Reply to Popcorn Problem: how could this have been handled better?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Seasoned wife and mother here.

Young mothers tend to be control freaks - not a bad thing per se, but attending to the needs of a young brood tends to bring that out in some people.

The advice that I will give a lot of you probably will not register for a few years, but here goes.  If you want to have a good relationship with your DH and just a peaceful marriage, a lot of you need to learn to delegate properly.  My marriage is not perfect but this is a skill that I learned after a few years.  DH is pretty active with household stuff anyways, but if I ask him (not tell) him to do something, I do not tell him HOW to get the task done and if the task is done within reason, I do not critique it. Now if he really screws it up (which is rare) I mention it to him, but not in a negative confrontational posture.  One example is that my DH uses the dishwasher and I prefer to hand-wash.  Thus, I know that if I need him to cover the dishes, he is going to do it his way.  And if I want it done MY way, I should be prepared to do it myself.  I am just not sure it is constructive for a person or a marriage to micromanage to that degree.

Many of you are in the "pre-martyr" stage where you insist your DH is an idiot and that is why you have to do everything.  [/quote]

I grew up as the child in the kind of relationship OP has.  My Mom says exactly the kind of hostile things OP's DW said about failure to clean up.  My Dad is like OP.   I am now the mother of 2 kids with a now exDH like OP is now.  While I agree with you, PP, in some ways about how the female acts in this dynamic, I really think men have to take responsibility.  I have lost a lot of respect for my Dad, whom I love dearly.  His expectation that it is the role of someone else in the house to either live in a pigsty or clean up after him is really disrespectful.  My Dad's inability to take responsibility for himself at this level, sent a very damaging message to me about what I can expect men in my life to do.  Because of that, I married someone who is not capable or does not wish to be capable of handling the personal/administrative side of life.  I divorced him, in part, because having an adult child was not how I thought I should live the rest of my life (and for many, many other even stronger reasons, but the "man child" part alone was enough).  I am raising my son to be able to take care of himself and his household.

My Mom played a reactive role in this, and the hostility she developed as a result is saddening.  While it's true that my Mom developed the "martyr" pose, by PP's definition, with my father's complete lack of ability to do even the most basic tasks, she was left to take on the whole of the domestic sphere of their life.  That is a gross unfairness and was the cause of the growth of my Mom's bitterness.  He has profited immensely from her unpaid work and time.

[/quote]

Interestingly enough, my parents had a slightly different dynamic.  My father was perfectly willing to help at first.  However, my mother would criticize him simply because he did things a different way.  Eventually the constant criticism caused him to not even try anymore.  Of course, my mother seized on that to claim that he never did anything and that she had to do it all.  When they divorced, my father proved more than capable of running a household.  When I first married, I was my mother.  Constanly insisting that things be my way in the household realm.  We were always bickering.  Where I started to evolve is that I was in the hospital for a few weeks and DH was in charge.  Lo and behold, the trains STILL ran on time.  And I was causing myself so much stress about HOW things were getting done and not that they were getting done.  But I agree wiith you, you do have to have a partner sho is somewhat willing and competent. [/quote]

You are lucky.  When I have been away from home, my now exDH routinely dumped the kids off on other family members with one or another excuse.  This happened on several occasions.  I am no longer able to travel overnight unless I make arrangements for a family member or sitter to care for the kids.  This has torpedoed my professional career as well as my marriage.[/quote]

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