I am a married man with a three year old child. My wife and I met when we were very young and I always envisaged us being married and having a family together. For a long while my wife did not want to have children, but eventually she changed her mind and we had our son when we were in our mid 30s. We are now both coming up to 40.
Prior to having our DS we were both really busy working people. I work in a professional job and my wife was had a management job in a council. However, once we had our son it all seemed to go wrong. I love him, but I think he has taken over our lives and our relationship seems to be heading for breakdown.
I feel as if my wife cut me out of decisions to do with parenting for the first two years. She breastfed him as a baby and as a toddler, far longer than I wanted, and I think it got in the way of our relationships (my relationship with him and mine with her) as he was always going to her. She would also wait with him upstairs until he went to sleep, rather than trying to get him to bed earlier so we could be together in the evenings. This went on for ages, although he goes to bed ok now without any problems.
Through all this I was working long hours and felt increasingly fed up that my wife hadn't gone back to work after maternity leave. She had applied for part-time working and they had turned her down, so we agreed that she should leave her job as there was no way that we could manage my hours and her old full-time hours, plus look after a baby. However, I felt that she wasn't really making much effort in the meantime to find something else, as jobs in her field tend to just come up once a year. We had a nursery place, but had to defer it for a year when she did not go back to work. There wasn't any other childcare in the area that we were happy with. So in that year she was just living in a bubble of taking our son out to baby groups and activities, doing volunteering and all the while I was supporting her. During that time I told her that I was having doubts about the relationship, but she didnt do much to put things right.
I have a professional job and a high salary (100k plus) and it annoys me that my wife, at the end of that year, went back to work on a lower salary, even though the job is part time (3 days per week). She often says that she really enjoys her job and likes the fact that it is far more flexible than her old job, so she can do nursery pickups etc, but I still feel that she is not really contributing much. Again, she is doing 'what she likes' and I am subsidising her. She pays about £1k into the currrent account each month, but I pay much more and also contribute to savings, which are almost all put in there by me - apart from an inheritance of hers.
She doesn't do that much around the house, as often I come home from work and there are still toys around and our sons things out when I just want to sit down and relax. She does do housework, but i think she does things inefficiently and expects me to pick up the pieces.
Sometimes I feel as if she thinks of our son first and doesn't think of me at all. I just don't seem to figure in what is important, it is all about 'her'. Our sex life has dwindled and I have asked her to dress up etc, but she doesn't seem keen.
She is well-educated, but I sometimes think that she says stupid things just to annoy me. She will come out with something 'funny' or forget things that I have told her and I think she is being deliberately provoking. This makes me feel very stressed. I tell her not to be stupid, but she then tells me I am being aggressive and shouting. I think that she likes to make out that she is the victim in all this.
I don't know what to do as I think she is looking for a way out.