First off I want to thank everyone for their replies and input. It's helpful even if it's a bit hard to hear.
Especially if he's from Chongqing there's literally no excuse for any of this, Sichuan is literally famous for understanding that there is an expectation to take care of and listen to your wife.
He's from Beijing. But I do think plenty of Beijingers get how to do this right, because his parents seem to. When we got together, it was pretty evident that he strongly preferred I move to Boston than him move to NYC. He had real estate investments going on in Boston, whereas I was at a good "stopping point" for NYC residence, since I didn't own my apt, I rented it, and was close to finishing a grad program. Unfortunately I think it's become an unfortunate dynamic where he knows I'm willing to sacrifice things that are important to me if it's for the benefit of the family as a whole.
You don't "know" that divorce is "always" a rift that hurts them.
I think it mostly is, and that parents need to be basically committing child abuse and neglect for divorce to seem preferable to the involved kids.
Past a certain point, there is no "learning to getting along", you're just a slave to a manchild growing older. I am a child of divorce, and I will tell you flatly: I'm glad my mother did it. It's not out of hatred towards my father, but because she - and my brother and I - would have wound up a lot worse had they remained together. In order for her to be where she needed to be, it meant a divorce. And I never faulted her for it, never felt anger.
I am also a child of divorce and I remember very often thinking to myself circa 9 to 16 years "why can't these people stop fighting and get along, instead of perpetually making me and Delia carry their water, burdening us with a shared custody agreement that makes us move house from his to hers every bloody week, and getting sidetracked with relationship drama more suited to kids our age than them?"
My parents are some of the most childish people. I can recognize that some partnerships are truly irreconcilable, that one's husband could be really that bad, so that a divorce isn't just about what your parents want, but about safety or getting yourself and family away from a person who's too fucked up to be a partner. My parents' divorce wasn't like that. They just liked to get drunk and snipe at each other over their various shortcomings. I remember they once got into it over who filled up the Brita pitcher last. I thought that was unbelievable at like age 9. If they had the maturity to act like the adults they are, they'd have been able to stay together, and I'm equally angry at both of them for not being able to get it together.
And I don't think my relationship is so unsalvageable either. It's more to do with gainsaying someone who I know loves me and who wants what's best for all of us, but defaults to a leadership position because he doesn't think anyone else can do it. It further challenges our relationship that he's really wise and correct most of the time, so that he expects you to take his side and thinks you're making a mistake if you don't. And that is pretty much how men develop hubris and ego IMO.
THIS is a dynamic you think is healthy and sustainable?
You're either bullshitting/exaggerating or enabling and coping hard.
I am exaggerating. Alex may not think much of feminism, but he's not into domestics, either. We share that and tend to avoid open conflict. I would rather bitch about him to 3rd parties than have a difficult conversation about how I think he prioritizes his time, or how he parents, or the way he sometimes treats his mom like a live-in au pair. That's a flaw and I'll own it.
Ya that's the sticky wicket. How do you persuade a man who is accustomed to taking your input as a request to take your demands and needs seriously? So far the answer I got from the community to DTMFA which seems like overkill.
Today at least when Tilly kept coming to find me during the little break I wanted, I took her back downstairs and told Alex "I asked you to hold Tilly for twenty minutes. Stop making me run her back down here." Also when they kicked Tilly out of daycare earlier today for a rash and Alex asked if I could take her to be seen to I said, "it's Dec. 23rd, and I work for a church. I cannot take the time to take her to the urgent care." and so he got her and took her there~! I feel like Smeagol learning to repel Gollum.
This is at least a little bit of an improvement.
Not that I give a toss about basket cases, but for what it's worth my prime suggestion atop of getting her shit together in general would to be talk to the priest she presumably works for being a church girlie and all, Episcopalian right?
I actually asked the Rector about this earlier today and she had some good advice. She agreed with you guys that she wouldn't tolerate this behavior in a spouse, but she also helped me come up with a way of setting some boundaries about the childcare.
like you?
