[Lynn]

I am new here, just to get that on here.

My issue is that I have been married almost 13 months now, I have a 5 1/2 month old daughter, whom I love to death, and don't want to lose her.

My husbands and my relationship started going down hill while I was pregnant last year. I just thought it was the pregnancy and thought that when the baby comes things would get better. Boy was I ever wrong. I have a history of depression in my past, and well I experience a really bad post pardum depression. My husband was suppose to take two weeks off when our daughter was born, and well when she was born he basically just went back to work right away. Even after telling the doctors that he would be there for me. Well it has been 5 months since I have really been treated, which I am happy about. And I am back to my normal self, (almost) But my marriage is worse. My husband won't give me any emotional support, or anything. We don't have sex, and well there is no attraction anymore. (I have almost lost all my weight, I use to weigh 130 and I am down to 140 from my pregnancy) I have asked him to go to counseling with me to try and find out what is going on with us. I am going to counseling myself, and I am on meds and all that, but yet my husband shows no interest in making things better. I am really at a lost right now.

See he has never put anything in both our names, and I have been out of work since last September. He controls the money and the bills. To the extent that he gives me a check for the amount of money I can spend each month for food and other things for the house, and gas for the car. Yesterday I went to go register my car.. and it is my car my name and all, just have not switched the towns it was registered in. Well they need proof of residency, which normally would not be a problem for me, but nothing is in my name here. I have been asking for over a year for him to put my name on bills and stuff. Needless to say, I had to get a bill with his name on it, and they said that they would consider that proof that I live here. (they just compared it to my license). So if we were to separate, or divorce I would have no where to go, because well my family is not one for letting the children move back in, I can only work a part time job at the time. ( and I have been since the end of March) and with my mental back ground I would be afraid that I would not be able to get custody of my daughter. I am really sad, and upset, confused and feel I have no where to go with all this. I have never been like this, with out a way out. But now I feel trapped. I guess I am to blame for some of it, but I have tried to get help for us.

Please give me some advice or what I can do. P.S I really don't have a lot of friends either, I have always been a quiet person. And I don't even know where to start to make new friends in a new town. ( i know pretty sad)

Thanks for reading..Lynn

[morning8glory]

I know how you maybe can meet some new friends.
I found the best place to start when I first moved to this area knowing no one. I went to the public library second day and loved the people that were working there. Now I can even go sit in one of the office and we talk and talk.
Most of them have childrens hour even though your baby is tiny you can meet other mothers at the library during childrens hour.
Most librarys also have other free programs through the week you can go to.
Also now that spring is here look for a nice park in your area one with a child's play area and take your baby to play.
You can sit on a swing with your baby and talk with other mothers that are in the park.
Don't be afraid when you meet a new person to ask if you can call them some time and ask for the name and phone number. I hear most new mothers go through down times.
Do you notice what sort of neighbors you have do you see any that you would like to know better bake a batch of brownies and go over with the baby and introduce your self.
I have found that there are many loney people in this world.
Notice when you go shopping if some one lingers near you and talk to you do not be afraid to talk with them and ask them there name and say hey I enjoyed talking with you can I call you some time and get number.
Also there must be some sort of support groups in your area.
I went to some for CFS support groups a few years ago and made a few freinds.
Of course we are all too tired to spend time doing much together.
Carry a little note pad in your diaper bag or purse and a pen and remember to get peoples names and numbers and then call them.
Also I am sure some Churches in your area have out reach programs for new people like welcome wagon and visit people just look in phone book and call a few and ask if some one can visit you.
If no one answers try calling when you know people are in Church.
It will not matter if you are not of that religion you are lonely and they might have some good advise on marriage problems to offer and you can just use it as an avenue untill you meet other new people or as a stepping stone untill things are better for you maybe .
Also Nursing homes often have people in them that are not really very sick just old or disabled and many lonely people if there is a nice one in your area go in and ask at the front desk if you may visit with one of the patrons in the nursing home.
Tell them you move in to the area and you are looking for people to be freinds with and spend time with.
Tell them you would like to meet some grandmother like people for your daughter to get to know.
Every time I go to visit a nursing home I see others in rooms that look out as I pass by just wishing some one would visit them. These people most have so much experance in life.
As far as relationship with your husband goes don't let him get away. He may need some extra incouragement maybe tons of encouragement.
You have changed in his eyes you gave birth.
He might think he is doing you a favor allowing you to rest.
Suprise him dress trashy for him, play music , dance, drink a little wine , suprise him with some thing new , do what ever it takes to show him you still have it and help him to get the job done.
It may take some extra energy on your account but you won't be sorry if you knew you were doing your best effort and things still were not happening but it may take more than one time at this to get good results.
All marriages go through growing periods of change.
A tiny baby must make the biggest change.
Get through the day and try to think of ways to meet people.
I have a freind she was in a similiar situation I do not know if I would do what she did but she decided to get a part time night job so she could get out and make friends and she uses the job money to pay for day care.
She works in a kitchen that serves one mid night meal to a factory of workers.
Her husband is very possive of her and he would not pay for day care or allow her to go very many places with out him and he worked 6 even 7 days a week and drank at night and they even started to retire at night to separate bed rooms. She joined a gym during the day that had day care that she oould walk to he did mind giving her money for that was before she starting working.
She is holding on but not giving up either.
I hope things get better for you and for that baby of yours.
Morning8Glory

