Have most of you ever articulated “goals” for your family?

I just wanted to keep us fed and housed while getting my kids safely to adulthood, feeling loved and turning into citizens who would leave the world a better place.

Complaining about a lack of “family goals” makes me wonder if OP was high powered at one point in her life, and is now a SAHM, taking her frustrations out in her husband and children.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like this dynamic:

https://www.drpsychmom.com/2014/12/28/couples-meet-counseling-4-wife-wants-annoyingly-satisfied-husband/

I'm a DH and I recognized a lot of myself in that description!

I'm a DW and I did too! OP, how old are your kids? I can completely sympathize with your situation as I am in a very similar relationship where I do all of the planning, activities, etc and he is just as happy sitting around and watching sports all day. However, I will say that its gotten a lot better as the kids have aged as he now coaches their teams, takes them out to the driving range, takes them to movies that they all want to see and I don't (i.e. Marvel movies). He takes them to ball games and I have hours and hours by myself.

I think a lot of men just don't have the desire to plan things for little kids. The thought of taking them to a kids' museum is fun for me but for him, that's just torture. He'll do it and be fine but he would definitely rather be dong other things.

Anonymous wrote:OP - there is nothing stopping you from living an interesting, ambitious life. This is on you.

+1 From your OP, your life sounds exhausting.

Most of my friends who are in marriages like this have a version of this conversation regularly:
DW: Tell me about a goal you have for our family.
DH: uhhh I dunno.
DW: Just tell me! Come on.
DH: okay I want to try river rafting with the kids.
DW: OH NO that’s dangerous.
DH: …

DW: Why don’t you pick our date tonight?
DH: *picks*
DW: Oh this parking lot is awful. Why is the hostess so rude? They don’t serve anything my gluten-intolerances can handle.
DH: …

DW: You would be happier with therapy. You should do therapy. I‘ll send you a link to therapists.
DH: ok
DW: why didn’t you make an appointment? Did you see the list? I‘ll call the therapist for you. I‘ll set the appointment.
DH: …

Anonymous wrote:Sounds like this dynamic:

https://www.drpsychmom.com/2014/12/28/couples-meet-counseling-4-wife-wants-annoyingly-satisfied-husband/

I'm a DH and I recognized a lot of myself in that description!

I'm projecting my own stuff onto here, but ... I don't see any real problem with the not planning - that might just be how he's wired. The real problem is if he can't muster up any enthusiasm for the stuff you plan. That could just be a "having little kids" thing though. When I was in that phase of my life, my ambition was to sneak a little time to just check out and veg on the couch.

Assuming that the lack of interest isn't long-term, though, you might want to try to make peace with his lack of planning. Personally, I don't like planning because I don't know what I'm going to want to do at the date and time when the plans are made, and I'm afraid something better will come up. This creates a mental block. My wife, on the other hand, is a compulsive planner. She feels deeply uneasy if things aren't mapped out.

So, I've learned to kind of get over my need to be in the mood for any given thing or fear of wanting to do something else; and I more or less happily go along with her plans. I try to be present and engaged in whatever she plans. I'm kind of go-with-the-flow, so I'm usually pretty successful in having a good attitude. But, at the same time, she's gotten better at respecting my desire for some amount of unstructured time in our lives. It's hard to live with a planner and tell them that your deepest desire is to do jack shit for an afternoon. So, I usually didn't say it, and it took her a while to figure out that's where I was coming from.

I don't know if your husband is at all like this, but if you want to take a deeper dive, consider that he might be like me in that his parents taught him at a young age not to want things. I was taught to work hard, do as I was told, and not expect the world to give me much. That made me an easy kid to raise, but I probably internalized it too much.

Anonymous wrote:I love my husband and don’t want to be with anyone else. Our romantic/sex life, no complaints. He’s not exactly romantic but that hasn’t changed. He has zero goals, dreams or plans for our family’s life. We have two young kids. I end up planning our dates every week (we do date night 1x a week), end up registering the kids for everything, make all our holiday plans, make all our travel plans, make all our social plans.. I’ve asked him many times to come up with some ideas for anything and nada. It’s beyond frustrating bc I feel lonely emotionally in our marriage bc he shows no zest or passion for anything but his career (management in tech industry) .. he avoids life planning goals, etc. I have confronted him many times and nothing happening. He was a D1 athlete and doesn’t work out at all anymore, just zero passions with the exception of work and watching sports.

I do all the planning for everything and I have no complaints about my sex life with DW and I don't even see what the problem is here.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Try a compromise to slowly give him more responsibility.

