Reply to anyone drop the rope with their spouse?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The idea that your kids will not suffer because of your DHs issues is insane. Divorce or not he is not a present father and that will have ramifications.[/quote]

While they'd ideally have a more day to day engaged dad, I don't think they will "suffer".  He can be a super fun dad and in an emergency he'd go to the end of the earth for him.  In the day to day he's happy to leave the day to day monotony to someone else.  I grew up with a dad kind of like him, he would take me on long bike rides on the weekends, and in general be fun and loving for chunks of weekend time and not part of week-day life, I knew he was "there" for me etc....but I got all of my day to day needs and security from my mom.  I honestly think at the end of the day my dad is the only one that suffered from it, I know he loves and supports me but I will never be as close to him as I am with my mom and I think he's a bit lonely now that he is retired and has time for family but doesn't have the very close connection.  So yes my life could have been a little better if I had a deeper emotional connection with my dad, but childhood was still really good b/c all of my emotional / logistical / security etc needs were still met by my mom and a lot of happy kids have family dynamics like that. [/quote]

Uh, you married your dad.  That is the ramification of having a DH like yours.  Do you want your kids to think that is the best example of a father?  He wants to sleep in instead of spend time with his kids?  You basically have repeated the same mistake because you were conditioned to think this is how it’s supposed to be.[/quote]

ok and here I am - given I can't force him to change what would you suggest? [b] Continue cajoling him [/b]all the time?  Give up on that and just leave it to him to do what he wants? Divorce?  Something I'm not thinking of?[/quote]

Yes. Because it works. [/quote]

Not for her. Look, at some point we all have a breaking point. Continually cajoling an unenthusiastic spouse is soul-crushing. She sounds committed to the marriage and to parenting, while still prioritizing her own happiness. That's healthy.

OP if I read correctly, your kids are 1 and 2. It's a total moving target right now, and you're more in survival mode than you think. My DD is 6 and just the other day I laid back down after dropping her off at school (I'm an ER doc) and remembered how hard the mornings were when she was a baby and I'd be "on" starting at 6a, every day, no matter how bad the night before was. It gets so much better/easier, no matter what your DH does, just because the logistics of parenting improve as they age.

I'm also of the mindset that taking your hands off the wheel may eventually cause your high-achieving husband to step up (emphasis on eventually. Nothing will happen right away), esp as the kids age.

Good luck, and kudos to you for playing the long game. I was a single parent from jump, and I've seen several of these situations play out among my married friends. People who take a measured approach like yours generally are they happiest, regardless of outcome. [/quote]

This is OP - yeah some days it works and others he just reacts like a teenager rebelling against mom and refusing.  It's not like after one nice request to get out of bed and join us for the zoo he cheerfully does it, its 30 minutes of trying to stay cheerful and positive doing it to his grouchiness back and then if I'm successful in getting him to go 2 hours later he'll say something like "Wow, I always feel so much better when I get out of bed and do something!" like that's shocking news every time.  I feel like instead of him having to take responsibility for his own happiness it creates a soul crushing dynamic for me of having to try to talk him into it and a parent/child dynamic for him where he can rebel and put blame on me instead of taking responsibility for himself.

This all sounds so miserable - but day to day I'm not unhappy, I just can't handle it all anymore.  When he is engaged we all have a lot of fun, day to day our life isn't miserable, I just am so tired of having to prod him along and its painful to have to do that.  Part of me wants to just stop caring / fighting it and remove that whole day to day conflict from our lives by arranging my life around who he is.  I'd rather be able to balance my own fairly demanding job with homelife, but if I think I'd rather just accept that and scale back some and stop excepting him to be able to carry some of the home front load without management.   I'm not sure I can do it though and truly let the hope / resentment go.  [/quote]

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