How do I stop hating being a dad?

I should preface this by saying that I am lucky to have a son who is healthy, smart and, by all accounts, a completely normal toddler. He's 21 months old this week.And... I hate it. It breaks my heart to say it, but it's true. For the past two years I've tried to convince myself that it will get better and that we just need some time to adjust to being a family, but I just can't bring myself to enjoy being a dad.Everyone knows that parenting is hard. "But it's all worth it!", say the parents for whom it obviously comes naturally. But it's not. I love the boy, I really do, but I just wish I could turn back the clock to before we started trying for a baby, before we had this needy, whiny, snotty bag of germs that's up all hours of the night and won't ever let me get any rest.I miss the freedom of being able to go out, or on holidays, or to the cinema. Or even to just sit and watch a film at home, or play a video game or read a book without being interrupted. I knew, of course, that these would be things that we'd be able to do a lot less of when my wife and I became parents. "But it's all worth it!" was the mantra. But it's not. It's just... exhausting. The thing that really gets me is the illness. I've been more ill, and more severely, in the last 2 years than I ever was in the 30 before. I don't feel like myself any more and can't help but blame the boy.My son is, in some ways, very independent. He hates hugs and kisses (which kills me inside, because I just want to give him a cuddle and tell him I love him, and that I'm sorry, and that I want to be a better dad). In other ways I find him incessantly demanding. The repeated reading of the same stupid stories. The endlessly looping videos of celebrities singing covers of their own songs on Sesame Street. It just grinds me down. I've tried replacing them with activities I thought we'd both enjoy. As a fan of Terry Pratchett I bought "Where's My Cow?" so that we could read that together. He loves it. We have read it three times this morning. I hate it now. The same words, over and over. It is torture.My wife says she wants another baby. This was THE PLAN. I told her I don't think I've got it in me to have another one. This caused a big row and we haven't discussed it since. My wife suggested that I was suffering from depression, so I've referred myself to a service called Time to Talk. I'm worried that someone will realise that it's not depression, it's just that I'm a selfish bastard who wants his old life back.But I want to change. I want to enjoy being a parent. I love my son (it might not sound like it, but I do) and I want to do better for him. I want to have a better relationship with him than I do with my own father. I just don't know how to start. via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2uFaJJ0