[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

.. and post back here to let us know you have 🙂

Hi DP,

Sorry to read about your situation - life can be really hard sometimes

Im going thorugh something similar at the moment - new baby (7months who we all adore), old relationship difficulties re-surfacing as well as new ones developing. My wife is also from a different ethinc background although born and raised in the UK - and lately serious deivisions have arrisen with both our families meaning its very hard to spend time with either of them, but they all want to see the baby. I have also suggested councilling on several occasions but she wont have it, with the line "if you think you need it then you go for it". I have spent a lot of time lately considerding what life would be like if we separated and (although she wont admit it) I think my wife has been doing the same altough neither of us want a divorce as there is still a lot of love there.

You have some good advice from the guys on this board - they know what they are talking about and have really helped me lately. Most importantly, keep talking and try to be empathic to the others situation rather than sympathetic. You are both going through an extrmely hard time and that is the reality of the situation - no-one else in your shoes would find it any easier. I've been undergoing some therapy to help me deal with the anxiety I am expericing as a result of everything and happy to share a few key messages which have helped me to some extent.

- love and sorry are verbs. They dont mean much unless backed up by actions and you show you mean them.
- try to embrace uncertanty (easier said than done this one) whatever happens will happen and accept you cant control it, merely appreciate your part in shaping how it will look in the future.
- nothing that happens is either good or bad, only our reaction to it makes it so.
- if you cant make a difficult decision on something, ask yourself - if you had a twin brother going thorugh this- what would you say to him?

When I couldnt get thorugh to my wife - I have found nostalgia to be a useful tool. Remebering what it was that first drew you together, how you felt before and helps focus on what you can get back to - dig out the photo album. Like you, Im also completely petrified of what might happen if we split up, but im starting to slowly realise that if it happens i'll just have to deal with it, life will look very different, but it will go on regardless and there will be ways to find some happiness and some piece of mind.

Hope things improve for both of you.

Skins

When I couldnt get thorugh to my wife - I have found nostalgia to be a useful tool. Remebering what it was that first drew you together, how you felt before and helps focus on what you can get back to - dig out the photo album. Like you, Im also completely petrified of what might happen if we split up, but im starting to slowly realise that if it happens i'll just have to deal with it, life will look very different, but it will go on regardless and there will be ways to find some happiness and some piece of mind.

This sounds like an cool idea, trying to remember what got you together in the first place. Maybe you can try to romance her and recapture what your relationship was like when it first started?

Hi Daddypig I am in a very nearly same situation excpet my partner is Scottish not from abroad as such. we have a 5 year old girl together and she has a 16 year old son and 14 year old daughter from her first marriage But i have brought them up with her since they were 7 and 5 The first 5 years on the whole were great we didn't have much money but rubbed along OK and nothing really got to us even major disasters we just got on with it and bounced back.

I am not sure where it all started to go wrong we moved from Scotland to Cornwall 6 years ago and all was fine at first I think things started to go bad when we lost the house with land that we had rented to set up our mail order plant business 6 months after moving from Scotland and had to move again just a few miles away but it was another move. then she found out about 8 months after the move from Scotland that she was 6 months pregnant I don't think she really wanted any more kids she was looking forward to being kid free and was now having that clock extended another 18 years, And boy have I suffered for it I adore my daughter But I have struggled with the whole father thing a bit I am no spring chicken and come to it very late in life (50 next year) and have some health issues so not as active as many dads and set in my ways to adjust as maybe I shoud. We then decided on another move to Somerset which again ended in disaster so I am blamed for that as well now.

But the rows have become horrendous she accuses me of everything, says I shout at her and the kids all the time ( i have a pretty loud voice and always have had so me talking is like shouting sometimes and it is made worse at present as my sinuses are permanately blocked and it is affecting my hearing docs say nothing they can do) She says she hates me the older kids pretty much hate me and barely talk to me and even my daughter has her moments.

Money never used to be an issue it was who ever had it paid now she says I don't give her enough money i give her what i can from the business and she only has to ask if i have she can have it But she wont ask she says it is begging I say no it is called communication I don't know you need it if you don't tell me.no one goes short but it is not enough she wants half of what the business earns basically as she is a partner ( only done to use both tax allowances) but the only thing she does for the business is 3 hours packing 3 days a week everything else is done by me on my own all the growing, picking orders, the paperwork, running the websites everything i have told her she needs to see a spread sheet of where the money goes but she refuses to look at it as she says I am paying all my personal bills with the busiiness money I am not I am paying one bank loan everything else is past debt from the family, past debts from our business in Scotland credit cards and loans we had to survive in scotland as the business was making a loss, current family household bills which I am struggling to pay £200 a week on food and petrol, council Tax Rent etc two laptops for the kids a vibrating exercise machine for her but i am spending all the money yes right !! I had £800 saved up for now which is our quietest month sales wise But had to use £300 to pay our youngest pre-school fees and I gave her the remaining £500 when she took the kids up to Scotland for a holiday did I get any thanks for that no I am now being blamed because we have no money now And what I have had NO holiday at all and barely even a wekend off.

I have slept downstairs for over a year she keeps telling me there is no way back and we are over But if i say i am going to leave she says oh yes typical man go and leave me with three kids if you do that I will have to move back to Scotland and you wont see your daughter

I do not want to leave her behind if I did leave I would be worried for her welfare the eldest has Aspergers and is pure evil he swears all the time is deeply racist, homaphobic and much more and threatens my daughter all the time has beaten his mum up twice and broke my toe and spat in my face and We had the police out to him twice in Cornwall the other daughter is nearly as bad sometimes and their mother says our daughter is like a noose round her kneck and she doesn't have a life it is cook, clean and look after Kids.

I do as much as I can i changed and did as much as I could when she was a baby given she was breast fed I was there for nearly every bath time when she was a baby even now I bath her when she wants me too and put her to bed when she wants me to But she is very clingy to her mum I take her out most Saturdays to give her mum a rest and time with the older two I cook, do the dishwasher, etc when i can I take my daughter to school and pick her up every single day I have only missed this twice in the 3 years since she started pre-school and now school and still run the business as well yet i am a terrible father and do nothing according to my partner and if I do raise my voice to my daughter it is on the 4th/5th time of trying to stop her doing something as one of us has to teach her some boundries.

So i am really looking forward to probably the worst Christmas of my life and really do not know where to go from here
We are trying to sell our biggest part of our business and do have some interested buyers I am almost tempted to see if they will buy her out and I move up to Suffolk in partnership with them. Because I have had enough of being taken for a mug

I'm sorry to hear your having such a hard time of it. Making changes in our lives is so hard. I wish you well whatever you decide.

hi Dad's,
i'm a young father of 23 and i have a 3 year old daughter and things are slowly breaking down between her mother and me i want it to work but we argue every day and im starting to loose faith as the shouting is more frequent and getting worse.
we arent married so im scared she will run back to her parents (who live on the other side of the country) with my daughter.

i know all im doing is stating broad fear but i kind of just need reassurance.

Hi Tom

Sorry to hear you're going through a rough patch.

Arguing Isnt good for any of you, but sometimes we can get stuck in a cycle of behaviour. Try and talk to her about how you feel and see if you can't work things out. Do you spend any quality time together? Perhaps arrange a night out, take her to the cinema or out for a meal. Bring her some flowers home, or some chocolates...there's no need to wait for an occasion to do this! It's these small spontaneous acts that women like.

Best of luck.