[overcome]

You feel powerless I know, he has set you up in a pretty bad spot. Ask for help in gaining your independence, as it is important for your recovery. Can you get any referrals to support groups in your area. You are not alone. Some men marry and consider thier wives objects like a car. Sounds like you married the wrong guy, not a crime, just unfortunate. Find out if he is having an affair, if he's not sleeping with you he's sleeping with someone. If he is having an affair, you can divorce him on the grounds of adultery and mental cruelty. And you may end up with the house, and he will have to pay for it. Find out your legal options as well. There is a way out, dertermine for yourself you want a change, and work on it one day at a time.

[morning8glory]

I was married 25 years ago. 1977 and still a women having her own independance in some area's was not a big deal if you married a man who loved you greatly and supported you . And the sex was great.
I knew women who had it much worse my grandmother loved her husband until he died 58 married years and he was a very mean nasty speaking person and greedy with his money and he drank too much and made my grandmothers life horrible, abbused her mentally, but she was a wonderful wife and took care of all her responibilitys. She had 8 kids.
We live in an area of farmers and Amish after I got married at 18.
I am 43 now and I was so in love with my husband and he with me . BUT.
Because we were so poor and we lived on one income and no family that would or could help us. We were on our own.
There was not a place for me to work part time if I wanted to because we lived so far away from the city and towns.
At times we didn't even know if we would have gas money.
Again women working out side the home was still not a big issue. I choice to stay home ,clean and cook and when I got my first sewing machine I made many clothes.
My husband was not home until 5:30 PM each night 5 days a week he worked 60 minutes away. At first I lived to make him happy.
I Made my self look nice before he got home ,fixed my hair and I cleaned our small bare home until it shined. I was so happy to own our very old worn out moble home.
We started to buy it before we were married but had to pay rent on the property.
I washed and hung our clothes out on the clothes line and mended every thing even socks by hand., I cooked nice meals with very little food and had them on table on time for my husband when he came home. I learned every trick there was about saving money. Not making money but saving money.
I wanted to do these things partly to show my self and prove to the world a women could. Since my mother was a bad example of a wife in my eyes.
I did not have a car or could I drive until I was 24 years old and I married and moved away from the town I had known all my life and all my relatives and all my friends and moved into a very rurual area.
I did not desire to drive. I took walks every day and walked to the post office.
The radio kept me humming.
Only on friday nights did we do any shopping for grocerys.
I was just laughting the other day how I thought it was a big deal and treat when we could afford to eat out a Shoneys and I would order what I thought was real sea food clam strips on a Sunday.
I did not have a phone at first or TV or a sewing machine.
My mom was mean and would not allow me to use or borrow the sewing machine I had helped my dad buy with money I worked for and that was Kept in my bedroom as a teenager that I made some of my clothes on.
She did not do much sewing but did not want me to have any thing to do with the sewing machine. She wrote up a will a few years ago for after she died and in it I am to have only her sewing machine.
I have a nice computor sewing machine now who needs that old thing she kept from me.
There was no extra money after I got 20.00 or less for all grocerys and house and personal needed items so I had no checking book. That $20. did not buy extra's like paper towels and napkins and any thing extra only the basic food items.
The personal products were all generic or the lowest priced ones.
I would buy one bar of this and one roll of that for a week. And it had to make due.
We did not drink or smoke or have any hobbies or extra interest that needed money to keep up.
My husband loved me very much but he came from a family that was not good at talking to each other or to me or every excepted me fully as there daughter in-law and they stil made demands on my husbands time for things so it took him several years to get the communication thing down with my husband.
He had to learn to say no to other peoples demands and yes to me.
He was quite and I was bursting at the seams to talk.
I was full of emointions he was not.
I wished at the time for a baby. My husband was just getting the bills paid on time so he did not want to add a baby to our life yet.
I tried to get pregant on accident a few times.
We have not had any babys. For the first 17 years I had no pets to care for no cat.
I thought if I had a baby I would of loved it so much and not been as lonely .
I started to feel empty after the first year of marriage like we were in a stale place.
