Child and 4 years... time to call it a day?

[louisebrownx]

Just want to say upfront , thank you to anyone who offers me any advice here as I am at a last resort now..

Bit of background first:
I've been with my partner for 4 years and we have an almost 2 year old daughter together. It wasn't planned , it happened unexpectedly. We were both very excited and happy when she came along and for the first year it was great. However, I would say the last 9-12 months or so have been a bit of a blur.

I am in uni doing a nursing degree and in my final year so I moved into my partners home that he owns and he pays for all the bills as I don't have much of a salary to cover this (I buy food which works out around £300-400 a month anyway.

I often find myself waking up in the morning and I don't feel 100% happy. This leads to excessive overthinking often about why this is. The same conclusion I reach to each time, is my relationship. I absolutely love being a mum and as I spend the most amount of time with my daughter, I am used to the life I have now.

My partner has always found it tricky to accept this. We are both only 24 btw so we are still young. He likes to drink, a lot. He likes to go out to the pub, a lot. This isn't something he has given up. Though it has started getting worse the last few months. He now goes to the pub every weekend, alone, to play pool. This used to bother me but now it doesn't really. He often goes out through the week a lot too and again, it doesn't bother me.

I'm beginning to enjoy my own time, it makes me think that I could be alone if it did come to it. I've always grown up wanting a family and wanting that family unit where both parents are together and from the start, I've never wanted anything different for our daughter. There has been times when I think, 'I can't do this anymore' as relationships can be tricky and we all have fallouts etc, however I just keep pushing on because I convince myself this is what I want.

We don't have sex anymore. Rarely. Maybe twice a month, if that. It's been that way for about a year now. I keep thinking that it will change one day and I'll suddenly want to have sex with him again, but time goes by so quickly and it stays the same.

I look at all my friends in relationships with their boyfriends on Facebook etc and they all look so happy. I know they are probably not but it just makes me think too. Some days are great and I feel happy and we get along. However, I notice the way we are with each other is different. He says things to me now that he would never have said before, he swears at me and calls me horrible names and speaks down to me sometimes. I know this is a sign that we both are losing interest.

He isn't the dad I thought he would be to my child either. He does the jobs he is asked to, like bathing her and feeding her. He just doesn't have that same connection I have with her. He doesn't read to her, he doesn't play with her. He has never really spoke to her much. You know you see these films and you see the dads and think that's what it's gonna be like. I've always had to ask him to do things for her, or he just doesn't do them. I've came home some days and she's not had a drink of water for the whole morning. He just doesn't think in that way.

I don't have many friends anymore as I lost quite a few when I had my child. The few friends I do have, I wouldn't want to say anything to them about this. They wouldn't understand. No one understands what it's really like. I feel alone in my mind, I don't feel loved. I can't remember the last time he told me he loved me. I just keep pushing on for the sake of my child and an easy life. I feel like this is all I deserve. Some days are good and that should mean something. As time goes on more and more, these feelings never go away.

I'm sat in the toilet writing this right now and all I can hear is my partner turning the tele on for my child to watch. He doesn't interact with her, it drives me crazy. I don't want her to watch the tele all day, she deserves more. It makes me doubt everything, sometimes I feel like I could do it on my own. That we would be better off on our own. I wouldn't have the hassle. I wouldn't constantly need to clean up someone else's mess who doesn't have respect for me.

The amount of time he's not home, it almost feels like it's only us. Then the times he is home, I'm tired. I feel like I want to be alone. I can't be bothered to make sense of it. I just feel empty sometimes. The more I think about it, the more it seems broken and the worse it looks.

I am happy in my life, I have nothing to be sad about. I feel selfish for feeling this way for my child, because I shouldn't. I should be happy with all I have, but somehow I just can't. It's not the same as it was and it kills me every day.

But we just keep pushing on, because I want what's best and I don't want my child to grow up without her daddy by her side. I don't want to go on holidays alone and not have that extra helping hand. What if some days I don't want to be alone. I can't know what to do and I don't know if these feelings will ever fade, will it get better? Am I just overthinking. Do I stick it out in hope that some day it will change. Time is a healer. At least I hope so.

Have you spoken to him about all this?
It's a fact most men don't mature until a lot later than women - god my DH is late 30s and he probably still hasn't grown up!

