Anyone ever had a bad year with dh but they got through it and all well now?

[Chrysanthemumtea]

All fine except for past year or so dh and I griping and annoying each other. Quite often I wonder if I like him as a person.

Ds has just turned 1. (And we have dd who is 3). So we are tired and still in baby stage.

I think it took dh at least 8 months to bond with ds though they have now. He admits this himself. I think it took less time, four months or so, with dd and lots of this because she was poorly and I think he was holding back emotionally in case worse happened.

His workplace is tough at the moment - structural changes and people being 'disappeared' at short notice. So he is working long hours and it is on his mind all the time.

But he is short with me and the kids and far less affectionate than he used to be and generally grumpy. He is neglecting me (physically, emotionally) and crap at doing stuff round the house unless I specifically ask him to.

Also his mum was quite ill and he is only child. So lots of reasons for him to be sad and withdrawn.

In other ways he is great. When we do get time together it is nice. And when I initiate sex he responds. But he doesn't initiate. We do stuff as a family and he is always one of few dads at birthday parties etc and we make sure weekends are times as a family. But whenever we have a nice day eg yesterday it ends with a row. Or a day begins with a row then becomes nice after the row. But always at some point a row.

So my question - is this just part of the rocky road of marriage with young kids and all will be well? Anyone else had years that weren't great but come out of it with a strong marriage they want to be in. It's seven years and maybe I just have the clichéd itch.

Sorry OP, my comment wasn't very helpful. You both love each other so if you continue to work at it im sure it will be fine.

We had a few very bad years when the children were small. For a long time I thought we might split up at any moment. Eventually the sun came out again and we've been happy for many years.

The most important thing for us was to try to give each other the benefit of the doubt and assume no harm was intended rather than just reacting to each other by lashing out or being melodramatically wounded. Easier said than done when you're exhausted and being pulled in all directions. If you survive till they're at school it does get better.

How did you fix it wideboy?

It's a long story - as I say, it went on for 8 years. However, I will try to summarise. One of the issues that led to the difficult spell was that my wife, who had been a SAHM, suddenly wanted to assert her independence. This took the form of going out most nights during the week; to the gym, to play badminton, to sing in a choir, to join a dance group, to do aerobics. If anybody suggested doing anything new, she was up for it. Nothing wrong with that, but then her Friday night at the gym extended into a sauna afterwards and she wouldn't come home until 10:30-ish. Nothing wrong with that either, but then she got to know a group of guys in the sauna and after the sauna they would go to the pub. One of them in particular would drop her off at about 11:45. The first night it happened was a cold, foggy winter night and I was starting to wonder where she was. When I protested (a) at how late she had come home and (b) that she had not warned me that she was going to be late, the response I got was similar to the things that women on here say: "controlling" for example. The Friday night thing became a regular fixture and I had to get used to being disturbed by her coming home late every week.

She developed a fairly close friendship with these three guys, to the extent that they persuaded her to do the 3 peaks challenge twice. The first time I wasn't too happy about being left alone to run the ship and the boys being left for part of the time when neither of us was at home. However, that cut no ice with her; she was doing what she wanted to do and essentially I could like it or lump it. By the second time, we had started to grow apart and I knew that there was no point in protesting. I had also started to get used to running the home without her there. Of the three guys, there was one in particular I was not sure about. I met the other two and they seemed harmless, but this guy always avoided me. I shall never know whether there was anything between him and my wife, but there were plenty of signs that something was going on.

I have a female boss who is also a very good friend. I confided in her that I thought my marriage was heading for the rocks and she suggested that I should also develop an independent life and also stay out until 11:45 on a Friday. I found that very difficult to take on board as I had always centred my life around home and family and didn't want to stay out late. Anyway, since nothing else would persuade my wife to take more interest in our relationship, I took my boss's advice. I made sure I came home later than my wife every Friday night. I commute to London, so it wasn't difficult to find somewhere to go after work and a group of colleagues to go with. If I left at 10:30, it would be midnight before I got home. I can't say that I enjoyed coming home late, but it was worth the experiment to see if it would make a difference.

After about a year of this, my wife decided she didn't want to do the three peaks challenge again, but the guys were pressuring her. The sauna at the gym started breaking down and her little drinking group fell apart as they went to different gyms for their Friday night exercise. It was convenient for her as she was able to avoid them and the pressure to do the 3 peaks challenge for a third time. Meanwhile, I was still coming home late on Fridays and the relationship was bumping along.

Eventually she said to me one day - quite out of the blue - that she was expecting me to announce at any time that I was leaving her and the boys. I assured her that I had no such intention and asked what made her think that. She said it was because I had become so distant. After that and a good long talk, the relationship righted itself and we have never looked back. We never talk about that 8 year spell, other than oblique references to "that time", and right now we have never been happier.

As I said, that is only a summary. I could write a book about other things that happened. One of the aspects that concerns me now is that since discovering mumsnet a couple of years ago, what I have read on here is familiar and I do feel more to blame for what went wrong than I did at the time.

Two small kids, stressful job and v ill parent. All sounds like a recipe for anyone to be unhappy and withdrawn. Even more so if he is the sole breadwinner. Is he?

I know from my limited mat leaves that when DH came home in the evening that I was desperate to talk to an adult but also shattered and snappy. The early years with small children are grim in many ways. I think if you want your marriage to work, then you two need to start talking. Get a babysitter and go out and reconnect a little. It shocked us how little we had to say to each other on the first few occasions but it does get better.

I think his comment about contraception was understandable. If you initiated then I'd have expected you to be prepared to be carried away. The prospect of no 3 probably didn't fill him with hope right at the moment.

