My husband and I got married a little over a year ago. I got married at 19, which I now feel may have been too young.I feel like we are growing up but not toghter. He still acts like he lives with his mom and I have just taken on the new role. I still love him as a person, I just hate living with him. The constant battle to keep him reminded of his responsibilities including picking up after himself has killed my sex drive and is stressing me out. I am ready to be an adult, not to be a mother. Please help.Thank You.
You are in a bind, and it isn’t an uncommon one. It sounds like your hubbie was spoiled by his mother who breast fed him till he married you! Now, he’s merely switched from her nipple to yours! You must be downright furious. Instead of killing him off, you’ve killed your sex drive. Psychological anesthesia is what I call it, and it always backfires, because while you are numbing out your feelings of anger you also end up numbing out the rest of you, including your sexual feelings.What can be done? Basically, we need to figure out how much leverage you have with him. In other words, how much does he want to keep you? If he does, then he should be willing to be more responsive to you. If he doesn’t want to keep the marriage, then you will not be able to have any influence.Let’s assume that he wants this relationship, then your best bet is to talk about the emotional effect his behavior is having on you. Don’t nag, whine or complain. Calmly state how you feel about the lack of help around the house. Your goal is to speak in a way that doesn’t get his back up. If he feels defensive, he won’t be motivated to work with you.I have the sense that your guy isn’t accustomed to considering how other people feel, so you might help spark some consideration for your feelings by asking him, ‘How do you think I feel when I have to remind you to do your tasks?’If you can keep the discussion calm, he should be able to stick around long enough to develop an understanding of where you are coming from and arrive at a resolution.You may also need to identify with the bind that he feels he’s in. It must be hard for him to have grown up with a mother who did it all for him. Her spoiling hardly prepared him for marriage. Now you come along will expectations that have never been placed on him before. He must be feeling pretty annoyed with you for placing ‘demands’on him. You can certainly understand that experiencing ‘culture shock.’Allowing him to speak about his feelings, may mean that he doesn’t need to act his anger out in indirect ways. Not helping out, and not being responsive to you is certainly angry behavior. What he needs to do is speak about, not act out, his anger.My new book, Till Death Do Us Part (Unless I Kill You First) outlines, step-by-step, how you can discuss and resolve any issue. So I encourage you to read it today. Let me know how you make out.
