on weekends) is that I just don't want him working that hard. It's not healthy for him to push himself with a 40+ hour week, and 3-4 hours after work, and 8+ hour days on weekends. Em is great for him because she runs up and hugs him and laughs and really helps him destress. She is as good for him as he is for her. I don't want him to be so wrapped up in splitting wood that he misses out on all the fun stuff of a 16 month old.
And, I really try not to nag or keep score. I make a conscious point not to ask him to do stuff that I can do myself, but I can't do everything. I just wish that he didn't have these periodic flare ups when he feels that he's persecuted because we need him and need to spend time with him. He doesn't take a lot of time for himself, but I really don't get any. He's very likely to run to the store alone and be off by himself, when I have Em in tow all the time.
I love my husband and I respect him. We had a terrible time last year and nearly split up b/c of his family and how they were treating me. I am relieved that we have worked that out to a manageable level, so I really just want to be very gentle on our relationship. I don't want to cause major waves in our marriage. I just worry how it's going to be when the new baby comes and I am trying to wrangle two...
Thanks for the reply. Sorry I was so long.
M2E
Thanks for clearing that up; it sounds like what you're describing is mostly weekend time, I didn't realize that when I read your first post.
M2E, I'm going to tell you how it seems to me that it is; I don't expect I'll be right with much of what I think it seems, but I'm hoping you'll let me know where I'm wrong so I can better understand and make suggestions that will fit better.
It sounds like your husband wants life to continue as it was before Em was born; he wants to work on his stuff (not saying what he's doing isn't contributing because it is) on the schedule he prefers, and for as long as he wants. You let him lounge (his schedule) in the morning, but call him up short in the evening. It sounds like you're the one pulling him in, directing that he "not work so hard" whereas he'd prefer to keep going.
It also sounds like you're soft-pedaling because you're afraid to make waves; you're taking the majority of the baby stuff and letting him have his down time largely because you don't want to push it.
I hear that you're unhappy, that you don't get time to relax, time to yourself but he does. He's complaining that he doesn't have enough time to finish his chores (the outside stuff) but doesn't see that starting earlier (giving up some of his down time) is what is needed to provide more of the time he wants. It sounds like he has to be pushed to spend time with Em, and I assume that carries over to doing the actual care taking of her (bath, feeding, etc.)
I know it sounds like I'm bashing him, but I'm not, I'm saying what I think I see and I'm relying on you to tell me what's accurate and what's not. You said he makes dinner four nights a week, did he do that before Em too? You also said that he helps out by lifting her for you because it's hard for you, but I thought that was one of his complaints, or at least the impetus of a complaint.
Sorry to keep pestering you instead of answering, but making assumptions and suggesting ways to deal with your issue from those assumptions won't help, but they could help.
~ cl-2nd_life"You can't control the length of your life,
but you can control the width and depth."
~ Author unknown
"Ignoring the facts
does not change the facts"
Well, you're pretty accurate, actually. I don't take it as bashing, either, so don't worry about that. :)
We always split the cooking before, but I probably cooked more. I used to do all the groceries, but now Em and I do maybe once every 6-8 trips. I always did all the laundry (he shovels snow, mows lawn, etc). I always cleaned the bathrooms and did maybe 95% of the other inside cleaning. When MIL lived with us, she had him doing things for her, too, so she was a big time-suck on him.
I would add, though that he'll help me lift her, but he rarely feeds her. He never feeds her a meal b/c the mess drives him crazy. He sits next to me at the table and she sits on the other side of me. He likes to read the paper at the table, so I talk to her, get her what she needs and all that while he sits and reads. She still gets 2 bottles - one for PM nap and one at bed. He never puts her down for a nap (he's off doing something outside), and he'll put her down at night once every 2 weeks.
I do soft-pedal around him. We are really both quite stubborn and direct. The major difference is that he just goes into this shut down when he's angry. He doesn't like to talk about problems. He's much more likely to yell/swear/etc and have knee-jerk reactions. I'd much rather talk. We went through a whole lot of this last year when we sold our old house, bought out his mother, then she tried to say she was moving to our new house with us, and I flat-out prefused. Our relationship almost combusted over it. It was the worst experience of my life.
I don't want to nag him. I've been with him for almost 11 years, and trying to push him to an earlier start just gets me nowhere, unless I really want to argue. If I were to try and direct that much of his schedule that he'd really resent it, so I don't try. Honestly, I'd be the same way if he were to try to do that to me.
