u/mamagenerator

My husband has long not liked where we live. It has changed a lot and grown so much in population in the last 10 years that it’s almost unrecognizable. He’s been saying he wants to move for years, but I have been happy in our city. I like my friends, our church, career opportunities, etc., though now that we have a child, the housing market has gotten insane post-Covid and public schools here are known to be atrocious. However, I feel like I could be really happy here if we stayed, but I have this secret shame that my H hates his life and is always depressed and a little angry because of it. I’ve given my H a sort of list of non-negotiables of things I’d need in a place that we lived, plus things I really desire, but I’ve never had a concrete place I wanted to move. He’d say he wants to move in the past, but I would say, we’re not 20 anymore, I can’t just move to a new city with no plans on a whim.

A few weeks ago, my H started getting really fed up with his job and started calling around to jobs across the country, seeing if they would be interested in someone with his skill set. They were all in a state that is quite far from where we live now, quite far from family, but he has dreamed of living there. He ended up with multiple interviews and promising prospects. One job, his #1 choice, said he would start next summer, and I was very okay with that. It would let our daughter finish the school year, give us time to save up, give me time to close out this chapter of my life and have some momentous lasts.

Well, my H is now extremely fed up with his job and says he just can’t do it anymore. He keeps saying that now he wants to move next month and that he wants to just quit his job now. I told him IHY, but we need at least $X to move and we’re nowhere close to having that saved. I told him I cannot ask my dad for money for this move. He says that it feels like I’m holding him back.

The thing that we agreed would make the most sense would be for him to move there without us for a few months and then we would join him once he’s more established, but I don’t understand where the money to pay extra rent would come from. The job he would be taking at The start would be a pay cut from his salary now.

I told him that he just needs to do what he feels like he needs to do, but truthfully I’m really heartbroken about having to move so soon. He knows that I do not want to move so soon.

What happens depends on how future job interviews go, but it feels like he will probably get the jobs.

ETA: I feel like the right thing to do is trust my husband with this decision and really *surrender*, but what if it’s not what I want? What if he is making decisions on emotions and I’m making them from financial logic? Do we just both do what we want (he moves now, I move later) and trust that the finances will come together for the second rent? I’ve always been the person who is the most in-tune with the finances, even though it’s a role I’ve regretted. I really want a concrete financial plan, but he doesn’t think it’s necessary.

I had been trying to get my daughter into part time care for TWO YEARS, and she finally started preschool this month.

I wfh as an independent contractor and have been very part time with her always at home because I can never work for more than 2 hours at a time (during naps) which means I can never double down on projects. My husband is usually traveling out of town for 3 days out of every week for work so I am caring for her totally solo half the time.

And OH. MY. GOD. I’ve gotten so much work done and I’m not exhausted since she has started school. I’ve been able to keep our house tidy and take care of myself. The sheer amazingness of not being pulled out of my focus every two minutes for literally anything. She is still at home with me 4 days a week, but then I know I will get a break tomorrow. My god have i just needed a break I can count on.

I had PPD for years, have been on multiple kinds of antidepressants, and all I needed was a gd break away from my kid every other day 🥲

My husband is pretty germaphobic. My family was not extremely dirty, but he thinks about things my family never considered. For example, if he travels, he carries our rolling suitcase through the house because the wheels have touched airport floors and airport floors are dirty. He won’t wear clothes worn outside the house while sitting on our furniture, so he changes whenever he comes home. The way he thinks about these things still has me taken aback sometimes even a decade plus into our relationship.

He has been taking our almost 3 yo to more things outside the home. But he refuses to let her sit *on* the potty. He insists on holding her above the seat, which of course is uncomfortable for her, and she doesn’t go most of the time. We have a travel potty, but it’s a little cumbersome to take with you sometimes. I have her use toilet paper as a seat cover, no big deal. She bathes every night. But he thinks her even touching a public toilet is disgusting. Every time he takes her somewhere, he has a conversation with me about how he hates doing it because he hates taking her to the public bathroom.

I kinda want to tell him to suck it up and get over it and that public bathrooms are part of life. She’s about to go to preschool and she will be sharing the very peed-on communal tiny potty with all the other kids. It’s gross, but it’s part of life - anyone else had to deal with a similar partner?

edited for typos :)

I feel like there have been a lot of posts in here lately about restoring PI with their husband, but I’m having the opposite problem.

I don’t like PI with my H anymore. And he’s doing nothing wrong in this department. I feel attracted to him. He can successfully get me to O every time, but I just want to get it over with. He tries to make out with me and give me foreplay and I grin and bear it. Maybe once in a blue moon I am truly into it, but it’s always in the morning or the middle of the day and never at night.

