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Husband seeking respect

1K views 6 replies 4 participants last post by  miketownsend11 
#1 ·
I have been married for 6 years. I feel like I could write a whole book on this thread, but I will try to stick to one area. Here is our key issue:

During our 2nd year of marriage, I took a risk and quit my job to start my own at-home business. She agreed to the idea, so I went for it. . . and succeeded!!
With this new business, I was making much more money than the job I had quit. In addition, it allowed me to stay home and raise our son that was born 6 months after I started my business . . .so we never had to send him to daycare! Sounds great, right??
...well, as many of you probably know, even just ONE child takes a lot of time and patience to raise 5 days/50 hours a week. On top of that, I was running my own online business, which takes a great a deal of time, too. Needless to say, my free time was very limited. I was lucky to get over 4 hours of sleep on weeknights. On a typical weekday, I would watch my son from 8am to 6pm . . . during that time, I would sneak in some small windows of time for my business. Then, later on, after my wife got home and eating dinner and putting our son to bed, I would resume work at around 9pm, and stay up til 3am to get my work done for the day. As for my wife, she works a 9-5 job, Monday through Friday.

Even for a "normal" stay-at-home parent, keeping up with cleaning, dishes, and cooking can be tough . . so imagine how tough it is with a home business that takes over 40 hours! I basically left all cooking duties to my wife as well as sweeping and mopping. I took on dishes and trash and lawn maintenance. Fair deal, I thought, but there were many a days when the wife would come home and be upset about not having dinner made for her. She seemed to act as if life was not fair to her . . the fact that she worked 8 hours, then came home to immediately make dinner and bathe our son was totally unfair -- yes, that is not an easy schedule, but neither is mine!! I feel like the major problem is that not many people (INCLUDING MY WIFE) can relate to what it's like to do what I do. Seriously, how many people do you know that work from home (FULL-TIME) as well as watch their kids over 50 hours a week? Most working parents that I know of are all using daycares or family members to watch their kids during the weekdays.

My wife is also occasionally upset if she comes home to a house that is not 100% clean and tidy . . . but get this . . when the weekend comes (the time that SHE takes over on days), I wake up and always walk to the kitchen, where I see pots and pans covering the entire kitchen floor. My son is playing away while my wife is cooking breakfast. She preaches what she does not practice.

My wife even tried writing me a "To Do List" every morning. Ha! The list usually included cleaning, cooking, and baby care activities that I needed no guidance on. I ignored the list and eventually told her I was going to write HER a list. The next morning, she woke up to a list that said "Stop Writing Lists"

She has come to resent my job, as it prevents me from being the fully available companion that she wants. I tried my best -- I even would go to bed with her and wait for her to fall asleep before I went to work for the evening . . . but that was not good enough. She says it is important to her that we "fall asleep together"

She respects me fully as a father to our child, but as far as our marriage goes, I feel like it is gradually going the wrong direction. A new job may cure that issue of resentment, but I truly love what I do, and we both agreed that we wanted to have a set up where at least one of us could raise our son for the first couple years of his life instead of having a daycare worker do so. My son is now over 2 years old and much more independent, and about to go to daycare for socialization and educational purposes . . .. but that will not give me much more free time . . because we just had baby #2 a couple months ago. And this daycare for my 2yr old is not even full-time -- it is only 3 days a week. She is totally resenting my job -- it has been over 2 years since she asked me anything about my business. Not even a simple "how is business going, honey?" NOTHING

...I feel like the poop is going to hit the fan if she throws a fit about me not cooking dinner enough or any other minute household chore. Raising two kids full time while running an online business takes a lot of patience -- and I feel like I have no patience leftover for her Impatience.

Right now, I deal with her impatience and nagging by ignoring her requests or telling her I will do something "if I finish my work in time" . . . or I say "it will have to wait for now, I have other things I have to take care of right now"
All of my responses are very peaceful, but I feel like to get the full attention and respect and understanding from her, that I need to be LOUD and Aggressive. That is not my style, and I truly believe that will only make things worse. She has been with other guys that were LOUD and had no luck at all with them. I need to even her out, but at this point, I don't know if I can anymore. I feel like a ticking time bomb. I think she is ticking bomb, too.
When we first met, I allowed her to take control of everything and went along with everything. For the past couple of years, I have put my foot down and simply declined her quest for control. She is a "Control Freak Wannabe" and it bugs the crap out of her that she no longer gets her way. I think it even bugs her more that her family and friends are now realizing it . . I always say that the one thing a controlling person hates more than losing control, is having others know about it!

