Mx,
New fathers - if they want a successful marriage have to develop a whole new skillset and a new mindset.
If you are able to do that you will have a happier marriage even than you do today. Hard to believe but true.
If you are unable you will have an "average or worse" marriage which IMO is not a happy situation.
The good news is that this is literally entirely in your hands. Your W clearly loves you and IF you step up here she will actually love you even more. However if you project to "her" what you have projected here - you will really struggle.
The pregnancy and then the baby may well mess with your W's hormones. This means SHE is likely to be more emotional. And that means YOU need to be LESS emotional, more calm and supportive no matter how you feel inside. If you freak out when she freaks out - you will slowly harm the marriage. It may not be fair but it is true.
Here is why "post baby" life gets bad for so many men.
- W has a huge new responsibility and decreases focus on H
- H is not as helpful to W, feels neglected
- W senses H is resentful of baby - this is a train wreck - W is programmed to prioritize baby as number 1 - compete with baby = lose
So what you need to do is help her with your baby - it is after all half you. And then if she is spending time with friends/family/work/etc. to a point where you are getting deprioritized address that. Meaning she WILL put the baby ahead of you. Don't fight it.
But be firm about not letting her put anyone else ahead of you or you may find yourself slowly getting deprioritized.
Read no more Mr. nice guy. But none of this is going to work if you do not get good at managing your emotions. Because being firm/tough/assertive - and you will need to be that way at times - only works if you are in control of "you".
Quote:
Originally Posted by MxRacer965  I married her because I love her, simple as that. It has nothing to do with religious beliefs or anything else other than that. And I never said anything about not wanting children with HER as opposed to someone else. If I have to have children, of course I would want it to be with her! I am just not sure that I ever really wanted them to begin with and as my best man at our wedding said in his speech that he knows I "will always do whatever it takes to make our marriage work because I love my wife and am self sacrificing", to paraphrase anyway. I did this for her, not for me. And it isn't about "me me me". It's about "us us us". I love our life together just as it is today and wouldn't change it for ANYTHING. This is the exact OPPOSITE of that. So I'm trying to get there. It's taking a while, and I have setbacks as I described above with the Terror Kid, etc. which is when I decide I have had enough I come here for CONSTRUCTIVE feedback.
I will certainly make sure to post again afterwards. I'm not above hearing "I told you so" from others!  Live and learn. I'm certainly not afraid to admin when I'm wrong!
And yes, I am concerned about our overall relationship and our lives afterwards. Like I said, the gravity of the situation is certainly not lost on me. This is a monumental change, at least from where I'm sitting, and I fear it will seriously impact our lives and relationship negatively. I think I have this feeling because I see so many married couples around me that are miserable. The common thing between them all is they have kids. So do kids make you miserable and destroy your marriage? Not necessarily in the short term, but in the long term? Like I said before, other than this, our relationship is about as close to perfect as you could get, IMO anyway (I could elaborate for a long time on this, but I'll skip it and hope you all take my word for it). I fear this unknown variable will cause us to end up like so many of the other miserable married couples I see around me all the time. My wife is all that REALLY matters to me and if anything were to lessen my relationship and marriage with her I would be very distraught. |
