Advice for how to vet your DH’s potential as a future father/partner?
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Anonymous
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Other threads today have me thinking. One person said that you know the kind of partner and father your DH will be based on how their father was when they were growing up. But if you didn’t grow up in the same town, how can you know?
I’m in the middle of a divorce so I’ve been thinking about questions I could have asked to know the truth about STBX and the patterns set by his family of origin: 1) did you eat dinner together as a family? More importantly: at what time? (Turns out that my STBX’s family would sit and wait at the table for my FIL to come home as late as 8:30 pm even when STBX was in 1st or 2nd grade). If I’d probed past my initial question, I would have realized that STbX was raised in a family where everything revolved around FIL and his schedule. 2) did your mom work? When? STBX made a big fuss about his mom’s career but was cagey about key details. I didn’t know until a year before our divorce that she didn’t start working until he was 16, and even then it was part-time and she would drive him to school and pick him up from activities and make all of his meals and do all of what should have been his chores. 3) what were your chores growing up? STBX lied about this so not sure how I could have accounted for his deficits in this area. I wish I had known the truth, which was “none.” His mom did everything until he went away to college because “he needed to focus on his studies.” 4) what did you pay for in high school and college? STBX had a job in college but bent the truth and pretended he worked in Hs, too. He was not responsible for any costs in HS and college and his parents would give him whatever money he wanted. I didn’t know this until we had some major financial disagreements about his personal spending and our joint financial planning. If your spouse has never been responsible for budgeting for their fun, you will have to be the bad guy. Don’t marry someone who never had to pay for anything in HS or college or he’ll never know how to handle discretionary income in a partnership. Don’t marry the baby who spent his summer wages on CDs and concert tickets while you were saving yours for textbooks and rent. Please add your hard-earned advice here! |
Anonymous
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OP-I get what you are saying but honestly a lot of the things you are upset about are things that were mostly out of your DH’s control.
For example, I grew up very poor and My DH grew up upper middle class. We had a very different experience as teens/young adults. He was pretty much given everything and I had to work for everything. He is an awesome husband and father and is about 3,000x better at budgeting and financial stuff than I am. So what I am saying is your experience is not everyone’s. |
Anonymous
Totally out of my STBX’s control but had I been aware of these things, I may have had insight into our future problem areas and biases he was bringing into our relationship about his “job” as a husband and father. |
Anonymous
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I agree with PP. My DH also had a much more wealthy and “easy” time growing up. What I saw in him was how kind he was with children and animals and how he was a good listener — those things have made him a wonderful father. We are friends who communicate, which has made him a good partner. All the red flags you are now noticing could be worked out with communication.
OP - you are raw from this experience. Sometimes people grow apart and no longer get along. |
Anonymous
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1 and 2 are so dependent on circumstances. DH is an amazing dad and husband. His dad is a great guy but wasn't around much growing up and wasn't an involved dad. DH grew up working middle class and his dad worked 3 jobs most of his childhood so he wasn't around much. And he was understandably tired and quick tempered (yelled a lot). His mom worked and was more involved.
For me, this is what I paid attention to 1. His relationship with his family. Not necessarily how close they were but how they acted around each other. He doesn't have a super lovey dovey family, but they all get along well and everyone is kind and respectful 2. His work ethic. He worked since he was 14 and has a hard drive. 3. How he handled his "bachelor pad". Was it decorated? Was it clean? Did he cook actual meals for himself? Basically was he a capable adult taking care of himself or was he going to need someone else to do it? 4. How did he respond when things went awry? Was he to with the flow? Did he struggle to adapt to changing plans? 5. How does he respond to sickness both when I was sick and when he was sick? Did he take care of me? Bring me meds? Tell me to rest? Did he act like a man -baby? 6. How did he support me when I needed it? Did he do what I needed or what HE thought I needed? Also, not to sound like an ass but I'm a pretty great wife and mom. If you based what you thought I would be like off my mom, you would go running for the hills. I'm great because I worked my butt off to NOT be like her and recover from the trauma of being raised by her. So I'm pretty hesitant to base everything off people's childhoods. |
Anonymous
No, not how DH grew up, how DH’s father behaves NOW. That is the future of your DH. Is the dad a grumpy, stingy misanthrope? That’s dh’s future. Is the dad happy and a good partner? Then DH will be too. Is the dad financially responsible and stable? Then most likely DH will be too. |
Anonymous
I think this is one of the cases where women are different from men. I think women are more likely to go to therapy and process their upbringing and resolve to be different. I think that men are socialized differently and don’t tend to open themselves up to change in the same way that women feel pushed to “improve.” |
Anonymous
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If I had it to do again, I would more closely examine my potential FIL's attitude towards fatherhood, housework, and his wife. I too easily dismissed red flags from his behavior because my DH expressed disagreement with and said he wanted to be a different kind of husband and father.