Your DD is still only young and to be honest they're really isn't much he can do with her at that age - is he a bit of a mans man so playing with dolls and pink toys he probably has no clue about and feels awkward?
Until my DC started talking and engaging I don't think my DH had much to do with her - it's a totally different story now though

If you want to stay with him and try and keep your family unit together then you need to talk to him x

Continued:

This is the reasons why:

He doesn't do nice things for me, he doesn't make me feel good about myself. I don't expect flowers every day or compliments. I'm not that kind of girl anyway.

He just doesn't seem very proud of me or what I have achieved so far. I have done so well at university with my child and I am going to be qualfiying as a nurse in just 3 months. We have already been planning our house move and all the great things we will now be able to do. I've worked so hard for this and I just don't feel he appreciates anything. He has never said well done for me passing an exam, he has never said thank you for me making his tea most nights.

I buy him nice things and he isn't appreciative. I feel like we are brother and sister. We are two people that live together and we share stories and talk about everything in life, but we don't share much else. We share a child and we share a home but we don't really share our love with each other.

I don't know if this is just how he is, he's never been a really lovey dovey kind of guy but it would still be nice every once in a while.
He has no respect for me in terms that I am a good mother, I can honestly say that. Everything I do and have done the last two years is to benefit my child. I want her to have a great life and I love her more than anything. She is my happiness 100%. He has never said I am a good mother. I am the one that reads her stories at bed time, I am the one that takes her to the park, I am the one that makes her dinner every night, I am the one that buys the clothes she wears, I am the one that makes sure she's happy. I do all this and I don't feel he offers much else in terms of the house we both live in.

It's just sad, she deserves the world. She deserves a daddy that will play with her all day long and never get tired. Not a daddy that is too rough on a Sunday to even get out of bed.

I get up with her all through the week, while he goes to work. I also work 12.5 hour shifts for my nursing degree and I don't complain. When it comes to a weekend, he still expects me to get up first thing in the morning with her. I've lost count of how many times he has been able to lie in bed for hours because ' it's his day off' and he works through the week. When do I get a day off? I don't get to go out much, alone. Unless my child is in nursery and most times she's only in nursery because I'm working. I had to write a dissertation for my degree while having my child. I spent many long nights writing till 2am and then getting up at 6am to look after my child all day long.

This isn't work though, at least he doesn't see it that way. I'm just sick of being under appreciated and anything I do, just isn't good enough. I'm going to be a nurse, which is something. It's an achievement, my daughter will be able to say her mummy is a nurse. Its a hard enough job that unless you work in healthcare , you won't get.

I just wish he would appreciate all I do. For both my child and us as a family.

We have spoken before about this kind of thing. He notices it's different too. He realises it's changed, he also too has expressed he isn't happy at times. He hasn't really done much about it though. Sometimes I'm worried he's going to leave me because I know he can't be happy, but it's the fact he doesn't that tells me I need to see this through too.

If he's willing to keep working at it even though he's shown signs he's not happy, then I should be willing to work through it too?

He hates confrontation and he has never been one to talk much about feelings. It's not him. He would prefer that we just got on and we're both happy. This isn't always the case though because he doesn't see that there's anything wrong in the first place. He blames his unhappiness at times on me just being grumpy and giving him a hard time.

He doesn't see the bigger picture in all of this and he doesn't see why I feel this way sometimes. He can't see he's done anything wrong, it's not even that he's done something wrong. It's just what he doesn't do. I don't really know what he DOES do either.

He just goes around doing his normal thing and i do mine, but he expects to live a much more free life than I do. I feel I'm always at home with our child and he is always out doing other things. He very rarely actually spends time with either of us. This just adds to my feelings and how I've been feeling about the whole thing.

You aren't getting much out of this relationship, whilst he gets everything. Your life has changed and his hasn't. My ex-H was like this. I was the one looking after the house and our child (as well as working). He would just go to work and piss off out with his mates all weekend whilst I looked after his child. I pushed for a promotion at work, so I didn't need his (small) contribution and then booted him out. I didn't want my DS growing up thinking its normal for a woman to be treated like this.

Best thing I did was booting him out. So much happier. His Dad is still a useless Disney dad, but it doesn't have as much of an impact on me now. DS sees him regularly and loves him, but knows he's a bit of a dick.