He says we feel like roommates. I would agree. We have an almost one year old. To be fair, we haven’t been on any date nights since baby was born, despite having offers of childcare. It’s at the stage where he doesn’t want to spend time with me, not even sitting on the sofa to watch something together. He says it would feel forced because we don’t have anything in common at the moment and there isn’t the same spark as before. I am thinking, well no shit? If you leave your coffee, it goes cold…
It’s a particularly hard stage with baby as sleep is not great and has not been for months and juggling work, parenting, life and everything else means there is not much space for our marriage. That said I feel hurt that all the affection has totally stopped, this is a big shift in how he was pre baby. He has also lost a significant amount of weight and is very defensive about it when I raise it as a concern. Other family members have noticed this too. I would say he seems withdrawn and often more glazed over at home but happy and functional at work and with friends. He is just not being himself. He thinks he is not a good dad and that I think he is not a good dad. This isn’t true. He has very few and far between little moments of joking and seeming happy like before. He always encourages me to make plans, have fun, have time to myself, spend time with friends and family etc, but often when I try and engage him with a plan, even a family day at the moment, he will make an excuse. I have two leading theories, 1) he doesn’t actually like me anymore and loves our baby but is struggling with the massive shift in responsibility and commitment or 2) he is having a MH difficulty of sort.
Thoughts? I am not sure how I can best help!