Should I stay or should I leave?

ravernoloo

Ok will try and keep this as short as possible.
Met my partner 4 years ago, got along so well blah blah.. always did things together, we were never a lovey dovey couple but he would randomly kiss me sometimes or we would watch films together. Had a child 2 years later, and things went a little sour, probably to do with the fact the attention wasn't solely on him. He is quite a selfish person but so are his parents so I can see why. Anyway I have just given birth to 2nd baby, so 1st baby is now 2 and new one is 3 months old.
Well things seems to have gone down even more. when the eldest grew up a little more and became easier i.e no more breastfeeding and eating food etc, talking we got a little closer again like old times. But now this 2nd one has been born he has just become so selfish. We bought a house together whilst i was pregnant with no.2 so all things then became joint. It seems since that time he is getting picky on what we spend the food money on i.e todays argument was because he spent £36 on nuts (which i rarely eat) yet when i mentioned i was going to buy cheese this week for our eldest he told me i shouldn't be wasting money. Now that to me is quite selfish when i have had to pay towards his nuts.
Yesterday he was suffering from food poisoning so was in bed almost all day. But last night he had a football night planned with the team, and decided to go out and have 1 drink. After spending all day lying around whilst i cooked cleaned and looked after 2 children, for him to then suddenly have the energy to go out?
He has stormed out this evening and not come back for the last 2 hours because i have just been truthful. I think last night really annoyed me. No sorry or anything.
Obviously there is many more things that happen but this is just the last 2 days.
I work part time (currently on maternity) whilst he works full time. I cook dinner most nights as well as do the washing etc.

I just feel completely like giving up, i try and tell him how i feel and he just doesn't really show any interest in wanting to change. His answer is well go and find someone who will do that. How can i make this relationship work? I feel it is 1 sided. I want to do what i can to keep it together yet he just doesn't care and doesn't want o change.

helcat26

I am struggling to understand why you would have a second child if things were not going well?


Anyway you seem to know the reason for the lack of harmony- either you can pay him the extra attention he wants or you cannot or do not want to.


your choice

Primrose

It sounds as if your partner has never really grown up and realised that when children arrive, all relationships have to be renegotiated and priorities have to change. If he had bad examples of an ungenerous attitude from his parents he hasn,t had any good role models to learn from.

I can only suggest you wait until the atmosphere is calmer, sit down together over a quiet meal or when the children are in bed and ask him if he regrets having the children and feels restricted by the way his life now is. Tell him you realise it's hard for both of you to adapt but try to come up with some compromise behaviours which will keep your relationship unantagonistic while your children are so young and demanding.

Remind him that things will get better as the children get older but if he is genuinely regretting the loss of his freedom and resenting all the new responsibilities he feels he has to cope with I'm afraid you're never going to get the support you need to be a healthy family unit together.

You need to quietly think through first what your alternative options are likely to be. Where would you live unless you stay and he moves out. Where will your finsncial support come from ? Brining up two young children alone is very tough. Do you have any family support nearby? Why should your parents have this burden thrust on them when it's not of their making if you are going to rely on them for practical or financial support. The breakdown of a relationship often impacts on others beyond your immediate home. Think things through before you rush into anything.

ravernoloo

We were still getting along fine and as my 1st child turned 1 things were back to normal which is why we had a second. The thing I cannot deal with is his constant selfishness and not really appreciating me. Is it hormones causing me to think this way I don't know?

ravernoloo

Thanks primrose tour words have actually brought me to tears. I think it doesn't help that I don't really speak to my mother and my father lives over 300 miles away so not close either. I don't have many friends which I think I lost a lot after having baby no.1 (which seems to happen if theyou don't have children)
I'm not young, I'm 31 this year so I thought it through with him before having children and he said that what he wanted. But it does seem he just cannot cope with life as an adult (he's 28!) And wants a mother figure.

Primrose

I can understand you're feeling very alone at the moment.
Ok, so he wants a mother figure. Of course He needs to grow up. He's a father now twice over but I suspect, given his personality, you're going to have to approach this from a different angle. He didn,t have the sort of parents who set a good example, so maybe you have to subtly teach him. He needs to feel "big" and "masculine" and "in charge of doing things his way".

So even if you don't think it will work, make him feel like "top dog" by praising him for the the things he DOES do right like bringing in an income every month and any little things he does do domestically like putting the bins out, etc. A little praise goes a long way.

Men can be strange creatures sometimes. All full of testerone yet sometimes their brains and personalities never develop at the same rate as other parts of their bodies . Try a charm offensive. As the children have arrived he probably feels been downgraded from No 1 priority in your life to No 3.

A grown up mature male would have accepted this. Your OH still has some growing up to do so before he reaches this stage so before you give up try techniques which help him feel he's climbing up the ranks in your esteem again. If he's truly inherently selfish this may not work but if he sees some positive behaviours on your part to set an example, he may start gradually changing his own.

Just a thought, in your earlier post you mentioned "my first child". Should you have said "OUR first child"? Could this be a clue that your partner feels your children are exclusively yours and feels they always have priority over him and that he!s now just the main money provider? Only you know how the nuances in your relationship go.

Let him have some nuts as a treat for example, but try and get him round to making decisions about "treats" for the rest of the family too so that gradually he starts thinking of you all as a unit again and let him learn how to take some responsibility for doing that instead of just thinking about himself.

Changing him into a sharing individual won,t be easy if he's an inherently selfish individual but just think of yourself as the more mature individual in this partnership, for the moment at least. You may just have to gently retrain him by example. Yiu shouldn't have to be doing this, but sometimes we have to experiment outside our comfort zones to get the results we want.

Good luck, and don't blast his ears off when he comes home from football. Just ask him he had a nice time and is feeling better. (Who knows, he'll never admit it but he might just feel a little bit ashamed of himself,)

ravernoloo

Thank you so much yes you make sense in everything you say. I said my child as I guess I feel they are predominantly mine. I look after them daily and he doesn't really do a lot with the youngest. I think in the 3 months he has changed his bum maybe 8 times? Which isn't a lot considering how many a newborn goes through! Thank you so mucheck for your kind advice I will definitely try this is different way and try and "teach" him to think more of all of us rather than himself. I guess over the 4 years he has changed a little as he does do some things which he would never have done when we first met.
Thank you primrose x

Primrose

Take a day at a time. Humour helps. Next time you have to change a nappy when he,a in the room try joking "well WE never thought we'd be doing this when we were carefree 18 year olds, did we. Why don,t you take a ohoto so we can show it to his girlfriend when he's s 18 and we can get our own back". Make him part of the process. He might even offer to change the next nappy !

annandale

Make him feel like top dog when he puts the bins out?

He's not a dog that needs to be trained. He's an adult with two kids.

Nothing was mentioned about his parents, how does anyone know what sort of example his parents set him!

annandale

He needs to pull his weight. Not be !!!!! footed around and treated like top dog for putting the bins out.

Pull his weight as in help with the kids, cooking, housework.

Seriously, it's 2017 and plenty men can and do support their wives to raise kids and not act like overgrown schoolboys

Pop_Up_Pirate

ravernoloo wrote: »

We were still getting along fine and as my 1st child turned 1 things were back to normal which is why we had a second. The thing I cannot deal with is his constant selfishness and not really appreciating me. Is it hormones causing me to think this way I don't know?

Do you appreciate him? How do you show that?
What does he have to do to show you he appreciates you?

I think a lot of the time, woman want outward displays of gratitude/love/acceptance etc whereas men don't all work that way, so a woman then feels upset when her expectations aren't met.

Drop the expectations, do your best at creating harmony in the house as a partner and mother and he will follow suit.