Tell me how you get through the bits where you don't like your partner.

[joanofarchitrave]

Any top tips?

It's been a hard few months. I'm losing my sense of humour about it. DH cant help being ill a lot and is currently working on a novel from home.I I can't help being seriously cheesed off. I'm out of the house 12 hours a day, we have one child who's at school all day, but it still seems to be impossible for dh to do very much around the house or keep an eye on ds's hygiene, or run errands. My faultline is that I love my job, I dont want to give it up or reduce my hours - and anyway, how would we live if I did? DH confessed to me a few weeks ago that he had a crush on a friend of mine. If only she were single and felt the same.

Have you explained to him that you were hurt by the disclosure of the crush. Is he trying to tell you he's unhappy with the relationship (rather crewdly)?

I think that when I am finding my partner difficult, I try to talk through the problem with him, explaining why I feel its a problem and hear his side of things. Sometimes understanding each other's POV is enough to make us more considerate of each other. Othertimes we need to try and come up with a compromise or solution.

For example: You might explain how you feel he's giving his best hours to this novel and neglecting other areas of his life which impacts on you, DS (and the dog) and coming up with some kind of limit on the time he spends on it, and other things added in instead e.g. if he finds it difficult to walk the dog alone, maybe he and DS could walk dog together when DS gets in from school.

Its difficult to make specific suggestions without knowing exactly how his condition affects him. Often its said on here that the partner should come up with theiir own solutions and that you shouldn't have to micro-manage them, but I guess you need to work out what he's capable of with his condition and what practical things would improve your lives.

Is his writing sellable? If so, maybe he could spend some of his time writing for mags etc or copywriting to earn enough to pay for a cleaner, dog walker etc. Of course, he can't contract out to someone else the time he needs to spend bonding with you and DS.

Does he go through better patches? It all sounds a bit miserable if not!