Sometimes, being married with little children is so lonely

[somebodydid]

I feel so fed up today. Two things in our house malfunctioned in the week so the entire weekend will be spent with DH fixing them, going to the DIY store to buy replacement parts for them and complaining about them.

Meanwhile my weekend will look like the week with sole responsibility for two under 4s.

I know as they grow and eventually become teens I’ll be able to do stuff for me again. But right now I can’t and it’s so frustrating.

Interesting. Appreciate the honesty.

It’s the fact that it happens every weekend. At the week I’m either working or have the children with me. So it has left me without any time to myself, no time at all to relax or to develop my own interests, for literally years.

That isn’t minor, and I would consider that I’ve had serious adversity in life. But that was a very unpleasant and snide post and was deliberately trying to be so.

Well now you’re just drip feeding. Your original post said you’ve had two minor malfunctions in the house meaning a whole entire week looking after the kids. Me saying this is a minor occurrence is not snide, it’s very reasonable.

If its every weekend you should have said in your OP 🙄

What a very unkind post.

True. I drip fed because I was frustrated in my op. It becomes obvious as the thread goes on this is a recurring theme.

So that’s my excuse. What’s yours?

OP talked about how often it was in several posts - it's not a dripfeed just because you couldn't be arsed to read the whole thread.

Still think it’s minor. You had kids. This is the reality for lots of people. If you’re bored of it, change something / get your husband to do more, or leave him and he can have them all by himself every second weekend and you can have the time to yourself. Being bored IMHO IS a minor grievance in the bigger scheme of things

I’m not bored, @AnotherNaCha but to be honest you don’t appreciate what I’m about here (fine) and you don’t want to (not fine, if you’re going to answer.) But this isn’t about boredom. The glib ‘oh well leave him then’ is the answer of someone really obtuse and purposefully so.

Would therapy be an option for you? Either marriage counselling, or even just for yourself? It could help to speak with someone and would also give you some time alone to focus on yourself.

Agree. What do posters get out of kicking someone when they're down

Hardly obtuse nor unkind. It’s just a very common situation and in the grand scheme of things, very fixable!

So many mums would love a DH to fix things around the house or to have their kids every weekend. So not to invalidate how you feel, but a reality check sometimes helps. Or sometimes feels like a mean comment. So be it

On a practical level, would there be an option of putting the kids into childcare for half a day on one of your non working days? Just so you could get a bit of respite?

But the dh doesn't have the kids at the weekend and purposely creates jobs or activities to avoid participating in family life/looking after his own children.

Not many mums would envy that.

What was the drive to have your second child? If you don’t mind me asking? We stopped at one because the financial and time implications for us and our careers felt too arduous. Honestly as well, I knew that I found it relatively boring early on, yes there are very sweet and rewarding moments, but 99% of job is drudgery, arsewiping and sequencing.

Why are you doubling down on your posts instead of admitting you didn’t read the details properly?

The DH doesn’t have the kids every weekend, in fact he seems to be inventing jobs to do to avoid spending time with his children and then telling the OP to deal with it. She is desperately unhappy and he’s not listening to her. Is it just an “any man will do” mindset for you or something?

Don't panic, that's not true. Mine are 9 and 7 (which I know sounds miles off) but by school age they can entertain themselves a bit. I'm reading with a tea in the garden and one is in their room playing and my dd is playing her recorder in the living room (it's own horror show but I'm through a door at least). It will get better, they'll go to school, play by themselves, get their own snacks, go to the toilet themselves, leave you alone in the toilet, sleep through the night, and before you know it they're gone. It's hard and boring and relentless until it isn't. It's fine to self pity for a bit though, get them to bed and get a gin and a biscuit later and have a bath. Also do get your dh to chip in more, why can't he do nursery runs, take a kid with him to do diy shopping (my kids at 4 absolutely loved B and Q).

Thanks. I am feeling better now but when I came down this morning to the announcement that something had broken and had to be dealt with I felt like crying. It’s a very busy time at work and I’m drowning with no time to myself or even to do the housework.

Why are there so many jobs that need to be done at weekends? When mine were little I used to love planning stuff so I'd find places to go so even if we did have jobs to do we would have one day out and one day doing what needed doing.
Say on a Sunday, I'd do some housework and dh would take the kids to do the big two weekly shop.
Would something like that work, one day work stuff/ one day fun stuff.

I really feel for you. Has your husband ever been on his own with the children, even for a whole day? I suggest you make plans to be away Saturday morning to Sunday evening in three weekends time (is your DH away for work or fun the next two weekends?), don't plan or prep for him, so he needs to do all the stuff you'd usually be doing. If this feels difficult I'd say all the more reason to do it. And a once a week evening hobby. I'm sorry he's being shit, I don't think he'll realise how shit unless he gets a taster himself.

