Issues

I don't write a whole lot about G here. That's mostly because, until the last several months, there wasn't too much to write about. Sure, we fought every now and then over stupid stuff, but there was never anything major. Things were normal, and as such, not worthy of comment. Then there's also the fact that I'm not entirely comfortable writing about anything that does come up between us because it's not just my business I'm sharing with the world -- it's his, too. I've always figured, since it's just my blog, I should only share my business here.

The thing is, though, that things have taken a turn for the worse over the past several months, and I really need a place to get everything out. And now I figure, well, there are very few people here reading anyway, so what's the harm?

G and I are heading to marriage counseling in a couple weeks. I made the appointment yesterday. I wish I could put my finger on what's gone wrong, but I just can't. Is it the kids? I don't know. They're 16 months old now, and the issues we're having now seem to have cropped up much more recently than that. We certainly can't blame them on sleep deprivation like we could've a year ago. It just seems like he and I are never, ever on the same page. Much of it has to do with the fact that I've been staying home with P & E, despite having very large student loans which are a long way from being paid off. He's been happy to have me home with them, and yet he hasn't been. He loves that they get to spend all their days with mommy instead of with a sitter, but at the same time, he's very resentful of losing several hundred dollars a month out of his paycheck to a student loan that isn't his own. Meanwhile, while I am an excellent mom (if I do say so myself) I'm not so much of a housekeeper. I spend all day, every day, playing with, reading to, changing, chasing, and feeding the babies. When he gets home, the house shows it. I try to keep up with it, I really do, but number one, I'm BUSY, and number two, I just don't have the same standards that he does regarding what constitutes a clean and orderly home. This adds to his resentment. He's working his ass off, paying my bills and his, and when he comes home, things are not as he envisions they should be. So then he spends any free time he has that he's not taking care of the babies cleaning up the house, and he has no free time whatsoever to do anything he enjoys. He rarely says anything to me, but then one day we'll have an argument over something completely unrelated, and that's when it will come out -- along with remarks about what I'm doing with HIS money. There are other things too, of course, but then this could turn into the longest blog entry of all time.

What it comes down to is, these days, we're fighting much more often than we're happy. I'm doing my best, and he's doing his best, but we're still coming up short. I didn't want to call a counselor. It makes me feel like a failure somehow. But I just didn't know what else to do. I don't want to raise P & E in an environment where mommy and daddy only communicate to snap and/or yell at each other. So I really, really hope the woman we see next month can help us. Right now, too often, I feel like I'm just about to lose it.