Relationships  Discussion Forum

Hi Friends...

If you remember I had post couple of months back about tension b/w me and husband.

Saheli, As you had advised I supported him couple of times, appreciated when he helped, gave him his free time.
after some days I tried to be strict and explaining it is give & take relationship, if you do something for us, my services are there for use otherwise I am not maid.

Our story is still the same, he is okay on weekdays, helps me a little in household work & child care etc otherwise weekends are really horrible. either we have argurments, fights, etc or he will keep surfing anything on internet or will sleep for hours and hours or watch TV.
when I want to clean house, or do some socializing or go out with kid whereas he wants to mainly eat & relax. he can only do grocery on sunday evening. I cant do all these alone and want him to share the responsibilities.
no love,respect or sharing :-(

My son is 2yrs old and earlier he was not getting adjusted in one day care center (went there for almost 2 months). I was very hopeless and was thinking of quiting my job, also I asked my parents to come and help me, they agreed and would be coming by november end.
my elder sister lives close by just 40mintues drive, she suggested not to quit job, she came to my house & helped me for 10-15 days with kid meanwhile I found out one home based day care near my work as temporary solution.

my story is not hidden from close relatives, they also believe I should continue my career.

my son is getting badly affected with our frequent fights.

Sometimes he doesnot want to go out or play with dad alone. he wants me to be there because dad doesnot take interest to understand his choices and also cannot match up with his physical energy. whereas he has wonderful time with my parents, he gets to learn physical and mentally lots of things, they take him out to parks & play with him,also feed him properly.

My husband is not happy with my idea of inviting my parents, though he doesnot have any issue with them.(probably he is afraid of telling his parents about my parents coming over here from india).

I want your advice on following -

1. My son is almost doing okay in the day care( going there for almost 2 months now and have stopped crying, plays nicely with other two kids), I will stop sending him there once my parents come( probably for 6 months).
is this transition good for kids.

2. my parents are very much happy with their life in India, they would be coming over here, just to help me. I dont want them to feel humiliated with my husband' s behaviour.
my parents tickets are booked, but they keep asking me about my kid and saying if he is doing fine then what is the need for them to come here (knowing my husband' s ignorant behaviour) ..
I know my parents will be of great help to me..I will feel relaxed, appreciated for my efforts etc..
how do I convince my hubby for my parents visit,and to behave nicely when parents around

3. Should I go to some counselor for our married life otherwise these tensions are draining me like anything. how do I find any good counselor. (I am afraid they are there for just to make money).


thanks for reading my problems... Ritika replied. Hi USAMom,

I had not checked this website for the last 1 week..saw yr message today...

After reading about how yr fights and arguments start, escalate and end, I have this to say.

For some of the issues with your husband, I would suggest that you keep your cool and don' t start shouting at him - specially knowing that the child is going to hear and get scared.

In the morning, when you get up for yr child, after getting him ready, why don' t you leave him in his play room or somewhere while you can go to the bathroom or have a quick shower?

When you find the bathroom dirty after your husband, why don' t you just clean it up? It will take 2 minutes and save you an entire day of argument and fights.

Let me give you a sincere suggestion. If you want your husband to change his habits like cleaning up the bathroom after him, you can start by not yelling at him every time he forgets to do it.

Nobody likes to be shouted at in the morning, so if the first interaction your husband has with you in the morning is you shouting at him...that is not really a good start to either his or your morning.

Seriously after reading your description of the fights, I had a sneaking sympathy for your husband. He HAS started helping you during the weekdays (the days when you are most likely to be tired after work)...so he is sympathetic to you..

ok. I admit that he does sound lazy and careless. But the way around it is through a little bit of love and a lot of patience.

My hubby is a lot like yr hubby in the sense that he would rather work on his laptop than help me in household stuff, leaves his clothes and other stuff scattered throughout the house, leave the bathroom dirty, basin full of hair (after shaving), get up late etc etc.

Even I get irritated with him at times, specially when I' m tired...

However, the way I' ve dealt with it is that I clean up after him (it takes 2 minutes) and then later tell him sweetly that \" sweetie, please aap apne baad bathroom thoda saaf kar diya karo na\" .

Shouting should be a big no-no.

Another thing, when you have fights, try not to prolong it or worsen it by adding other elements to it. E.g. When you prepared tea, you could have easily given it to him also. When you chose not to give it to him, you knew he will feel bad and will add to his resentment.

My advise would be to let some things go ..don' t create so much tension in your house over them.

As for your specific questions-

1) After yr parents come, still send yr child to day care..otherwise he' ll forget that routine when your parents leave and will again have a tough time. You can keep him home one day and send him to daycare one day. That should work.

2) Let your parents come. If you think, you' ll feel more relaxed then let them come here so that you can feel a little less stressed out.

However, your husband will be more amenable to being nice to yr parents, if you stop yelling at him so much on what he should do or not do.

3) Going to counseling would be a good thing. Ask your primary care physician to refer a good counselor. And no, they can be very good and are not there just to make money.

I wrote this quickly, so might have missed some things. I' m sorry if I hurt you by my candid comments. But my intention is to help you.


Saheli replied. reeaallly sorry dear, got so busy in somethings, just couldnt make out time!