Any advice? I don't want that bombs to go off.
 
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#2 ·
Mike,
It's terrific that your business has succeeded.

Is there a reason you aren't directing some of that money towards services folk who could take on some of the home care tasks you lack time for?

Even having someone come in 20 hours a week would make a massive difference in both of your quality of life.

I'm also a bit puzzled as to why you elected to have a second child without attempting to resolve this friction point.
 
#3 · (Edited)
What percentage of your joint income do you bring into the household?

You have made a mistake that a lot of people do. You have put everything ahead of your relationship with your wife.
As MEM says you can hire help. Hire someone to clean your house. You can even hire someone to watch your child for some number of hours a day while you are working during normal work hours. I did this when I worked from home and my son was young.

You cannot go to bed at 3am every night and have a good marriage. It just does not work that way. The most important relationship in your family is the one between you and your wife. You two are the foundation of your family. If you two fail, your children are left with a broken home. If you don’t want your marriage to blow up, you need to put it first. You need to put your marriage/wife first.

Here’s what I suggest. Tell your wife that you are exhausted from having to work your business after everyone else goes to bed… and you miss being with her. So you are going to hire some help so you can do more of the work during the day.

Tell her that you want her to work with you to fix your marriage. You are the one who is here so you are the one who is here asking questions, so you the one who will need to take the lead of your family and being your marriage back to a healthy place.

Get the books “His Needs, Her Needs” and “Love Busters”. Read them. Then get your wife to read them and do the work together that the books say to do. If you feel you need more help, also go to marriage counseling.

You are right that a lot of people think that when someone works from home they are not really working. My suggestion on that is that you look into how to behave as though you are going off to work every day. Set regular hours. Is your office in a separate room? If not, move it to a room with a door that you can close at the end of the working day and open at the start of the day.

Hire help so that you can work normal hours.

If you search the web you will find a lot of info on how to be more successful of establishing that you do have a job that is important.
 
#4 ·
Exactly. You can't be expected to run the house, a business and care for a small child. You have to give somewhere. If you keep going the way you are, your marriage will be in serious trouble. It's just not worth it.

Hire someone to clean the house - they could come in twice a week.

Hire someone to come watch your son say three mornings a week, even in your home if you'd feel more comfortable with that. Then you can lock yourself in your office and work solidly for a few hours, you'll be surprised how much you'll get done with no distractions.

If you have to choose between hiring a cleaner and a child minder, ditch the cleaner and sit down with your wife and divide up the chores.

You must devote time to your wife and marriage EVERY DAY.

I commend you for your efforts, and I understand that you're doing what you're doing for your family, but now that you can see it's not working so well some changes need to be made.
 
#5 ·
EleGirl, thanks for your feedback. Much appreciated!

To answer your question, I provide about 65% of our total income. I pay majority of the bills.

I actually do plan on hiring help for my business in the future, but I do not have a steady enough workload to split up my income. I have some weeks where I pull in just $300, but then other weeks where I pull in over $2500. Contract workers want steady work, and I can't provide that, especially given the fact that I am the "breadwinner". To provide steady work for contractors, I need to have the ability to be available to clients, contractors, and others during business hours . . . and being alone with 2 kids in the house all day until 5 or 6pm dis-allows my chance for that . . . so I will not really be able to grow this business until I have free reign of my daytime hours. I have many plans and great ideas for this business, but I can't implement any of them until I have the time to commit to them - I will probably have to wait until the kids are both in school.

Hiring help for my business is not possible right now . . and setting your recommended hours is not possible right now, either (at least not in the daytime, as we have a baby that is hungry nearly every hour)

.. hiring help for cleaning our house could be an option, but I am not sure we can afford it. We just bought a new house (well, technically, I bought the house myself, as she had very bad credit) and are about to take on daycare expenses for our oldest son, so don't know how much will be in the budget for cleaners/maids. I will check out quotes, though!

