So - I apologise in advance this may be a long thread sad Sorry if it bores.......sad
I am really at my wits end and a bit desperate to be honest. Maybe a little background would help.
I am a fifty year old male, and my wife is in her early / middle forties. We have been together six years and have two wonderful little girls aged 4 and 3.
Everyone thinks we’re the perfect family. We are both teachers - although my wife has recently career changed. She was a nurse. She was qualified in both disciplines.
My wife is a wonderful lady. As mentioned, she is a qualified nurse and a qualified teacher. She came to the UK from Eastern Europe with the teacher qualification, put herself through university in the UK and qualified as a nurse too. She rose up the ranks to a band five. She is beautiful, intelligent and generally (and genuinely) wonderful to me.
Our problems really did start when the first child came along. She has admitted suffering from depression in the past before she met me, and displayed all the symptoms of PNT after the first child. However, she wouldn’t see a doctor. Both pregnancies were extremely difficult and obviously in quick succession and both in her forties. She genuinely nearly died on the second one - it was hideous and I felt desperate. I was there every step of the way to help.
The problems are basically disagreements over the children and the way they are brought up. Short version is that I am allowed little to no input in the children’s behaviour or the way they are brought up. For example, even though they are 4 and 3 I have never been allowed to put one of them to bed.
Her parenting choices completely bewilder me. Even simple things like for example - they clean their teeth at night (when she remembers) before bed and then drink sugary apple juice afterwards. They are both very intelligent, very strong, very forceful girls and with my wife they are essentially allowed to do what they want. My wife will ask them to do something, they will say no, and she will just give in. For example - they will ask to watch Paw Patrol, she will say no, and they will just throw a tantrum - literally smashing things and throwing things across the room, kicking and hitting her and she will just give in and say yes.
I believe the children need a strong hand - I don’t believe in shouting and screaming at them but I do set strong boundaries and have an expectation that they will listen to me. They do. My wife tends to be soft soft soft, explode which sometimes involves hitting them.
There are many many other examples but I really don’t want to turn this into a slagging match because she is also wonderful with them in many ways - she does art and craft with them (which isn’t my area at all) and spends all her time with them. She is completely devoted to them and loves them completely. She is a great mother.
The eldest started having problems even at nursery - she was hitting other children if they wouldn’t give her toys and generally kicking and punching her key worker if she paid any attention to any other child. The nursery was the best nursery in the area. When they mentioned the issue to us, I tried to listen and take it on board but my wife just insisted that the key worker was no good and wanted to take our daughter out of the nursery.
Our daughter started KG this year and had three major meltdowns in six weeks, attacking other children if they wouldn’t give her their toys. I tried to speak to my wife about this after we were called in (I teach at the same school) but my wife insisted it was the school’s fault and that ownership is merely a construct that adults place on things and that children don’t understand ownership so the other children should just give our daughter their toys anyway.
If I try to express an opinion on the children at all the general response of my wife is to get extremely aggressive and confrontational with me. If we manage to get to the stage where we are discussing how we can both be better towards each other, then she will throw allegations at me about how I behave but when I ask her (genuinely) to give me examples of how I have behaved in a certain way so I can be better (I want to be better) she just shouts at me and says she shouldn’t have to give me examples I should know.
We did manage to have an interesting conversation a few weeks ago and during that discussion she did say that her mother bullies her, her father bullies her, her brother bullies her, I bully her and my sister bullies her. She said the only person who doesn’t is my Dad. Her mother is a very strong woman, deeply unpleasant, who divorced her husband (my wife’s father) twenty years ago but kept him living with her ever since. He still loves her, is totally dominated by her and is a full alcoholic - drinking ten cans of strong beer by 9am and just keeping going. He lives upstairs in the house and only comes out occasionally to drive his ex wife somewhere.
Now the thing is - we do have lovely family times together. As long as I don’t express an opinion on the children’s upbringing or try and be too involved we have great times. Our children love both of us (although her more, to be fair) and as a family things can be very very good.
I love my wife (although she has refused me sex since she fell pregnant with our second daughter so we have only actually been intimate for less than half our relationship. However, sex is not something that one person has to give to another so I have to deal with it), and I love my children very much. If we did split up then I wouldn’t ever see the kids as she would go home to her country and bring the kids up speaking her language and I would live in the Middle East where we live now so I would have little or no contact. Her and the kids already speak her language even when around me and it’s beginning to get to the stage where I can’t understand them sometimes anyway.
I also love her, and believe that when you marry someone and have kids you really should do everything you can to stay together and be a proper family. She comes from a broken home, I don’t and I believe divorce is not a great thing at all.
But I really don’t know what to do.
The relationship is rocky and she suggested that we write down our views of each other in positive and negative columns so we could properly discuss. This was suggested seven weeks ago. I did mine in a few days and gave them to her - she has never done her list about me, saying she has been too busy, so I can’t know how she wants me to be better and the good things she feels about me so I can make an effort to improve.
I worry about my kids and how they are going to grow up, I want to be there for them - and for my wife too. I love them all - but I don’t know what to do.
Sorry for the long post......