Is love salvagable? (warning: probably boring)

[BumgrapesofWrath]

Been with DH for 7 years, and have two children (toddler and baby.)

I am finding DH increasingly frustrating. I suppose character traits that I once admired are actually quite annoying now we have children. For example, I used to love his laid-back nature, but it's not conducive to family life! Don't want to bore you with the details, but I feel like he needs a rocket up his arse. He loves to start ridiculous projects that end up taking lots of time as he can't seem to estimate how long things take to do. Which also means he is always late. And because of these traits, he ends up being stressed about work all the time as I imagine he procrastinates and trundles along until the shit hits the fan. Then I feel stressed!

I have also noticed how similar he is to his parents. And I can't stand his parents for various reasons. So am finding him a bit of a turn-off for this reason.

I also find myself hoping that the children inherit my personality traits and not his as I'm finding his traits annoying, and actually have witnessed how being like him actually makes adult life quite difficult.

I'm not intending to drip feed. It's all pretty tedious stuff, that's all.

The question is, once you start feeling this level of contempt for someone, is it salvagable? Maybe something that is worth adding at this point is DC2 is only 8 months old, and I have found the transition for one child to two very hard, so maybe my tolerance levels are low.

Also, for what it's worth, I did used to be absolutely, crazily in love with him. But I think it's gone.

I suppose what I mean is all these things really aren't awful, so maybe it's purely a compatibility issue.

I have no idea whether you can get those feelings back. All I know it, it's really hard work bringing up children on your own - so if there isn't anything major wrong then it is probably worth trying to...
Also, it is easy to get things completely out of perspective when you have a baby. Life is quite hard, and you probably aren't getting enough sleep, so maybe you are putting too much focus on DH simply because he's close at hand.
Do you get any time on your own with him without the children? Even if you don't feel like it, if you actually do go out together you may find his qualities become more appealing again. And being laid back is quite a handy trait as the DC get older.
I don't know if that helps, but just a thought.

I think it's having an 8 month old and another little one issue. You are tired, tolerance is all round low and any neediness by another adult is incredibly irritating. I think it's true you can't change a person, and perhaps some of his traits are not great at this time point, but at another, having one more laid back person may be great (e.g. when children are older). I would not suggest making any major decisions so soon after a baby and in the middle of toddler hell!

Kindness goes a long way to reversing contempt. If you were once madly in love with him, this is a good sign, you have something to return to. But if you indulge the contempt too much it does cause damage. Try to be relatively kind at this stage, whilst communicating honestly about the stuff that annoys you. You probably annoy him a lot too, this is normal in a long marriage, but I've found these things go in cycles and you may well fall back in love many times over the years.

He sounds a bit like my Dh. I'll often think "FFS just get on with it" about all sorts of things - loading the dishwasher, tidying up, etc. He'd also start some project on his computer and I'd be saying to him "Can you do that after folding the laundry, I've washed it and dried it all the least you can do is help fold it." I too found it really annoying when my dc were that age. I will say that they are now 4 & 6 and it is so much better as the mess they make is more contained and they're more able to do things themselves.

I don't actually think it was Dh that was the problem (after all, it's his personality so he'd always been like that). It was more the stress of having two young kids, too much mess and never feeling on top of anything. I also think that Dh felt it too.

Oh, I've just remembered, one thing that did help was to sit down and work out what stuff was a priority. e.g. Kitchen worktops need to be kept clean so that it's easy to use them for making meals for the kids/my own lunch (whereas we didn't mind the laundry building up a bit).

My dh needs a rocket up his arse too, he has no sense of urgency, it drives me mad. I'm the opposite, I always want to sort things straight away. I tell him to stop being like an old man...it often works. I think you need to remember that you often seek out a partner who complements you, hence him being laid back nd you.
Try to remember what attracted you in the first place.

I used to take the kids away to my mum's or somewhere when feeling like this. It was incredibly hard work and when we got back dh had missed us and I was so relieved to hand the kids over that we were really pleased to see each other and realised (or felt like anyway!) that we did love each other. It's so hard with kids this age.

Just want to say thank you all for your responses!! Very helpful, and you all seem to be in agreement, which you rarely see on here!

I think may be it is stress and frustration. We do have evenings out and when I think about it we do have a lovely time when we are without the children.

I've had a bit of a word with myself since I posted. I've started fussing him, snogging him etc (sounds awful, like I haven't been doing it, but the truth is I haven't). Think the spark is still there...