i dont know where to start

Hi everyone... My DH and I have been having some problems (well I think there are problems and he thinks its normal). I would love some advice on how to start making sense of this. I will warn you - this is long.....

Some background: We have been married for 7.5 yrs. We have a 4 year old son. We both work full time and I am currently doing a part time MBA. So things are BUSY around here. We had an arranged marriage after a brief courtship. I always thought 2 fairly level headed people could make a marriage work. We are similar is some ways (same sense of humor etc) but there are a lot of differences. DH is a great musician and I can'tble hold a tune. I sometimes worry that he would have been better off marrying someone who shares his passion. On the other hand I love to read and DH does not.

Coming to the actual problem: For the past few months DH and I have been fighting a lot. I would say at least once a week. And we fight about a variety of things. An example: today we fought about creating an ebay account. More on that later. I think there are some deep underlying issues.
- We are both type A personalities and it is not easy for us to say sorry. So even small fights become big ones
- I take time to do things because i am meticulous and DH will just throw stuff in the shelves and as long as the outside counter is clear he thinks everything is good. It drives me nuts to open his closet and see dirty clothes stuffed in there. I am a bit of a control freak. Like I don't want DH to mess with the kitchen - I like to arrange things a certain way and DH always puts the wrong dishes in the wrong shelf. You may think this is not a big deal but I have a bit of OCD - I go back after DH finishes in the kitchen and restack everything. When I am busy I don't have the patience to re-stock everything and I lose it with DH. I have requested DH several times to leave it alone and I will do it but he claims I don't do it in a timely fashion. Some of you might think I am lucky to have a DH who helps but he only does this because he thinks I do a bad job. So if there are dishes in the sink for more than 1 hour after dinner then DH thinks I keep the house badly and he will step in to clean it. Never mind that during that hour I was doing the laundry. So I feel like him cleaning the house is actually a commentary on what a poor housekeeper I am and not him being helpful. So I resent his help.
- After DS was born I gained some weight and I have not gone back to my pre-preg weight. I know I am not overweight or anything, just not as skinny as I used to be. DH now claims that he is not as attracted to me because of this. At the same time when I dress up nicely he says he find me attractive. But his constant back and forth (I look good- I look bad - I look good ...) is driving me crazy. And I have reached a point where I don't believe him when he says I look good. I think he is just saying it so we can have sex. Its not like I am not trying to lose the weight . I work out every night even when I a dead tired but apparently its very hard to lose weight.
- I always feel like he keeps me at a distance and this is starting to get frustrating. He never tells me about his difficulties or dreams. Its all business or fun stuff. But I don’t think he trusts me. Classic eg: a few years ago one of his cousins got divorced. This was a close cousin and I know her pretty well. Anyway I didn’t find out about it until one of his aunts mentioned it (several months after the divorce) and when I asked my DH About it he kind of said it was his family thing and none of my business. I felt very hurt. I also came to realize that he has been discussing the whole divorce issue with his parents but never when I was around so they must have made a decision to exclude me from this. What did he say to his parents “don’t tell my wife”? I feel so insulted! So now every time we fight I can’t help but mention that he never shares things with me and this makes him angry. It’s the truth. He claims that guys don’t like to talk about this stuff but he seems plenty happy talking about it with his parents, cousins etc. I don’t want to point this out because it will cause all kinds of other problems but in my heart I think he does not want to share the real stuff with me. He is fine talking about all his ex-girlfriends and how much fun he had before he got married. just none of the real “here is how I feel” stuff.
- We recently started talking about having our second child and DH immediately started planning how we could have the child at a time that would be convenient for his parent eg: if we have the child in spring his parents can come in the summer as they were here last summer and they like to come every summer. Seriously – he wants to have a child per his parents convenience!! To his credit I told him that I would prefer to have my mother here for the first 6 months and he agreed. But I get mad every time I think about it. There were a lot of problems with his parents when they came after my DS was born and we have had some bad fights (eg: in laws called me lazy because I slept in after staying up with the baby all night).
Ok – this has become a long (and probably boring) story. I will stop here. What do you think? I know this is not as bad as some of the problem folks have in this forum. But its driving me crazy. Oh and the ebay thing – I wanted to but something on ebay and I asked DH to create an account (he always does this stuff. I am not the most technically qualified person). DH said that I agreed to buy the thing and creating the account was part of the job of buying the thing so I had to do it. I felt like he was trying to divide what I had to do and what he had to do – like we are roommates or something so I told him off. And then just went to the gym for 2 hours and left me with DS (on a freaking holiday). He came back and tried to be nice but I got mad because he was being nice after getting his way (I ended up creating the ebay account) so I refused to patch up and he started shouting. I refused to fight in front of DS which made him angrier and he shouted some more and we haven’t talked all day. So that’s it.

