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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Honestly, I think this is crazy awesome. Like totally fine.

He doesn't want to participate in your lives. He's made it incredibly clear.

My wife did the same thing. She even complained about the cleaners. First off -- it's ADHD and depression, OP. In men, it manifests in anger, but looking at everything, it's like there is a real reason for all of this. Yes, my wife worked and even was a great employee (despite hating her work and complaining constantly). But it doesn't matter.

My view was to just do what all of these posters said. I focused on me. I worked on my own anxiety and depression, which helped me get a sense that yes, I had a role in this dynamic but I had a great opportunity.

I manage everything in my home. I mean, everything. I do all of the cooking, I make all of the major decisions (my wife gets told what's going on and can weigh in, but her untreated ADHD makes this an exercise of slowly feeding her information in bits that don't overwhelm her). If she hates something, obviously, I'll make a change, but if it doesn't impact her, she doesn't get a say. Activities? I do 100 percent of the driving (I work from home and manage this). Cooking? She's welcome to cook and add to the weekly calendar, but if she doesn't, I just make the meals I want for us, decide when we are eating out and do the grocery shopping. Major kid decisions like tutoring? I found them, including that 3k in money from the state of Virginia to pay for math tutoring. Money stuff? I handle all of the budgeting and saving and retirement planning.

In the short-term, my kids got a mom who could intensely focus on them the way she could. She did things with them like play Animal crossing or read. And I think I have learned to value her own expertise and talent that is driven by her ADHD -- she can research incredibly well and focuses on tasks sometimes to an incredible extent. Yes, it's a halloween costume or cleaning the laundry room, but I appreciate it whenever it comes up and keep things moving.

We both focus really hard on having a respectful discourse. We don't yell and I detest complaining (I sort of shut down with all of the complaining and disengage after years of hearing complaints with no action on her part). It's a peaceful and happy home.

I always will run things by my wife basically saying this is what I think the plan should be, do you have a plan/want to get involved?

Months went by but slowly she started getting more involved. She's still not terrible involved in the weeds, but she doesn't want to be.

And yes, I could be divorced. But it's just a headache, I would much, much prefer managing this all alone with my wife not causing harm than having my kids grow up in two homes, one with a person with an untreated mental illness/cognitive issue and one with structure.

The future? Who knows. If we didn't have kids of course I'd cut and run but I won't thrust the complications of divorce on my kids. I might when they are adults, but they can decide what if, any, relationship they want with either of us.[/quote]

See I think this is great advice but I also think it's worth noting that women, by virtue of biology, just have a greater "value" than men do.  Women 1) give birth 2) are much closer to the children generally 3) will generally spend a lot of time nurturing, playing with the kids, etc when you free up their time.  The same cannot be said of men.  We have studies on this.  SAHDs do a fraction of the housework and childcare SAHMs do.  It seems the difference may be biological- who knows?  But when men have more free time, they generally dont spend it playing with Timmy and reading bedtime stories.  Which is really fine- men and women are different, and all that, I'm not even saying this is always a bad thing.  But I think the dynamic of the man taking over the decisions, doing most of the housework, taking care of all the bills and big decisions, is going to be very different than a woman doing the same.  When a woman does it, quite often the man will just be hanging around, playing video games or whatever.  And again, women just seem to have more innate value to relationships- do more emotional labor, etc.  So while your situation, while it may be frustrating at times, may have worked out, I dont know that the genders reversed would.  Most women aren't willing to sign up to micromanage everything to have a man just sitting around doing nothing.  Men need to add greater value to relationships to make up for their lack of ability to bear children, bond with kids as well, etc, hence why theyve historically provided money.  When a man's not adding money, AND not helping around the house, AND not really doing childcare- I mean, what's the point?[/quote]

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