OK, I'm looking for advice on this terrible situation...

Married 5 yrs with a 20 month old.
I work full time and do freelance at night. She is a stay at home mom.

She is going crazy because she says I'm so messy and says that I dont help out around the house.

From my perspective, I'm doing all that I can. I get home, spend time with our daughter, help out with the dishes and other cleaning, watch TV with my wife, then she goes to bed while I work late into the night before joining her in bed and getting up early to start it all again.

When do I have time to do more cleaning? She gets mad if I don't notice the dust in the laundry room, or a dirty toilet. If I don't notice these things, how can I fix them? <img border="0" title="" alt="[Confused]" src="images/icons/confused.gif" />

I really want to try to fix things here...

Try breaking it down. Tell her you want to be more helpful and ask her what specifically she'd like you to do to help out. Have her make a list of the things you could do after you got home so that she felt like you were contributing. Have her prioritize the list and hang it up where you'll notice it when you get home.
It's possible that just 5-10 minutes of your time once a day will go a long way.

I can understand your frustration since she apparently has more time to do these things, but you two need to work this out together. Chances are, the things you would need to do in order to make her feel that you've contributed are minimal, but you want to make sure you spend your time doing those things that she thinks will help. She's at home the most, so listen to her about what would be most helpful. Don't try to guess what those things are or you'll just get more frustrated if she doesn't appreciate your efforts.

Smile

There could be more to it than just cleaning. I work full time and I also have a 21 month old. On the weekends my H has to work sometimes for overtime so I know he is tired but after a full weekend from 7am to 10:30pm of taking care of a toddler, attempting to clean and pick up constantly I get quite resentful too. I won't even think of asking my H to clean, he won't. The way I look at it is the cleanliness is my standards not his therefore it is up to me to clean if I want it clean. I learned that a long time ago. As for the baby though, he wanted him too therefore his care should not be only up to me work or no work. He gets Fridays off and the baby still goes to daycare and he goes to pool on Wednesday evenings but I never have time away. Maybe your wife needs a few hours once a wk or every couple of wks to go shopping, go for coffee or visit someone without a toddler around. Believe me at that age they are very busy and although I am not home all day with him I still feel overwhelmed.

Just food for thought !!

Marie

You might find that doing something more constructive to build your relationship with your wife, rather than something passive like watch TV, will benefit you more in the long run.

I doubt truly that the issue is mess. I'd be willing to guess that it's more a lack of EN support, and criticism about messiness is just a manfestation of her "lovebank" being depleted. I think you will find that as your wife's EN's are met, whole lots of other niggling little issues will just disappear, and stop being problems.

Is the freelance work a requirement? Are you spending the 15 or so hours a week with your spouse doing recreational things? (And parked in front of the boob tube doesn't count). What's the motivation for the extra work? Just money? Perhaps it isn't worth what it's going to cost you.

Try Basic Concepts, and look at the LB's and so on. Try to find POJA on housework and such. And make sure that regular purposeful deposits are going in to your wife's LB.

Take the questionnaire's, see what your wife has to say. Then figure out a way to make it work.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by Jaye Mathisen:
<strong> You might find that doing something more constructive to build your relationship with your wife, rather than something passive like watch TV, will benefit you more in the long run.

I doubt truly that the issue is mess. I'd be willing to guess that it's more a lack of EN support, and criticism about messiness is just a manfestation of her "lovebank" being depleted. I think you will find that as your wife's EN's are met, whole lots of other niggling little issues will just disappear, and stop being problems.

Is the freelance work a requirement? Are you spending the 15 or so hours a week with your spouse doing recreational things? (And parked in front of the boob tube doesn't count). What's the motivation for the extra work? Just money? Perhaps it isn't worth what it's going to cost you.

Try Basic Concepts, and look at the LB's and so on. Try to find POJA on housework and such. And make sure that regular purposeful deposits are going in to your wife's LB.

Take the questionnaire's, see what your wife has to say. Then figure out a way to make it work. </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Thanks for the analysis. We're taking the surveys and trying to figure out what our Eseential Needs are.