Throw away because obvious reasons.
I(36) and my husband(34) have been married just over 10 years. We've been together for 11. We talked a lot about having a big family and having kids when we were dating. We agreed. Well 10 years later we have 4. They're not typical. The autism spectrum has graced up with multiple visits. This makes parenting a bit different than we first imagined.
I have thrown myself into learning about how to be a better parent to them, how to feed their sensory needs and brain and how to discipline and how to teach and all of the damn things. He has not. He continues to treat them as a neurological child and then gets frustrated and angry with them for not responding as such. He has not changed the way he talks to them or disciplines them. It infuriates me.
It puts the emotional load of everyone in the house onto me. I have to monitor everyone's emotional state ans spend so damn much of my time calming them down and regulating everyone.
I edition to this wonderful bit of extra work he creates for me, he also is basically married to his phone. I have tried everything I can thing of to get him to put it down. We have had a serious talk about his screen addiction about every 2 years. If its not the computer its the phone if its not the phone its the mother '![$,$[×,-<×&@* video games. I swear to god if I didn't have the self control I have that play station, computer, TV, and cell phone would be smashed to peices. I have never loathed electronics so bad in my life. My kids have a 2 hour timer on their switches and do not play everyday. The expecting is if theyre playing with friends we extend it. They have tvs but they get a max of 4 hours a day. 2 in the afternoon when the baby sleeps (can be used for a show or a game) and 2 to wind down at bed time before bed. Sometimes this gets cut to 1hour unless its a movie.
My husband works from home. He is in front of the computer all day. Working from home means though that on his 15 minute breaks he can game or take a nap, and often this is what he uses his break time for. So theouout the day he's getting actual breaks. Plus if its super slow he can watch reels on his phone or play a phone game while he's working. Meanwhile I am raising 4 kids, cooking cleaning homeschooling regulating playing referee taking kits to appointments and overall just exhausted. He unloads the dishwasher on his lunch break. He occasionally swaps the laundry. The laundry gets shoved to my side of the bed so I either have to deal woth it or try and sleep under it which means half of it ends up back on the floor. Yay.
Anyway. My main point is he gets plenty of breaks though his work day. So I would expect, as any mom would, that when he clocks out he can take a fucking break and put the phone down and play with his kids, help with dinner, talk to his wife….no. he will eat and watch reels. He will set his plate down and scroll shit. He ignores me he iflgnores the kods he half listens because that GD phone in his hands. Well I recently had to get a part time job working a few evenings a week. And I thought he could handle it. It's 3 days a week and its 4 hours with the kids. Technically 3. Because one of those houes he's still working and our smallest is usually still napping. Sorry for typos I'm still very angry and its effecting my typing.
These 3 hours he's with the kids should be dinner for an hour maybe an hour and a half, then getting baths going or playing wih them for an hour or doing bath time. And then getting them ready for bed. Brush your teeth, if you didn't take a bath wash your butt and put on clean clothes. Let's tidy the rooms and dinner mess. Then put them to bed. Then within an hour and a half I'm usually home. Its easy. It's 3 hours. It's basic parenting. But numerous times he comes upstairs makes HIMSELF food "they said they weren't hungry" and then sits on his phone while they run around the house. Then when they go to bed theyre hungry so he throws barw minimum at them. Here's 3 hot dogs here's a microwave cup of Ramen. Here's a bowl of cereal, and sends them to bed in dirty clothes, messy rooms, and nothing done. Now the clothing can be trick because of the autism. Sometimes they want to wear the same outfit again for 4 days. Whatever. Does he make sure their asses are clean? Their teeth arw at least attempted to be brushed. Their spacex are clean and safe. No. He trwleats them like dogs. Here's your treat now get in your crate.
Today is my last straw I asked him to do something specific and when he failed and I asked him why he didn't do it he claimed the kids were all being loud during that time I was texting him. So I pulled up the camera we have in the home to the time I messaged him. The particular instance was still while he was downstairs working and no child was there. The rest of the chunk I sent him he was sitting on the recliner scrolling and blatantly ignoring my messages. He failed to pass an important message to our daughter and failed to set up something that was needed for that issue. Bwcause he was on his phone. He took a long chunk of that time sleeping in the recliner while th3 kofs ran around. Our youngest is less than two and everything ends up in their mouth. So if she was choking who would know. Certainly not him because he was sleeping. Or on his phone.
I so want a divorce. I don't want to do this with him anymore. I love the ever loving ahit out of him and I know his dad was crap and he has no real guideline for how to be a good dad but what kills me is he acts like he doesn't like them. They're not important they don't matter enough to him and neither do I. Nothing matters as much at that damn screen.
Would counseling fix this? Is this relationship just too far gone to save? Outside of having yet another talk with hi about how he needs to step back and put more effort into his family what the heck do I say. I'm so tired. I'm tired of fighting for this to work. I'm tired of fighting to feel loved.
I even brought out secual kinks to try and feed his need for physical touch and sex hoping maybe if I fed into him and his self worth and his needs then he'd maybe more willing to feed into his family. Everything only helps for a very short time before its back to the phone. I even caught him watching porn on it when I was literally in the next room. And its not like I wasn't putting out. It's an issue because he had an addiction 8 years ago after our daughter was born and took a lot of work to break so we agreed he'd stay far away from that. So that hurt a lot too.
I just feel ignored unseen unloved unvalued and taken advantage of. Can I save this marriag?