I completely relate to you, and remember feeling exactly like that,still do on occasion even though mine are school age now. Do you have any mum friends to hang out with? I didn't have loads but it does save your sanity and nice for kids to hang out with friends'kids too,even when little. Then me and other mums would have a glass of wine in the garden. It will get better anyway,hope your weekend improves x

Just to add, I think being the default parent all the time is really tough and I think that's the thing to tackle.

OP, I am very sorry to hear how low and unhappy you are feeling. It seems to be that you are actually depressed at this point. I totally get where you are coming from, I felt very similar to you and therefore only had one child. My mum had me and my brother and although she dearly loved us, she hated the work of being a mother and I was worried I would end up like her. What you are feeling is not abnormal and it is totally understandable. It does get better, but you have 2 issues here, one is the dreadful drudgery that comes from having young children and the other is a DH who is not pulling his weight on the parenting side of things and thinks that that is your role. You say you are considering a divorce, so you need to tell him this and he has to start taking your point of view seriously. I think you would benefit from couples counselling if at all possible. I think that Relate offer some free of charge and over the phone. Basically you cannot go on like this. Something has to change drastically and provided he can make some changes then it can be fixed in time. He obviously just doesn’t get it, or have you not clearly told him your thoughts? Sometimes we assume our partners know things that they really don’t. You say he is away for the next 2 weekends, is that for work?

I think you should put your foot down to be honest. Next weekend, he takes the dc out for the day or you go out for the day.

Go see a friend. Go sit in a cafe. Go for a swim or watch a film or something.

If he won't be considerate and give you time to yourself, you have to take it.

I remember having babies and pre-school children it as being a really lonely and isolating time where meeting up with other Mum friends for a coffee or walk around the park was the absolute highlight of my week. My DH worked mostly evening and weekends (nature of his job) so I was alone with my children where most other families were together. Because he was rarely around at the weekends is also the reason why I decided to be a sahm (otherwise I'd have been working all week and parenting alone all weekend).

I would not want to go back!

Hopefully this is an unusual weekend for you OP and you can spend more time with your whole family next weekend.

I'm sorry you are going through this.
Men can be shit. 💩
We only have one little boy and my fella used to try and fix crap, and then moan.
We tried the whole divvy up the hours, and got resentful when one worked more and the other does more unpaid household labour etc. 🤦‍♀️

It honestly felt like bloody groundhog day.
I went back to work and it got a little better.
We wrote down a rota for cooking, it worked for a while and then we used it as a guide, instead of a strict rule.

To be honest, the thing that stopped me from kicking him in the balls most days, was him paying for a handy man (a guy who we know who charges mates rates) to fix all the crap jobs that hubby would half heartedly do, and that way it freed hubby up to spend time with his family, as he had no excuse then (it's amazing how many non important jobs can materialise with men).

I had PND, and we sat down and had a come to jesus meeting. Our support network was non -existent (my mum got very poorly, her partner is very elderly, and my MIL and FIL both passed away). My pals all work full time and life was a daily grind.

I told hubby the 'wife-work' / unpaid labour was soul destroying, and he agreed to pull his weight more and for us both to have a break once a month by paying a cleaner to come once every 4 weeks.
Sounds mental but we try and clean up between us both for 3 weeks straight (Which we do mamage).
Then on the fourth week, my hubby has to move his arse and tidy ALL his shite away, as we're not paying our cleaning lady to tidy his crap.
The house is then all tidy and ready to clean
(which also forced us to get rid of a lot of clutter and crap, we accumulated all kinds of tat).
And honestly it saved my sanity and possibly my marriage. As I know that the house will be clean within 2 - 2.5 hours while I took our wee man out to the the park for an hour, then to the Lidl (he loves the shopping trolley) which killed another hour.

Hubby had to work a little over-time to pay for the handy man, but once all the jobs were sorted, he could stop that.
We factored a cleaner into our monthly budget and made it work.
It still works now, and even though my wee man is 6, some days are still hard, but it's a lot easier than when he was a toddler.

These may not work for you, you may have a brain wave and decide you want certain things to happen, or you may have had enough and may decide to leave.

Your feelings are valid and it's fucking hard work being a mum. I honestly don't know how you manage with two, as I struggled with just one.
Life got easier when wee man joined reception class in school, as before then I could only make 1 mum and baby class, due to bloody covid) and it was lonely during that time.
When he joined school I was added to a whatsapp group and could message and say, anyone going to the local park today? And someone would always be there more often than not, so then wee man could just play with a pal, while myself and the other parent could chat while we supervised the kids between us.

Sending hugs to you 🫂