His underlying reason for doing everything he does is to make a nice life for me and the kids. The longer he is away from my ILs, the better he is. He has these attitude "flare ups" more before holidays. Maybe it's all tied back to the problems between me and his family since I was PG, as well as that his family is just dysfunctional. It hasn't gotten better with his family. They won't speak to me. They call DH on his cell, but never call the house. Em's first bday party was at our house and they ignored me (except for the only BIL I have who is decent). There are some pretty deep issues here with my ILs and how he wanted to handle all this.
It still surprises me that even though he has these long chunks of time to himself, not just in the mornings, but when he's doing something, I don't think he understands that it's still time to himself, whereas probably 99% of my weekends have Em attached to them.
I just don't know. He is so good with her when he chooses to spend the time with her. Do many men have to be PUSHED into being dads like this? She makes him so happy and he admits that, but he still is busy...
Is this really unusual for some men to react to being a parent like this? These little flare ups of "me, me, me" are tiresome. And they certainly don't change the fact that we have a child and she needs us to take care of her.
M2E
I have to say that it's very possible that he sees what he's doing as the right and most important thing he can be for his family. If he sees his proper role as being responsible for physical well being (chopping wood, fixing the truck), and sees your role as being caretaker of the home and children (which is how it appears), he may feel spending time with his child is taking time away from his responsibility to the family. Make sense?
That said, that doesn't excuse or explain his hours-long lounge before getting to his work. Quite frankly, we'd all like to have lots of lounge time, but when you have children, your free time largely goes away and you have to change and adapt to make it work. IMO, it's not reasonable for him to expect to do his "guy stuff" on his old schedule, and certainly he needs to see that you need equal time off. Watching EM so you have time to "dash off to the shower" is hardly fair or right. And yes, I completely get you about his time being alone, where he's afforded the luxury of "shutting down", and having his own uninterrupted thoughts, let alone not having to keep "on alert" for the needs of someone else. As far as him reading the paper for hours while you feed Em and multitask around the kitchen, the mess may drive him crazy, but sorry, he's a big boy and a father, times changed when a child entered the scene; it's time to buck up and deal with the mess. We all end up dealing with a lot of situations we'd rather not when we're parents, but that doesn't mean we don't still have to do it. Equal time is only right. One Sunday he gets the R&R time while you feed, the next Sunday it's reversed. That's right and fair. However, if he sees male/female roles as being very set in home/children and repairs/physical comfort it may not be as easy as making an agreement. What I'm hearing you say though, is that you're not willing to talk to him about these things; and if you're not, there's not much likelihood it will change. You've said your arguing styles are different; have you approached these subjects when there isn't an issue or problem between you? Talking about your concerns and/or how duties and care are divided in your household when there isn't a problem can allow for real constructive discussion. If/when he blows up can you agree to leave it alone for 24 hours, then come back together to talk about it? That allows him to go through his "shut down", and take another look at it when everyone's had time to cool down and process it. Thoughts?
What I really suspect though, is that your issues go a lot deeper than house/childcare issues. You've described a pretty significant rift between you and his family, and I think there's still anger/resentment just under the surface for him, and some insecurity and fear on your end. I'll bet there's some anger/resentment on your end too, regarding his family and how he dealt (and deals) with that. You may be afraid to express it, but I'll bet it's there; I can't imagine it not being there.
It seems like what you've got is a huge unresolved issue brushed under the rug while you try to go about your lives. But, I suspect that big problem is having an influence on your everyday problems, and perhaps is causing some. That big problem is affecting your ability to deal with your everyday problems effectively (you're afraid to confront them with him) and he probably uses that to give himself more freedom and maybe run just a little roughshod over you. Even if he is't intentionally doing it, it's likely that his anger is affecting his choices in how he deals with things. You say he gets better the longer he's away from his family, but you have to know that he's not really getting better; the issues he has from growing up and living in a dysfunctional family are still there, they just aren't as apparent; the only place they've gone is deeper, underground. In order to resolve those issues he'll need to do some work in therapy. Which leads me to my last question (finally, huh?!) Did you see a couples counselor when you were dealing with the family issue? If you didn't, I'd really urge you to do that now. You've got a lot of issues that are getting deeper and more serious the longer they're avoided, and they're having a negative effect on your daily lives together. If you did see a therapist, since the issues aren't resolved, I think it would be wise to go back for a bit.
