Hi! Give me your opinion. I have been married for 10 years, together for 15. I have two children who I love. My marriage is rocky right now. I work fulltime and am working on a doctorate degree which is probably my fault for trying to do so much. It seems I do everything and have to remember everything for everybody, kids and husband. I cook, clean, do kids' homework, play with them, go to all of their events, etc., etc., etc. My husband does work hard, but that's all. He works and sleeps. He gets tons of rest to my little rest. He doesn't put the kids to bed, at least, he does not take them outside to play, nothing. In fact, I have been teaching by son to play football (glad I was a tomboy!). Every once in a while he will do things around the house. Been to counseling twice and I refuse to go again. Sex life is out the window. I'm absolutely not interested. Those around me say I should cut my loses. They say I don't look happy. Any suggestions to save or does it sound like an ending?

This is a sad thing to read. Don't know how guys like this think since they have no clue on the responsibilities they take on when they get married and decide to be parents.

So I guess you know you are married to a dead head. Any decent spouse and parent would understand their responsibility to help around the house and help do their part in being part of their kids life. It's bad enough when a spouse dumps all of the house chores on the other without regret but when they don't do their part in shaping their kids lives then that is very bad.

Ok so I probably don't need to spend a lot of time telling you what should be the correct situation in your home since you already know. A fair split of the houshold chores is needed, etc. Whether he likes it or not he must spend time with the kids not just from a chore perspective but they need both parents to work with them to learn and grow.

Well what I suggest to you is a good serious discussion with him. You really need to ask him what his intentions are. Are his intentions to be a divorced man with no contact or interest in his kids? If so then he is in good shape to meet that goal. Are his intentions to have a healthy - long lasting marriage and kids who love him and appreciate his fathering skills? If so he has A LONG way to go to make this a reality.

Chances are he will either answer the question the he wants the happy ending or he might even answer that he doesn't know what he wants. So this is where you need to lay down the rules of the game if he wants to turn the ship in the right direction. Tell him you both must discuss the household chores and agree on a reaonable spit AND honor the agreement. He must agree to force himself to be a good father that is well connected to the kids. He and you must agree to find the root cause of the problem in your love life to eliminate the barrier that is keeping the both of you from having a raging inferno desire for one another. I assume the inferno was alive and well when you both decided to get married so what the heck happened over 10 years to put the fire out. Make this a 2-way conversation allowing him to voice anything you might have done to make him this way. You might find that you have done things to cause the problem.

One thing I am curious about is your comment that you tried counsiling and refuse to do anymore. What happened - counsiling is usually a good thing. Did he just not respond or did you have a bad counsiler?

I would say you are going about it the wrong way. Sadly enough, you have to treat your husband like one of your kids. What do you do when one of your kids doesn't do their chores day after day after day?? Do you just keep yelling and screaming or do you regroup and try a different approach. Positive reinforcement would be a good one to start with. It's not going to make anything better by telling him what a dead beat dad and horrible companion he is. People don't react well to criticism like that. Unfortunately this sounds like my husband to a tee and we've only been married 3 yrs. I haven't found my approach yet. But remember, You can't change anyone else, You can only change yourself and how well you deal with situations.

First, thanks for both responses. The reason I said I won't try counseling again is because I think why beat a dead horse. Both times, especially the first time, things improved for a short time. Then it was back to the same old stuff. The second time the counselor said we sound like we know what we're doing, we just need to put it in motion. Basically, he talked a good game.

I've done everything under the rainbow, at least I think, to get him to help. I use to yell and curse, but that of course didn't work. I started asking for time to talk calmly about the situation, but to no avail. I even tried to make a deal. He wanted more sex, I wanted more help so I said if you do more of helping around the house (even assigned chores) I promise I'll have more sex. Well I started living up to my end of the bargain, but I noticed he was doing nothing. I let it go for about a month hoping he would kick in. I finally said to him,"We had a deal. I'm doing my part, but you're not. Why?" He said, "I didn't know we started." I put the ball in his court by letting him select when we start. He's never mentioned it again. Now, what man would pass on some sex? I just don't understand or know what to do.

Understand the stance on the counseling.

Funny story on the sex deal - I kind of have the same deal with the wife. My wife is a stay at home mom and does a decent job keeping up with things except for laundry. Something about laundry just doesn't click with her. In the past I would let it pile up until I couldn't stand it anymore and just spend a half day Saturday knocking it all out. Over time this was not resolving itself and she finally told me one day that if I would do the laundry every week I would be a VERY happy guy in bed. I immediately jumped to my feet and had a batch of laundry in the washer within a 5 minutes spread. I have been doing the laundry ever since without complaint and she makes it worth my while in the sack.

One thing I can offer to you before you just throw this guy out and serve him divorce papers is trying a Christian based troubled marriage retreat. My neighbors just attended one a few months back and it saved their marriage. They were certainly headed for divorce and they agreed to attend a one week retreat as a last ditch method to salvage their marriage. Their problems were worse than yours - the husband had many problems with infidelity (even had a online sex ad and would email other women right in front of his wife), he did nothing to help with chores, sat around and messed with his toys or computer in his spare time, spent little or no time with his 4 little kids, etc. So as you can see it was about as bad as situation as you can get. The wife was certain that all hope was lost and the weeks before the retreat she was already getting things ready to move. So they went on the retreat and it actually worked. It was a boot camp of sorts and there was plenty of hardcore sole searching discussions and he really got a chance to see what a bum he has been and how damaging he has been to his wife and kids. So he declared his desire to be a good husband and father and since then he has been a different man. All is happy in that family now. So I suggest you think about doing something like this if you are loosing hope in your marriage.