Anonymous wrote:Wondering if others are struggling in their relationship post baby. We have an almost 10 month old and I thought things would have gotten better at this point but they have not. Long story short, my husband has really been struggling with how your life changes after a baby. He basically just tries to fit the baby into his "old life" instead of morphing into a "new" life that includes a baby. I get it, babies aren't fun 24/7. There is a lot to grieve about your old life, but I am just at my wits end.
For example, he is really into sports, sports gambling, etc. Every single Sunday he has been, and wants to continue to be gone from 11am to 9pm to watch sports at a friends house while I am at home with the baby. After a ton of blow ups he now "brings" our son to watch sports all day, because I said how ridiculous it was for me to sit alone all day with the baby every weekend. A decision he consistently regrets as many of you would imagine, being in a room with an infant and 8 other men is not exactly an appropriate place for a baby to spend an entire day.
Every weekend it is something he needs to do with his friends that have no children, sports related. I am talking fantasy sports, college basketball, college football, NFL, soccer, hockey, basketball. It never ends. He has always been into sports but the gambling has made it 100 times worse paired with all his friends are into it, so if he is not doing it, he feels left out.
I really value my social life as well, but taking care of the baby alone all weekend is not what I signed up for. We also have had to work on his mood swings where he is in a generally annoyed mood while we are spending quality time with our son because some fantasy team didn't have enough touch downs. All he wants to do every weekend is hang out with his childless friends and sit around drinking beers watching tv.
On top of that, he plays xbox every night for at least 3 to 4 hours. I don't actually care, but I care that he stays up till 1-2am every single night and is irritable because he never sleeps and just wants to game with his friends. Again, he did this pre-baby. Stupid me.
Is this normal behavior? He said I should expect him to be usually gone one weekend (say Saturday) to go watch sports with his friends every weekend. As a working mom, we both work during the week and I did not sign up for just hanging out with the baby alone. He tries to "fix" this by bringing the baby, when in actually I just want quality time with my family. He just doesn't like to hang out with our son all day as he finds it "boring". I find myself really jealous of other couples who are just out and about hanging with their spouse and their child on the weekend. I have to drag him to every "family" time and he acts like I should be grateful. Some game was on and we were on a family walk and he wanted me to "thank him" because he was missing a random basketball game to take a walk with his wife and child at 7pm on a Wednesday.
I have suggested couples therapy and he has refused saying he will never attend. At this point, I am ready to end my marriage since I am incredibly lonely anyway. I just don't know what to do. We have had many conversations on this. To make matters worse, we have had a lot of struggles before this, including a stillbirth. I say that because we both, before our living son was born, had longed for these moments.
I am just so disappointed with how my life looks like with our living son after everything we have been through. And to answer your question if he is avoiding his grief/trauma of our past, no he is not. He is just a man child that doesn't want to make any changes to his personal wants. None of this is new behavior for the past ten years and I should have known better. I guess I just assumed he would smarten up a little bit when we had a child.
One of my friends recently separated around 11 months. I think it's a mistake but I understand her frustration.
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