Generally though - you have to give each other the benefit of the doubt and that possibly the other didn't mean to be short with you.

We're not married but have been together about 10 years.
We suddenly lost dp's dad when I was 12 weeks pregnant with are first leaving dp's housebound, very ill mum living 150 miles away from us. Dp is an only child too. We had just put are notice in on our flat and dp's mum was going downhill rabidly.
Dp's mum went in to hospital about a month after her dh death. There house was a state and needed a lot of work/deep cleaning, which we went to every weekend to do. Dp's mum carried on going downhill and at about 7 months pregnant I couldn't do the journey anyone and started staying at home. My dp spent every weekend until I gave birth away from me, it was horrible. When ds was about a week old we went down to visit her for her birthday and she died 3 days afterwards. Afterwards we spent 4 weeks there sorting the house out with a newborn. We both needed so much support from each other but we couldn't provide it, I had just given birth, he had just lost his mum.
We fought a lot, I really thought that we wouldn't get through it.
But we did, ds is now 18 months and were due number two in a few weeks. After counciling and anti ds for both of us the cloud started to clear and we're stronger than every.

I have - together I think 6 years when we had dd1. The baby stage was exhausting - dd was a shit sleeper but he had terrible insomnia - so got into the 'who's more tired' bickering ALL the time. And then he went through a patch of weird depression - I think mainly due to work pressure (he had a very full-on job and is a terrible perfectionist too. Lots of 16 hour days and very late nights (genuinely work not affair though - can't say what as could out me)
It manifested itself as a kind of detachment/disassociation. He is normally warm and empathetic but he just felt very apart and didn't engage as he normally would. Hard to articulate. It alarmed him too - I found google searches on disassociation and depression - but he didn't really talk properly about it till the worst was over.
There was nothing abusive but I felt incredibly lonely and unsupported. Probably compounded by my being back at work but still having little sleep. I just felt as though I was shouldering all the family stuff and that he wasn't taking an active part in my life.
Unusually for me (I don't take any crap in my relationships) I just carried on plugging away. I'm no surrendered wife but I let some stuff go and just tried to treat him the way I'd like to be treated, give him the benefit of the doubt, and not start fights, even if it was tempting (so not engaging in the 'I'm more tired' conversation). Just to be clear though, this was not an abusive situation, more just a case of not feeling the close connection we had previously where we could natter all evening or sit companionably in silence, or tackling household things together.
Anyway, it passed, he got back to normal, we got back to normal. I think he's fab and the feeling's mutual. This was about 5 years ago now. We have dd2 and have weathered it all much better. So glad I persevered. Planning on growing old together :)

Omg sorry for the essay OP!

Also sorry to be a thread hog - but I'm sure I was no fun to live with either - worn out, resentful, martyred I expect!

Thank you babyphat. Fills me with hope.

Mammoth row last night but we made it up and then he opened up more about work. We had a good friend die a few years ago and I always held onto the fact that he and his wife had old each other they loved each other that morning. So we never go to bed or out the house on a row.

Actually we used to have stinking rows before we got married. I famously threw a hairbrush against a window and broke the glass in temper when he left the room I was mortified and blamed it on the building work going on downstairs - we do laugh about it now. I also threw my engagement ring at him once in a car park, before a holiday. I am a very mild mannered person, but I was just furious with him, he likes to think he's always right, and he has learned that this can be bloody annoying.

What I did was I sat down and went along the lines 'I am worried about you - let me help you, tell me what I am not doing that I could be doing to make life a bit easier for you'. We also banned phrases like 'you never' or 'you always' or 'i would never' and so on. We also agreed that we were on each others side - and we need to remember that. We made a huge effort to be a more affectionate to each other - just randomly saying I love you and a kiss etc. It doesn't need to be sex every time.

My DH works crazy hours, and sometimes it gets too much for him. When this happens I need to pull harder, take the reigns off him at home - I don't tell him what to do with DD, or what exactly to get from where, I just gratefully accept any shopping, if its wrong I make do and say nothing about it. Think about it from his point of view - he's trying to help and gets it wrong - it makes him feel like he can't even get that right. My DH has a right thing about how socks are folded (yes its weird!) but I just do it because he likes it. I bundle mine together any old way though. I try and show him as much kindness as possible TBH - I choose to share my life with him. I try and build him up, telling him what a great Dad he is etc.

We have really worked to get here I must say - and I am sure friends at the time of our rows were probably thinking we wouldn't make it. But I am glad we rowed and got it all settled - because we really know each other now. I guess we both try to put in as much as we can into us, because we get so much out of it now. I don't fear him going anywhere - you can't approach a life with someone thinking that at the back of your mind. Sometimes you need to row to open up the lines of communication - think of it like blasting a dam to get the water flowing- Once you have some throughput you can start to talk it out rationally.

also this looks like I go about spending my days trying to make him happy - I do - but he does exactly the same for me. These days we are so in sync. I am glad of the effort at the start to have what we have now. And I nearly died after giving birth to DD (terrible blood loss) - I guess it has made us terribly close. We also don't go to bed on a row - you are very wise there. It will get easier. And its ok to row - its how to deal with it that makes the difference.

^ what tea says - trying to make the other person's life easier - and sometimes one person has to make the first move. We didn't row as such, it was more passive-aggressive sniping. I had to learn to not keep a mental list of injustices (like always being the one to settle the baby or whatever).

I remember also introducing a rule : if someone is nice enough to do a job around the house, the other person doesn't criticise how they did it.