To wonder when life got so... bleurgh?

[fatflaps]

Mid 30s, 2 DC under 5, married, work FT.

I'm not sure if it's apathy or depression or what but life feels a bit flat and like I scowl quite a lot.

I get frustrated easily and don't laugh very often. I guess I'm pretty uptight. I feel lazy and complacent and tired.

DH and I often rub each other up the wrong way. We haven't had sex for ages, like a year or something. I love him dearly but feel quite distant from him. I think he feels the same.

I have very little patience with the children to the point where today I've just put them in front of the telly so I can just switch off a bit. Then I feel guilty as I'm at work all week and, when I took this full time job, had intended to make the weekends all about the kids...

My parents are close by but I'm ashamed to say I'm not very tolerant of their set ways. I suspect DM is borderline narc so think I'm dealing with facing that too.

The house needs a lot of work and the work we have done is half finished.

I've just started a new hobby but I can feel the excuses to not bother going creeping in.

I find my friends hard work. Not particulate close geographically or emotionally to my siblings.

On the face of it, I've got noting to moan about (lovely family, good job paying well, nice house). Yet I am moany. There's not much joy in anything at the moment and I don't really know why. But it's not that I'm unhappy - just not specially happy either.

And i feel super brattish too as I'm fully aware that loads of people have proper/real/big/serious/devastating/tough shit going on and here's me moaning about, well, er, nothing really.

Is this normal? Does everyone else with small children feel a bit zombie-ish? I'd like to go and live a simple life on a desert island, or do something really adventurous that will really ignite some excitement. But alas, there's washing to be hung out and I need to magic something up for dinner................

Yes I felt like this, it passed. Can you get someone to look after DCs so you and DH can get a break? Baby steps

I feel the same at times.

Again - 2 dc (6 and 8), lovely husband, nice house and car, 2 secure jobs, good health - nothing to moan about.

But it's just all so much at times. And yes it does feel brattish but that's how I feel. Every fucker wants a piece of me. My boss, my parents and MIL (favours), the dc, dh (sex is nowhere near as frequent as he would like), friends.

Sometimes it gets on top of me - the responsibility and the repetitiveness. From home to school to work and back again every day. Shopping and cleaning and extra curricular stuff for the dc every weekend (and dh more than pulls his weight so I can't moan about that).

But it doesn't take much to tip me over and then I start listing everything that needs doing and it's a huge black spiral downwards because there just isn't enough time.

It's not depression (with me), it's just a childish grump that I get in that can last for minutes or days at a time, depending on what caused it.

My god greasels you've hit so many nails on the head.

How do you snap out of it?

I'd love to be one of those families who look so relaxed and happy.

I can't work out if I need a holiday, antidepressants or vodka.

The whole lack of time does my head in. Today I've been so unproductive and buggered around doing sod all when there are a million things I could have done. But I just haven't been arsed.

I bet there are lots of us who feel like this x

You're not alone!

Another one in the 'Meh' club here.

I only work 25 hours a week, but by the time I've factored in school runs, homework, housework, spending time with 11yo DD (who is going through puberty with a vengeance and needing a lot of mum time) catching up with DH and pandering to geriatric parents, the minute amount of time I have for me is only good for mumsnetting and TV 'cos I'm so knackered.

I've been having counselling recently and told my therapist that I feel like I need to shut 'me' in a box and just knuckle down and accept that for the next few years I am simple Wife, Mother, Daughter & Employee. I hoped he might take it as the desperate cry for help it was as I'd spent the previous 3 days in tears and unable to eat. Instead he seemed to think it was a viable alternative to constantly trying and failing to make time for myself and getting frustrated.

Thankfully I'm feeling a bit less negative now, and have a week's annual leave soon which I have made clear to my family is going to be all amount me.

My DH laughs me when i stay up until all hours daydreaming and planning fantasy holidays and adventures, but quite honestly it's the only way I'm staying sane at the moment.

to everyone else in the same crappy boat atm.

You are definitely not alone and have articulated what I feel to a T.

Well I feel exactly the same as you OP and I don't even have children- so what the hell is my excuse?!

I just really struggle to feel 'happy' I never take the joy out of the small things, I'm always expecting life to be adverntorous and exciting and if it isn't I feel really down.

I've always been like it really. I don't actually think I know how to be happy.

Feel exactly the same.

My dc are 1 and 3, dh works 12 hour shifts and is usually working at the weekend.

I ashamed to admit that I find life a chore often.

You are not alone.

I am in a similar mindset OP. I think it is just blah blah blah - week in week out. DH and I were talking about it the other day and we both feel it. We love our kids and wouldn't change them but it is just feels like a long, uphill march. Still love my husband, like my job etc but we are just both so bored.

I know this is so spoilt/first world/middle class problem but I suspect I miss the excitement of my life before kids - there was always something to achieve/do/niceholidaytobook it's very shallow, but we had a lot of fun and now it's just so hard sometimes to work up the same enthusiasm for a crappy week in a self catering apartment somewhere shit vaguely warm. Wah Wah Wah poor me.

Yep.

Only one DC of my own but DH and I both work full time, we are often away with work and juggling nursery runs, dog walking, demands of FIL and my DSS on top of everything else is such too much sometimes.

Having young children is hard. Maybe it's the realisation things aren't all about you anymore. It's alot of responsibility.
Drop things you could do without and concentrate on what you would like to do, rather than what is expected
Try and recoup your relationship with your husband. Not having sex for years isn't normal.

I'm the same (ish) age as you but had my children a bit younger (one is disabled so I'm not spoilt) and life is meh sometimes, that's absolutely normal but concentrate on what is good and try and change what is bad and yes you are lucky

I found life very, very hard when my children were under-5s. I really felt sorry for myself a lot.

