Did you and your DH drift while your DC were in “middle childhood”?

[Floorfeelslikelava]

DH has said to me that he’s not happy, that we don’t talk about anything except the DC and he thinks we should get some counselling. He says he doesn’t know what will be left of “us” when the kids leave home if we have nothing else to talk about.

On my side, it has felt for years that I’m asking for more of his time and attention. He works very long hours and I’m almost always on my own in the evening. I’ve said to him previously that I feel lonely and I miss him and I wanted to spend more time together. I agree that it feels as though we’ve drifted. I suspect he thinks my life is and I am boring - I do almost all the child-related stuff simply because he isn’t here and I work part time. I do feel a little bit bewildered, if I’m honest, that I have as I say been almost begging for his attention for a long time and he has suddenly announced this, as if it is a problem I must solve.

The DC are 11 and 8. Is this something that anyone else has experienced? Did you manage to come back from it and find your spark again? (If you all got divorced, please don’t tell me that bit - I feel as through the bottom is dropping out of my world a bit this week.)

mmm, this is a bit odd. Does he really mean you dont' have enough sex? Becuase that's often what seems to be the underlying message.

But let's assume he's saying something that's true. In which ase, perhaps counselling IS the right answer because you have felt unherd for a long time, and now he is saying he feels disconnected, so perhaps those are things to explore in therapy?

Can you say to him that you have felt the same for a while and that you've asked him to engage more but he hasn't. That you're glad he also sees it's a problem and that yes, you'd like to go to a therapist and talk about what you BOTH need and want, and where you have found difficulties?

It’s a very difficult time

tell him you agree - that you don’t like this drifting apart - that you want to have a life beyond the kids

I suspect he finds you say you want more of him but only talk about family stuff

it really helps if you can carve out some time for the two of you - a babysitter once a month

and perhaps both share what you want form life when the kids are grown - travel? Then make an effort to watch a travel program together ? Move location - watch location location. Try and find a future thing that you both connect on and can dream towards together

Yes op that was us, as another poster said it was a sex thing too, but I remember him being really upset one day and saying ‘when did we stop going places? Why did we stop even trying?’ Hopefully ye can turn it around

I sympathise OP.

My children are 11 and 8 and me and DH's quality time together (and I don't just mean sex) is far more impacted now that it ever was when they were babies, toddlers, young children etc.

They take up all of our time and we have definitely noticed it worsening the older they get. We maybe get 30-60 together a day to watch something on the TV but that's it.

I used to laugh when people told me that parenting gets harder and more time consuming as the children get older, but they weren't wrong!!

Agree with him. Ask him what would he suggest.

Honestly, we’re in a better place now (dc 13 and 10) than when they were little. Life is more relaxed, hands on parenting less intense although the worries they bring can still be there. We have a good work life balance on the whole though. He wfh. I work out of the home but only 4 days per week.

DC do dominate the conversation often but we try and do nice things together. Sometimes he’ll take a day off when I’m off and we’ll go for lunch/brunch/ day out. The kids are at an age where they are good company though so we do nice things and events as a family. Meals out, sporting events, days out. We don’t have any childcare so we don’t get evenings out on our own really but we get by and we both have social lives away from each other too.

It sounds like you don’t have much fun, either together or separately and maybe you’ve lost a bit of your identity. If he thinks you’re boring, would he take over more of the parenting whilst you did more for yourself (probably not). Counselling maybe a good idea.

Yep split around this age. Also dating is hard because the kids need your time. Mine are 15 and 10 and still only time i can date is a sunday or alt sat nights. But men appear to want more than that so its like a no win situation.

The best couples ive seen at dd secondary school.

1. Learnt to ski together
2. Go to the gym together
3. Holiday once every year without kids
4. Weekend trips without kids

Maybe try some salsa lessons.

Definitely that's my experience too OP. It's good that he wants counselling, he has things he needs to say. I think its possibly the opposite in my house in terms of the dynamic. Dh is always looking to do things with me and I'm often the one making myself unavailable. It's not personal just being overwhelmed and not having any time to just be me. Sometimes I just crave silence and solitude and he used to take that as some sort of rejection, he gets it now I think.