When you have kids, it can be stressful, and there is a tendency to revert to what is familiar. If that's a father who withdraws, never takes initiative, and expects his wife to "mother" him the same way she mothers the kids, then even if your DH is working against that example, there will be times when that's what he does. My DH does better than his dad did. But his dad was a misogynist who believed a father's role was discipline and nothing else, and that men had no obligations to a household other than working, even if their wives worked. So the bar was extremely low. If I did it again, I'd look for a man whose father raised that bar up off the floor, at least. I'd look for someone with a family dynamic where no one freeloads and everyone contributes, and where people know how to communicate (beyond my FIL, many of the men in my DH's family expect to be cared for by women, whether their wives or their mothers or whoever is around, simply by virtue of being men). I made a mistake in thinking someone could totally reject their socialization. |
Anonymous
Yep. Every man becomes his dad. Every woman becomes her mom. |
Anonymous
+1. Look for empathy, respect, ambition, problem solving, and communication. The rest will fall in place. People are doing the best they can. If you have a spouse who can empathize, find solutions, and truly communicate, you and him will figure it out. |
Anonymous
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I agree with the PP that not everything is as straightforward. You never know if the person who had to work for everything to pay for college will feel strongly that they don’t want that for their own kids or feel the need to make up for what they didn’t have. Meanwhile someone that grew up secure in money could have learned good financial practices and had parents that made sure their the kids still understood the value of money.
The key is that you are both being willing to talk about how you felt about it (it was great or no, want to do this differently). Also being able to communicate and listen if you don’t naturally align while not being critical of the other person’s upbringing. I’ve been fortunate my DH and I have a lot of similar values and I get along well with my in-laws. Even with that we had to navigate different habits/communications we hold from our family of origin and find compromises that are not 100% what he grew up and not 100% how I grew up. As cliche as it sounds, communication (both listening and ability to reflect and articulate your thoughts), flexibility and thoughtfulness are probably better indicators than a specific way we grew up. |
Anonymous
You should qualify this with "all else being equal". None of my sisters is anything like my mom. But we all got married at least 5 years later than she did, and our parents gave us much more than her her parents gave hers She would have been more like us if she married later. My DH is a better father than his dad, but he too married much later than his dad did. |
Anonymous
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Whaaat? A divorce that is all the man’s fault? In this forum?
Thank you for your reliable narrative, OP. I’m sorry you were an innocent victim. |
Anonymous
| Much of it is just luck, OP. My DH grew up in a very dysfunctional household, though his parents remained unhappily married their whole lives and there was no cheating. It made him all the more determined to do his best to create a happy and stable family. |
Anonymous
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You would be better off basing this on what you see now, rather than the past. How someone grew up is important, avoid those high ACE scores (and I say this as someone with a high one), but pay more attention to how they treat people.
My DH was still close with every good friend he'd ever made, and more importantly, he was always doing things for them. Very generous. He's an accountant and when we met he was doing all of his friend's taxes for free. Still does. This weekend he was fixing a friend's lawn mower. He was very generous and kind and amiable with me as well. How someone treats the people they are close to, and what kind of energy and inclination he has for that, is key. |