Hi all, I haven't see any (good) articles or resources to help a dad deal with a highly emotional wife when raising a kid. My son is now a year and a half old, and while of course it has been a challenge raising him, it has been a much bigger stress dealing with my wife and her ups, downs, and demands. There seem to be plenty of mom support groups but not for dads!Since my child was born, I constantly have had to deal with accusations of: 1) Not being home enough since I work too much 2) Not doing enough to contribute 3) I don't care about the kidRegarding #1 I leave early in the morning for work and I am home by 6:15 pm every evening. I never work during family time on the weekends; only during baby's naps and when he is asleep. But she is in a bad mood (for whatever reason) and feels like taking it out on me, she complains I work too much and am not around often enough. I hardly call this "too much work" and feel that my work is in line or less than most dads.Regarding #2 She sees the nanny arrive in the morning (since I'm out of the house by then) and she also comes home from work at 4pm to relieve the nanny. So she handles most of the child care. However, on the weekends, I am the one who gets up early and makes breakfast for everyone, and I am physically and mentally present all day Saturday and Sunday. I do everything I possibly can to contribute to the household. Even during the week, when the baby wakes up in the middle of the night, I am the one to get up and feed him and change his diaper and put him back to sleep. But again, she will accuse me of not doing enough to help out with the baby. It is all about perception.Regarding #3 She will spend hours and hours doing Internet research or shopping on Amazon.com for the perfect utensil set or pair of sneakers, and ask my opinion. When I say I really don't think it matters which item to get, she gets angry that I don't care about our child. Of course that isn't true, but again that is her perception. I really don't think that using a different spoon or fork is going to drastically change his future. But we have gotten into plenty of arguments about thisThe advice I've seen online is to "deal with it and support her because she is the mom" which of course I try to do, but there is only so much I can take as a punching bag before I feel at wit's end.It has gotten to the point that I have zero extracurricular activities. I work, and I'm a dad. That's it. I don't exercise, I don't meet up with friends, and I don't do any of my hobbies anymore. The three times I have gone running since my kid was born, I went jogging with the baby. The reason I have chosen this is because of #1 above - where she accuses me of not being home enough. Honestly, even going to the barbershop once a month (total of 45 minutes out of the house) has become a tremendous amount of stress for me. The other week she got angry that I never have any extracurriculars. She accused me of making her feel guilty when she goes out with her friends because I never do anything outside of the house. I basically said that she has yelled at me for not being around and not being much of a contributor around the house, so what else am I supposed to do? She didn't respond so the jury is still out on this one.I get yelled at every week, either for the same old things or something new. I just take it and try to be as agreeable as possible.I'm going to stop my rant now but I just wanted to get some stuff off my chest. I was wondering if there are any other dads to chat with or any online groups to bounce ideas off of. Women are really good at leaning on each other for support but I think that men generally aren't very good at it at all. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2DHsNC2
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