Its friday and i'm going to tuck into this slowly. Its been a bad week and this issue I've been confronting for 5 years, possibly my whole life is a very complicated issue for me. Heres the thing. My life has consisted of changing parental figures every 5 years. The state removed me from my mothers house when I was in second grade and went to live with my father and his new wife. My father gained the most of the partial custody of me and my brother. My mother was under deep depression and in disarray, my bitch of a stepmother was a neat Freak psycho from the more inbred parts of Utah.
I keep the house orderly when I can, either through guilt or doing it myself but mostly through a combination of both. I hate having to guilt my wife into cleaning because its usually initiated right after I start to pick up when I get home. I'll start to straighten up the living room or kitchen and about a thord of the time she will join me, followed by a quick return to the couch and a request to clean the other room.
I like to cook so we share the meals when I am home. Breakfast, lunch and snacks are handled, no problem and can usually be found on the living room and kitchen floor/table/counter and smeared on the furniture.
The kids play consists of interacting with toys, various objects, pulling out the CD's/DVD's, destroying them interspersed with 2-5-10 minutes watching the ever present television. I observe consistently the TV is on when I leave in addition to when I return, the 31 month year old parked in front of it. Moms on the laptop or feeding the ten month old while on the laptop. What is done in between I cannot say with certainty, all I know is what I see when I come and go. I keep the TV to a minimum and recieve complaints when it is turned off.
My wifes half of the relationship seems to be collecting electronic versions of Japanese comics and watching Korean/japanese High school soap operas while phoning in the kids activities and the housework.
I come home, ask how she is and I get depressed when I can't see anything constructive happened at the house today for her or my 31 month old. The 10 month old I worry will swallow bits of plastic, paper, food or other objects the toddler spreads throughout the house like confetti until I arrive home to clean.
I am considering hiring a housekeeper but the purse strings are controlled by the one who does not earn any money. What I mean by that is a resounding "that costs money" is given as a reason to deny my repeated discussion of hiring a maid. We have money. What we don't have is one sides ability to acknowledge that whomever is responsible for the same duties a maid from Servicemaster provides, the same needs are not being met currently. Make sense?
She is a staunch introvert. We married very young. We went to the same elementary, middle and highschool. She is affable and friendly but also very limited in her social depth. My social life and progression at work is challenged as the social life is how you get into higher positions. At HHC social functions are subsidized by the company but your partner adds strenghts I am trying to foster in her any normal upwardly mobile individual should want. She would have been happy staying middle class. This is a part of the larger problem I am dealing with.
I do what I can to maintain. Sweetheart gifts come often to her. Chocolates, Sonic coneys and runs to Starbucks are always our language for "i cared enough to go out of my way for my love". I love her and the kids more than anything. that's why I wrote the OP.
Naps for the 31 m/o are rarer and rarer. Oddly enough its the weekends when she gets her nap. The toddler is easy to put down. Hell, I just did that now. Took a half an hour but I did it.
Also, one more thing...are you sure that she doesn't do anything all day except sit on the couch, read comic books, etc? I remember years ago, JB saying something to the effect that "All you do is sit home all day"....I thought for a moment and replied, "Oh! You think that because the house looks like this when you come home that it looks like this all day!" And the next day, I didn't do anything at all.
He walked into toys all over the floor, food stuck to the wall and under the high chair mat, dishes piled up in the sink and dishwasher, clothes tossed all over the floor and bathroom.
"What the hell happened here?" and I said..."I sat home today".
This is how bad it is: I ask what the hell happened almost every day except now I don't even bother. I know what happened and so does she. No argument will solve it so we don't bother yelling at each other. I've had too much yelling in my life growing up to learn that raising your voice solves nothing. We never have yelled at each other aside from very specific moments that went nowhere until cooler heads prevailed, nothing lasting onger than ten seconds and no harsh words, just statements of feeling.
I have been asking "What the Hell Happened" consistently for the past 2 years and i am at a loss for what to do. Now I worry that my kids will be raised the same way she was raised, the seventh of ten kids in a household, raised by the occasional parent and reluctant big brother or sister in concert with the ever present TV.