Reply to Feeling like I'm the spouse who is always "on" and keeping things in order

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "Feeling like I'm the spouse who is always "on" and keeping things in order"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Has he always been like this? If so, you knew what you were getting into[/quote]

Not necessarily. Life gets a lot more complicated when you have kids, own a home, and hit middle age. Often what happens is that someone will be responsible and self-sufficient but then throw in two kids, house maintenance responsibilities, declining parents, and work stress, and they will start seeing how little they can get away with. It's easier for men to do this than women because of existing gender norms, especially around kids. When dads drop the ball regarding their kids, everyone is forgiving. When moms do, everyone is blaming. So it's very easy for this divergence to occur when kids come into the picture, where the mom has to be vigilant as a survival mechanism, because other moms as well as teachers, nannies, daycare workers, and extended family, will blame her if anything goes wrong. Men quickly learn they get a lot more leeway on kid-related stuff and learn to take advantage of that leeway.

It happens all the time in marriages. I know plenty of men who were self-sufficient and responsible pre-kids, but then kids come along and their wives are doing 90% of the child admin and more than 50% of the household admin. Maybe it's reverting to patterns they saw in their family growing up, maybe it's fear of screwing up, maybe it's laziness, maybe it's a combination or something else. But it happens a lot. There may be men who throw up lots of red flags before marriage and kids, but there are also definitely men who seem to have it together and then act helpless when things get hard.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics