Traditional roles, Are they really....

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Traditional roles, Are they really....
886
Tue, 09-21-2004 - 9:04am
healthy for women or men? Let me just preface this by saying I have been living in a traditional role my entire married life. Dh brings home the paycheck and I raise the kids. This past weekend we came from a family gathering that involved all the women working and all of the men sitting and watching sports. Frankly, I am sick of it.I am completely wiped out after those things! I have four kids, two of which are 3 and 5 and need to be supervised, so I am working twice as hard! Just this morning dh told me not to buy anything without clearing it with him first....bleck! I am beginning to feel as if the kids get short changed when families are traditional. Dads don't interact with their kids as much as they should. Moms get to feel like a slave to their families. I am beginning to feel as if it is best for families if the mom at least works part time because then the dh can be more active in parenting and keeping up the household. This is sort of a vent but a debate as well. I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts.~Lisa

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 10-01-2004 - 10:46am
Which is exactly why I don't think anyone ought to be putting all the blame for the demise of a 25 year marriage on her DH.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
Fri, 10-01-2004 - 11:11am
If your not trying to prove something, why do you keep yammering about it?~Lisa
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-07-2004
Fri, 10-01-2004 - 11:27am
LOL, No. Being addicted to cigarettes has nothing to do with smoking around your kids. You can be addicted and spare them exposure. Lots of parents do that.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-07-2004
Fri, 10-01-2004 - 11:28am
LOL, I'm not working through my issues here. They've already been worked through. I'm just offering explanations for why someone might not want to feel obligated to have sex with someone else.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-07-2004
Fri, 10-01-2004 - 11:41am
Yup. That's what I thought back then. Which is why I was foolish enough to have two kids with him. I have come to the sad realization that he didn't go through with the reversal hoping it would work. He went through with it hoping it wouldn't work (the odds were WAY in his favor here). That way he would have kept his promise. Breach of that promise would have been a divorcable offense IMO because it was one of the conditions for my marrying him in the first place. The only reason he had the surgery was he didn't want to see his retirement plan leave and have kids with someone else. Once they were born, he must have figured he could do whatever he wanted and his retirement would be secure because he thought I'd never divorce him with kids. Now we're in a custody battle because his finances are better if he gets the kids.

I don't know whether I'm just an idiot and couldn't see the truth or if it's just so awful I didn't want to see the truth but I didn't see it until after the girls were born. Then it became apparent that something was really wrong. Before kids, he had to stay on good behavior to keep me from leaving and taking my paycheck with me (he gets way more out of boasting about being married to an engineer than I've ever gotten out of being one). After the girls were born, I guess he figured he was scot free and could do whatever he wanted without risk to his retirement plan, namely my income.

The part that's really going to bother me is having to give him half of my pension. He has no pension because he's never managed to stay in one place long enough to get one. It won't amount to much for him though as there is 12 years between our ages. He'll be collecting that pension so early it won't be worth much to him. Unfortunately it will cost me when I retire.

Boy did this turn out backwards. I figured I'd be retireing on his pension as I never thought I'd have a job with a pension. Oh well. Time to pay the piper. I'm just hoping they don't slam me on alimony. The only reason I make more than him is he doesn't want to make more. He likes working for mom and pop organizations where he can go in when he wants, get off when he wants and take as much vacation as he wants. He'd be making twice what I am if he'd taken the job he was offered when dd#1 was 6 months old and he'd have a pension too boot.

My lawyer says the court will consider that he never bothered with retirement savings or staying somewhere long enough to get a pension because he knows he's going to inherit from his parents estate. I don't know how much that will help me but he says it will be considered in the division of property.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 10-01-2004 - 11:55am
Answering your questions is "yammering?" Gee. You know, you could always stop asking me questions if you don't like it that I respond. Or you could just stop reading my posts, which might be a good thing seeing as you're too busy to answer my questions or back up the things you're incorrectly saying about MY posts.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 10-01-2004 - 12:18pm
And lets not forget the famous "I am a great role model because I am an engineer retraining to be a teacher" thread.

"Hasty conclusions are the mark of a fool" Sign in front of a church


Kristi

"I do not want to be a princess! I want to be myself"

Mallory (age 3)

      &nbs

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 10-01-2004 - 12:55pm
I agree wholeheartedly, except that I don't think that no one is kicking the others "mostly" because they aren't bringing their personal problems here. Many women do bring their personal problems here and get tremendous support. I think they "mostly" don't get kicked because they do take their fair share of responsibility and because they are grown up enough so that it wouldn't TAKE a swift kick in the pants to get any of them to value, even if not agree with, the different POVs that they SOUGHT.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-28-2003
Fri, 10-01-2004 - 1:23pm
What I think is so nasty about all this, if I can go by what you are posting as being somewhat accurate, is that now you have rewritten the whole story of your marriage in your head and it sounds terrible. To think that he didn't really want his kids (after years of assuming he did), to think that he married you for a retirement plan, to think that he would deliberately ask for custody as a battle tactic and not through real desire to be with the kids, that all really makes the story of your marriage a sad one. And although divorce sucks and no one ever enjoys it, the story of your marriage doesn't always have to be so grim. (I'm thinking here of Savcal who seems to take the position that she had a nice marriage until the last few years when her xdh changed and made some poor choices.) It's bad enough that your marriage is over but now the entire history of your marriage is ruined too.
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-28-2003
Fri, 10-01-2004 - 1:31pm
If I may psychoanalyze...

I think it's a defense mechanism. GK strikes me as someone who feels more comfortable if she sees things as black and white. "DC is best." "Piano lessons are good." "My marriage was and is bad."

I think she has conflicts about divorce. I think she may be able to deal with that conflict, especially putting her dds through it, better if she can make is an "absolute."

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