I've never publicly posted about my relationship before, which perhaps is good in maybe I've not felt the need to before, but I recognise that, over the past 2 years, my partner and I argue about the same things regularly and neither of us really agree with the other so no resolution is met.
I am desperately upset today and know I need to have a sit down conversation with him tomorrow about how I'm feeling, but perhaps need some thoughts on another way for me to approach this that may work.
I'm in my mid thirty's and have been with my partner since we were teenagers. We have 2 little boys (5 & 1) and used to communicate really well.
After the birth of our first, my partner sank into depression and considered suicide. I managed to get him help, for which he was prescribed anti-depressants and attended a therapist for cognitive behavioural therapy. Whilst it took a few months, I felt as though I'd gotten the old him back and was elated!
Over time he's said to me that part of what sent him into depression was that he felt he was always trying to do what was expected and it was never enough. Now, he'd even said that this was doing housework and family stuff which placed me to blame. Now I wouldn't say I have unreasonable expectations at all nor would I ever have attempted to make him feel bad about not doing enough?!
Anyway...this has resulted in him prioritising his own mental health (understandable) and uses this previous trigger as his reasoning whenever I say I feel that he needs to do more to help me with the boys or things around the house.
After DS2, I've returned to work only part time so he now picks up 75% of our bills and often works late and weekends, meaning I'm putting both boys to bed and cooking dinner.
Part of him prioritising his mental health means that he's also signed up for a personal trainer two evenings a week, so even when he's not working late, there's two evenings I'm going it alone (he can't do lunch hour because his job is in the building trade).
He'll also take the occasional night (say once every couple of weeks) out with friends, sometimes this will even begin in the day for perhaps someone's birthday and although he will ask me if it's okay, my response of late has been "I don't know why you bother asking as you do what you want anyway".
I organise all of the bills, shopping, school etc. At times I feel non-stop and unsupported because of how much I'm juggling.
Now if I ask him to do something, he will do it but I find myself frustrated and upset that, where he gets a spare second he'll go for a sit down and look on his phone, whereas I'll be doing chores. He does clean the kitchen and cook sometimes though, he's not all bad.
Sorry, really long post but o can't stop now I've started.
We've just come to visit my family for a long weekend (fri-tues) as we live on an island where we have not been permitted to travel to the UK since the pandemic began in 2020 (meaning that my family have never met DS2).
As you can imagine, it's been terribly painful not being able to see my family and more so not be able to introduce them to my beautiful boy.
We had numerous conversations about how I was struggling with it all throughout the past year and he himself said "as soon as we can go, we need to go."
When we could go, I spoke to him about dates, prices, isolation requirements on return (this should be 2 days with a negative test) and agreed dates and booked.
Since arriving, he's gotten extremely tense and angry about the idea of possibly contracting covid and said that he cannot believe that I have put him in this position.
Not only that, but angry that I booked for so long (5 days) as he'll miss so much work when I know how busy he is.
When he initially raised this, he shouted at me exclaiming that he didn't want to be here. Now, he doesn't usually shout at me, I was furious at being spoken to not only like that but about this of all things, something I've been desperate for with so many emotions involved. Now, it transpires that my father heard this which upsets me.
In addition, I feel like he often makes as little effort as possible with my family he has even just fallen asleep on multiple occasions whilst we would be meeting family and chatting.
I spend a lot of my time (more than most!) with my in laws and their daughters family. And I am heartbroken that I even need to ask him to not fall asleep and look interested in my family, let alone to shout about how he doesn't want to be there.
It's not a new thing him acting disinterested with my family. He'll often leave and go into another room and I've spoken to him about this in the past and his response is always that he'd never force me to spend time with his family if I didn't want to. The conversation never seems to end well and no resolution is ever met.
I've started standing up for myself a bit more and suppose am a bit shtty with him when I'm not happy about something but it only results in us bickering in front of the kids and I NEVER want to do that. My 5 year old even told me how it upset him at bedtime this evening and now my heart aches more.
The crux of this is, I need him to know that I can't go on like this. How would you begin to approach this?
If you've managed to read this, thank you so much for sticking with me and my ramblings.