To answer your question about men and children, my ex-husband wanted only to deal with the kids on his terms, when it was "fun" and convenient for him. Dealing with a crying child or having to do anything when he didn't want to, he really resented. The man who is my husband now, I'm certain would have been wonderful with infants and small children, but he never had the opportunity. The men I work with (a little more than 20) do a great amount of care of their children and love doing it. Some have expressed having no time left for their relationship, they work all day, go home and taking on the role of "dad", once the kids are in bed, they're too exhausted to have anything left. I'm not saying all men are active fathers, but the men I work with are. Your husband may be "busy", but when children are in the picture, sacrifices have to be made, and the children shouldn't be what's sacrificed, IMO. But, I don't think this is the crux of your problem. I do think that if you resolve the issues that are in your relationship, if the daily ones don't go away as a result, you'll at least be in a position to be able to address them and effectively resolve them.
~ cl-2nd_life"You can't control the length of your life,
but you can control the width and depth."
~ Author unknown
"Ignoring the facts
does not change the facts"
I think you're right about a lot of things. Some of them are still hard to hear.
M2E
~ cl-2nd_life"You can't control the length of your life,
but you can control the width and depth."
~ Author unknown
"Ignoring the facts
does not change the facts"
In terms of chores on weekends, no, he's been like that for the 11 years I've known him. He has pretty much always preferred to start later (he's not a morning person) and to work really late. Like I said, he'd often work into the dark. He's always had this huge list of crap to do, but when we moved to a house that wasn't a fixer-upper, I thought he'd be done with it. Now it's just a whole new set of stuff to do...
But, in some respects the problems with his mother started when I got pregnant. They co-owned a house before I knew him, so when I moved in, it was all of us. That lasted about 9 years, mostly b/c she had her own separate apartment (studio) area. Before the pregnancy, she was pretty solitary and I'd go up to see her every day after work and over the weekend, etc. But she rarely came through our section of the house when we were home. I used to clean her bathroom for her b/c it was always filthy - and then she'd get sick from it. She doesn't drive at night or in the snow, so I'd take her to groceries, errands, etc. I also took her to all her doc appts (incl. more than a dozen appts for eye problems that she couldn't drive herself home from), but her own kids in the area (<45 minutes and 4 kids besides my H) didn't even try. All his siblings have older kids, so they were all wrapped up with their family stuff and were more than happy to abdicate any responsibility to their mom on me. And when I got PG, I stopped doing it and I never started again, so they (H's siblings and spouses) resent that MIL isn't taken care of anymore and they have stuff to do.
When I got PG with Em, MIL went nuts. We took her to all 4 ultrasound appts and tried to include her, only to have her tell people things that we explicitly told her were just for us (complications I had, gender, etc.). She said some pretty nasty things, my personal favorite being in response to me saying that I didn't want visitors at the hospital, when she replied, "I will invite whoever I want to the hospital. This is about ME being a grandmother and you need to close your mouth, lie back, and be gracious." Oh, my DD is the youngest of 11 grandkids, so she wasn't a first-timer.
After the baby was born it got worse. She has always smoked, but she suddenly started leaving the door to her area open while we were at work. So, we'd come home to find the house full of cigarette smoke when we brought in our baby. She wouldn't close it, even when H asked her to try to be attentive (the nursery would smell!). And she just told him that it was easier for her, so she didn't have to go up and down one flight of stairs to let the dog up and down at will.
She used to walk in while I was breast feeding (I had problems with BFing - mine and baby's) and stand over me from behind, reeking like cigarette smoke and in her pajamas, when I'd been up all night. I felt so utterly betrayed and on display. It was horrible.
Anyway, so I finally told him this had to end. And we found a new house, told his mother, put the old one up for sale, and ultimately moved out. We bought her out at 50% of the profit of the house. BTW - his agreement with his mother had always been that they were going to sell the house as soon as he renovated the kitchen (last project), which was finished in April 05. His siblings are equally ticked with him, that he had "abandoned" their mother. And yes, he is the youngest of 5, last to marry, last to have kids, and the one who always took care of her.
Timeline -Baby came in June. Offer on next house at the end of August. Offer on old house in mid-September. Moved in early Nov.
MIL actually told him she was going to move in with us to a finished area behind the detached garage. I just couldn't do it and told him that if she moved in, the baby and I weren't. She never did, but none of her other kids offered, either. She went on a waiting list for senior citizen assisted living, stayed with her daughter until Jan when she got in. She hasn't spoken to me since Dec 05. She has been to our house and seen me since then, but she won't speak to me.
I think my husband hates me for this.
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