Posted by thewrite1 on May 3, 2005, at 14:26:43
I've been married to my husband for nearly 11 years. 14 months ago we had a baby. I gave up working full time to stay at home with the baby. I have been working weekends and my MIL has been taking care of our son. I appreciate what she's done, but she's a very difficult woman. Everything has to be on her terms and then there's all the demands that come along with it. I didn't want to become dependent on her because I KNEW how things were going to go. The husband insisted that it would be fine. It's not. Everything is really f'ed up. She tries to mother my child, tell us what to do all the time, and make all these silly demands.
I haven't been able to work for over a month because she had to go into the hospital for surgery. I don't hold that against her because if she's not capable of taking him, she's just not. However, it has been like pulling teeth getting any kind of info from her about when she'll be able to do it again. I knew if I kept calling in to work week after week, I would eventually get fired. We finally got it all sorted out, but she was no help whatsoever.
To give you an example of how petty she is, when all this came about, my husband told her that we would call my mom and ask her to come and help us until she could get back on her feet. She replied that she wouldn't be out of commission that long. 6 weeks is a long time to lose over $300 a week in income, don't you think? We had already asked my mom anyway and she turned us down. MIL did not know that, but I think at any time she could have said, "Why don't you call thewrite1's mom? This is taking longer than I thought." She would never do that because one simple reason: she doesn't want another grandma around that she feels she would be in competition with. That's probably also why she treated my mom like dirt when she was here before. None of that really means too much now, I just wanted to give you an idea of the kind of person I'm dealing with.
So after our son was born, we moved 75 miles from where we work so we could be close to MIL because she promised the moon and the stars. My husband is gone at least 12 hours a day. I am at home with no transportation and a 14 month old. The highlights of my days consist of reading babble and taking the boy for a walk so that I might run into a neighbor and have a 5 minute conversation.
We've talked before and decided that we need to take the MIL out of things. For that reason, I've decided to go back to work full time. There's the matter of getting our 2nd car repaired (or buying another), but all that can be worked out. I want to be independent and now all I feel like is a prisoner in my own home.
All this wouldn't be so bad, but everytime I try to take a step to better our situation, I'm met with nothing but resistance from my husband. We don't have anyone to watch our baby and haven't been able to go out alone in about 8 months. So I suggest that we find a daycare that does drop ins, just so we can have some time to ourselves to see a movie or whatever. It took me two weeks to pin him down to a time to go see the one I picked out of all the calls I made to different daycare places. By that time, the last infant spot had be filled.
Then last night I was looking for jobs and found an opening that's not too far away in the industry that I have all my experience in. I was excited because there's not that many openings for that type of thing in this area. I waited until he got home to talk to him about it and he was nothing but a negative nancy. Naturally I became angry and a fight ensued. He told me to "look into it." I didn't know what that meant so I asked him to clarify. He wanted me to see how much it pays. You can't just call up and ask something like that and be taken seriously about the job. You have to send in your resume and when and if you get called, you can inquire. I could have smacked him. Finally he begrudgingly told me to apply for the job.
I've told him I'm miserable in the place that we're in and he says he's miserable, too. So why then does he put up so much resistance to the efforts that I make? It seems like all we do is snap and growl at each other and I don't know how much more I can take. He won't go to therapy with me and he won't even admit there's a problem in a lot of areas. Oh, is that why we haven't had sex in four month?
I know this is long, and I appreciate it if anyone went through the trouble to read it. I just feel like I'm at the end of my rope and I don't know what else to do.
poster:thewrite1
thread:493168
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/relate/20050325/msgs/493168.html