flowmom | need to commit to myself

[flowmom]

For the 8 years that we lived together before having children, H and I mostly maintained separate finances and paid our own way. We did get into a financial crisis after buying our first home however...there was a huge unexpected bill for cost overruns ($10,000) and it was during a time when I was unexpectedly high and dry with my consulting contracts. H freaked out and was furious that I didn't do more to earn money during that time (he felt I should work at McD if I couldn't scrounge up a contract) whereas I saw it as a financial setback rather than emergency (we got a personal loan to pay the cost overruns). That's when he started his side business and that was something that he never forgave me for, even though about 3 months after we got the huge bill I went on a 3 month contract to the US and worked almost every single day and ended up overall earning a typical amount of money that year (which was less than H earned because by that point he had a steady income from a job). That crisis was seen as a huge core betrayal in our M and it came up in MC in a way that was not at all obvious how to deal with. That's when I felt very hopeless in MC...H was nursing grudges from every bad thing that ever happened over the last 16 years.

When we had children, we had a general understanding that I would work part-time and we would share the childcare. But when our baby came along with his special needs and we learned more about parenting, our perspective changed about the role that I needed to play as S's mother. We strongly resonated with attachment parenting and that wasn't compatible with the model that we had both envisioned before children came along. H seemed to be on board with attachment parenting, but we never really had the conversations about what the implications of our choices would be. And frankly this all happened in a haze of extreme sleep deprivation and being frazzled at how difficult it was to care for our baby.

I did work part-time and even did crazy things like do field work and have H tag along with S so that he could breastfeed regularly, etc. I tried to do both but as time went on and once I became pregnant with my second baby and then had to care for two children, it became less and less feasible to do serious amounts of work. The last two years I did very little paid work...the lowest ever since S was born.

Right now I am earning enough to pay for the rent on H's apartment, but not all the furniture that he has bought, and whatever new sports he wants to start or courtship expenses that he might have.

The finances were a trigger but not the whole issue. I think there was a physical attraction issue that H has only referred to indirectly (due to my being slightly overweight, unfit and being involved in a lot of breastfeeding and mothering stuff). And of course a lot of communication stuff that I understand so much more since reading How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It.