diverp

Sorry in advance if this is a long post. I am sitting at work today, Saturday. I really feel like I have hit rock bottom. I am 36. I took a job in 2002 after graduating from an engineering college. I was highly sought after for this position. I moved here with my father and am looking after him (he is 76). I dated a bit when I moved here. I came accross some interresting dates, none that I would want to be with long term. I had a bad relationship with one woman for a year. She was bipolar (as was her mother) and was hard to live with. In this time frame, I fear that I wanted a relationship so bad that I put up with a lot and treated those close to me not as nicely as I think i should have. We split up, then I just didn't date for a while. Then I met my now wife. We had some things in common. She liked to be outdoors. She had a horse. We dated for about a year and I proposed. We were married in May 2005. We have a daughter who was born this last August. She is big part of my life. Starting just before my wife told me she was pregnant, I was having difficulty living with my wife. She would not help around the house at all. Most of my time was spent with her and her horse (its okay once in a while, but not every day). My days seemed to be planned out by her. There were plenty of little things that were really coming to the surface and bugging me about her. I assumed that was normal marriage. Then, the pregnancy was difficulty mostly because of her family. Once my daughter was born, her family would butt in a lot. Mostly her mom, who I don't really like that much anyways. Of course, during this time, my wife did even less around the house and to help. Also, we agreed that being a stay at home mom would be better for our daughter. So, my wife quite her job. Now, when we got married, and we started to merge our accounts, etc., my wife disclosed to me that she had a fair amount of debt (about 50k worth). We also racked up a fair amount of debt for the wedding, etc. So, I refinanced my house and tacked an easy 100k on top of the old amount to pay that stuff off. I hate that we had to do that to be honest. So, doing that made our monthly mortgage quite a bit more. Also, I had my suv of 4 years break down on me and I ended up selling that. I don't know how this happened, but I got talked in to getting two new vehicles with nice high payments to go along with them. I tried to settle down the spending at the end of last year. I kind of wrote off a bunch of stuff to holidays and the like. However, it is the start of a newer year and the same spending is going on. My wife is constantly wanting to buy new things instead of making do with what we have. I make a decent living as a software engineer, but not enough for this. I am extremely stressed out. I have dwindled down the thousands of dollars I have saved for years and I feel like it will be gone soon. So, my wife was asking me why I was in a funk a few weeks ago. I had already communicated this stuff to her, but it came accross as something new. She starts feelin sorry for herself and gets into crying. I feel horrible now. On top of that, I have been semi promoted quickly in my company, but without the pay. It appears that we get paid on the low end of the scale where I am at now. Bad thing is that I have had constant projects that require me to work 60+ hours a week. It seems like there is no end in sight and that someone is always getting on me about needing their stuff. I have essentially two supervisors who both give me stuff to do,, but don't know the other is doing so unless I tell them. Its frustrating. Since I create new code for a large platform and it is a big undertaking, all I hear is when things go wrong, never when things are good. So, today, I am here and I have a job that overworks me and is stressing me out because I no longer enjoy it. I have a wife who spends like crazy and makes me feel guilty that I can't spend more time with her and the baby. I have payments like crazy for everything. I have a father who I can't really pay attention to or help any more. Non of my life is the life I used to have. It is a completely different life that is not mine any more. I feel like I am working just to dig out of the pit that has been dug. My solution was to go back to college to get an MBA so I could get a little higher up the chain and make more money. I also proposed to my wife that we move