Then we had a terrible car accident that left me with only a broken jaw in two places. I was in the hospital a week.
Its the first time my husband ever cried for me infront of me when he seen me in the hospital .
My husband had to work for the income most that week. He was not there for my surgery.
I still think he should of been by my side when I came out of surgery.
But that accident changed things for us .
We were now with out a car and went in debt for another car that broke down and had to be junked with in a year.
We grew up while I was recovering from a broken jaw and extremely low weight problem.
We had diasters in our moble home. The septic was over flowing and every time our neighbor decided to wash clothes all day we got the full septic in our bathroom and kitchen it came up all the sinks and over flowed the john.
Tolet paper and crap from the neighbors and ours use to flood our floors. Our neighbor was mentally ill and she did not care.
I was so tiny and hungry and sick with my jaw wired shut and I would run and just cry in my bed until one day my husband handed me a mop and said help me with this mess.
We had water pipes freeze up in the winter so we had no water at times.
Things got better in time.
We moved our moble home to a village a tad bigger and we got to know a few people in village. One neighbor worked at a moble home manufactoring place and he started to give us stuff to fix up our place with.
Our first new carpet was many pieces so well laid and stabled down by our neighbor and husband that it looked like one lenght of carpet.
But the pipes and septic froze one of our first winters there for 3 months we had no water and no toilet. We used an old ladys concrete basement shower that had no curtains around it and the basement had windows to the walk way above and it was winter time. Those were short showers every other day.
We used a bucket for a toilet.
We finally figured out how to stop the pipes from freezing but every thing took money that had to be saved up for.
I started to take action and told my husband that I wanted a telle-phone and a sewing machine and had my first yard sale and sold a few things we did not have much to sell so I sold things like our home made wedding quilt that his aunt made us.
I did not make much money but my husband seen how much I needed these things so in time we had them. A phone and a 100.00 brand new sewing machine that turned out to be a lemon and would not make a tight seam no tension.
When I turned 24 still living in the same place my husband bought a car for 500.00 and said you are going to learn to drive this car and so I did and I do. One of the first things I made my husband when we could afford a different sewing machine was his first new winter coat that he always wore hand me downs as a teenager.
He still has that old dark blue goose filled coat and even though he has a nicer coat he still wears that old coat in the winter even though it will not zipper in the front any longer and I can not mend it any more.
The cat also loves that coat and as soon as my husband throws it down on a chair the cat jumps on it.
We grew in love and got stronger in relationship.
If I had a new baby maybe I would of felt the strain of a having to work at a marriage at a young age with no money and no family to help me.
Take my personal story for what it is. It is true and we are still very much in love. Still have relationship between us he is generous in gifts and he even talks too much some times.
I have my own check book now and credit cards but not for years until there was a bit of extra money for me to have for my own spending.
Things are in my name.
I hope you will both grow in love and respect for each other.
Maybe your husband is so extra carefull about money because there is no extra money.
My husband was and at times it caused a few arguments.
When we were first married he told me how high or how low the heat will be set in the house and I was up set with that control because PA is cold in winter and I was cold natured being too skinny and I decided he had to come to other agreement about this and after I read an article about saving money on heating bills he allowed me to turn the heat up to 68 during the day if I turned it back to 60 at night instead of keeping it at 65 all the time. That is just one example.
My way saved more money.
Do not go thinking I was quite and took every thing sititng down.
I did any thing I could to wake him up at times.
I was fighting for our marriage to work and still do.
My folks were divorced his folks are together but not emointally close.
Just one small thing that I did just last night. My husband packed to go on a trip for business to Okl. It is only an over night trip.
He went to bed before me and got up at 2 AM to leave while I was sleeping but I put a card in his cameria bag to tell him I love him.
It will probably fall out infront of others and I will laugh about that.
I tell him I love him and unlike his folks we still do have sex after 24+ years.
I do not allow him to get away with out making it a regular part of our life.
Jeanie

