Coping with a selfish partner

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Good man, workaholic, grafter, provides etc etc....but wants to have the freedom to do what he likes so I'm usually stuck on my own or up late doing all the things I cant get done in the day as he wont help at all.

Hobbies at weekend hours and hours bike riding, motorbikes, fitness, early nights, early mornings etc. I'm left struggling to find how to entertain two under 5's.

Talk about it....have but he states he works hard and he wants to enjoy and get fit at weekends/evenings. He just doesnt enjoy doing the family thing at all.

Im a SAHM and particially help run the business. Like most mums I do everything and I mean everything. I do enjoy my home life but really he is taking the P out of me to an extent I'm starting to stick up for myself and its just causing bad vibes. Being more assertive just makes the atmos worse and I just dont know how to get around this.

He's always been pretty self centered but this isnt the family life I envisaged. He didnt enjoy the baby stage at all and managed to avoid any help there and really doesnt do much with the boys at all - only maintenance and boy things but wouldnt dream of acually taking them out. He does love them but they seem to be 99% my responsibility.

I usually dont go to bed till late these days as this is the only me time I get. What makes me laugh most of the time he thinks we are great together (not surprised having a fab housekeeper) Sex to him has no connection with how well we are getting along he still expects it which bugs me. This is my 2nd marriage but honestly its not great.

'Ironically, his mother left his father for near enough the same reason (many yrs ago) he resents his mother for this but really he is turning into his father!!!!'

'Its like he does know what he's like but doesnt want to change (like he's giving in)madness!'

I really don't know what to tell you because I'll never for the life of me understand how or why people stay in relationships like this other than they have no self-love left anymore.

And if you can't love yourself, you can't really love much of anything else best you can.

Instead of focusing on him, focus on you and why you think because 'he works hard' that means you deserve to be treated as a non-person.

That's honestly the best advice I can offer you.

You can't talk sense into him, because he doesn't want to hear it.

So talk some into yourself.

Would you be happy for your sons to treat someone like the way you're being treated, because there's a very good chance they'll end up on their own as fewer and fewer women are putting up with men like this.

No people are not saying that you will get resentful and that you'll wander off. I'm saying that he will wander off, claiming that he wasn't "getting enough" from the relationship.

Yes, that could happen to you too, but much further down the line than this - at the point when you have "given up".

I run my own business too incidentally and understand acutely why it is different to a 9-5 but that is no excuse and you are making excuses for him and why you're putting up with it.

If he can manage to organise his time enough that he can do out in the evening and weekends, he can manage to organise him time enough to let you go out in the evenings and the weekends.

As others have said, would you treat him the way he treats you? I doubt it. So don't let him treat you as the help. Housekeepers don't work 24/7 anyway. You are deserving of time to yourself just as much as he is. You work ridiculously hard - looking after your children, keeping the home and running the farm.

STOP PUTTING UP WITH IT! Do not make excuses that he works hard. SO DO YOU!

If you aren't happy, change the situation. Life is too short to be miserable.