I don’t anticipate ever sending this to Laura but i had to capture my thoughts on the unfairness if how she had treated me—holding unrealistic expectations under the circumstances—and how much I have done to try building positive relationships in the family contrary to her claims. Though I don’t anticipate giving her this letter it is very much an artifact of my life’s history.
Laura, how can you say that I should do more when you do almost nothing compared to me? For years you’ve talked about things getting better when {X} but we pass {X} after {X} and you are still sleeping hours every day and contributing virtually no work of your own beyond shopping for toys or clothing and occasionally arranging doctors appointments. You’ll supervise the kids for a few minutes of work several days a week but you hardly pick anything up yourself in the process. You are in charge of meals (dinners) but that means you actually cook half a meal less than 3 times per week (and a full meal less than once a week on average).
I get to watch you on days I’m working from home as you wake up 40 minutes before the kids go to school and let them get themselves ready. Perhaps you drive them over to school but sometimes not even that. Generally they get their own breakfast or get breakfast from the school. They get lunch from the school. You tell them when it’s time to leave if they didn’t leave on their own. After that you spend an hour or 2 eating breakfast and chilling with the news or TikTok or a movie, then you go to sleep. You have no reason to get up until half an hour before school ends (so that you can get some food in you to have energy). The kids suspect (pretty accurately) that you don’t do anything for all the hours they are at school. When they get home you talk with them for a while, maybe let them watch your media with you then (before it became my job to manage the work again) you would watch them work for between 5 and 20 minutes and then let them play games or watch TV and scavenge for their own food . (That’s assuming you didn’t just declare a free media day or make assignments and let one of the kids check the other kids off while you don’t even leave your couch in the back room—which I know you did with some regulatory.) Meanwhile you binge more of your own media in the other room being “available” in case they tear themselves away from their media to interact with you.
I get to arrive home to a house where they are buried in media and don’t want to be bothered with anything more than “hello” (they certainly don’t want to be bothered with a reality check) and they have left out whatever food they’ve scrounged for themselves so regardless of what work they did I am greeted with at least messy counters and food on the couches against our house rules. If I complain you will tell me to my face that I don’t merit seeing a clean house—my wants or needs have no validity (or at least, there’s no reason for you to lift a finger for my comfort if it didn’t fit your timeline already).
I’m already doing the majority of the work and yet you ask me to do errands or favors for you often multiple times in a day and definitely several times each week (at least if you are doing anything—if you have a down week where you simply ignore your work that sometimes translates into not even asking me to do anything, you’ll just let the family go on autopilot for days on end).
The dynamic is: Dad does the work regardless of how tired he might be (so is it any surprise that he can be grumpy/snarky/frustrated with the kids) while Mom is perpetually resting to make sure she has the energy to not be upset with the kids. Add to this—where the kids can tell the workload between us is vastly unbalanced—that I’m always defending you to the kids when they complain about your performance while you validate and amplify their feelings that I’m inadequate. (I guess that’s fair since no mere mortal is adequate to the tasks I’m expected to bear.)
When are you going to face up to the facts of how much you let me carry the burden and how incongruous it is that while letting me bear a vastly greater portion of the responsibility you can’t even see your way clear to believe I’m trying when I carry that double portion in a flawed manner. I get neither mercy nor reprieve but somehow you think you are the one being mistreated in this relationship. I give and give and give and give while receiving contempt and judgement in return. When do you start to recognize that your actions would sink a lesser man (and frankly, you’ve virtually sunk me at several points).
If I flag and fail it’s definitely my failing, certainly not the foreseeable result of how little you contribute. It doesn’t matter how reasonable your rationale is, the burden is real. You seem to think that if the rationale is legitimate that we must pretend that the burden is ipso facto bearable. Thus you see me be imperfect and conclude that you’ll simply withdraw your emotional support—emotional support I have been deprived of for several years (with a few brief instances of reprieve).
You have been largely inert starting while you were pregnant with Ezra 11 years ago. Certainly that was totally justified at the time, 3 babies in 3 years. You actually became more inert (perhaps due to the medication) after you were finally correctly diagnosed with bipolar a mere 9 years ago. Regardless of it’s justification (or the duration of the justification) can you imagine carrying that burden for that long? (Hint, if I had been completely absent for the entirety of our marriage up to that point you were pregnant with Ezra before our 10th anniversary.) I’m not bringing this up to dredge up the past, simply to highlight how long the present state has been present.
The continued state of being unreasonably inert is still in evidence. Eva can probably remember you talking about wanting to reevaluate your medications in one of our early visits with her (perhaps the second one—where it was just you and I). Since that time (more than 2 months ago) you have not even contacted your psychiatrist to start that discussion—not for lack of time, because you’ve napped for well in excess of 100 hours in that same span. Similarly, you have bipolar disorder—a diagnosis that demands therapy in addition to medication—and yet you have gone nearly 2½ years since you have seen a therapist for yourself. You complain that either I’m not trying or my efforts aren’t good enough but how can you claim to be trying when you refuse, even against suggestions and reminders, to participate in what is considered the bare minimum standard of care for your diagnosis?
What have you DONE to try to ease my burden? You can encourage me to get a hobby or refill my bucket but you don’t try to refill my bucket and you complain if my coping strategies are inconvenient for you. No matter that your coping strategies for the bulk of our marriage have been blatantly inconvenient for me.
You complain that I’m not building anything positive with the kids—that requires some pretty selective memory. In just the last seven years I have volunteered to coach three seasons of soccer plus been the primary parental participant for 6 other teams (not to mention personally coaching Isaac through 2 years of soccer even if I wasn’t coaching his team). I did that despite the fact that 2 of those 3 stints of coaching were decidedly inconvenient for my employment situation at the time. Besides soccer I supported 2 basketball seasons, went camping all summer one summer, and planned a separate huge family camping trip. I’m not going to pretend that every one of those efforts was successful but every single one of them was undertaken with the singular goal of trying to create positive memories and interactions with the kids individually and the family as a whole. (That’s 14 soccer team seasons, 2 basketball seasons, at least 10 small camping trips and one big camping trip in 7 years—all things where I put in virtually all the effort to make them happen. And that’s besides 2 trips to Disneyland, annual trips to Bear Lake, Splash Summit, two ropes courses, countless trips to museums, multiple fathers and sons events, and going to scout day camp—events I didn’t have to organize and push through myself but I participated in an effort to build positive memories.) And several of those things I did completely without you.
If we lack positive relationships it can be because of my weakness but it’s not because of my lack of effort. Is it any wonder that I find it unfair that you treat me like I’ve been a negligent parent? Just because you don’t see all the times I give the kids hugs or stop what I feel like doing in favor of what they wish to do doesn’t mean I’m being a cold and distant father.
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