[mbarsk]

Dear Lynn!
Your husband is acting exactly as my husband did 15 years ago when our first child was born. He took no interest in me or the child, he just worked. He did not love me that was the simple truth and it was obvious from his behavior, I just could not believe that the man I had married changed so drastically when we became parents. I endured hoping things would improve for the sake of our child and because I was afraid of being on my own. He left me, when our second child was newborn ,for another woman. He was totally unaware of the pain he caused me, the stress he put me through by constanly lying to me, critizising me, by being out drinking with other women etc and also unaware of that by hurting and stressing me he was also hurting his children in that I could not be as good a parent for them as I could have been had my marrige not been living hell. Until this day he still does not grsp what he did to me but now I could care less. He had the power to devastate me because I was so vulnerable being a mother of two small children, just as vulnerable as you are. Today it would never happen!!!

My point is that: YES there are people like that, totally ruthless will even attack a mother with an infant not seeing how vulnerable she is. On top of everything he is denying you, the women who gave him a child financial equaliy!! For Christ sake you can not even get a drivers license!! Would you treat him that way? Hardly, it is not normal.

I read that someone suggested you slip into something sexy and seduce him ("help him getting the job done") This is a terribly cynical advise! He should be the one sedusing you after what you and your body has been through expecting and giving birth to your child. He should worship the scars on your body and kiss you all over and be eager to show his love making love to you. Normal would be that he was just as in love with your baby as you are, feeling the baby is a miracle. Do not loose track of what is normal in this awful situation you are in!!

Get a divorce, your husband is an [censored] and the sooner you see it and accept it the better. Remember your childs childhood is not possible to rewind once it is gone it is gone. Do not let this uniq period in your life get ruined by your husband. It is undertsandable if you are like taken by surprise by how your marriage has developed but you must not let it parylize you making you not take action to make a good life for yourself and your baby. This is not a time to be "a quiet" person just sitting there taking "[censored]" from an [censored] you must take responsibility for yourself and your child.
If I were you however I would seek help now ( Family counseling) just to show you care about your family and that the wellbeing of your child is your utmost priority in order to have this to show in the future should you end up in a custody fight. By the way, how likely is it that your husband would go for custody given the little interest he seems to have now for your child. As I said my ex husband took almost no interest in the children when they were little however he grew more interested as they grew older therefor see that you divorce now, a judge is more likely to think an infant should be with the mother. Take charge of your life and responsebility for your child by getting out of a marriage clearly doomed.

