Stay Or Go?
What’s your relationship/dating problem? Send it to [email protected] or fill out this form.
Holiday updates, please. Former letter writers, where are you now? Did our advice help? Send us an update to [email protected] with “update” in the subject line. Make sure to say which letter you wrote. Let us know what happened.
Q.Should I stay or should I go?
My fiancé and I have been together for more than three years. We have two babies together and pets. When he is nice, it’s nice. He has anger issues, though. He can snap at anyone. He complains that no one ever wants to hang out with him, mainly his friends. He asks them to play video games or go hunting, and either they can’t or they do something with him once and then don’t right away again, and he gets mad.
He criticizes how his friends parent their children. Yet he is over here yelling at our kids or animals or even me. He doesn’t want to see a therapist because he thinks it’s pointless – yet he’s never tried. Recently I started a new job, which we agreed to because he is not working until early next year due to contracts. He complains about our kids crying, and gets frustrated and tells me I’m not helping him out with them.
We have a good sex life. We don’t spend as much time together as I’d like, but he doesn’t really make the effort. Should I seek legal action or try and work it out?
– Stay or go?
A.You can go to therapy by yourself. That’s a good first step as you figure out what’s next. Maybe after you try for a bit, he’ll join you. Some people are more comfortable visiting a counselor on someone else’s behalf.
It sounds like most of your time as a couple has been spent with big responsibilities – kids, pets, etc. You didn’t have a long stretch of togetherness that involved just hanging out and being free. Do you know what the two of you are like as partners when there’s less pressure? How much of that did you experience?
You might not have help from friends, especially if they also have kids, but if you can call on family for some babysitting – even for a few hours – it would be nice to know what the two of you could be like outside of the house, without stress in front of you. That kind of free time would also give you the opportunity to talk about some of these problems.
But before you get to all that, tell him the yelling has to stop. It hurts you and the kids, and makes messages difficult to hear. There are better and more respectful ways to communicate. Tell him the yelling ends now – because it must. If he can’t start there, there isn’t much to work out.
– Meredith
Readers? Is it time to work on things? Legal action?
Be civil. Be kind.
Read our full community guidelines.To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address