Appreciation?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you criticize all that he does, it is not going to make him want to do more. It will make him want to avoid and resent you.

If you can't understand what having a father around does for your son, then maybe you shouldn't be a parent. It's not just about you. You sound like a child throwing a tantrum.

So true. What a selfish cow.

Poor guy, he has to come home to this. Looks like she will walk. All in all the guy will be better off. At least he can start again with a woman who is grateful and make a new family, leaving this horrible woman in the dust. She doesn't exactly sound like a catch.

And DH (or his job) is paying for her therapy!

[Anonymous]

Do you work Fulltime OP? If not, then I think you might be expecting too much from him. Working fulltime while raising a family is very tough.

[Anonymous]

OP here: I am not looking for someone to tell me that I am perfect and he is wrong, or vice versa, so I will just ignore the posts which do that. I am also not planning to start any SAHM wars. I will just say I have been SAH, wah, and woh after the child was born, and the problems did not go away! My job was either not important enough, or not stable enough, or not hard enough compared to his.

H does not have to stay with me if he does not like me; he knows that he has fucked up twice now (he was married before), so he has his reasons to stay. The irony is, he had the same complaints of his first wife...but I digress.

As for basic stuff...I did not mean everyday stuff like taking out trash or unloading dishwasher. He does it very occasionally. I mean, if you have a child you provide for the child - and for the mom until he is older (or take primary custody). It's not something you "appreciate"; it's like I if I demanded appreciation of say changing diapers at night, or staying awake with a baby with teething pain... These are things that you just do, just because you have a baby. Same thing about playing with your child. This is what I am trying to understand and I can't! What is there to appreciate?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here: I am not looking for someone to tell me that I am perfect and he is wrong, or vice versa, so I will just ignore the posts which do that. I am also not planning to start any SAHM wars. I will just say I have been SAH, wah, and woh after the child was born, and the problems did not go away! My job was either not important enough, or not stable enough, or not hard enough compared to his.

H does not have to stay with me if he does not like me; he knows that he has fucked up twice now (he was married before), so he has his reasons to stay. The irony is, he had the same complaints of his first wife...but I digress.

As for basic stuff...I did not mean everyday stuff like taking out trash or unloading dishwasher. He does it very occasionally. I mean, if you have a child you provide for the child - and for the mom until he is older (or take primary custody). It's not something you "appreciate"; it's like I if I demanded appreciation of say changing diapers at night, or staying awake with a baby with teething pain... These are things that you just do, just because you have a baby. Same thing about playing with your child. This is what I am trying to understand and I can't! What is there to appreciate?

You don't get it. Go back and read the first page of this thread slowly, over and over.

You wouldn't appreciate if he thanked you in the morning for letting him sleep and for getting up with the baby? You wouldn't appreciate if he if noticed the small things you did that he was grateful for? You don't demand it but it is pretty nice when your partner appreciates you.

Your expectations are off. You don't just expect he be the sole provider for both of you and therefore that isn't worthy of appreciation. You should appreciate that.

Stop seeing it as all or nothing. Your viewpoint is that unless he becomes superdad and awesome husband then there is nothing to appreciate. You need to break this down. It is a good thing you are in therapy. You come across as very rigid and critical in your thinking. You are stubborn and don't want to give an inch. This contribution to the dynamic will kill the marriage as much as what he does.

[Anonymous]

Good God You Bitches! Come on!

Its as if you just assume that the therapist has it right. A bad assumption.

We do not know the pattern and how it started. If he is nitpicking at her and calling her fat, what makes ALL of you so far ASSUME that this is because it is HER fault? Why assme she started the lack of appreciation?

Also, two times divorced and the same complaints of previous wives? HELLO? Noone takes note.

OP: Your task IS hard. I would be more interested in knowing the HISTORY of your relationship. IN a nutshell: was he once not like this? Did it begin with the child? What was the dynamic in the approximately three years before the child? That is what a good therapist would be looking at. You can just start in the present and fix things. Its a good plave to start to STABILIZE things which is probably what the therapist is trying to achieve.

