My dh is a pretty good sort of fellow. He's a wonderful provider and an excellent father. He helps around the house with everything, I'd say, except cleaning the bathroom. Dishes, laundry, changing beds, vacuuming, mopping, he does it all. With the kids, bedtime, baths, errands, meals, drop of at school, again he does it all. Can't really complain all that much.
Except for last night.
He accused me of spending too much time on the computer scrapbooking, i.e. goofing off. See, after dh comes home from work, it's usually time to get the kids ready for bed, which he does. So I do some computer work or other stuff. This week the kids have taken an extra long time getting settled down he's coming down later than usual. On top of that, I did spend extra time at night, i.e. after 9p working on the scrapbooking lessons and doing some layouts using the techniques I learned in the on-line class I'm taking.
When he comes down from the kids bedtime, I'm scrapbooking. It's like 9:30 or after. It was irritating him that he was up there dealing with the kids instead of doing something more productive while I sat downstairs and played. There's a couple flaws in his theory, though. First, I made sure I had all the other chores done that needed to be done that day before I began scrapping. Second, I wasn't spending as much time doing that as he suspected because I did other stuff first. Third, he still would have been upstairs with the kids even if I had been doing something more productive.
So we hashed it out in a nice way last night. It was a productive chat. But his reaction doesn't help my guilt over doing things for myself these days. I feel guilty because he works hard all day and then comes home to deal with the kids before he even eats dinner. Then he stays up really late doing his things. But he says he enjoys that time with the kids. I'm not sure how I'd feel if the situation were reversed. I think I'd be the stereo-typical male -- wanting to come home, put my feet up and relax while the wifey gets dinner on the table LOL!
I do spend more time on the computer than I should. I'll admit that. It's a hard addiction to break. Almost as bad as my addition to coca-cola! But at least when I'm scrapbooking I feel like I'm doing something for the family and not just myself. DH thinks it's unnecessary in any event. His opinion is that I should just throw them in albums and be done with it. Our ideas about time efficiency and which tasks take precedence doesn't mesh for the most part. And that's okay.
I was trying to explain to him that as a mom who stays home I have no identity outside of the home. It's just Denise Mom or Denise Wife. I have nothing of value to talk about except how many times Mia uses the potty or what errands we ran or what we ate for lunch, etc. It's very depressing some days. I need an outlet. And if I'm not able to get out of the house to join a club, use a gym or have a job, then what's wrong with joining an online community, making cyber friends or working on scrapbooks? He just doesn't get it and never will. Some people don't and that's okay. I get it and I enjoy it, especially since I'm so shy in real life, and that's okay too. Some things we just have to agree to disagree.
Again, we had a productive chat. I always feel emotionally closer to him when we have these chats without the fight, of course. We should really have them more often. I mentioned that perhaps we should have "meetings" from time to time to assess what type of goals we have as a couple and a family and individually and how to best meet these goals. We can discuss our progress and perhaps if we are meeting goals and such on time then it won't matter if I spend an hour or two scrapbooking in the evening. Relationships are so complex.
No comments:
Post a Comment