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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here. Thank you for all the feedback. While quite a few of these situations are about money, that’s not really the main issue most of the time.  We both work full time and live comfortably. I wish it were just about money. That would be simpler to resolve. For example, we’ve expressed how hard it can be to take small children out for chores. His brother and sister in law have often offered to watch our kids. They offered again this weekend. I told DH we should take them up on the offer, buy them all pizza for lunch and do what we need to do in two hours. He waffles and insists it’s no big deal to take the kids- 3 under 7– with us. Why he wants them along to go to Home Depot and Costco who knows but it always ends up being stressful. That’s one example. In my mind it shouldn’t be a big deal to let relatives willing to watch them for a few hours help us out. [/quote]

Let’s explore, when he says it’s “no big deal”, did you say, “wait, I think we may have had two different pictures of last week or maybe different ways of handling it.  I felt like the kids argued for 15 minutes about who would push the cart, I had to stop Larlo from taking everything off the shelf and avoid a meltdown, and then one of us had to do potty breaks with the kids and the 1 hour trip took double that with the kids.  What was your perception?”  Then listen to see if you have two different perceptions of the same thing or he saw the same thing but says “yes, it brings back fond memories of me shopping with my family”

You are trying to get to the root of where the miscommunication is happening.  You are are assuming he sees and hears the same things you do, it impacts him the same way it does you, and that he would make the same decision as you when he has the exact same perception of an issue and same impact.  He is assuming the same about you.  Sometimes with my DH it’s about different impact and once it is communicated explicitly normally we find a solution that plays to the person’s strength or tries to balance so one person isn’t always getting the brunt of what they don’t want.  With the shopping thing, initially my DH would go on household errands on the weekends and I was home with both the kids.  While that sounds great, they would alternately play and argue and trying to get them to clean up/clean their rooms would have me wish I was the one grocery shopping. I  also couldn’t plan my errands/get out of the house because I didn’t know when DH would get back.  Also, personality wise on the weekend DH doesn’t like to sit in the house and I’m recharging for the work week. We both had to discuss our perceptions and in the end after DH taking both kids, and them fighting like cats and dogs and him coming back to say why that wasn’t a fun time, the compromise was him alternating which one goes shopping with him.  With just one, both the home and shopping experiences were very pleasant.  He also gives the heads up on the timeframe for the errands so I can plan accordingly.  And when we have to be the heavy to get the kids to clean, it’s a team effort and we share that fun.  Now that worked well for us given our personalities, how our kids behave, and how we each are impacted by their behavior - someone else could come up with a completely different solution that works for them.  Also, if DH and I had jumped to a solution without the the background discussion I could see being frustrated because you are coming in 3/4 of the way into the story assuming the person has read the same book and drawn the same conclusions.[/quote]

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