Frustrated Dad

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-09-2009
Frustrated Dad
2943
Wed, 09-09-2009 - 3:28am
I really need some opinions on my situation. I am a 30 year old dad with 3 children. I work 10-12 hrs a day 5 days a week and every other Saturday. I am pretty much a homebody, the only time I really go out is on Sundays during football season to watch the games. I do what i need to in order to support my wife and kids. But I am at wits end with my wife and need some help.
My wifes day is as follows. She wakes up any where from 10am - noon (which means 2 of our children (11 and 7) wake up feed themselves and walk to school) at which point she will got downstairs to the kitchen to light a cigarette and call her sister or best friend. During the 1/2hr to an hour that she is on the phone she will make (for herself)and drink about 3 cups of coffee. At around noon when the baby wakes up (11 months) she'll feed him change his diaper and set him on the floor and mostly ignore him as she calls her mother. Usually around 12:30 she'll head out to do errands leaving me with the baby until 1:30 when she'll get home so I can rush out to work where I'm 20 minutes away from and need to be in by 2.
Heres the thing i have no problem being the sole financial gainer in the house hold but I expect certain things. I guess thats the reason for this post to find out if my expectation are to lofty. I expect her to get up in the morning with the children make them breakfast help them pick out cloths make sure they have their homework and send them off to school( I would even help in the morning but i got sick of waking up in the morning while shes still sleeping when i was the one at work last night). I would like breakfast every once in a while made when i wake up i don't expect it but it would be nice. I would like the baby up before 11am I just don't think he should be sleeping that long. i expect laundry the be cleaned, folded and put away! The laundry in our house gets washed and dried them it usually ends up on the dining room table for half the day then it makes its way over to the living room where its folded and left on the couch for a day or two (is it to much to ask to have it put away). I expect the house clean! Cleaning the kitchen for her consist of of doing the dishes and mopping the floor! Cabinets, frig, counters, stove maybe once a month. Cleaning the dinning room consist of her wiping the table and vacuuming one area of the carpet. Bathroom, living room are cleaned in the same manner and the children's room and bedroom upstairs can go months without cleaning! I expect lunch made before i got to work! No breakfast and lunch not even a packed lunch/diner!I expect a home cooked diner for my children! Not pizza, macaroni or canned spaghetti!!! Is this to much to ask? i expect diner when I get home, real food not something she sends me on yoville or farmtown, which she's on until 2am!! DO I EXPECT TO MUCH? I thought these where to things a stay at home mom did? Are my expectations to old school? I need answers I feel like I'm being taken advantage of and I don't know how much longer I can last.

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iVillage Member
Registered: 10-22-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-03-2010 - 5:59pm

~I don't think so~


I do.


iVillage Member
Registered: 10-22-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-03-2010 - 6:13pm

Yep, I picked up on that immediatley.

Avatar for mom34101
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-03-2010 - 6:41pm

Exactly. To me, those kinds of pleasantries are just common courtesies. DH's family is different, so I get that not everybody does it that way, but I do find it odd.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-22-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-03-2010 - 6:52pm
If you get that not everyone does it the same way that you do then why do you find it odd instead of just different. Finding it odd seems very judgmental, like your way is right and their way is wrong. Why can't both ways even being different be right?
iVillage Member
Registered: 10-22-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-03-2010 - 6:54pm

~

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-24-2010
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-03-2010 - 7:36pm

Since both of us would have to make assumptions, mine would be that it would be more of the same. And I'm not impressed.

Since no one knows, I think I'm done. I don't have any interest in trying to argue whether each snippet of information, if it is true, wouldn't make one a neglectful (uninterested, bad, uninvolved--pick your adjective) parent. I have my opinion on the whole picture, which admittedly is not a great picture (we don't know enough).

“Clearly," said Arthur,"you're an idiot- but you're our kind of idiot. Come on.” 
― Markus ZusakThe Book Thief

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-03-2010
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-03-2010 - 8:21pm

Some people take the easy way out in life. They let themselves go because it

Avatar for mom34101
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-27-2003
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-03-2010 - 11:00pm
Because it does feel odd to me. I wouldn't wake somebody up who was asleep just to greet them, but to me, saying hello and goodbye when you come in and go out is something family and friends do. That's the way I was raised and the way I'm raising my kids. While I get that they don't mean anything by it, I still find it odd that some of dh's family members just come and go without doing that. It just feels like a basic social skill to me.
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-04-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-03-2010 - 11:25pm
Right. Because a school's policy for drop off and pick ups was DIRECTLY responsible for Hayleigh Cumming's disappearance from her home in the middle of the night. Naturally schools would immediately respond with changes in policy.

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Kitty

"I would make a long list, but that would take too much time and I have stuff to do like taking over the world and cooking cheese spaghetti."

************

Kitty

"If you can't annoy somebody with what you write, I think there's little point in writing."-- Kingsley Amis, British novelist, 1971 t .

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-04-2009
In reply to: daddy_gil
Wed, 03-03-2010 - 11:27pm
Not really. The point of his post was clearly "SAHM sux." there really wasn't anything of value in it.

************

Kitty

"I would make a long list, but that would take too much time and I have stuff to do like taking over the world and cooking cheese spaghetti."

************

Kitty

"If you can't annoy somebody with what you write, I think there's little point in writing."-- Kingsley Amis, British novelist, 1971 t .

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