to a different state where things aren't so expensive. She wants to have land for horses, etc. I woudl like my daughter to have something like that. I really want my daughter to be able to go to schools that are good. THe local schools are not. I want a job that I enjoy going to. I want to feel like I am not in debt to my eyeballs. So, moving to a cheaper state with better schools and a good job adn the ability to possibly get a nice few acres for horses woudl be awesome. I propose this to my wife adn she gets a little odd because she has a lot of friends here and woudl have a hard time moving away from them. She says she will think about it, but I am pretty sure taht unless I find a perfect place and bring it up to her, she will go against that move. On top of that, my wife is a stay at home mom. I know it is a lot of work to deal with a baby. However, she can't even get some of the basic chores done during the week (dishes, vacuuming, dusting, etc.). Because of that, my house looks like a wreck most of the time. I get home and instead of playing with my daughter, I am essentially cleaning up and organizing things. I wait until they go to bed to get my class work done and do any studying I need to do. On top of all of that, I used to be very active. I was at a point of running ove8-10 miles every other day. I loved being in shape. Ever since I got married, my wife seems to come up with a bunch of other things that we need to do on weekends. She leads me to believe that I can go ahead and run or whatever, but then when teh day comes, she already has a bunch of errands that we both need to do and if I mention that I wanted to run, she gets all upset. Because of that, I have put on about 35-40 pounds in the last year and a half. I used to weigh about 155 to 160. Now, I am about 200. I get sick more often (I never used to get colds). Now, when I get home, my wife has my daughter napping until about 6:30. So, I can't do any running. Actually, any time in the past I wanted to exercise, my wife jumps on the wagon and wants to exercise and I am the one that needs to give in. I want to run. Well, she doesn't like to run, so I have to do the exercise that she wants to do. Its been this way for a while. If I try to do something else, she gets very upset. My wife has already booked a "girls weekend" for May. Its the 40th birthday of a few of her friends. So, they decided to go to Puerto Vallarta for 5 days (There is another $2000 gone). She also wants to do a week vacation in August (another $1200) in which we share a place with 3 other couples at a lake a few hours away. She goes out with her friends about once every 2 to 3 weeks for an afternooon or something like that. She has playdates with other mothers every Friday. I haven't done a thing in months. A friend of her's husband asked me to play some poker about 5 months ago. My wife said to go.I come back at midnight and she gives me the cold shoulder for being out late (even though I had only been out for 4 hours). She says to do some things, but if I then go to do those things, she get all upset like she is getting shortchanged. I think I have hit the bottom. I am looking at things the last two weeks in order to lower the bills. I want to move back to a place where I can have a cheaper mortgage. I have looked into trading my car in for something cheaper or at least with a lower payment. I am trying to consolodate my bills to get them lower. I still don't get to do anythign I really want to do. I think to myself how much I used to love running. Then I tell myself that I really should try to get out again. Then I just tell myself that it would only last for one time, then stuff will come up adn I won't be able to do it on a regular basis, so why bother. I am so incredibly numb and stressed out to most things around me. I hate this feeling. The thing I hate is that all this started when I married my wife. And things got worse when my daughter was born. I hate that anything bad is associated with my daughter, adn my wife for that matter. I almost feel like a drastic change is the only way to turn things around. I hate pretty much most things about my life right now. I have nothing to look forward to. I hate most days. I have nothign fun to do any more. Life just stinks in general. Sorry to be such a downer, but I needed to get this stuff off my chest somehow. Thanks I feel really trapped in my options.

