The things we do for love

There are about a thousand different reasons for why you shouldn't have children, all of them very good (I can think of only one good reason for why you should have them: they will be the biggest loves of your life, but that's a different matter). One such reason is: it f***s up your relationship!
I never thought two people in love could argue as much as me and my husband does since we decided to go down the baby-road, but there we are, screaming and shouting blue murder at each other and jumping at the chance of criticising each other, and poking each other and being as goddamn bloody disrespectful as we can possibly be, and all, because of our children.

And it's all because of that old cliche that having children will change your life forever.
Oh, it certainly will. You will no longer have more time to yourself than you know what to do with. You will never be able to be 100% spontaneous again. Your lie-ins will decrease dramatically and your love-life will take a hit. You won't be able to be fun and adventurous anymore.
All of you who have children knows that this isn't exactly true. You can still sleep in late on a Saturday. You can still steel and hour or two to go shopping, or have a coffee or what ever it is that you like to do, your love-life isn't gone for ever and technically, you can, should that be your thing, go trekking in the Himalayas or scuba-dive in the Maldives, because we all know: life does not end when you have kids.
It does, however, make it so much more difficult, and that's where the arguing enters the picture.

We have gone from being easy-going, fun-loving, laid-back, chilled out people to being constantly tetchy and irritated and ll because we have to manage our time and ourselves in such a strict way that it seems to take all the fun out of being alive. It's true, if you scratch under the surface of almost every single argument we have, Time is the number one reason for most of them. We simply don't have enough of it, and the little we have, we are pretty damn unlikely to share. So, while before, we were full of respect and eager to please each other, we have now transformed in to very selfish human beings.

I mean, who's turn is it to go for a run this Sunday? Who's turn is it to go out to dinner with friends? Who's turn is it to sleep an extra hour, and who's turn is it to read the whole Sunday newspaper undisturbed? That's often the extent of our arguments.
All thanks to our two lovely little children who we love and cherish and would like to bring up together, as a couple, not as separated ex's.

Oh, the irony, the irony

After finding out her husband had an affair, my FoF is going through a painful divorce and and an even more painful reality check where she has to re-evaluate almost every memory she has as a happy married mother of three. Needless to say, she's having a lot of counseling to help her through this. But what is even worse is that this is also taking it's toll on the children. The two eldest are acting out, and their school work is suffering, so they too are going to weekly counseling sessions. This isn't how she'd ever imagine her life to be.

The husband thinks she's a drama-queen who's using the children to take revenge on him in the only way she can: financially. He has threatened to stop paying for the children's counseling as he is sure his wife is only out to get him.
- It's too expensive, he says. I can't afford to pay for this on top of the mortgage on the house and the rent for my apartment.
Next week he's going to Europe on business combined with pleasure along with his co-worker slash mistress.

Oh, the irony of it all.

It is like bashing your head against the wall, because these women come out of the woodwork often enough for it to matter

It often seem that for every step forward we take ten thousand steps back. The latest book published in the ever lasting debate between stay-at-home vs working mothers is this step back to the 1950's voice of an american woman named Megan Basham. Her book, Beside every successful man - A woman's guide to having it all, not only argues that 80% of all women want to work fewer hours after their children are born, but that men and women's brains are biologically different in their way of thinking. "Women are collaborators", she said in The Guardian last week. "We have a more communal concept of success, and a lot of that applies to our relationships."

She also states that traditional marriage, ie, the one's where the wife stays at home, are less likely to end in divorce than those where both partners work full-time. In order to fullfill herself and to boost the family's economy a woman should stand beside her man, support him in his carreer-moves, help him write CV's and make sure that he has a nice, realxing home to come back to after a long day at work.
Needless to say, Basham's type of "choice feminism" has met a lot of harsh criticism.

Basham completely ignores the fact that housewifery has very little to do with about choice but is often simply a plain case of throwing in the towel. I am all for personal choice but I resent the statement that our society as a whole would be a better place if women stayed at home - let's just call a spade a spade, and not try and sex this thing up: women stay at home because most families who would like their children to have some kind of parental interaction during otherwise long stressful working weeks have no other choice since there simply are no compromises in terms of flexible working hours and affordable child-care.
After years of hard work in college and universities did we really have no other ambitions than to become our husbands un-paid PA's?
It is insulting to say that this is about biological differences (it is also a very weak argument to keep in those cases where the husband gets bored with his PA at home and starts sleeping around with the secretary at work.)
This is about it being 2009 and women are still being second class citizen's, and dressing it up as anything else is pointless. Let's have a proper debate on how many women actually stay at home through choice, and what we could do to actually to strike up a balance between home and real, paid work

Let's forget about the last fifteen years of our lives

My friend of a friend (my FoF), who's husband has been cheating on her, is very anxious to keep the marriage going. She still loves him and want to fight for him. Most of all, she doesn't want her children to grow up in a broken home. He agrees to go to counseling together to talk some things through. Suddenly, in the therapist-room, he trows a bombshell.
- I have never been really happy in this relationship. It feels like you're suffocating me.
My FoF is going mad.
- The wedding, the children, moving in to our house. All of which should be the happiest day's in our life. And they made him more and more un-happy.