If the goal is to make life with DH more pleasant NOW then you BOTH need to be nicer to each other. Finding that difficult and exploring why, that will take some time but that will also get to the real problem.

Lets get this thread onto a helpful and realistic track. It is the posters who are being all or nothing. OP is just in a shitty place, which feels like all or nothing. But if you read between the lines you can see its more complicated.

[Anonymous]

PP, I agree with you, this is basically what the therapist vis telling me (minus the judgement of course).
At least now I start to "feel" what it is to appreciate (as opposed to just intellectual understanding).
I have no idea why I outright refuse to appreciate. But once I start to, maybe this will at least take away some of H's picking on me. I honestly don't believe that love (if there was one) can be regained, even if there once was love...

[Anonymous]

10:32, THANK YOU, from the bottom of my heart.
The therapist is the same I have been seeing pre marriage and when we were dating, she knows the background.
She really helped me before, but at that point I was set on making this work.
My problem was that even though I loved my fiancée, I had a hard time respecting him. He has changed in some ways since, but not all.
Post kid, it's like the tables have turned. I can't blame him for his revenge, but I don't want to put up with it, either.

I don't know if I just cannot be with a man I respect (for any reason), or if its just I made a mistake of settling for someone I don't respect enough and it can be fixed.
Yes, MY goal is to stabilize things because up and divorcing would not get me far right now- though I would LOVE to get a break from H. We cannot afford separate households so we have to make it work in a civil manner under one roof. I can stay with family for a while but I don't think this is a viable option.

[Anonymous]

New poster here:

I have had a hard time appreciating my husband as well. I went through this time in our marriage (and still find myself in that very same place often) where I expected my husband to meet me in the middle with the kids, the house and everything in between. There is a huge difference, however, in our family life. My husband works 80 hours a week and I stay at home. It isn't feasible or realistic to expect that my husband pull the same weight that I am.

I had to take a step back-- MANY steps back. I had make myself look at the things that my husband DOES do that I don't see on a daily basis. My husband wakes up before the sun and goes to work. He comes home to a dark house since he works so long. My husband carries the weight of all of our finances on his shoulders alone. It is solely because of HIS hard work outside of our home that I attend MOPS groups, chaperon field trips for our children, go out to lunch with friends after preschool-- all while driving a new car and coming home to a warm house and a roof over my head.

Even when my husband DOES come home, say it's before bed time for the kids, he isn't always in the floor tickling them and playing. Say he comes home at dinner time and I am serving the kids dinner. He immediately jumps in to help me. Then he'll sit down and I will make his plate. After dinner, he isn't scrubbing the floor or wiping down counters or washing dishes, he's relaxing on the sofa with one of the kids or maybe by himself. Why isn't he doing more you may ask? In my honest opinion, working 80 hours a week = time to relax.

I am sure there are things that your husband does do but you are too wrapped up in focusing on everything that he doesn't. I recently took a bible study which revolved around marriage and child raising. The speaker said this, "If you focus too much on who your spouse is not, you will miss who he is". I was convicted. I decided to throw out the person I thought my husband should be and be thankful for the husband that I have.

And, you know what? Sometimes you'll find me with multiple children outside cutting the grass FOR my husband. Some say he gets off too easy-- I say, serving my husband (not in every way but most) is my job as his wife. Oh and by the way, a husband that works, like you say yours does, and brings home the bacon is wonderful. Some men won't even do that!