Don't get me wrong. I very much enjoy spending time with my daughter. I do realize that this is something I will never get back once it passes. My issue is that there are so many other things that need to get done. I enjoy spending time with her on the weekend. I just hate feeling burnt out when I get home on a weekday and then spending time with her that I am just not enjoying (not because of her, but because there are a million things going on that I would love to forget).

My wife and I have a 5 month old daughter. MY wife wanted to be a stay at home mom and in a lot of ways, it is nice. Before I met my wife, I had plenty of money in savings and a low mortgage on a house that is worth more than I paid for it. I was happy in my career and was doing well in performance. Since then, I have had to refinance my house to get rid of debt my wife built up from before our marriage. The first couple of years of marriage involved a lot of frivolous spending. Lots of little vacations. Lots of furniture and new items to buy. Stuff I really would not have done otherwise. Now that my wife is not working, I am really feeling the pressure now with money. We are pretty much scraping by from month to month with nothing for savings, etc. Neither of us have had much rest since my daughter was born. Bills are mounting up (daughter, my wife needing dental work, etc.). I feel incredible stress now and feel like I am not very fun to be around. My solution has been to get my next degree which would be an MBA, in order to get a job that would boost my earnings in a couple of years. My wife is good with this until it means that I have to study or something along those lines. She then gives me the guilt trip that I am not spending enough time with her and my daughter. Well, I work from 7:30 until hopefully just 5. I get home after typically having a stressful day. Then, my wife essentially holds my daughter out to me when I get home for me to take care of while she goes off in teh house to do something else. I understand that it is not easy to take care of a baby. But we both have separate things we need to take care of. I mean, if I can't get my stuff with work and school going and successful, then we are just going to go deeper and deeper in debt. I have been incredibly depressed as of the last couple of months because this. I actually find myself resenting my wife sometimes, thinking that if I had not gotten married, things would be much different. Probably not a fair correlation to make, but I do think it. My daughter, however, is the best thing in my life. I woudl never trade her for anythign. She is the one thing that makes things good when I get home (which makes it worse when my wife insinuates that I do not care enough about them). So, I have kind of pushed for a while to move to a place where schools are better (for my daughter), where cost of living is cheaper and where there are company's that I coudl work for. The appealing part of this for my wife woudl be that we could possibly get some land for horses, etc. She had a horse before and I paid for the upkeep on that for quite some time. So, she has been kind of skeptical about moving because she woudl be too far from her friends. However, even she admits the schools here are junk and cost of living is just too much. I have no problem moving. She will be wishy washy about it. I feel like I am just treading water. I used to excel at my job, but now it seems like I dread going into work. I used to really enjoy hobbies, etc. However, I never seem to be able to get out to do anythign enjoyable. My wife has her play group stuff with other moms and their kids a couple of times a week. I also take care of my daughter at least one day of a weekend out of every couple of weekends. For example, my wife went Saturday to some yoga class and took off yesterday to go scrapbooking with her friends for most of the day. So, I end up spendign the weekend at home and looking after my daughter. I have not had a chance to really do anything around the house as far as upkeep. I have not been able to get out and do something enjoyable. It seems as if my wife does more things out with our daughter and her friends than we do as a family. I mentioned something about not being able to do something for me and she got very defensive about it. She starts making me feel like I am being a whiner (she has to look after our daughter for the week, so why can't I do that for some of the weekend). She sort of agreed that she does a lot out and I don't and that perhaps I should. I asked her when I should try to do that, as I don't have a chance. The result was that i can schedule to go out and do something. However, it seems that I can't do somethign around the house. She essentially said that me doing somethign aroudn the house is not the same. Yesterday, on the time other than when she was gone, she spent a few hours doing cleaning. I have a hard time understanding why she is doing that on the weekend instead of during the week so we can possible do something together. I did a bunch of cleaning the day before while I had my daughter and my wife was out. So, she gets stressed now if I mention wanting to pull back on the spending and that I am stressed over it. She says she feels guilty because she wants to contribute. However, the things she could contribute with are not really viable right now. It woudl involve her working part time to help bring in money or something like that and I think she would fight that tooth and nail. I am really in bad times right now. I am trying to step back a bit and take note of things in an objective way, to try and see what it is that I need to do. I just feel like there are so many more things that I have to do now and I just can't do them with time constraints. I know this is probably somethign that a lot of parents go through, but I didn't think it woudl be this bad.