It’s not like he is forcing anything on me. I am free to say no. I just don’t want to say no all the time because I know that’s not good for our relationship. I hope that I will be into it by the time the O comes around, and even then I just want to O with no intimacy and get it over with.

He also used to have a beard, and I had no problem kissing him. I always like his beard, but he wanted to be clean shaven a few years back, and now he has whiskers. I hate kissing him with whiskers, and when he asks why I shy away from kissing him, I tell him it is because his whiskers are too pokey. He takes this personally and thinks this is a coverup lie, but it’s really not. I have told him “I loved kissing you when you had a beard” but he says he was ready for a change and has no plans of having a beard again.

I feel like there is something wrong with me for feeling this way. Why is his physical intimacy annoying to me?

LO turns 3 in a few weeks.

Up until now, we have been doing natural consequences and it’s worked very well for us. As a baby, if she would bite, she couldn’t nurse. And as she’s turned two, we can’t go to the park until she cleans up her toys and goes potty, or she won’t get something until she is no longer whining and asks in a calm voice with good manners. I followed all the parenting advice to a T on this and felt like her tantrums were under control and minimal because we held our boundaries.

But this last week, she’s started doing random menacing “naughty” things and I’m absolutely lost as to what a “consequence“ is besides her cleaning up the mess herself. She knows she shouldn’t do these things. It’s like I’ll be letting the dog out to pee and she’s gone into the bathroom and emptied half a shampoo bottle in the bottom of the tub, or put half a pack of baby wipes in the toilet one by one, pulls out all the tape on a roll. It’s past the point of taking all the pots and pans out of the cupboard to explore as an infant - she definitely understands she shouldn’t be doing these things.

I think perhaps big reactions to these things are fueling them, but my husband disagrees and thinks there needs to be big reactions because it shows she shouldn’t be doing them. She absolutely gets rewarded with us being forced to put down whatever we’re doing and pay attention to her, even if it’s negative attention. But besides her cleaning up her mess, I don’t understand what the natural consequence here is. She gets a ton of positive attention. My husband is home with her usually 3-4 days a week, and I wfh part time so I’m with her every day. She gets one 25 minute episode of TV a day and that’s all the screen time. I honestly think she is just bored and i cant wait for her to start preschool next month.

HELP! What do you all do in this situation?

My H has vowed to save money and get rid of some CC debt we have, and he has been actively not doing things he normally does because of this to save money.

This summer, my family is taking a vacation together, which is not something they do frequently at all. My H cannot go because of work anyway. He will be out of town for about 40 hours during the trip, which means someone will need to watch our dogs. My family really wants me to go and has even offered to pay for my part in this, (plane tickets and $ for a dog sitter) even though I didn’t ask them to, in order to cause less of a burden for me. If I don’t go, I would be the only sibling that doesn’t come. I cannot even think of a time in the last decade my family has taken a trip like this.

My H despises having anyone take care of our dogs. They are very high energy and he thinks that only he can do it right and doesn’t trust anyone. I got a friend to watch our dogs last summer while we traveled with his work. Even though all of our dogs were just fine, he claims it was a terrible experience and he won’t ever trust anyone to watch them again.

At first he said we couldn’t go on the trip because of the financial sacrifices he’s making, it wouldn’t be fair. Then when I got the finances sorted out, he said I can’t go because he won’t trust anyone to watch our dogs. I said that I will find a dog sitter, but he trusts absolutely no one.

He says he said he feels so disrespected that I am even considering going on this trip, that he wouldn’t have married me if he knew that I wouldn’t respect his choices. I said, though perhaps I shouldn’t have, that I wouldn’t have married someone who would never be able to take a vacation without their dogs and would leave me locked in the house because of their trust issues.

I am in between a rock and a hard place. I am confident I could find someone to watch our dogs, a friend of a friend. I have several options. But my H says he will be mean to them and not want them there and not trust them. I don’t know what to do! If I go on the trip, which is what I absolutely want to do, I upset my husband. If I please my husband and stay home in order to watch the dogs for a day, I upset my family.

ETA: I have tried “borrow your brain” type approaches and expressed my pure desires here, but he says there is absolutely no situation where he will trust someone enough to watch our dogs. I’m at a loss.

I could end the post there.

But yesterday my daughter (2.5) was banging metal together and making a very loud noise that was bothering the dogs. I asked her to stop from the other room and she did not, so I walked in there sternly and removed the temptation from her and asked her to do something different.

I realized that even though I was peeved because that noise overstimulated me to no end, the irritation on my face didn't cause her any concern. She was in no way afraid of me. I was so afraid of my mom as a kid. Not listening the first time was always a spanking. It made me proud of myself, happy for my kid, and sad for myself as a child all at the same time.