ok i'm back, armed with wine and my dinner! Boys are not asleep, but can't have everything.....currently singing twinkle twinkle little star!
so, picking through the posts i have concluded u are EXTREMELY depressed, put your heart and soul into being a wife and mother, but absolutely nothing goes into being YOU? have i caught the essence so far?
May I ask how old DD is? i.e. how long have you had to be wife, mother, chief pot and bottle washer? Has your DH always been bone idle but good natured with it, i.e. he has personality traits that make up for him being lazy? Did he get worse when DD arrived?
I could have written your post about 2 years ago....my twins are nearly 3 now and I would say we got a healthy balance about a year and half maybe two years ago. i went back to work full time when dt's were 5 months old, DH has always cooked, even pre-babies, so it just carried on after they were born (thank god else we would all have starved). He sounds good so far dont he! He also did their bottles every night, always helped with bathtime, but then i guess he HAD to, he was thrown into it whereas dads of singletons may have got away with doing less as mummy could cope better. Anyhow I digress.
As practical as he sounds and as hands on as he was, he wasn't supporting ME....I didn;t go out, WE didn't go out as a family, but he did very regularly. At the weekends when it was full on family time, he was obvious in his absence "oh i have to help so and so with such and such" which always followed with "they taking me for a pint to say thanks".....He could manage evenings and mornings in the week, but full on 8 hours of babies each day at the weekend, wasn't interested.
In conclusion after many rows "but i cook" "I do the garden" none of which i could argue with, I walked out. We weren't being a family, we weren't enjoying life, we were functioning, existing day to day....apparently i could go out if i wanted, it wasn't his fault my friends ignored me....but whenever i wanted to, he already had plans. thing is i shouldn't have had to ask, i had as much right to go out as he did..
I'm falling off the point a bit here - what i'm saying is, i walked out for 4 days and took the boys - he got such a shock. He realised i wasn't a doormat there to look after HIS sons when he fancied some time off, i had a life, i could cope, he couldn't put me down with insults about my parenting skills to make me think i needed him. When I came home he was a new man. We have alternate nights out (if we have no plans we stay in TOGETHER), he gets up with boys on a saturday morning, I get up on a sunday. We go out as a family on the Sunday (he plays rugby on the Saturday and i go an watch the home games with the boys) and generally we are part of each other lives again.
I walked out for a lot less than you are currently going through and it improved my life 100%. If you don't give him a shake or a wake up call he ain't never gonna change believe me, I tried all the different ways of talking to my DH and nothing worked because deep down he truly believed this was how life was supposed to be and that i was moaning about nothing. I had to SHOW him what he was doing to us, then he sat up and took notice. He occasionally slips into 'just going out with the lads....' and i always come back with, 'no problem babe, i'm off shopping tomorrow, so you got the boys in the day......'
He even sent me to Italy for a weekend to stay with his sister and he had the boys all to himself, it was ACE!
Your DH has worn you down so that you no longer bother to moan because you can't be arsed, he has you right where he wants you, my dh thought he could do the same - threaten an argument if i moaned about something and i used to avoid arguments like the plague. Now i treat him like a toddler and just talk over him in a calm voice stating what i want to say then walk away and let him digest.
God i have really gone on there and looking back not sure any of it is relevent, but i wanted you to see that a relationship that was once similar to yours can change, but it will only do so if YOU take the lead.
You know what kept me going when i walked out and he was throwing every insult at me under the sun......
If he changes because of this and starts pulling his parental weight - I win
If he doesn't change I'm best shot of him and will start again on my own - I win
WIN WIN!