Need advice on work life balance to help save marriage.

[marcg]

Hi all, new here and looking for some advice. I have 2 kids my daughter is 1 and half years old and my son is almost 2 months old. The issue is I feel like when I look around all other fathers seem to be able to support and give their wives time to their selves. Yet we can not find any time for her to be able to go and spend some time away to at least have a little break. Question is how do dads that work a 9 to 5 balance the work life schedule and be able to give their partners time off to just relax? I want to be a better husband but feel like I let her down at every turn.

This is causing a lot of arguments and I think resentment as she feels like a lone parent.

Weekends?

What do you do when you get home from work?

At the weekend and in the evenings, usually.

I didn't get a break as in going away for the night without the kids when they were tiny, but can you have them for an hour or so whilst she has a bath/walk/coffee with a friend?

I used to do the same for my DH.

We also used to take it in turns to have a lie in at the weekends.

Please give us some detail!
What do you do before/after work? Do you go home or out doing something? If you go home what is it you do?
What do you do on weekends?

What are you doing between 6pm and 10pm and all day Saturday and Sunday? There’s two full days and five evenings a week available so what is it that’s getting in the way because it’s not the 9-5 job bit

When can you find time? Mon-Friday 6pm-7am and Saturday and Sunday 24 hours.

If you go to the beach, park, shopping centre or swimming pool early doors, they’re full of knackered looking blokes with prams. As it should be. Be that bloke.

It's changing the mindset. Your partner also works 9-5 doing childcare. Although not paid think of it like that.

So you have the rest of your time to split - equally divide up chores, maybe between ones you prefer each, then whatever time is left you (both) need a) some quality time together b) some quality time alone.

My dh was out of the house from 6.45am until 9pm when the DC were that small.

On Saturday mornings he sorted the children so I.got a lie in and a couple of hours to myself.

Monday to Friday, he always made me tea before he left in the morning and held the baby for long enough for me to shower.

On Sundays I took the children to church and he had a lie in.

He was/is decent, honest and moral. We never argued. I appreciated he was a workaholic.

It varied over time as she had different periods of being full-time SAHM, then part-time at work, plus some full-time working.

Generally she'd put the DC in a crèche at the gym once a week while I was at work, plus go out with friends/colleagues in the evening every couple of weeks. I'd have a lie-in on Saturdays and she'd do the same on Sundays, usually followed by her going out for a run. We'd take it in turns putting the DCs to bed and also getting up in the night. We also aimed to go out together once a month without the DCs.

My general aim was to make sure that we both had roughly the same amount of free time.

My wife is a personal trainer and was teaching classes 3 nights a week from 6pm until 7.30pm and one on Sunday between 11am and 12.30pm. I have taken on those classes so once I finish at 5pm I get ready and leave to teach and I get home around 8.30pm. At that point my daughter is usually in bed and we then have dinner around 9-9.30pm. The mornings we all get up at 7am and at the moment my daughter is going through the stage where she is refusing to do anything with me and just screams for mum. So my wife tends to do the morning wash and potty stuff and I make her coffee and do the breakfast.

Weekends yes you are right I could be more productive and take the kids out on my own. But at the same time she wants the weekends for family stuff. The issue is more during the week where she wants just 1hr or 2hrs to be able to go the gym 3 times a week and somehow we can just not manage to make it work.

By the sounds of it im just being pretty useless and need to step up and just be better.

You’re not actually working 9-5. Three days a week you’re working essentially 9am-7.30pm, which is very different. If she wants to go to the gym 3 times a week (and if she’s getting back into personal training she will need to) then it’s two nights once you get home and one session ‘long-run’ on the weekend. I wonder if you could all go to wherever the PT stuff is at 9am Sunday. You entertain the kids in the pool or whatever there is until 11am, while she’s working out. She takes them at 11am, you do the class, she potters around the park or shops or whatever, you meet at 12.30pm for lunch somewhere. Nice combo of me-time and family time.

If the PT place is an hour each way that’s shit!

Could she take back her classes? Or just give them up altogether so that you aren’t working so much and are more available at home?

Most sensible thing would be for her to take back her classes if that’s what she wants. She can’t have you hold them for her and then complain about it.

In the kindest possible way, if you are teaching her classes, I presume you need the money. If so, there needs to be compromise because you can't afford to buy in any childcare.

Can't she go to the gym on the evenings ypu are home early? What about at weekends?