I had asked for this information to make sme things clear. Thanks for the detail and neutral information. Something sertainly doesnt seem to be right with ur hubby' s attitude. Has he been always like this, even before marriage? ! He also seems to be egoistic, and his notions and exoectations out of roles in a family (wife hubby) are different from yours.

According to me, you have two options.
Either work on the problem and get it fixed. Or let it be as it is and start finding workarounds.

The first options means investing yourself in finding out why hubby is like that and doing things to change him. Given your situation, I m not sure if you hv time and energy for this. Leave the decision to you. The results of this approach would be more positive.

Second option is to accept hubby' s attitude and see what we can do now.
I would suggest getting a common mature friend talk to your hubby and explain him how things are difficult for you. This person shd not talk in your favor nor show that the discussion was planned.
In short, I am looking at letting your hubby know that what he is expecting is incorrect. In the US, for a working lady with a child, its not correct to expect things that are expecting from a housewife in india with maids at help.
Also, he needs to know it takes 2 to clap, needs to know u r doing ur bit, needs to know where he is going and what blunder he is doing.

And dont think u r right person to make him understand all this. If u can get someone, will be good.

In this second option, if u cannot get someone to talk to him .. you will need to have a talk with hubby and make some things very clear. You need to make him clear abt what he shd expect from u - for eg cooking, baby .. what u expect from him - eg morning tea, breakfast.
tell him clearly and lovingly that u r finding it difficult to manage all that and u need his help and u wdnt be done these 1,2,3,4 things going fwd and he wd be doing them on his own. Also tell him that he needs to give a helping hand and its not ur resp alone.

All that u hv in ur mind .. tell him. Make sure this is an open discussion and not an argument. Make sure this doesnt turn inti fight ... u will need to keep a check on ur anger.

Once u tell what houechires/help he needs to do, and u define what all u will be doing .. stick to it. For eg, if u hv decided morning tea will be his job going fwd, dont make it for him if he doesnt. (I am assuming he is not a voilent person).

This attitude is bound to make him more angry. Let him be. Time and again if he gets angry and yells at you, tell him extremely cooly and lovingly in 1-2 lines that u love him and need him iin ur life but u cant do all this alone. No more arg no fights.

You will need to control ur temper. Stop arguing with him. Make a rule for urself that once arg starts, u wont say more than 3 replies. Just keep quiet and dont argue no matter how pinching he says.
Just keep quiet!

Be determined, strict, but loving and do ur duty lovingly whatever u plan to do - like cooking.

He wont leave you.
But for u, its time to stop looking at him and search for your happiness in other things, and forget getting him on the line. I am not suggesting u to separate, nor asking u to look at other man .. just asking u to forget expecting happiness from him and enjoy other things that u can.

I was concerned to read abt his health. Why/how can he sleep for so long? Why does he complain of BP? Why is he so dull and sluggish? See dear, there can be a medical/health issue behind this behavoir.
Not a serious one may be ... but people who are lazy and dont excercise, over the course of time they become mroe and more lathargic and then we see above symptoms. Find out if this is the case and if yes, please do something about it.

Last point. I reaalllly did not want to write this point because I knew if I say this, you will get biased by it and I would be simply giving you another worry.
I am still writing this point .. but some imp things before that. Being so far away here, I cannot say what the real reason is. I can only guess. And hence, I will tell you all the generally possible options, out of which all may not be true/applicable. Right?
So if I say that the reason for a man to be not interested at home, may be he is having his interests elsewhere, then it does not mean this is really the case. What made me say this is the point that he is fine on weekdays not on weekends.
What makes me assume that this shd not
the case with him is the routine u hv mentioned on weekends. Sleeping, lazy and all - if he had some other interest - his symptoms wd be different.
Hope u know what i mean to say.

Thats that. My message in short is - dont worry too much about him, conc on ur kid and job, define housechores for u and him .. draw ur lines and rules depending on what all u can do for house, be nice loveing yet strict, stop arguiing totally, and find happiness in other things rather than expecting from hubby (go ahead for move with friend if he is not joining u). Be ready for his anger for this approach but I hope he will know it soon that he needs to change and will change later if not sooner. I am assuming he is not a person who wd take extreme steps like being voilent or asking for separation.

Let me know your thoughts on this before implementing. Same situation replied. Hi USMom,
I have the same situation at my home.While reading this post I felt as if am reading my story .Your husband still allows your family members to come , my Husband doesn' t allow any one from my home to come.He is very very very selfish....Even he doesn' t think about kid. Kid is 100% my responsibility.

One way I am lucky that I have a fulltime house made who is very good . But she will be leaving very soon . Then my situation will be same as yours. Let me know if you get any soln to your problem .

Now I am used to with this life . My only concern is My Son who is also 2yrs is getting effected. Saheli replied. Tell me more ..

I want to know details about your fights. Please tell me why do you have fights, who starts, what are the topics, what kind of arguments u have (he says what then u say what), how does it end with, what happens after argument how long does it go, who breaks the ice?

You may need to sit back and analyse things ... before u reply. Please be honest, and portray the situation as it exactly is - neutrally.

Meanwhile, be patient, lets see what we can do. Avoid arguments .. just avoid replying/saying anything even if he irritates you. Count till 10, move out of the room, put on TV or something and divery urself for a while.

Let me know.
Things will be fine soon, we are taking steps, arent we? Think positive. Dont worry.