Not waving but drowning

[haphazard]

Hi people,

A few of you out there may vaguely remember me, my previous thread is over a year old now.
Went for Gold got the Bronze
It seems like H and I have been backsliding pretty badly and getting ourselves back into a bad place again.

To summarise
me 40, H 38 married 14 years, DS 6, DD 4
Bomb dropped in April 2003, OW involved, H moved out.
Managed to find this site within a couple of weeks of split so DB'd like crazy and got him to recommit and move back in by summer 2003.

Short honeymoon period when everything was great. This started to slowly peter out.
March 2004 my mother was diagnosed with secondaries from the kidney tumour they had removed 2 years previously. I was very focused on her and little time for H. H supportive but not close. When H offered his support I thanked him but was thinking (oh yeah?) - bad DB mistake I think.

Nov 2004 mum died. The day after the funeral had a big row with H where he -not in so many words - made clear he had cut me enough slack and putting his needs on back burner was no longer an option. This was a carbon-copy of his behaviour within days of our son being born My reaction was pretty much the same too which was to lose respect for him, to realise he is just a child who cannot be happy unless he feels that he is the centre of my universe.

Since then we have been functioning on auto-pilot. I have had to deal with the grief of losing my mum on top of the grief of knowing I am in a bad M and can't see how it will ever get better. I have spent a lot of the past year unpacking my childhood and recognising many of the things which led me to be where I am today and what it was about my upbringing that has meant I accepted a relationship which can never be truly intimate. I guess that's what losing your mum can do - give you the space to see the wood for the trees in your relationship with her. It has been a hard road and I have travelled it alone.

Two months ago I started back at work, from having been largely a stay-at-home-mum apart from bits and pieces of freelance work. I think I have been managing pretty well to keep up with the domestic side of things as well as working 8.30-2.30 5 days a week. H seemed pretty cheerful about it at the beginning – he has been constantly bemoaning how stressful it is to be sole breadwinner and we have had many arguments over whether I have been doing a good enough job in the home! He has not pitched in much since I started working – a minor nod in that direction but nothing significant. The other week I managed to screw up the grocery order on the internet so we only received about half the stuff we needed. I did not get any chance to pop into a grocery store between the order arriving on Tuesday and the end of the week. So that Friday evening there was not much food in the house. However we normally eat a take-out on a Friday evening so I wasn’t too concerned. I went out that evening but was due back by 9pm, H put the kids to bed and we phoned for the delivery of Chinese food. As we were beginning to eat I was chatting about work and saying how much I was enjoying things and felt pleased that I felt like I was doing a good job. H’s response was a very sarcastic I’m happy for you which then led into: but that doesn’t mean you can neglect your other duties. I was gobsmacked. He then started on about the lack of food in the house and how he had come home starving but there was nothing to eat. I refused to engage in this argument – just said well there’s food here now so lets eat. I was so mad though, he is not a child, if he was hungry he could have made a sandwich or a slice of toast or something. It wasn’t like there was literally NO FOOD just nothing that tickled his fancy. A little after we had finished eating I tried to talk to him about it and asked him to apologise, which he refused to do.

The following week was like a hangover from that almost-argument which meant there was very little communication between the two of us so eventually the damn had to burst which it did last Thursday.

Again he was picking me up on domestic stuff, like not making sure he has enough clean shirts for the following week. Now that might seem an easy enough thing to do, but he never needs the same clothes two weeks in a row, sometimes he is out seeing clients all week and has to wear shirts and ties and other times he is office based and can wear jeans and sweat-tops. He never communicates about what his needs are going to be so I have no idea and just plow my way through the laundry in whatever order. He feels unloved because he sees me ignoring his needs for shirts as a sign I don’t love him, so he becomes grumpy and distant.

Now before anybody suggests I read 5LL yes I have read it and yes acts of service are one of his love languages. We both read it just after the reconciliation, my LL is quality time. At first he made the effort and came to a salsa dancing class with me once a week as well as making time to just hang together. But he was making it obvious it was such an effort for him that pretty soon I just let him off I guess after that the acts of service became more of a chore for me.

Anyway the culmination of this row which escalated further and further was that I finally came out and said what I thought of his behaviour after DS was born and how difficult I found it to respect someone who could not stop thinking about their own needs for more than a couple of days. Someone who did not have the maturity to allow me any more than 48 hours to recover from childbirth and bond with my son before flipping out over the lack of attention coming his way. He made some reply which had nothing to do with what I had just said. Then later he was conciliatory – still without referencing what I had said. Over the weekend he has been friendly, hanging out with kids and I instead of disappearing into his den to play on the computer so maybe something did sink in. On Sunday he cooked dinner and it was good, he said something like –you’ll have to keep me on just for this. I had not said anything about not keeping him on. I just smiled and said I guess so.

So it looks like there is still something there, looks like we could somehow make a go of things but I tried very hard before and I’m not sure I have the energy to be trying again. I don’t want to do it just for the sake of the kids. There has to be more than that.

Last year I felt I only had a bronze medal, now I feel like I’m not even a contender

Fran