[Solved] Relationship breaking down/ young baby

Hi DaddyPig,

welcome to DAD. First of all congratulations on the birth of your daughter and becoming a dad - She sounds lovely.

Wow sounds like you have a lot going round in your head at the moment.

Did you say that you had issues before but they seemed magified after your wife fell pregnant?

Gooner

Thanks Goonerplum.
Yes, my wife (after doing her education and working in UK) never went back to her home country because we married in the UK. I think she has been made to feel guilty about this by her family and this has created tensions between us. With the baby arriving things like language, way of bringing her up, cultural values etc have become to be bigger issued than before as before it was just the two of us and the wider families were easier to keep out of our life.

DP

Well...international marriages have their own pitfalls, like different cultures,languages to name but a few.
I can talk from personal experience as it can be very very difficult to find a compromise everyone can be
happy with.
Does your wife originate from a country within the EU?

Have you given counselling or mediation a thought?

Best wishes to you
Kirsten

Hi DaddyPig,

Right first of all, just to put your mind at rest: As you are married to the mother you have parental responsibilty for your child so she can not just leave the country with your daughter. There are steps you can take to stop this. However lets put that to one side and talk about your relationship with your wife.

It appears to be a normal occurance for relationships to be put under strain with the arrival of a baby, see this news story that we featured a little while back. One Plus One have named this Baby Quake.

If I read your post correctly it sounds as if you are both feeling as if your relationship is not as loving and respectful as you would like, is this correct? I get the feeling, from what you have said, that you would like to try to improve your relationship?

Keep talking.

Gooner

Man, It can be tough after your first baby is born. Lack of sleep, trying to find time to spend quality time with your wife, working full time and trying to do stuff when you get home. All the small stuff suddenly feels like massive problems. Also if your wife is at home with baby all day long she must feel like she has no life of her own, that she is just living day to day for you and baby. My wife felt really isolated.

It felt like all the fun had gone out of relationship and trying to adjust was difficult. You don't need to come from different parts of the world to have different cultures. Both my wife and myself were bought up differently by our own parents and had different ideas on certain things - our cultures were different, even though we are both from a British white middle class background. This all became more apparent with the arrival of a baby. I guess the toughest thing was meshing that all together and creating our own 'culture' for our baby.

Thanks for your reply Kirsten.
Indeed my wife is a dual national she has British citizenship and of a country outside EU.
I have suggested councelling a few times but that has met with an angry response. I think she would say the issues are with me...

DP

Thanks Gooner,
You are right we would like to try to improve things and divorce is not something that either one of us wants but we seem to be at a stage that everything each other does irritates or makes the other angry (even the attempts to improve things...).
You are right the worst we can do is stop talking as then it really is over.

DP

I would agree that relationships do come under strain at this time. Being a full-time parent can be quite mundane at times and relationships can suffer as a result. In my experience talking is important but can also be detrimental if the same things are gone over when not enough sleep has been had by either one or both of you.

Are you at the stage with your baby yet where you are able to give your wife some time for herself? - even if it is just a long bath, or an evening out at the cinema with a friend? Do you think your wife would appreciate this if you suggested it to her? As well as this it can be really helpful to try to make time to listen to one another - is there ever time in the evenings when your daughter is asleep when you can spend quality time together to listen to how each other are feeling?

I hope things improve

Sorry just caught up on this one.

It's positive that neither of you want to divorce. maybe you need to sit down and talk about how the two of you fix it. no one person is to blame - it takes two of you to screw up a relationship and it takes both of you to repair it.

DaddyPig,

I would suggest the two of you talk - and both really listen to each other. Try to avoid "You" conversations ie "You always" and "You don't" which can sometimes sound like a list of complaints. "I feel", "I need" and "It would be great if" statements help to make the situation less confrontational.

Relationships need working on, they are not perfect and do go through rough patches that test them. But as the two of you seem to want to make this work then you should be able to navigate how to improve it.

Gooner.

Thank you to everyone for their replies.
I will take your advice and I hope salvage the marriage.

DP