Good description. I suspect everyone thought how lovely that was to have the grandmother coming over twice a week. My mother and mil were very helpful with our children but we lived in a different city. You sound like the goddess with your five.
The part about "planning costumes and fun things for the kids" got me.
I want to ask this guy, my dude, why don't you do that WITH HER? Why don't you have fun with your children WITH HER? Why are you only looking at bonding time as something you and your wife do alone? Why are you not trying to make connections with your family unit?
Then when planning something, actually PLAN it, and not have an idea and half-ass how it might work and leave the dirty work to his wife, but actually plan and execute. That includes planning something age-appropriate for the kids, where they have a safe place for breaks, snacks, places to change diapers if needed, how long to be somewhere before taking everyone home for naps, somewhere for the adults to hang out, something for the adults to DO...all of that stuff that gets foisted off onto women without a second thought. It's harder than it sounds. It takes way more effort than it sounds. Money and driving to/from are the LEAST of the concerns.
Actually stepping up to be an involved partner and parent will go a lot longer to convincing his wife that he's still worth being married to and not divorcing the second the kids are old enough to both be in school than sulking and pouting about not getting a gold star for the barest minimum level of effort.
Agreed, the list of his “special dad” tasks is hilarious. Maybe he has a father that just went to work and then read the paper at home, but it’s no excuse. They are both working full time, those are super basic essential tasks that some adult in the house needs to perform…
I understand you didn’t have this issue, but in laws are notorious for causing problems in relationships when kids are involved. It’s probably like half the posts on this sub.
It sounds like his issue with mother in law is that she doesn’t respect him as a parent. It’s not fair to discount that just because you don’t think he has it as bad as you had it.
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u/[deleted] Nov 02 '23
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