The incredible thing is that she is still willing to work through it. She cries, and screams, and goes through roller-coaster rides of emotions, but she's willing to take him back.

When I was a little girl I dreamt of being a.... penniless divorced mother of three. Then I would live happily ever after.

I bumped in to a friend of a friend in the book store the other day. She looked pale and tired and in desperate need of a good meal. I haven't seen her for a while, so after the pleasantries I asked her how the holidays had been, and that's when the flood-gates opened.
- Oh God, she said, trying to hold the tears back. I can't do it any longer. If I don't tell anyone I will go mad.
Turned out her husband left her.

Usual story, nothing new. The classic.
He starts acting strange and absentminded, takes even less of an interest than usual in the kids. Does over-time, working late, going on spur-of-the-moment business-trips and when he is home he sits in front of the computer or receiving text-messages at inappropriate times.

All the tell-tale signs of someone who's met a single, late-twenties, no-children, no-commitments, no-obligations woman from work. And two weeks prior to my meeting her in the aisle by self-help section and
sociology at Borders, he moved out, asking her to not only put a brave face on for the kids and the in-laws over the turkey-stuffing and Christmas carols, but also to please not tell anyone until he's had a chance to figure out what he'd like to do.
- Do, as in what? I ask. Hasn't he done enough?
- He'd like time to figure out if he's gonna stay with me or with her, she sighs.
- It doesn't really feel like he can make any demands at all, I say.
- What can I do? she asks. He's got the money. And I'd be left looking after the kids. The little help I got from him before was better than no help at all.
She's quiet for a little while, than she says:
- He says he's been un-happy for a long time. He says that I stopped being fun. It's like he's saying it's my fault he had an affair.
She adds sarcastically:
- Well, I could have been more fun if I wasn't so exhausted all the time. I look after three kids 24 hours a day! If he stopped playing golf and started to spend a little more time at home, maybe I'd find the time and energy to give him some attention. If he stopped acting like one of my kids, and started acting like my equal and partner.
She put the book back in the shelf for self-help and amateur psychology.
- You know - I don't need this. This is war. He can bring it on!

Hit him with a stick for crying out loud, and if that doesn't work, stop making his dinner for him!

I have more than one friend with this problem, but one friend in particular is annoyed with her husband for never getting up at weekends and deal with the kids. So all week, he has to sleep because he needs his beauty-S for work, and at weekends, he needs to sleep in because he's had such a stressful week at work. Well, Hello? This is such a cliche I can't believe I'm using it, but since when was home-making (I hate that word BTW) not hard work? Since when did taking care of children not require anything but the sharpest head?
- What does he think you do all day? I ask.

My friend belongs to the more dedicated of mothers, not fully an alpha, but close enough. She drives her SUV around town all day, picking up and dropping off and scheduling activities and has time to do a pot-roast and has all the tupper ware to go with it too, I mean, the woman is a Hellrazer as far as I'm concerned. At ten o'clock she's exhausted and drops dead in bed. She hasn't read a book in years. She has no idea what goes on culturally, she doesn't even know Reality TV, it was that long since she sat down in front of a screen that didn't show Elmo.

Meanwhile, after work her husband still has time to play Tennis, go to the gym, play a few rounds of golf, and comes home to home cooked-warmed up dinners, peaceful silence and no arguments over the remote control. And he gets to sleep in at weekends while she's up making pan cakes and getting the kids ready for soccer practice.
- What would he do if you wanted to go back to work? I ask her. Would he start doing his share of the work at home?
- Maybe, she says. Thing is, he doesn't really enjoy house-work?
Well, who the F*** does?
- And he wouldn't know what to do with the kids, I mean, that's my job.

Honey, your kids are your kids, not your job, and you had them with your husband, and you made this decision together. Did he think it was something that would be fun but that he didn't need to take any responsibility in dealing with them?
My friend needs to get a grip of her life and shake some sense in to that husband of hers. He's not suddenly gonna wake up one day with an urge to do something nice for his wife. She needs to beat him over the head with a stick: "This is our family, this is our home and our children, we started it together and we work it together and we share this, all of it, the good and the bad."

We like to go around in circles

One of the multitude of things that I argue with my husband about is the weekend shopping trip to Safeway. If I have planned to do something with Kate, my daughter, we have to plan this around him, and it turns in to a really big deal and at the end of the day, I am left at home with the kids, like I am the rest of the week, while we all wait for him to get back. The reason? He doesn't want to bring Leo, the toddling terror.
- What the fuck?! I say every time.
- It's just easier if I can do it alone.
- What the fuck!! I say again.
- It's a hassle bringing him, and it will delay me getting him in and out of the car. Easier to just do a quick in and out. (My husband doesn't do anything 'quick'. Rustling up a chicken salad takes him the best part of two hours.)
- What the-, I say again. What the eff do you think I have to do every day? Do you think I stay at home all day? I just have to suck it up and do it. Toddling Terror in tow. That's how it works. That's life.