In yor situation wich is so stressful you can easily get confused about what is "normal expectations" and what is not and even about what is right or wrong. As an example you say you fear your husband would get custody. To me that seems very unlikely given how he is behaving now. Yor history is not that important what is important is how well you take care of yourself and your child, that is what a judge looks at deciding on custody. Try to find someone you can consult with on a regular basis in order to keep yourself on track and prepare yourself for a stressfulperiod as you take the step out of this hell you are in. Your husband will probalbly find many ways to make life difficult for you as you decide to leave him. Excuse my spelling English is not my firt language.
Best of luck!!

[Lynn]

Thank you very much for the advice, but I do have to say one thing. He may not be the best husband in the world. But as a father that is a different thing all together. He is a great father, he gets up in the morning with her, and when he gets home from work he takes her also, and he will feed her and also but her to bed at night.

I do have a drivers License, I just had a hard time registering my car. But I was finally able to. My husband also has finally put my name on the checking account. We still have no attraction anymore, but we are living more as friends I guess at this point.

Also believe since I have been working things have been a little better around here. But at the same time I have been able to see my own faults and stuff that I have not been doing. i.e cleaning as much as I could.

Although our relationship is going down hill, he is a good dad, and loves our daughter very much, he shows that. There is still hope for us I believe. We just need to take one step at a time. Everyone says that our daughter is one of the happiest babies that they have ever seen, and that we must have a happy household. Well, I just say that we both love her very much and give her lots of attention. There isn't anything either one of us would not do for her. I know the main problem is between him and I. But at this time, where she is very happy and she is just 6 months old, I just think that where ever we have failed in our marriage, we are making up in the parenting department.

I am not sure how long our marriage will last. But I know that our daughter will always have two very loving parents and to me that is more important right now.

[kitty]

Lynn: I am glad things seem to be getting better, but you really should still look into getting therapy with your husband. You should not have to sacrifice your life. Ultimately, if you are not happy with your husband, you will do harm to your child because your child will be able to sense this when he/she is older. Good luck.

[Lynn]

I do go to therapy. I have been going my whole life for different things. My husband has agreed to go with me to one of my sessions, my shrink wants to see what the whole issue is about. And it isn't that I am not totally happy. We have only been married 13 months, and in that time we also had a baby. So a lot of things have gone on. He is not mean to me. He does talk to me, he doesn't go out or stay out. I have been happier in life yes. But I am not one to just give up. Not my style. I feel what is going on is both of our faults. It takes two to make a relationship work. And it does not help that I too distance my self from him time to time. It is really complicated. But I do really thank you for your replies, it is nice to know someone out there cares.

[mj14]

Lynn, it sounds like things are moving in a positive direction, since he addressed one of your main concerns and put your name on the checking account, and is now going to go to one of your sessions with you. From what you have said, he seems to be willing to do some things to help with the relationship, so maybe you can repair things with time. I have heard many friends of mine say that their first year of marriage was the very hardest, and they weren't always sure the marriage would survive. And none of them had the added stress of a child at that time. So, give your marriage a chance to heal...you may find that with a little work, you can rediscover your love for each other.

I'm going through something similar...after 10 years of living together, I was starting to feel that my partner and I had drifted irrevocably apart...we were still very good friends, but we lived completely separate lives. Well, when I sank into depression, caused partially by feeling very alone and unloved, he asked what he could do to help, and I just said that I wanted him to be here for me. Since then, he has grown more and more attentive, and I am finding that those romantic feelings I thought were gone are coming back. So, just like feelings can fade with time, they can also re-emerge.

Good luck.
mj