Hi guys,
I need an outside opinion on my situation, my wife and I have a 4-year-old girl and 1-year old boy and I’m getting more and more tempted to jump ship!
Our first child hit us like a tsunami, we thought we were ready but colic and undiagnosed lactose intolerance showed us otherwise. The first year of our daughter’s life felt like hell, I’m sure many know the feeling, almost zero sleep, constant crying and screaming, wife had PND quite severe and I had some extreme guilt having to go to work in the morning. Anyway, we survived (barely) and a few years later my son joined the tribe.
In a desperate attempt to prevent another round of PND we fed the second on a bottle, and I did every single night shift for the first 7 months of his life (slept on the sofa downstairs so he wouldn’t wake my other half). Then after a glorious 3-4 hours sleep head to work for the day.
Anyway fast forward to today, I now do all the early mornings (wake up around 5-6am with the kids) and wife wakes up at 9am so I can go work (I now work from home), when I finish I help with cleaning up while wife feeds the children, I bath them (wife wont) and she puts them to bed. Then I cook her dinner, wash the dishes, put a load of laundry in, watch 20 minutes of TV and go to bed.
I’m beginning to wonder what I’m doing here, I get less sleep, less free time (wife gets to stay up late and watch TV, phone etc every night), I do all my own laundry/ironing, make all the meals for us, take out the rubbish, clean the kitchen, the usual DIY stuff, manage the bills and do the shopping. I get zero say in how the little ones are raised or disciplined, and wife won’t allow anyone (not even my mother) to babysit so we can have a night off.
I’m certainly not some man boy craving a single life, I work very hard to provide a good life for us and was in complete support for her to quit her job to be a full-time mum, I take pride in that, but this feels like I’m being taken for a mug. I feel like I get nothing from her, I would love it if she ever bothered to so much as make me a cuppa, even our sex life is INSANELY infrequent and boring (she admits to this and refuses to do anything about it, apparently I’m lucky to even have one?). We have spent 100+ hours talking about it, so many arguments and compromises from me but I’m running out of patience and energy.
Am I a monster for thinking about leaving? I feel that she’s a decent mum but turned into a terrible partner. She refuses counselling or outside help and I can’t help but start to wonder what it would be like to live alone and split the childcare. I want my kids to have a great life, and to be there for them as much as possible, but I don’t know if I can cope in this house anymore and never have any time off or intimacy.