I do agree that the foundation between me and my wife is VITAL. I do think I should point other things out.

-Family and friends are very important to her . . .and she has LOTS of friends! The bad thing about lots of friends is that they take away from alone time and special date nights. Even with my hectic schedule, I do make time for going out . . . but she always wants 1 or 2 other couples to join us. That is fun from time to time, but it totally takes away from our much needed alone time. Keep in mind that most of the time our couples get together, the guys and girls end up separating to do their own things, so I barely ever even see her on many of our nights/days out. To top that, her mother lives close by and is at our house 4 times a week. Obviously, I have no complaints right now, as she helps with the babies, but even BEFORE we had any kids, she was coming over to hang out 3 or 4 times a week. I pointed it out, but it was pretty clear that she was not going to make any effort in telling her mother to come by less often.

I am the only one that sets up "alone date nights" . . . I even sometimes reject the idea of inviting others to join us, to which she responds by calling me anti-social and a hermit. If it was up to her, 95% of our times out together would be with her friends. And even in our rare times alone together, she often says "this is a nice restaurant, we should totally invite Katie and Mark here!" . . . it's almost like she is saying "I'm having fun, but it'd be better if our friends were here"

For us to have a strong foundation, we need to optimize our alone time and we need to respect and support our passions.

One passion of mine is my business, which she never asks about...another passion is playing sports - I played in a basketball league for 3 years, once a week . . she never watched a single game. I can guarantee that if one of her gal's husbands was on my team, she would have came to DOZENS of games because that would have been a chance for her to hang out with her friends. Case in point, there was ONE incident where I played in a tournament with my wife's friend's husband . .and sure enough, her friend was there, so my wife was there, too!

FYI . .due to hectic schedule, I just quit all of my sports leagues -- I know where my priorities are (at least I think I do)

She is passionate about her work as well . .and I often ask how her day at work went at least 2 or 3 times a week. Another passion of hers is taking pictures . . . I helped make a website for her and offered assistance in many other ways.

I have supported her passions/hobbies .. . but don't feel like I get the same support in return.

I feel like every day, there is at least one thing she says or does that puts a dark cloud on our day. If not at me, it is toward our kids. She got extremely worked up two days ago because our oldest son would not smile for a picture she was trying to take. Today, she was upset that I missed a spot on my back with my sunblock while at the beach, and ended up with a sunburn. She lectured me about skin cancer, etc., etc. . . nevermind the fact that she burned herself a week ago while at a park.
Yesterday, I slaved in the kitchen making dinner, only to have her come home and complain about the way I made the pasta. (but she had 2 servings in 1 seating nonetheless)

We knew we were opposites from day one . .. I think it is now catching up to us.
 
#6 ·
Yes, I get that she is not perfect. My advice remains the same.

Get the books “His Needs, Her Needs” and “Love Busters”. Read them. Then get your wife to read them and do the work together that the books say to do. If you feel you need more help, also go to marriage counseling.

The both of you have to put your marriage first. Ask her if she will read the books with you and do what they suggest.

If she says no or only gives it ah half effort then you will need to destabilize the relationship. What that means is that you tell her that either she works on the marriage via counselors, books and you both compromise or you are not staying in the marriage. But only do this if you are about ready to walk because you would have to follow through if she calls your bluff.

If you are not at this point yet, then you read the books and you implement what they say to do.
 
#7 ·
Yes, I realize it seems a bit odd to have a second child without resolving the tension . . . to be honest, we both have always wanted to have at least two children, and we really wanted our son to have a little sibling . . . AND, we are 40 and 39 years old, so, excluding adaption, it' was pretty much now or never if we wanted to have another child. It was a risk to do so, but even worst case scenario, we both know that our sons have great parents, even if the marriage falls apart --that is one thing we can both always agree on.

I am honestly confident that we will thrive in the future -- we just have to tough it out over these next couple of years until both of our sons are more independent. Two working parents with two kids and no daycare is no joke!
 
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