Feeling Hopeless...

[Dom R]

HI Ann!
glad to hear that you are still in a "working on it" frame of mind. That's the best thing

some quick words before i hopefully turn in for the night...

about the daycare thing... I think you're doing pretty well there. That is to say, leaving him room to "step up", IF he decides to do so. Neither extreme of forcing him to do it all, OR forcing him to stay out of it, is a good thing really.
If he wants to get involved now, even though he never has before... great! Give him encouragement and help when he asks for it, and back off(as much as is safe for your daughter) when he doesnt. allow him to make mistakes, so long as they arent long-term harmful. it's the best learning experience

I think you should have him handle dinner more often.

LOL... sorry, that was funny. If i don't cook, he will either not eat or just grab a bag of chips or something. It's important to me that my Ds eat well, so i make sure that they have food. There have only been a couple times that i haven't fed them if i have to go out and one of those times they ate potato chips for dinner... the other time i can think of he made tv dinners and i told him what a great idea that was and how much i appreciate him taking care of that.

Hrrm.

What I could have said better, however, was , instead of "let him" take care of dinner... more along the lines of telling him, "ok, tonight, it's your turn to take care of dinner FOR ALL OF US". Him, Ds's, AND you.
I'm pretty sure he wouldnt dare to feed you potato chips but you still might be stuck with frozen dinners.
I think that you could have *some* amount of input, into what is provided for the family. ie: a counter-"suggestion" of, "well, tv dinners are one thing... but what if you got takeout from xyz instead?"

If he still says "no i just want to do tv dinners", though... you should then accept it gracefully. Remember, you're asking him to do this, to relieve YOU, of dinner duty sometimes. So if that is accomplished, even if it's not to your perfect satisfaction... you have to live with it.
He has to accept your efforts in some areas, so you have to accept his. right?

I told him if he doesn't feel like our M and Family is worth the effort that he should tell me now, either that or commit to actually making some changes. He said that i and just trying to start a fight that of course he thinks it's worth it. I told him that i'm not trying to start a fight, i'm trying to save our M.

Any marriage counsellor will tell you, that "starting a fight" is not the worst thing you can do for a marriage. By far a worse thing, is NEVER fighting about ANYTHING.
Then nothing ever gets resolved, and things just keep getting worse and worse.

Just a thought there for you. I think you actually handled that quite well... and, wonder of wonders, you got a good response from him!

Keep fighting for your marriage! (just... fight "with love"? )

It sounds to me like you are doing quite well. This is a long and slow effort... sounds like your efforts are already having some results, though. that's great!