 

thank you

maya - I took your advice and patched up. We argued a bit more about my stubborness and his short temper and then patched up this morning. The good thing about our fights is that we can laugh about it afterwards. He has already told me to get a trainer after the second child is born so I can control my weight. It just hurts my ego to be told that I am unattractive (I am 5'4 and 123 lbs - not what I would call overweight). With regards to my in laws, I have no objection to them coming it just bugs me that he wants to plan a baby around their vacation calendar. My co-sis refused to let them visit for the 1st year after her second child was born because they caused so many problems with her first pregnancy. I think my husband wants to make sure I don't do the same thing. I won't, even if they deserve it, but still irritates me that their convenience is top priority. Oh well - I suppose he will always be that way. Its a good thing I am not shy to express my opinion!

Indianguy - I see what you are saying and I really appreciate a guy's opinion on this. I tend to tell my husband everything (and I mean everything) and if I don't tell him something I feel like I am scheming against him. I suspect a lot of women think this way - if he does not tell me something he does not trust me. When you don't tell your wife something, is it because you don't want her to think badly of someone? Or is it because you think it is none of her business? Like my husband will not even share the good stuff - abc got married or had a baby. I told him my cousin's 12 grade exam score the day I heard about it! If you wanted your wife to think well of that person, couldn't you say "xyz happened to this person. They are a good person so its sad"? And how do you think your wife will feel if she hears about it from someone else and not you? I was very hurt to find out about the divorce from someone else - some one who assumed my husband would have told me. And then to find out everyone (co-sis, distant cousins) knew and I was the only one out of the loop made me angrier. Sorry for all the questions. I really want to understand this more because it is a big issue between us.


I also worry that because I don't get along with my in laws my husband refuses to share anything about his family with me. Could this be the case? DH acknowledges that ILs treated me badly and he is suprised I am still talking to them (he told me he was fine if I wanted to cut them off after they said some very bad things to me). But they are his parents (which is why I still have a cordial relationship with them). I sometimes wonder if he thinks he is protecting his family from me. Which is so unfair because his family has free reign to bad mouth me. But this divorce thing happened before my ILs started bad mouthing me so there has to be another reason he wants to keep me away from his family. Just thinking out loud (or typing as I think)

Bottom line - I can't make him tell me stuff. I wish I could but I can't. I don't want to be in a situation where I go to a family gathering and find out that there is something going on and people are saying "your dh didn't tell you?" Or we go out with friends and all the other wives know some gossip and I am clueless because their husbands confide in them and mine does not. I have tried explaining this to him but it makes him mad and he gets unreasonable and says things like "guys don't like to talk about stuff".

Maybe I am making a big deal out of nothing in which case please help me get over myself. I need to stop fretting about this stuff.

 

Teacher - I think all men should be required to take a class in cleaning before they get married. I have caught him rinising stuff and putting it in the shelf - while it is dirty and wet!! and I am so obessively clean it almost makes me want to cry. Funny story - my co-sis told me that before we got married DH would throw out dirty clothes and buy new ones to avoid doing laundry.

ProundIndian - I do want to get to peace and happiness. I am just not sure how to get there :-( . I am going to try to pick fewer fights but it is so difficult. Plus if I start backing away from fights DH thinks he can boss me around and that is a no no for me.

Sindura - I know what you mean about my DH teasing me about my friends and family. I am okay with it though because it is in no way different from what I would do with my parents or brother.

Thanks