SO Advice

Interestingly enough I am going through something very similar with my fiancé. This past week was his first week back, and it was hard on him in the sense that he told me over and over how worried he was for us (Me and the baby) doing it all alone but yet when he'd get home from work, he'd barely interact with us. I do feel that I did better than expected on my own this past week and even feel like I've gotten my LO into a routine with just the two of us, when my SO is home routine goes out the window as he gets pretty noisy or wants to interact with the baby outside of schedule which is OK but makes it hard on maintaining a routine with the baby.

I guess what I can tell you that worked (somewhat) for me today (being the weekend with no work), is that when my SO was trying to do stuff alone like house maintenance, I'd remind him how he kept telling me how I needed to get out of the house more and just talking to him about how he's making our day seem like we're two adults living together....

with two separate lives and that kind of hit home for him as he came back and asked what I wanted to do today. We ended up getting a pizza, taking the kids and eating it at a park and then played some sports.

Communication is what will (hopefully) help and letting him know that every moment counts now that the baby is here and you want that baby to grow in a family and loving home. ❤️

Im sorry m, this sounds so hard for you and I don’t want to invalidate your experience… but I wonder if he might be experiencing some depressive symptoms since being back at work? Perhaps taking a curiosity approach might help. “I really appreciate how supportive and helpful you have been these first 6 weeks.. you’ve been an amazing partner and father… I can only imagine how difficult it must be to go back to work for you, it certainly had been difficult for me. I’ve noticed xyz since you’ve returned to work and I’m wondering what’s behind the abrupt change? I’m a bit worried because It’s not like you to be distant and be sleeping so much. What’s going on with you? How can we get to a healthier routine for our family?

I went through something sort of similar when my husband went back to work. He also had 6 weeks off and was insanely supportive during that time. My husband also was getting 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep in the guest bedroom, but was still coming home from work utterly exhausted. He’s a middle school teacher and he’s always exhausted after work.

Finally last week we hit a breaking point where we were both very frustrated with the other one. Luckily, we have strong communication skills that are a result of years of working on our communication and years of my personal therapy. I realized that neither one of us was being particularly empathetic towards the other one. I was so angry he was getting sleep that I couldn’t see his situation and he was so exhausted from work and had depression that he had to be at work instead of with his son that he wasn’t seeing how I was hanging by a thread.

Stopping to see both partners points of views is very important. I personally still struggle with how much more sleep he gets than me, but we are both taking the time now to see each other and share our emotions.

I would guess if your SO is freezing you out all day that he has an avoidant communication style and is bottling up his own emotions. It’s so hard to get our partners to open up, and not particularly fair to ask you to do the bulk of the emotional work. But sometimes as women we have to be strong on all fronts.

I hope you and your partner can get back into a good groove and find balance with each other. 💜 it’s hard work being a woman.