[Anonymous]

OP here: thank you for sharing your experience, PP!
My H works a regular 40 hour week. We rent a small place and I drive a 2006 Toyota. Not that I am trying to downplay what he does - all that matters is that he works almost no overtime and still he claims to be tired.
He rarely jumps in to help when I come home from a grocery store or market with the kid, for example.
He gets to sleep until 9.20 on weekdays and until and past noon on weekends.
So it's not exactly like he is killing himself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here: thank you for sharing your experience, PP!
My H works a regular 40 hour week. We rent a small place and I drive a 2006 Toyota. Not that I am trying to downplay what he does - all that matters is that he works almost no overtime and still he claims to be tired.
He rarely jumps in to help when I come home from a grocery store or market with the kid, for example.
He gets to sleep until 9.20 on weekdays and until and past noon on weekends.
So it's not exactly like he is killing himself.

I understand your frustration with him not helping do things as simple as get groceries out of the car. Have you tried coming home from the store, walking inside and asking him to help you bring the groceries in?

I used to want my husband to just DO IT without direction. However, I have learned that I need to spell it out. If I get home from the store and I need my DHs help, I ask. He 99.9% of the time will help me unload groceries and put them away.

[Anonymous]

OP, I can relate some to your post. I too SAHM and lately, I've been feeling under appreciated. I don't need to have a huge deal made of what I do and I don't need pats on the back. What I do need (or would like) is for my husband to talk to me about his day and for me to discuss my day with him. Yet when he gets home (when he's not traveling) he's done talking to people and needs down some days, this means he barely says anything to me until 11pm at night. My twins are 8 and I really need to get back to work. I volunteer a ton at the school and for the last 4 weeks have been working on a HUGE project for the school with another Mom and literally had no time to keep up the house, unless I do it at night and I'm beat because, I've been running around planning events, organizing a huge event which draws 1,000 people to it. So I've only done the bare miniumn, which is cook breakfast, make lunch, cook dinner, keep up with laundry, etc. He expects a spotless house, sex every night and a quiet wife. It's frustrating, so I can relate to your post! Sorry, didn't mean to derail your post.

[Anonymous]

Yes I have asked him. Groceries and other heavy lifting he usually agrees to do, but if I ask him to undress the kid (or make sure he is undressed) and help him wash hands while I put away groceries, he would often say- why can't YOU do it? He made it very difficult for me to ask.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes I have asked him. Groceries and other heavy lifting he usually agrees to do, but if I ask him to undress the kid (or make sure he is undressed) and help him wash hands while I put away groceries, he would often say- why can't YOU do it? He made it very difficult for me to ask.

How old is your child? Reason I am asking is, right or wrong, I know many Dads who aren't comfortable hands on until their children grow up a bit.

[Anonymous]

Op here: child is 3.5, he can do most stuff himself but needs supervision or he runs off to play without washing hands and taking off shoes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here: I am not looking for someone to tell me that I am perfect and he is wrong, or vice versa, so I will just ignore the posts which do that. I am also not planning to start any SAHM wars. I will just say I have been SAH, wah, and woh after the child was born, and the problems did not go away! My job was either not important enough, or not stable enough, or not hard enough compared to his.

H does not have to stay with me if he does not like me; he knows that he has fucked up twice now (he was married before), so he has his reasons to stay. The irony is, he had the same complaints of his first wife...but I digress.

As for basic stuff...I did not mean everyday stuff like taking out trash or unloading dishwasher. He does it very occasionally. I mean, if you have a child you provide for the child - and for the mom until he is older (or take primary custody). It's not something you "appreciate"; it's like I if I demanded appreciation of say changing diapers at night, or staying awake with a baby with teething pain... These are things that you just do, just because you have a baby. Same thing about playing with your child. This is what I am trying to understand and I can't! What is there to appreciate?

Are you being obtuse on purpose? Of course the stuff you mention in your last paragraph are routine things adults *have* to do. The point PPs were trying to make to you is that maybe if you were a little nicer to him, if you made more of an effort to seem genuinely appreciative of the things he does do for you, be a bit nicer to you in return and mire willing to help out with the house and child. It's true that you attract more bees with honey.

This does not solve his complaints about you, however. Boring, fat, no interests...those are serious criticisms. Are you working on that at all?