How to handle the little things

27 replies

hasitreallybeenthatlong · 12/10/2022 18:03

How do you handle those "little disagreements" in relationships? My relationship with OH is rather strained to say the least. We have been working on it, however the last couple of weeks we have barely seen each other and it has been great as we actually missed each other, we both work from home so see almost too much of each other, it's been a nice break. However I was excited to go home and see him and DS, however, I found out he didn't pick DS up for nearly 2 hours after he finished work, for context I hate DS being in nursery so much so as soon as one of us finished we collect him, it's really annoyed me, his reasons were he was tidying the house, he has never tidied the house in the 4 years we have been together so why he started now, turns out he washed the dishes and hoovered the hallway. This has really annoyed me and put a real downer on me seeing him because I'm back to that irritated stage with him. How do you handle the little things and not like them ruin something? Trying to get out of this bad mood before I arrive home!

OP posts:

Cw112 · 12/10/2022 21:36

Also I'd say go for date nights, get someone you trust to babysit ds and go out together, do something nice and reconnect with the people you are outside of being mum and dad etc and just talk and enjoy each others company. To start off you could even agree boundaries of certain topics that are off limits if they normally result in disagreements.

Original poster

hasitreallybeenthatlong · 12/10/2022 21:57

Cw112 · 12/10/2022 21:33

It sounds like you need to learn to pick your battles. Maybe you need to find a way to pause when something irritates you so for example, ds has been longer at nursery today. Instead of immediately wanting to give off to dh pause. Take half an hour to yourself and say you're going for a shower/nap/ tidy the bedroom somewhere you can be more or less alone. Give yourself 30mins to take the time to think about is this actually something that warrants a row, is ds happy and content, is dh OK, is anyone hurt injured or sick, is this thing that happened today going to have a lasting impact on the wellbeing of your family moreso than having another row with dh will. It sounds like you've got into a cycle of being irritated, speaking your irritation, defensiveness on dh part and then a row ensuing so you need to break the cycle. I'm using your child being in nursery as it's the example you've given but it could also be the amount of cleaning he did or whatever the problem is. Hopefully this would give you a chance to pause, reflect and think about whether it's something worth fighting over or if you maybe are having a knee jerk reaction because you've been used to arguing.

I will on an aside say that as the other parent you also need to trust dh to make decisions and judgements on the welfare of your child as they are also his child and you're parenting together so if he feels ds is safe, happy and content and well looked after in nursery then you need to be able to respect him as your coparent unless there's another angle to it we're not understanding here. Otherwise you run the risk of constantly undermining him which will feed into the cycle of rows it sounds like you're having and make you feel like you take all responsibility which is actually possibly a choice you're making rather than something you really need to do.

This is quite possibly the best advice I have ever received. Thank you so much for taking the time to write that, I think every now and again we all get so caught up and I very much feel in a conveyor belt of lie with timings/ routine etc so I will try and adapt a little of this advise into my day to day life.

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