We have 3 DCs. Youngest is 5months. No family around to help out. It's bloody hard. I spend all day every day with the children. It's relentless, frustrating, occasionally wonderfully, but often a constant round of demands, complaints and bickering. DH isn't enjoying his job and seems to be being managed out. He's looking for other opportunities and freelance.
We don't seem to communicate well. I'm so bastard tired I can't muster the energy to talk and an often silent. I'm conscious I'm often passive aggressive - try hard not to be but its a default response and sometimes I just haven't got the energy to try to manage conflict in a different way. He's often critical or argumentative, which just makes me even more silent.
We had a humdinger this weekend. He said something hugely hurtful. I was a bitch. I know neither of us want to actually do any long term damage, and that we do actually love each other. But we get to competitive tiredness really quickly, and just aren't being kind to each other. I do understand how stressed out he is. But I'm just totally done in too, and I don't have much left after the children have utterly sapped me. I think he probably feels much the same. We're miles away from each other and I feel so lonely and sad.
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Relationships
What do you do when you're both massively depleted?
BusyCee · 07/03/2016 15:04
I think the first thing is to tell him that you love him so much but that this weekend really got you to realise that you both deserve to have a happier marriage, as in years gone by you'd never have both dreamt of hurting each other the way you both have last weekend. Say you're not happy and you know he isn't either so it's time to put your heads together to work towards the marriage you'd always thought you'd have.
Then chuck in a couple of ideas and ask him to have a think about what could be done to improve things.
It's very important to look forwards for positive changes, rather than back and picking out all the negatives that have been.
If you frame it as wanting positive improvements rather than blame and fight picking, hopefully you can begin to move forwards.
If it looks like turning into a fight, you can say yes, it's been shit but I'd hoped we could now work on improving things rather than looking backwards.
Hopefully reminding yourselves if your love and what you wanted in you lived together will help you to move forwards in a different direction. 
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