I feel a total failure tonight. My DP and me are struggling to get along ever since our daughter was born. First child challenges mostly but it has highlighted some really fundamental differences in our whole approach and worldview. We've also had a lot of stress in the past two years (new baby, moved house twice, new jobs for us both, bereavement etc).
I have considered ending it (i daresay he has too) but they say you shouldn't make any major decisions in the baby years as everything is magnified by no sleep etc. I also want another baby and want my children to have the same dad (even if it ends up not working out longer term). He is not so keen on a second child - he says quite rightly and sensibly that it has pushed us apart, things are only just starting to get easier with DD and another baby would set us right back and we'll end up even further apart emotionally. I agree with everything he says logically, but whereas for me its worth the risk, for him I don't think it is.
SO I've been trying really hard not to quarrel with him - things he does and ways he thinks that drive me up the wall I've been trying to ignore, when he gets flustered over something i don't think is a big deal i've been trying to support him and validate his feelings instead of tell him why he shouldn't be bothered etc. I am trying to increase our intimacy too, but because I am always so tired, DD still wakes up several times a night anddue to low libido at the moment I need to get myself in the mood quite far in advance, I tend to 'book it in' and this probably seems a bit by numbers and lacking in spontaneity to him.
I tell myself that I am doing this for us, and to get us to a place where he feels confident we can manage another baby; but I do feel a lot of resentment sometimes that I am putting all the effort into the emotional side of our relationship - he is completely inarticulate about emotions, and I think it's likely he has alexithymia or possibly a personality disorder as feelings are like a foreign language to him. I try to 'read his love language' and see the things he does for the household and organising our lives as the expression of his affection for me and DD. But he doesn't seem to make any attempt to see the ways I try to express affection (verbally) as valid, doesn't give me anything back in that way - I feel like I am doing all the benefit of the doubt, compromise, see things his way, appreciate him stuff and he doesn't even try to meet me half way, just sits back being dissatisfied with our relationship but doing nothing and suggesting nothing that might make it better.
And tonight all this resentment just boiled over and we ended up having a stupid row about nothing very much. Looking back I can see how from his POV he did nothing wrong, and was in fact trying to be useful; but from my POV it all comes back to the same pattern of wanting to control everything practical in both his and my life, whilst being completely absent emotionally and apathetic about our relationship.
Is it normal to feel like your partner just doesn't like you very much? Not in a malicious, trying to do anything sinister way - just the sense you are a necessary evil he is working around, rather than someone he specifically likes or actively wants to be around?
And is it babyish not to be able to just see beyond that, appreciate the fact that my whole life is very well organised thanks to him, and just work for the best outcome in the parameters of what we do have, and stop wanting that emotional connection and feeling of being valuable to him which is clearly never going to come?