I’ll never grow to like my Husbands dog, and there will be endless fights in our marriage for it.
Hey everyone, I (21F) got married to my husband (23M) recently and I’ve loved the experience. Some backstory to this post, I am not a dog person, I never have been and I’ve never been able to come to a point where I’ve genuinely wanted to be around a dog. My husband of course, is a dog person at heart and has an 11 year old border collie who clearly means a lot to him.
Early on in dating, I was always open about the fact dogs did not impress me and I couldn’t ever see myself bonding with one. I was introduced to my husband’s dog before we started dating and my rules around dogs are simply, I’m good with them existing around me as long as they don’t invade my personal space. So this would be, having to be right next to me without me having a choice and needing to constantly have love from me when they’ve received it from their primary caretaker their whole life.
My husband understood this and dating went on.
Back in January I moved in to make things easy to plan the wedding and I took over being the dog’s caregiver while my then fiancé (now husband) was at work. This is not a problem to me but again, I don’t enjoy dogs so the care giving was simply feeding, letting it outside and cleaning up his fur, even playing frisbee with it and sometimes taking him on a walk (I have however stopped walking him, because he’s reactive to other dogs and I don’t need that stress on me. I’ve decided that is my husband’s problem.)
I started to notice that my husband was expecting a bit more from me with the dog, like actually petting and pretending I liked it. But it’s just not possible for me to feel anything more than toleration towards his dog and it was explained again that I did not enjoy giving that personal space to the dog.
Fast forward to being married and the dog was quickly moved out of the bedroom to sleep in the hallway in front of our door, shut. This caused a bit of an argument between my Husband and I but with the dog in the bedroom I was being woken up constantly and it was starting to effect my relationship not just with the dog, but my husband as well. So, my husband ultimately agreed for my sake.
I’ve taken notice that when I’m home alone with the dog, he leaves me alone for the most part. But as soon as my husband comes home, suddenly, the dog needs to be near me 24/7. Following me everywhere I go, laying next to me by the couch and now has even gone so far to always have to lay next to my side of the bed on the floor only IF my husband is in the room with me and I’m in bed.
The bedroom is a personal space for me and I do not enjoy the dog being in it, therefore, if the dog decides to sleep on my side of the bed floor, I nudge it until it gets up and goes to my husbands side. Well, today it got up and then would come back 3 more times. I continued to nudge and redirect him, and once again, I noticed my husband started to get irritated. That irritation gets to be quite normal when I tell the dog to move when it’s too close to me, but it’s irritating for me as well because the dog never wants to be by me unless my husband is home and my husband is the one that loves it.
My husband and I get into fights every once in a while where he wants me to show the dog more affection and basically rule the house and go where it wants, but I want my husband to understand that I emotionally do not connect with the dog past taking care of it.
I know it’s not possible for me to ever love his dog, but I love my husband and I wish there were just more understood boundaries on my end. I know and worry it’ll continue to get to be a bigger problem in our marriage and more fights will arise. Not enough where it’ll cause a serious rift in our relationship, because my husband and I are quick to talk things out and apologize, but it is a draining topic to disagree on all the time. Has anyone ever seen the light at the end of the tunnel on this before?