"Which of these three restaurants would you like to go to for our date night?"

"For our next vacation, would you prefer the beach or mountains?"

I’m a wife and I have trouble with these types of suggestions. For one, restaurants are overpriced and I am not ready to travel yet with the ongoing pandemic….I think the OP is high maintenance.

Boy, you sound fun.

OP - there is nothing stopping you from living an interesting, ambitious life. This is on you.

Poor OP, falling for the D1 athlete trope and discovering he's just like most other married men.

Do you know how many D1 athletes are complete slobs, and/or actually hated most of that experience? It may have opened them some doors when looking for jobs because it stands out on a resume, but it doesn't mean f---all much of anything else.

And the notion of someone being a D1 athlete like it means something is pretty comical when you come across them all the time in adult leagues and see that they actually aren't better than anyone else at their sport.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He was a D1 athlete he realizes all that over the top hyper driven goal oriented stuff is crap and a miserable way to be. He probably wishes you would learn how to be in the present instead of planning the perfect next thing

Ding ding ding, maybe he just wants to be with you.

You mean tag along whilst doing nothing for her, the kids, the family or the home. Must be nice.

Op, what does your husband do around the house? My DH is not good at the life stuff like planning vacations, setting up play dates, planning dates, etc, so I handle it but he does trash, all the yard work, cooks, etc. so in the end I feel like it balances out.

OP, I get it. I often feel this way too.

I do think it would help to separate out the things you are looking for. I relate to all of them, but I do think you're talking about two distinct things:

1) Short-term planning, like figuring out date nights, making travel arrangements, inviting friends for dinner, planning playdates with other families, etc.

2) Long-terms goals, like saying "I really want to take the kids to visit my relatives in Ireland while they are still relatively young" or "I was think Jack might really like a coding camp next summer".

What I've learned about my husband is that I can actually outsource plenty of that short-term planning to him, as long as I pick the right stuff. Like he's actually really good at setting up playdates with our friends. He's also really good at figuring out where and what we're going to eat, whether it's on vacation or with friends coming over, or just meal planning for us. But he's terrible at planning dates, all non-food aspects of vacations, and all the kid-related holiday stuff (i.e. making sure kids have costumes for Halloween, getting stuff for Easter baskets, etc.). He also is really bad at birthday celebrations, especially mine, which is a source of contention because he just doesn't even try so unless I plan my own birthday, we will literally do nothing and that feels pretty crappy.

But I can work with that. He's good at some things and bad at others, I have some of the skills he lacks and it mostly evens out (except for the birthday thing, it's the one thing I'd really like him to make more of an effort because I just want to feel taken care of once a year).

The long-term goals stuff, what I've found is that I need to initiate these conversations, but if we separate it out from the short-term planning, they go better. He does have ideas about what he wants our family to do and things he wants to do. He doesn't "take initiative" with it, but the ideas are there. It helps to have these conversations without pressure -- after the kids go to bed, over a glass of wine, ask "ok, what are the experiences we really want to have with the kids before they go to college." Write some of it down. Revisit it occasionally. You can have similar conversations about your retirement plans, or just empty-nest plans. The big picture stuff. Don't bring it up all the time, but maybe check in twice a year so that those big ideas guide the smaller decisions you make.

It's not perfect. Obviously I'm still initiating most of this. But at least he's involved and invested.

Anonymous wrote:Do you work? Or, if you do are you in management? I manage upwards of 60 people across the country and it is quite draining. If my spouse were planning everything I wouldn’t lift a finger either. Consider it a division of labor.

Stop moving the goal posts. I would just ask if she worked and how much his role is breadwinner or dual working parent.

If he is the only one who works, and he obsessed about work and only outlet is sports I would say something is up — perhaps he is stressed about being breadwinner or his job is in jeopardy and the only way to dull that anxiety is with Tv. Or he could be straight up depressed.

I mean even the go-getter big law partners I know have an idea of where they want to vacation or what kid of cuisine for date night. That apathy is super weird. Outside chance he is having an affair too?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Try a compromise to slowly give him more responsibility.

"Which of these three restaurants would you like to go to for our date night?"

"For our next vacation, would you prefer the beach or mountains?"

I’m a wife and I have trouble with these types of suggestions. For one, restaurants are overpriced and I am not ready to travel yet with the ongoing pandemic….I think the OP is high maintenance.

DP, but no, the OP doesn’t sound high maintenance at all, but that she’d like her husband to contribute to their family more than he does.

You sound high maintenance.