Well, my last thread locked up with some of you posting that I should get a baby sitter. Mama and maybe a few others who have been with me from the beginning will know that this issue is complicated for MANY reasons but I will try, best I can to explain it.
First, getting a babysitter has been a problem for a number of reasons.
1) We do not go to church (yea, I know, and please, let's not start THAT conversation) so our network of people is limited in that respect.
2) We don't know many people in our neighborhood and those that we do know either don't have teen/college age kids or if they have babysitters, they don't seem very willing to give them up to us, i.e. give us their numbers. Also, our sons' school is pretty far away so the moms of the other kids don't have sitters that live close enough to us. We've tried that too... or at least my W says she has.
3) There was a point, starting a couple years ago that I TRIED to take things into my own hands (since W seemed to be dragging her heals) and find us a babysitter. I went as far as getting phone numbers, etc. I found these people through neighborhood newsletters, through MY friends, etc. My W never wanted to follow through and if I suggested doing it on my own, she didn't want that either. I did, at one point talk to a couple people, even set up meetings but W, one way or another, managed to put a stop to it. Could I have just done it without her participation? Yea, but considering she is HYPER protective over the kids (another issue to talk about another time) and I wanted to do this to get her to go out with ME, it didn't really pay to have her pissed at the process that made that possible. She would always SAY she was going to find a person she liked and then never do it no matter how much I asked her. It seemed to me that the best case senario would have been for both of us (since she didn't seem to want me to handle it OR her) to work together to make this happen but she never really seemed into it.
4) The people we have used (exactly TWO girls, 3 times in 6 years) both are not very available and one has since moved away, the other soon to do so as well.
5) In the past, money was a BIG part of why we didn't do this. The things we like to do, go to movies, dinner, plays, concerts, clubs, etc, all costs money. We could never really justify the added $40-60 or more added to our night's expenses to go out. We just figured we could just stay home, eat together after the kids went to bed, watch a movie on our big TV and save the money. In hindsight, that cost versus the decline of our marriage seems VERY small... of course, much of our marriage we literally could not afford this.
6) We have NO family within 200 miles of us.
Now, there is also the fact that my W, come to find out only AFTER the affair and this sitch began, really HATED to go out with me because of how I would act. I would get moody if things didn't go my way and if we went with other people, I would never talk to anyone, preferring to sit alone while they danced, drank and had a good time. People would always ask me what was wrong. That would piss me off even more than her "leaving me alone". I was a passive/aggressive [censored] to the Nth degree. I now know this.
I think all these years when I have been trying to get her to get a sitter, or work with me in my attempts to get one on my own, she was not cooperative because she just didn't want to go through the hassle for a night out that would usually end up badly... and they did. These are realizations that come with soul searching...sadly I didn't have to search very deep.
I know you may be thinking "well, things have changed so why not try again?" I have tried, BELIEVE ME, I have tried. I have tried to get her to get the girl she used those two days (hell, for all I know this girl knows about OM and is covering for them) but for some reason she's never available when WE need her. I have once again brought up the people I know. She seems to ignore this. I have even scheduled a good friend of ours to babysit free of charge and she balked. There's only so much I can do.
She CLAIMS not to want to go out, just like she has all these years things have been "bad". She CLAIMS that the life we have, staying at home, watching the occasional movie is enough for her as long as we get to go out when our parents visit, or we visit them (about once or twice every couple months). BS I say, but what can I do? She HATES surprises, always has. She HATES to be out of the loop on something like a babysitter or plans to go out.
I am at a loss. You can suggest anything you want, but the bottom line is until my W wants to go out with me, I guess she'll block every effort I make to facilitate it. That's how I see things. It's not 100% dire, as you all suggest, but I DO see this as one of the changes I want to see in our marriage. I THINK, through conversation and just time passing, she IS starting to soften on this. I really DO think she tried to get the "girl" to babysit for our anniversary so that's a plus (actually, she was the same one who sat for us last anniversary).
Like I said, it's complicated. I wish it didn't sound like a bunch of excuses. Maybe it is, but I just can't seem to make this work on my own and if she isn't willing to help, well...