Yeah. They know. My wife's sister has her three kids and is very condescending about some things we do with our daughter compared to what she has done with her kids (her kids never had a bed time, they homeschool, etc.). We have already started a bedtime for our daughter and it is working out very well. I wouldn't home school our daughter. I also don't like how pushy she is with my wife as she knows she most likely won't back down. I think the thing that bugs me is that before we had our daughter, the world seemed to revolve around her and her three kids. Now that our daughter is getting a little older, she is getting a little more attention from her mom and dad, etc. Instead of being nice about it, she pouts and makes it a contest of sorts. For crying out loud, she has only come over like 2 times to see our daughter since she was born. We have friends who have come over more. Heck, our neighbor has seen our daughter more times. My wife's sister is very petty, in my opinion, and I don't think my wife sees that or how she manipulates her. I won't say much about it, but it is not a healthy thing in my opinion. Her sister at one point was trying to pawn off a bunch of old boy's toys and clothes and the like on us at one point because they were cleaning out our garage and didn't want to toss it. It wasn't about being nice at all, just convenience. I said no. We don't want boy's stuff for our daughter, thank you very much. She also tried to push some religious stuff on us and our daughter. Neither my wife nor myself are religious. I respect her sister and family doing what they want, but after we kind of put our foot down on not wanting religious stuff pushed on us, she tries to get her 5 year old son to give our daughter a bible. I just saw that as a manipulative thing to do and I didn't appreciate that one bit. Ahhh, in-laws.

Don't get me wrong. I love taking care of my daughter. Its just that since she is only 4 1/2 months old, we haven't exactly had a chance to do anythign with just the two of us for quite some time. It woudl be a nice thing to do (I was kind of looking forward to it actually). Here mom comes to town about once every 3 months or so. I have no problem with her mom. I have a problem with how her and her other daughter butt heads and then mess around with everyone else's schedules. I did however let my wife know that if it helps, I will try to move my birthday off to another non church day next year

Hello, I am 35 years old and turning 36 on this coming Saturday. Typically, I don't really make a big deal out of my birthday, unlike my wife who seems to need a birthday week Anyways, my wife's mom is coming to visit starting on Thursday and staying the weekend. This is always kind of a mess because then my wife's sister and the mother do not really get along greatly. The sister, in the past, complains that the mom doesn't come around to visit enough, but when she is here all she can do is complain about how her mom disrupts her family (she has 3 boys and her husband). Over the last 4 or 5 months, my wife's sister and family have become overnight religious nuts. THey never showed interest in religion before, but all of a sudden, they are going like 4 days a week, twice on Sunday's. My wife and I are not religious at all. On Christmas, everyone had to schedule around their church schedule, which was annoying. So, originally, my wife had planned to have her mom babysit our 4 month old baby for Saturday afternoon while we go and get some dinner out and possibly a movie...something fun. What ended up happening is that the sister decides that they are not going to have time on Sunday to visit with her mom, so they would need to do something on Saturday. So, my wife kind of caves in and agrees. So, on Saturday, my wife and her mom are doing something in the morning and then the mom is going to head to my wife's sister's house for the afternoon. THEN, on Sunday, my wife's mom is wanting to go do something with my wife. So, as it turns out, I am going to be babysitting for Saturday and Sunday. But wait, there is more. THEN, my wife's mom decides that they should have a girl's night at teh movies on Friday night. So, my wife asks me if I could get off work early on Friday so taht I could babysit our daughter then too. ALSO, her sister mentioned that since her husband has Friday off, why not have everyone come over to our house on THursday for dinner and to chat. My response to that with my wife was.."now, do you not realize that I do work on Friday and that I won't be home until about 6 and that with people over later in the evening, we won't get our daughter to bed until at least 9:30 or 10 (which will make her cranky and not sleep so well anyways)? I just asked why this couldn't be done on the weekend? Her sister said taht since her husband had the next day off, it was all good. WHat am I? Chopped liver? Anyways, the thing that is odd to me is that since birthdays for myself really aren't a big deal, why am I so peeved about this chain of things happening this weekend so that I am essentially following my wife's sister and mom's poor planning and am essentially becoming a babysitter for the entire weekend? My wife was sick this weekend, so I was taking care of both this past weekend. I had a discussion with my wife yesterday about it bugging me and she agrees that it is not very fair. She said that her sister's actions bug her too, but she didn't want to "make waves" with her mom and sister since they do enough of that by themselves. So, my wife would essentially like to not make waves and instead allow her sister and mom to schedule things this weekend. Heck, I'll be lucky if I can get out of the house to at least have lunch or something with my dad (the only family I have outside my wife and daughter). I know, I am probaly being very stupid about this...but it still is annoying.

