I Am Feeling a Little Jealous
My husband is great, but he's not a saint
I don’t find myself consumed with jealousy very often anymore. Not in the same way I did when I was younger. Sure there are things I wish I had—lifestyles out of reach that appeal to me, material items or fancy invites—but for the most part I am okay with who and where I am.
However.
On Father’s Day an old friend whom I love following online posted something outrageous. In the midst of a beautiful post dedicated to her partner, father of her baby, she thanked him for “understanding that you’d rather be tired than deal with me being tired.”
I have a thousand questions.
How did he come to understand this? What is she like when she’s tired? Did she purposefully ratchet it up so as to lead him to this realization or did he reach it on his own? Is he a saint? Does he have a twin? Is he one of these lunatics who only needs 4 hours of sleep a night? How can I convince my own husband that he needs to have this realization?
I do not have one of these saintly selfless husbands. I have the regular kind, who gets tired and lets me know when he got less sleep than I did or watched the kids more. He never graciously offers to stay awake! I mean yes, he does all the late night driving and stays up later than I do, he also does all the dishes because I have paper thin hands that peel from water and soap exposure and gloves also exacerbate it, which really works out for me, but that’s because I take mornings with the kids.
I know it sounds like a system that works for us but I want this other system, the one where I get to sleep and he stays awake because he knows I’ll be a nightmare if I’m overtired.
Have I been too pleasant? Too cordial? Too amenable?
When people are bitchy to me I get even nicer. I think it’s called a “fawn” response. Recently a relative was in the hospital in a shared room with someone who was moaning and screaming. It was less than ideal. She really wanted a private room. My instinct was to be super nice to the charge nurse which got me nowhere. I spoke with someone who used to work in a hospital and she gave me some advice that involved escalating and not taking no for an answer. It worked.
But see, I never would have taken that approach without coaching because I’m afraid of my own shadow.
My response to feeling like I’m going to have a meltdown because I’m so tired I can no longer function is to stifle my feelings and try to act like everything is okay. I hit the brakes when I need to hit the gas!
I remember when I had my first baby, that’s when the competition over who could get their basic needs met began. It had never been a competition before, we both slept like normal people and ate like normal people and showered like normal people. But once Elliot was born it was more like Hunger Games. I haven’t actually seen Hunger Games but does it involve someone bouncing on an exercise ball at 4am with a fussy baby and crying her eyes out because she has postpartum depression which she thinks is just baby blues?
I have another friend who said her husband offered to do every diaper change because she carried the baby for nine months. It was then that seeds of this tree of jealousy took root.
Okay we have a problem! I intended this to be a light silly piece but instead I am discovering I harbor real resentment! It’s interfering with the intended levity!
Having a newborn in the house was really rough. I had a traumatic birth and then spent five months feeling increasingly alienated and scared and forlorn until I woke up one day and realized this was something more intense than baby blues and I should see a therapist.
I did, and that was the beginning of getting me back to where I am now: writing a Substack about how I resent my husband.
Except I don’t, normally. He is fantastic and a true partner. He is funny and incredibly smart. He is an amazing father. He just isn’t my father. He isn’t selfless. (Okay neither was my father but just go with it.) He is deeply invested in making sure he gets time to himself to sleep and think and exercise. Which is healthy! For us, the business of raising a family is a negotiation. I’ll take these hours and you take these hours. Etc.
But I want that other version! The one where someone says, “You are breaking. Let me carry that for you.” Except he does carry literally everything for me. I haven’t brought in groceries once since we’ve been together and I hardly ever take out the trash.
But I coordinate all the schooling and childcare and doctor’s appointments. And bill paying and home management and blah blah. I have to remind him many times about things. And then he will ask me to remind him again at a better time, which is really just pressing my snooze button (it’s my nose) and does nothing to release me from having to remember to remind him.
See, this is why social media is bad. It gives you FOMO. I have FOMS, fear of missing sleep. Will I ever make up for the sleep I missed out on when my kids were newborns? If you listen to my podcast or follow me on social media you know I’ve been trying every single day and by that I mean I take a lot of naps with this heat pad.
I do love my husband so much. I’m just tired.
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My spouse and I are on the other side, with two grown kids now out of the house and more or less on their own (one of whom attended your 2017 Sketch Fest show in SF with me). Raising children can be hard on a couple, and if you think little kids are hard, just wait until you have teenagers.
What I learned raising our kids was to resist the urge to keep score with my partner. I just always tried to do the best I could in the moment and trusted my wife was doing the same. We held on tight and tried to enjoy all the good stuff without dwelling on who was getting the most sleep.
Your words made me cry. I’m in the trenches of child raising too and trying to still enjoy my partner rather than resent him all the time. My kids are a similar age to yours and I feel like I have the same personality as you in regard to being afraid of my own shadow. My therapist has helped me to just ask for what I want from my husband rather than wait for him to offer. Which I would love if he would just offer!! Never the less, he now takes cares of bedtime every night. And I get to go to bed! Simply because I asked. Who knew?