How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids

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How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids

How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids

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Know that your baby is affected [by your fighting],” Dunn says. “If you’re fighting over her head, making a few choice gestures, she’s getting those stress responses. We were in a pattern called ‘Demand-Withdrawal,’” in which one partner tries to get the other to do something, or to engage and communicate, and the other one just shuts down. The relationship gurus John and Julie Gottman call this stonewalling, and it’s one of the big predictors of divorce. (Um, maybe because it’s enraging.) After finding themselves arguing often after having a third baby, Holly and her partner chose couples therapy, which research has shown can lessen relationship distress. Initally, she says, her husband resisted, seeing seeking help as a sign that their relationship had failed.

Dunn begins her efforts to change her situation when she realizes that she's reached a breaking point. "Our daughter is now six, and Tom and I still have endless, draining fights. Why do I have the world's tiniest fuse when it comes to the division of childcare and household labor? I am baffled that things have turned out this way." loc 158. In cringe-inducing honesty, Dunn admits to being verbally abusive to her spouse. My stomach actually churned when I read the sorts of things that she'd call him during fights. That part of the memoir made me very glad that she decided she didn't want to live like that because I know that I wouldn't have wanted that either. Even discounting the final chapter, there's a lot of repetition. Dunn even manages to recycle some of her jokes into several locations.Jancee Dunn is honest, smart and funny. Her truthful writing style makes me feel understood and less alone with my issues in the world. I found some of her anecdotal narratives to be really harsh, especially toward her husband, that was hard to read. She shared the tone of Julie Powell in "Julie and Julia" and I wasn't a fan of that one either. For me, it would be a challenge to be married to Jancee or a Jancee type person.

Becoming a parent isn't the only cause of new conflicts, says Stacey Sherrell, a family therapist in California. But pre-baby, couples generally have more time to focus on issues like poor communication. That's more difficult when a child is added to the mix. I'm not proud to say that the main reason I haven't had her do anything more arduous is that I haven't had the patience to teach her how to do chores, nor to remind her to do them." (p171) As my baby is only two months old and my first, our life is still pretty easy. I feel like this book helped me navigate my changing relationship with my husband and laid the groundwork as my son grows up. think of chores as household membership requirements. So you explain to the child, 'Look, it takes a lot of work to run this family, and Daddy works at it, and I work at it, and you can work at it, too, and make a really important contribution...and when they help, you immediately say, 'Thank you! This makes a big difference.'" (p171)Find ways to get Dad involved and continue to encourage and reward his engagement with the baby. This means stop criticizing the way he dresses the baby, feeds the baby, or changes a diaper. Dad feeling competent is more important than the baby wearing coordinating outfits.

When I first brought it home from the library, Bart raised an eyebrow and said, “I’m not sure what I think about that book.” Make saying “thank you” for little things a priority until it becomes a habit. It will help both of you feel seen and appreciated and gratitude is one of the most significant indicators of whether couples will stay together. Date NightThe last chapter is a recap of literally everything Dunn learned. You could just read that and skip everything else. It's like the whole book in magazine article format. A couple years since the birth, they have found better ways to communicate and strengthened their relationship.

You need to advocate for what you need, or stay on your own side. Now, this advocating can mean losing your temper and screaming that he needs to get off his ass and fold a load of laundry, or no it’s not okay to take a long nap after a long hot shower after taking a long solo run all morning, or you can have a civil conversation and divide up the chores. And keep having that civil conversation, weekly or monthly, as new responsibilities crop up and others fade away. (Goodbye diapers, hello baseball camp.) Enter Dunn, her well-meaning but blithely unhelpful husband, their daughter, and her boisterous extended family, who show us the ways in which outmoded family patterns and traditions thwart the overworked, overloaded parents of today. I told [our therapist], honestly, I see him as another person that needs something from me," says Holly. The therapist encouraged her to see him as her partner, instead. "That mindset shift for me has been a huge thing. We still have our little tiffs, but I feel like they’re way less explosive than they used to be. And I feel like when we do get angry with each other, we actually discuss it now."

After that, the book is divided into sections about the major areas of conflict in marriage. First, there is housework (surprise! to no wife ever). Then a whole chapter on how to fight so that it’s both effective and doesn’t destroy your relationship or scar your children. I think the author was trying to meet a real need in the market of marriage/parenting books, which are usually written for those in breadwinner/homemaker roles, and I think that's why this book gets recommended so frequently in circles without a traditional configuration. It seeks to help couples work through things like how to divide household jobs if both spouses work full-time. It challenges the idea that chores are gendered, which is a worthwhile conversation to have, even if you disagree with her. We are about to enter into a 3-month phase where our roles will shift pretty dramatically, and I'm interested to see how it will go. Though, if anything, I think Christian should have read this book to figure out how to deal with *me*, as I tend to be the one who doesn't see household tasks until they've hit DEFCON 5. This book would fall into the same category as Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project, which a more sarcastic person might describe as "incredibly privileged NYC mom tries to make her dream life even better."



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