About a week ago, we had a small argument in which she was flat out telling me that none of what is going on is her fault, it is mine. Also, as an example, I was sitting there one night quiet because she wants it quiet for the baby and then is obviously brewing over something I am unaware of and then uncorks it on me later on saying that I am being a jerk because I am being quiet? I have been called an a**hole (not entirely in joking from the delivery) and a few other names. I asked her 1, not to resort to name calling and 2, not to solely point the finger at me. If I do bring something up, it immediately gets turned around onto me as "I do this because you do that". I have said that we won't get anywhere if every argument is about finger pointing. I have tried to bring up things as they come along that bug me about her as I hope she would do the same about me. She even asks me to do this. Then, when I do, she takes it incredibly personal and gets upset, sometimes crying. So, I have to essentially make the decision between bottling it up and getting mad, or bringing something up, then getting an hour or more of my wife being upset or crying. I have pointed this out to her and she tells me it is because she "is a girl" and that is how girls are. I don't buy this "because I am a girl" stuff. It is a copout and wipes away accountability. My wife has a friend coming over today in the afternoon to babysit for a few hours. I am kind of wondering why she couldn't have asked the friend to possibly do the same when we are both home so we could go do something together. I have suggested, today, that perhaps we can get someone to look over the baby for an afternoon on teh weekend and we could go see a movie and eat out for a change. My wife was extrememly overwhelemed with the baby. SHe is not really the motherly type by nature, so I understand it has a large learning curve. I have reassured her by telling her taht this is all normal and that she is doing a great job (no, "you are not screwing up our child"). However, all of that reassurance seems to get forgotten the first time I bring up something that is bugging me.

My wife and I have been married for 2 years. We also now have a 3 month old baby girl. As time got close to having our baby, a lot of things had changed with us. Now, that we have a baby, we are not nearly as close as we once were. My wife has been in 2 other marriages, this is my first. As time has gone along, I have seen what it is, from what she has described to me, that she had done with her other marriages and relationships. Typically, she will tell me about things in her past and I can almost immediately see similar things happen in our relationship. I have gotten to the point where I almost dislike coming home from work because I feel that the majority of things she talks TO me about are things that she wants or things that she wants me to do. She is incensitive about a lot of things. She will be spacey about common things around her. For instance, she will forget something in the kitchen, then come in and sit down, then say "oh, I forgot this, get that for me". I took a couple of weeks off when the baby was born to help. Then, almost immediately after that was my busy few months of the year for work (100+ hours a week). So, very little sleep and lots of late days. However, I would get up with the baby and stay with her during the day on weekends. I have not had a break or anything like that. I cook all the meals. I clean the house. I handle all the bills. I take care of the dogs. I do the improvements around the house. My wife is a stay at home mom and wants to be for a while. And I agree with that. However, she does very little during the day because our child is young and requires attention. So, I work, then come home and clean and cook. I don't get to sit down and relax until 10 or 11, and only then for a few minutes. On top of that, I have to be quiet because my wife is wanting to let teh baby sleep in the evenings on her. Only recently has she gone along with getting a bed time going. Anyways, this quiet means we have no conversation in teh evenings at all. In the time since we have had our baby girl, my wife has gone out on at least 5 "girls" days in which I have babysat and has had a full day girls Christmas party. In that time, I have been out one evening for about 3 hours to play some poker. WHen I returned, I got attitude about being out. So, I have had no break. I fear that I am getting more and more resentful of my wife as time goes on. TOnight is a good example. As soon as I get home, I am in the door for 1 minute, and she hands our child over to me. Not a problem. She then sits down at the computer for a few minutes. Okay, nobody is getting dinner (me that is). So, I am happy to be with my daughter, but my wife is messing around. SO, I ask if perhaps I could go get changed, get dinner going and relax. She gets quiet. So, after dinner, and cleaning the dishes, I started getting the lights out and put them on teh Christmas tree. My wife really wanted to get those on before the weekend. So, i went ahead and started. My wife pretty much watched the whole time, with our baby in the bouncy seat we have. Then, after a few more chores, I finally get to sit down and relax for a few minutes. I am reading a book. Well, my wife comes along, and asks if I can do yet another thing. We are chatting for a minute, so I put my book down on my chest while I am talking to her. She then asks for the book so she can write on it. I jokinly say "I was reading that you know". Meaning, hey, you have 5 other books right next to you to use to write on, why do you want the one I am reading? Anyways, as soon as I said that, I am a jerk. So, now, she is being cold and went to bed all mad. Things are at a point where a majority of the things my wife talks about are chores or things she wants me to do (on top of the things I already do). I understand completely that caring for a baby is not easy. But couldn't she at least try to help with these other chores and perhaps talk to me a few times without wanting something? It is getting frustrating to say the least. I know that things get difficult when you have a baby. A lot less sleep and a lot less time together. My wife tends to try to pick arguments as well. A couple of weeks ago I get home and the baby is asleep on her. So, I have to be quiet. So, I am sitting back and reading. So, after about an hour, she gets all worked up and asks why I am being a jerk. I was honestly stunned. "What in the world are you talking about...I am sitting her being quiet, reading and minding my own business". So, I heard an hour of how I am an incensitive person. Very frustrating.