Ex: I take him to the local grocery store, get him out of the car and in to a trolley, which I then can't leave for even a second in fear of him either falling down trying to pull himself up the shelves or him shop-lifting every single bag of Goldfish he can find. I then put him back in to the car, load the bags, take him to the corner store where I take him out and carry him in to the store because the aisles are too narrow to push the stroller around. I queue for what seems an hour by check-out, nearly breaking my back holding and distracting Toddling Terror from eating all the strategically-placed-right-in-front-of-us-croissants only to learn that it is cash only for parking meter cards, and I have the grand total of a dollar in my pocket, and so, strap him back in to his car seat, drive all the way to the hardware store where it takes me ages to find parking. I have to unload the shopping in order to get the stroller out of the back, and then, as I come back 15 minutes later, I have to do it all again before heading home. And that's one hour of one day, and a good day at that.

- And you are moaning about taking him to Safeway? They even help you out to the car with the bags if you ask them to!
- Well, you do it then. I stay home with the kids and do window art.
It's a foul cop-out and of course, I don't go for it.

There's two issues here.
Issue Uno would be that on weekends, I really like to get myself out of the things that I spend so much time doing weekdays. Like negotiating yet another snack-time, fighting another tantrum over toilet-roll I'd like to not be rolled out all over the bathroom and so on. So sure, technically, I should take him up on the offer.
But issue number Dos is, I'd like my everyday routines to come as naturally to him as they have had to to do to me. I've had to learn, and master the craft of coping with everything with a child glued to me, I've done it skill-fully, and so should he. We are equals and should share everything. Why should he demand get-out-of-jail cards? Do what you have to do and stop moaning about it!

( I know that he would argue that if we are equals why do I keep nagging him to change the spot-lights in the living-room, why not change them myself? And why do I always, always leave old food in the fridge and wait for someone else to find it? Why do I call his bedside table a sorry mess while mine is organized clutter? Well, what can I say? If I was perfect, it wouldn't be much fun being married to me. And by the way, this wasn't about me, it was about him.)

When all is said and done you still have to live under the same roof

One of my best friends and I were talking the other night and broached the subject of marriage after children.
- It's a fact, she said. We are still happily married, and we love each other, but our relationship has fundamentally changed since the kids. It is impossible to be the people we were before them.

One thing that I really didn't expect from motherhood was that my relationship with my husband would change so drastically. We went from being best friends with benefits and added bonus on top to two very tired, angry people who argued, and argued, and then argued some more. Seven years later we are still married, and we would probably define our marriage as a happy one, but it's like my friend said: we are different people, in an different place, and there's no turning back.

Priorities change, the balance within the household suddenly starts weighing very much in favor of the man, it seems, and time, that dreaded, wretched time factor becomes so acutely prominent and suddenly, that rock-solid thing called love, that you thought you had for granted, turns so incredibly fragile that you run the risk of ruining what what you have by every new damn argument over who's turn it is to do the dishes.

An average argument, of course, would be who's right it is to feel more tired. We're both light sleepers, so we both wake up at night if the kids do, and we both find it hard to go back to sleep. Next day, he's going in to the office, sitting in front of his computer, and I'm trying to keep it together for the kids whilst fretting over the fact that this is yet another day when I am too tired to do all those things I need to do, take those pictures I promised my friend, write that short-story I've been meaning to send of for so long. By the time my husband and I see each other again some time in the early evening, bed-time routine beckons and we are fighting over who should bath the kids, who should help with home-work, and who should just have the right to crash on the sofa, because, by God, we are having a competition about who is more tired, comparing notes on how many times we were close to nodding off during the day.
- I did homework yesterday.
- Yeah, but I bathed two kids, and read three stories.
- But I made their beds two days ago.
- So, I do that all the time?
- But I am so tired. I had x meetings and no lunch.
- I had x melt-downs and no dinner.
- I haven't even had a chance to sit down all day.
- And me? What do you think I have been doing all day?
- I really am more tired. I only slept five hours.
- Only slept 4,5.

You get the idea....

Most of the time, I'd say, nine out of ten times, we manage to solve the arguments calmly and nicely and we both know that we are going through a stage in our life where logic and reason really don't feature but still, ten out of ten times, before the "I'm sorry"s and the make-ups, I will have had "This is it, I won't have it anymore, this time I'll f****ng divorce him!" played on repeat in my head first.
That's just it. You go from being so passionatly and madly in love with your partner and the relationship you have together to being tolerably respectful but also hating and loathing each other more than you ever thought was possible.
A lot of people can't see it through. Divorce-rates in families with young children are sky-rocketing.
Personally, my husband and I are doing our best, but sometimes, every day is an on-going struggle.
To be continued....