Trouble in relationship

[TamiG1979]

My husband and I have been together for almost 5 years. He has always worked a night shift at a hospital but would get home at 5:00 a.m. I don't start work until 8 am so i would wake up and talk to him before I go to work. He started at a different hospital a year ago and was working all different shifts including days which I loved and he didn't. He prefers nights. He got offered a full time position to work 10:30 pm to 7:00 am and work 10 nights in a row. We discussed it, and I said, If you take this job, you need to make time for our family. Like get up and eat dinner with us before you go to work. Here we are now a year later and he hasn't even got up once for dinner with me. He wakes up 1/2 hour before he has to leave for work. On his days off he stays up all day while i am at work and then sleeps when i get off. How is that considerate of me and our time? I have told him over and over that I need him to spend time with me because 10 days in a row of not doing anything together makes for this relationship to fail. What he is doing is coming home at 8 am and staying up until 1 or 2 in the afternoon. He also drinks which makes you tired. He drinks to much in my opinion but that is a different story. He will then complain how tired he is. I tell him to go to bed earlier and maybe not drink so much. He just says I am not his parent and he is an adult and can do what he wants. I am so lonely. Our relationship has suffered tremendously and don't know how to get back from it.

[somanymistakes]

Working lots of different shifts isn't good for people, so I can understand why he'd rather be on nights all the time. However, if it ends up with you never seeing each other, that's obviously not good for your relationship.

[d0nnivain]

I think your compromise was very reasonable. It's unfair of him to ignore you all.

 

I would tell him that his failure to spend time with you all & eat dinner feels like abandonment & ask him to go to MC with you. Otherwise since you are already basically a single parent, you might want to consider being one for real. Good news, you might be able to get a judge to force him to be the responsible parent from the time the kids get out of school at 3 until you get home from work. He'd still get 7 hours of sleep.

[preraph]

Sounds like he's not even trying to maintain the relationship. You can't do it alone, and he doesn't sound very pleasant or at all invested.

 

If you should decide to divorce and do joint custody, he will be forced to interact with the kids at least and take some of the overall burden off you and give you some down time. I'd think about it.