Since my youngest turned 12 a few months ago I feel my life coming back. We have gone for dinner or just walks together, we went away overnight and left the kids home alone (eldest is 17), we have started to talk about things other than kids and laundry and money and DIY, and make plans together again. We have a long way to go and intimacy is slowly coming back. There is hope for us yet I think.

We’ve both agreed that sex isn’t the problem, actually. But I do take your point that perhaps on the odd occasion when I do get more of his time, it does end up being consumed in talk about family stuff, rather than politics or the books we’ve read. I did wonder about carving out time to sit together and have a cuddle and listen to a podcast on something interesting together every night.

I did try to persuade DH to put aside one night a week to go and learn something new together - a sport, a language, anything. Unfortunately, he isn’t that keen.

I kind of feel that still loving each other when the kids leave home is a decision that you make - that if you find that you don’t have as much in common at that point, you be as open minded as possible and try new things until you hit on more things that you both enjoy. I am pretty stunned to learn that he thinks it’s only worth being together if it’s sunshine and roses all the way. I just don’t think that’s realistic in the parenting years. Or usual.

Ours are similar ages 7 & 12 and I do feel a bit like we are in survival mode, but I got diagnosed with cancer a year ago so this past year has been pretty horrific. I don’t think it’s because of the ages of our dc though. I think it can be an age when there is a lot of running around to activities, being the taxi, ships passing in the night.

In your case though, it sounds like your dh doesn’t want to spend time together. This is very different to not easily being able to, or being to unwell to (in our case).

Could you set aside a night once a month or a lunch once a month for the two of you? Not to take a class or whatever, but just to spend together. We don’t have any childcare in the evenings, but we do go out for a nice grown up lunch when we can. We haven’t run out of things to talk about, but it’s definitely not the free wheeling times of our youth, because neither of us does much that the other doesn’t already know about. You do need to make time and space for each other though. He needs to be willing to do that.

Offering my solidarity, our DC are also 11 and 8 (well the eldest turns 11 in 5 days). I'm a SAHM, DH has a busy job with lots of trips away and evenings out, mainly meals with colleagues. When he is at home for a family meal he's so tired he goes to bed early. We haven't had sex for over a year, due to he's always tired and he has ED, we have tried but it's not working. I'm often reading on here about perimenopausal women not wanting sex anymore and I almost wish I was one of them, but no, I want sex and I don't know what to do.
He's a very involved dad and tells me loves me every day, I'm not going to leave him, I just crave time to ourselves.

It’s almost harder now that our eldest doesn’t go to bed until 9/9.30. Even the time available has been squished down into perhaps an hour and a half before we collapse into bed too.

I do wonder whether we expected too much of this period. Perhaps we thought that once we were through the little-kid years, we’d have more time to ourselves again. It’s just that we filled up that time with deliveries to hockey and football and swimming, etc.

I think it’s very easy to just fall in the habit of following your routines and not actually enjoying life / exploring new things / spending proper quality time together.

It’s hard to not do that really, what with work, school, the endless chores…

You need to carve out time to do your own things / spend actual quality time together.

I do think this is a difficult time and yes, logistic etc are a nightmare. Plus its often the time we all seem to have the least money. A big part of our relationshp is based on an ongoing whatsapp conversation!

It seems like you’re both on the same page about the fact something is missing, but in different places about what to do about it.

I think he’s right that you do need to be aware of what’s going on now or you will be in a difficult place when the children do leave home, however, that’s not going to happen if he’s not making himself available for you.

Ideally you need to have some time carved out for just the two of you to do fun stuff together/weekend without the kids or whatever, plus you need time to do your own things, so that your interests are widened and you have other things to talk about.

It is hard when the kids are staying up
later but that just means you have to be extra intentional about your time together. You have to plan for it rather than just drifting along accepting the gap. It’s about sitting down and saying ‘Our relationship is a priority, what plans, schedules and sacrifices in other areas are we going to put in place to improve things?’ You have to work at it as a team. I’d go along with the counselling too as things may come out of that which will be enlightening and helpful for you both.

It sounds to me like he’s also working too many hours. It’s very easy to hide behind that and say ‘It’s my job, there’s nothing I can do’ but that’s a cop-out. If it’s important enough he can almost change some
aspects of this.