My husband accuses me of being dead inside, no compassion, no empathy. I have agreed to talk to a counsellor. We have been married for 15 years and have 4 children aged 5-12. I have always looked after the children as he works long hours and is gone for 12 hours so I have always done bedtimes etc alone. Weekends he is generally tired from his job (which he hates) so has never taken over. He says that I’m not the same person I was when we married has accused me of not exercising enough (I do now, just not so much when the babies were young), ruining our relationship by breastfeeding and always putting the babies first. He feels like he is never number 1. The kids have probably taken over a bit and he plays a backseat role. I probably did put a lot of energies into the kids as both him and I are from slightly dysfunctional families and I wanted to give our family what we didn’t have, bedtime stories, sitting at the table to eat etc. Maybe I went too far, I really don’t know. How do you all keep your husbands happy whilst managing a family? I don’t have any family nearby but am close to my family. I feel like perhaps if it was more a 50/50 partnership then I’d have more time to focus on him? The backdrop to this is I find he often talks to me disrespectfully (even in front of people) which causes me great sadness. I also find him angry and shouty and feel a lot of our marriage I have felt I have had to walk on eggshells. He does have MHI so doesn’t handle stress well. He doesn’t like his job, me, is frustrated at the kids, doesn’t see friends, we haven’t been on holiday for years, we hardly socialise together. This might just be the MHI though that he struggles to find happiness. I honestly don’t feel like I am terrible person, I have tried hard to keep the family happy, support him where I can and keep on top of everything. I do feel like I haven’t been the greatest wife though, I’ve not often done super nice things for him (cook special dinners etc) so I can see why he is upset that I’ve not made him number 1. I’m so confused. Should a marriage be this hard? I just feel like a failure and if we split up, I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else as I’m obviously incapable of making men happy.
Sorry for the rambling post.