I started to feel young and happy again as they got older - they are infrequently sick (touch wood!) and we go out again because we can sleep in!

Things will get better.

Yep. Drudge drudge drudge. Go to work, get through it, go home, do a whole load of never ending housework, have one or two nice hours at the weekend then start the whole bloody week all over again.
I seem to live for holidays which are over in a flash. To make it worse, 50 is fast approaching (so not even small children excuse) and it feels as though time is fleeting. But we are part of a generation who are going to be working until nearly 70 or beyond and then not have the lovely retirement we see our parents enjoying.

The house needs huge updating and revamping and we haven't been able to afford it for the last 20 years. I'm starting to think maybe it will never get done, and this is going to be it. Stuck in a run down tiny terrace for the rest of our lives working ourselves into the grave.

Sorry, that was shit but very cathartic! And like other posters on here, I have a lovely family, a roof over my head and food to eat - so nothing really to grumble over. I just wish life was more fun.

When i'm in my little black hole, very little can snap me out of it. Dh being lovely and running me a bath with candles - I think 'Oh fucking great, he's so wonderful and i'm just a massive cunt all the time'. The dc being kind and doing something nice which reminds me how wonderful they are - the guilt creeps in and I start thinking they really deserve more than be being fucking grumpy and working and cleaning and...and so on. Good or bad, it doesn't make a difference to my spiral down. Spilling my tea made me fucking cry a couple of weeks ago (although I was in the middle of an exam at work so was hugely on edge anyway).

The only thing that works for me is ignoring the big picture and concentrating on one thing.

So yesterday, dh was working, I took the dc to their morning activity, got home, did lunch, cleaned up. 1.30pm and had the whole day ahead but I could feel myself 'going' (iykwim). Shouted at the kids for very little reason, then felt shit, then felt tired and sat down. Looked around at the mess that needed cleaning and thought about the back garden which is desperately in need of attention, and the mound of washing and the fact that I hadn't text Zoe back yet who would be pissed off and that my mum wanted me to take her shopping tomorrow after work and I had a pile of unopened mail...it's like a constant stream in my head that I can't switch off.

So I thought fuck it. Everyone can go fuck themselves, Zoe and my mum, and the bastarding weeks worth of washing staring at me from the bathroom and the pile of unopened letters.

Got the kids coats and shoes on, went out to the garden and threw stuff around. Did two runs to the dump to get rid of a pile of scrap wood and accumulated shit (and we'd missed two weeks worth of bloody rubbish collections so had 6 black bags festering in the bin). Got the mower out and did the grass, washed the patio, moved a pile of slabs that dh was supposed to be doing today. I came inside at 5. aching all over and covered in bin juice and crap, with everything else I needed to do still there - but the peace of mind of getting one thing done, along with the physical exercise just made it seem so much more manageable.

Rather than take one day at a time, the only thing that I can do is take it one task at a time and ignore everything else. That does generally snap me back to life and normality. There's far too much in a whole day for 'a day at a time' to work for me.

I don't think you are the only one. I may be tempted to suggest a touch of depression but you need to decide that, I know it makes me fed up, impatient and likely to do nothing. But I know life is boring and most families are fairly boring week in week out because we have to get stuff done and are exhausted by the weekend. Is it work that needs to change or do you just need a spark outside work - time alone with your OH or a hobby/time alone? Sometimes just getting something in the diary can perk you up.

I'm glad to read of other people in this situation. It's so hard with little ones and yet we feel that we should be so thankful for our children but it doesn't mean it's not hard.

I look around at the state of my house and especially my kitchen which was never messy pre dc.

I hate the chaos children bring, my children whinge and complain and fight if I take my eyes of them to tidy up.

I haven't read a book for 3 years as all my waking hours are spent caring for my children or working.

I've no family near by to help.

It's v tough and the word bleurgh sums it up.

I am sending to OP and all of you .

At 52 with DCs in their late(ish) teens I'm at the other end of the tunnel and I think you're probably all just so tired from juggling work, school runs etc that you end up feeling as if you have disappeared.

It does get better, you do re emerge blinking into the light, find your DC's are off to Uni/ work and that you still exist as (more or less) the person you were at the beginning of family life.

I realise that must seem a long way off for you all but it really does go in a heart beat.

It does get better, you do re emerge blinking into the light, find your DC's are off to Uni/ work and that you still exist as (more or less) the person you were at the beginning of family life.

Well that's just made me cry (in a good way)

I think a lowering of expectations is key (dcs are now 9 and 12). A good weekend for me is a run in the park followed by a long bath, a nice meal and sex at some point. If I get those then I don't care if the rest of it is taxi service/house hold slave/ Sargent major. There isn't much "me time" in the average term time week, but we do live for the holidays :)))

Oh and I think exercise ( and sex) does help.

Ybaby I'm hoping that a few more years and it will improve. DD1 is costing us a fortune at the moment (at performing arts school) and DD2 still needs running around here there and everywhere so at the moment we have no time and no money. I do sometimes think that 5 years down the line when they are less dependent on us it will get easier. It's hard to see now.
I do have nicer times with DH than when the DCs were young, so for those with young children, that aspect (and in my experience the sex aspect) gets better as they get to teens.

I feel like this too at times, I think it's the combination of young kids (well DD is 13 but in many ways teens need you as much as toddlers) and ageing parents plus having to work long hours just to have what feels like a pretty modest lifestyle. I'd love to get off the treadmill and do something different but I haven't got time to decide what .

I agree it's totally a first world problem, many people are worse off etc etc but that doesn't mean we don't feel it.

100% understand and agree with you OP

Full time work is so hard when you've got young children. No wonder you're so knackered!!! Everyone needs time for themselves, time for a stimulating hobby and time alone with dh. These should be fundamental to the weekly timetable if at all possible.