My wife and I recently had a baby. She is 2 months old tomorrow. My wife is going to be a stay at home mom as we both feel that is ideal. So, I am the sole earner. I have a fairly successful career. I have two bachelors degrees in computer related fields and am starting to earn my MBA. The company I work with, I have been with since 2002. This time of year is typically the really busy time for us. In the past, it has been very common for me to end up working 120-140 hours a week for a month and half this time of year. This year is much different. I have several things going on. I am now supervising several people. I have a supervisor who is very non-involved (in the way that he doesn't seem to notice what it is that I am doing most of the time). I am essentially loaned out to two departments with two different supervisors. I have projects coming from both sides and I don't think one knows or cares what comes from the other for me. I have about 6 or 7 projects running at one time as well as maintaing a couple of older projects. I have another team leader at work who started off using me as an informational resource (I am the only one who knows about a particular thing at work). So, 5 weeks before our busy trade show, he has taken a 3 week vacation. That's fine, except for the people under him inherited his projects dealing with this thing I know about and are all hitting me up every half hour for help. I don't care for my supervisor as I don't value his opinion. He is very much a pencil pusher who does not know much about the technical side of what we do. Our company has undergone a major management reorganization over the past year, so things are always changing right now. The most stressful part is the stress of thinking (what happens if they lay these people off or do this or that). Our company is pretty big with 5000 employees, so I don't think there is too much worry, but it is always there. Several projects were promised by immediate management to upper management. Projects that really are not reasonable and really require much overtime to complete in time. To top things off, I have a project that is due in Janary that I can't start until the end of November. So, my Christmas season is going to be busy. So, I typically end the day feeling very run down (I am only getting 4 or 5 hours of sleep with the new baby). This is the first time I can remember not liking going to work. I always have liked to learn and work, but this is getting to be a bit much. Of course, I run into the issue of that I get my projects done on time, I help a lot, and then I do get recognized solely by my superiors giving me more projects. I guess I haven't learned how to have reasonable expectations on myself. I think I have to learn how to do things as they come adn if they get done on time, fine, if not, well, its not the end of the world. Very frustrating times. I haven't really had work stress to this degree before. I think it is just accentuated by the fact that I have a wife and child at home now and I can't just tell my superiors "no" for fear of reprisal. How are some good ways of handling overload at work? I have actually, in some spare time, started to dust off the resume in case I want to start looking at jobs with different companies. There are several places I would like to go. However, my wife's family is here in town and I don't know how she would do with moving away from them. Also, real estate prices have dove due to people who were caught trying to make a fast buck on housing a year or more ago. So, it is tough to sell a house in my area right now without taking a bath on the sale price. I know these are matters that a lot of people face all the time. I just don't think I have come up with good ways of handling the stress. If you have stress, you don't tend to make the best life decisions.

He he he. Okay, so I flat out tried to open my wife's eyes into how she was being selfish with not being very friendly to let my dad and sister (who traveled 2000 miles to see my daughter). I kind of pointed out how her family has been and she kind of just went quiet. She never ended up bringing things about this up again yesterday, which was odd to me. Okay. So, I talked to my dad and sister and arranged for them to come out on Saturday when I am home, before my wife's mom comes to town in the late afternoon. THey have already said that they won't come to this impromptu dinner on Sunday and I can't say I blame them. I actually feel a little ashamed for my wife to be honest. So, today, my wife is talking to me on the phone and said in a "by the way" manner, that her aunt wanted to have a bbq at our house for a dinner on Saturday evening. So, after having a long bunch of weeks of no sleep and lots of work, we now have two days straight of 10+ people, from her family, coming over to our house. Now, that is enough stress in itself. Not to mention, she never checked with me on this. So, it will be hectic for a couple of days while we have to entertain her family. I did tell my wife that nobody is coming through the front door if they have a cold. Flat out. Oh, and since my wife's mom is coming to town tomorrow, and she has some weird obsession with the Drink "Tab", um, now I have to make a trip to the store to pick up her mom's Tab on the way home tonight. Okay, I am going over the edge a little here. Time to go find a nice quiet place for a while and count, say, to 10,000,000 or something Big deep breaths.....

I have seen something along those lines in my family. My wife's sister and family all of a sudden got religion about 9 months ago. I am in no way a religious person. My wife really isn't either. One of the first things my wife's sister did was to start offering things to my daugher like a bible, etc. I grew up in an area that had a majority of Mormon followers. I didn't appreciate religion being pushed upon me there. In all cases, I believe that if people want to practice religion, they can do that all they want. I encourage it. However, once their behavior becomes infringent on my life or the life of my family, that is something I will not tolerate. My wife's sister has two young boys. One of them constantly wants to give our daughter religious things (our daughter is 6 weeks old). I have told my wife that once our daughter is old enough to make her own decision on this point, it is up to us to protect her or to guide her. Until that time, I do not want people pushing religion on her, at all. I voiced my feelings on this and the sister has been respectful of this. Although, I do get a slight cold shoulder from her family when they come over or when I go over there. The idea of practicing a religion is a personal one and I despise anybody who needs to get solice from forcing their beliefs on those around them. I sometimes believe they do it to re-inforce their own beliefs. Why not just trust in those beliefs and be satisfied with that? Do what you feel is right and go with what your gut tells you. If it tells you that you don't want religion as a part of your life, well, make a stand about it now before it goes on a long time with your mom thinking that she can change you.

My wife, as long as I have known her has a few childish qualities. She , as is her mother and sister and the women in her family, have a selfish quality. This was shown yesterday to me again. My sister who flew 2000 miles came into town yesterday with my dad. My dad saw the baby at the hospital and once after but my sister has not seen her yet. However, my wife's mom was here two weeks. Her sister has seen her several times. Her aunt and aunt's husband have been here several times. Her dad and step mom who she doesn't even get along with show up unannounced, about 3 times. She has had friends over to see the baby, one time bringing a cold to us that put me down for a while. So, I asked my wife when a good time was that my sister and dad could come over. She got all hesitant and I asked what was wrong. She said that she would like me there when they are here. I told her, it is my busy time of year at work, I can't take time off. After work is difficult because my wife essentially wants to get to bed by 8:30 or so for when she gets up at 2 or so to let me sleep. To add to this, she accuses my sister of not clearing her trip down here which is, well, silly. Now, my wife's mom and grandmother are coming for the weekend. It was her aunt's idea to have a big turkey dinner on sunday, served at 2 in the afternoon because we had to work around her sister going to church. So, another day of having 10+ people around the house. After all of this coming along, I felt very offended by her even hinting that my sister and dad who arranged and came this long way, are being a hassle. All they want is to see my daughter. I brought this up and pointed out to my wife that she was being very selfish with this. She sulked for a while and seemed fine later on. I see this with each of the women in her family. The husband's family seems to always be put down. Her sister's husband's mom and dad are constantly being ripped on. Her mom's husband is constantly being ripped on. I could go on. I flat out told my wife I am not putting up with that same treatment because they don't warrant it. THey have been nothing but nice to her and us a couple. Very frustrating.

The situation is two pronged, in my opinion. On one side, my wife is a slightly selfish person. Her sister and mother are the same way. On the other side, the situation is sort of like if two people with kids get married and one parent really doesn't treat the other persons's child(ren) as her own, more along the lines of baggage she needs to put up with.

I can see that another issue is starting. Previously, I received a phone call from my wife stating that my dog had snarled and snapped at her aunts husband when he went to pick up a ball of his. I was all stressed out from this. I get home and ask the guy if everything is alright. He looked at me confused and said that everything was fine. Not a problem. So, I was unsure if my dog had done anything or if my wife was blowing things out of proportion. My dog is a bit of a barker. If he is outside, he can really start going, especially if there is a dog or something else going off somewhere near. My wife's dog barks a lot too, but she seems to only get worked up when my dog does. Anyways, sice she has been home full time, she gets really annoyed by my dog. Today, her sister's husband was over and my dog was outside, and apparently, my dog lunged and snarled at the sliding glass door. Now, I am unsure if my wife is being dramatic or not. I have not seen my dog do anything like that. And, this is someone he has never seen before in the house. Regardless, to be a safe dad, the PC thing to do is to get rid of my dog. I hate to do that. I like to give him a chance. However, if her concerns are valid, I don't want him to hurt someone if he is doing this. He was not like this previously. WHen I got him from the pound, he was skiddish and would bark at people, but I used to have people over all the time before I met and married my wife. For whatever reason, he now is more of a barker and my wife makes it sounds like he is aggressive towards other people. I am really torn. The easy thing to do is to take my dog to the pounds. It would hurt me and I really hate to do that to him. On the other hand, my wife is not being very giving or understanding or helpful with him. That would essentially make two dogs I would give up because my wife has issues with them. The first dog, I had to get rid of because she was afraid it would hurt her little corgi (my dogs were/are black labs). It turns out that her Corgi is aggressive to my dog and my wife thinks it is cute. He herds my dog around and. I almost think that her dog has gotten aggressive with my dog (but is too small to do any damage) and my dog has learned from that. It, again, is another thing that adds to the frustration.

My wife had her mom here for a couple of weeks. Now, she has her aunt and uncle here for a couple of weeks. So, she has someone at home to help out during the day....which just boggles my mind more. We do actualy have a bouncy seat and swing and sling (and, it feels like, just about every other baby gadget known to man that you can pick up in Babies R Us That being said, I don't believe that I have shown my uncertainty to my wife about second guessing myself. THat is purely how I felt when I woke up this morning. It is my tendency to not whine about work to my wife. Its very stresssful and accounts for about half of the stress in my life right now. Not much I can do about it though. On the other side of that, I tend to relay my misgivings in a joking manner with my wife and hope that she can get my drift without me having to come out and get her upset. I have tried several ways of getting misgivings accross to her over the years so far. Each way makes her tend to feel sorry for herself. I think she feels like she is always doing the wrong thing. I am pretty sure she has an inferiority complex associated with that. However, she can go the opposite direction, ask my opinion on something then turn around and dispute my opinion. Anyways, regardless, the stress in my life is a cumulation of several things at once, my wife's actions just being a small part at the moment. I guess being run down has really made me more apt to being moody. If anything, I kind of expect my wife to understand when I need to have some down time or if I am being overwhelmed, but she doesn't. I like to think I accommodate her feelings of being run down when she is, but I guess not.