Stress On A Sunday

[Data]

I am feeling quite wound up today, which is odd, I thought Sunday is supposed to be relaxing. Also, I have completed a task for my uni work which I have sent to my supervisor, and I normally feel good after I do that, but I don't today. I think part of the reason may be that the tasks are taking too long.

I'd love to go to Mind today to socialise but I just don't have the time. I want to get out and go for a walk for an hour, and in a minute I am going to take off and go for a forest stroll. When I come back, I guess I will be doing housework. My wife was supposedly doing housework yesterday, but the kitchen is appauling. She has left me a most unpleasant legacy: the bin hasn't been emptied and is over-flowing, the clean dishes have not been put away and there is generally clutter and mess everywhere, its really bad. And she has the cheek to ring me today and ask me to buy things from the supermarket for the kids. I wish she could have bought those when she went shopping on Friday. So this afternoon its housework, which I REALLY RESENT BECAUSE I WANTED TO GET ON WITH MY UNI. And then, on top of all the shit that my wife couldn't be bothered to do properly, there are all the tasks that she just likes to ignore. The census form needs doing. The grass is starting to need a cut.....

Then I have to go to mums for tea which can sometimes be a hassle because, although the food is nice, she does go on a lot and I sometimes don't agree with the way she treats the kids.

This evening I will be looking after the kids, and I'd love to spend time with them, but i will be doing my uni work and trying to get them NOT TO INTERRUPT ME, which is really hard.

Then my wife will come home and she will be in a bad mood. Well, to be fair, she does a difficult job and most people would be in a mood after a 12 hour shift.

I am drinking every evening now. Its the only way I can get through the days, they all seem stressful. For a change, I want things to go easy.

[Dibley]

Welcome to a womans world.

[Benway]

Hi Data,

I understand the feeling at being fecked off at every little thing. (For me, it usually means I need a good cry).

On cleaning-Could you try & recruit them to a 'spring clean sunday', promising them a small treat after you have done an hours work, for example.There are lots of things even small children can do- putting dirty laundry in the wash-basket, picking up stuff, making their beds, putting away toys, etc. You know yourself what would be age-appropriate.

Maybe your mood is influenced by your surroundings - I know mine is, and I feel much happier sitting in a clean room than one I had let go to bits-so much so i was living out of my box room at one stage(!) I do sympathise with how exasperated you feel living in clutter - in fact it took me 2 skip fulls of junk and much procrastinating over the past 6 months to get my house to a stage where I don't mind if anyone calls.

When I actually cleaned the house, I felt like I had 'reclaimed it' from the junk monster.

Also data, you'll be suprised how quickly kids grow up. In a few years they'll be teens, and you will be thinking nostalgically of how things were when they were small. Please cherish this time with them- it dosen't last forever.

Wishing you well, and if I may give you a recommendation of what changed my ways - A (very small) book called 'Clean Your Clutter with Feng Shui' By Karen Kingston. (I have not got to the Feng Shui bit yet lol)

[justine giggle]

well done hun on getting some of your uni work done today!!!!!!!! (remember them positives hun) xxxx

[Villan]

my tip... do teh census online - dont even look at the book (apart from to get the online code etc) cos the book is scary... online is easy :)

[detroitguy]

Data – I am sorry you are stressed at the moment. I realize that you are often stressed and I hope you can start getting more of a handle on it. It is really in bad taste that you keep bad mouthing your wife on here. Does she realize what you are writing about her? I think if my wife continually posted bad things about me on the internet for all of the world to read, I don’t think I would remain married to her! You say you love your wife, but blabbing about her problems to everyone shows that you don’t respect her - you really need to respect someone to love them. It is obvious that your wife is struggling – chores not completed is a sign of illness and I feel compassion for what she is going through. I really just wish you would stop printing the crap about her. It just isn’t right – Detroitguy.

[Data]

I understand the feeling at being fecked off at every little thing. (For me, it usually means I need a good cry).

On cleaning-Could you try & recruit them to a 'spring clean sunday', promising them a small treat after you have done an hours work, for example.There are lots of things even small children can do- putting dirty laundry in the wash-basket, picking up stuff, making their beds, putting away toys, etc. You know yourself what would be age-appropriate.

Maybe your mood is influenced by your surroundings - I know mine is, and I feel much happier sitting in a clean room than one I had let go to bits-so much so i was living out of my box room at one stage(!) I do sympathise with how exasperated you feel living in clutter - in fact it took me 2 skip fulls of junk and much procrastinating over the past 6 months to get my house to a stage where I don't mind if anyone calls.

When I actually cleaned the house, I felt like I had 'reclaimed it' from the junk monster.

Also data, you'll be suprised how quickly kids grow up. In a few years they'll be teens, and you will be thinking nostalgically of how things were when they were small. Please cherish this time with them- it dosen't last forever.

Wishing you well, and if I may give you a recommendation of what changed my ways - A (very small) book called 'Clean Your Clutter with Feng Shui' By Karen Kingston. (I have not got to the Feng Shui bit yet lol)

Thanks for the book recommendation, that is very constructive. I have indeed been close to having a cry today!

I think getting the kids involved might actually work. Its worth a try anyway. Its not a cure for the problem, because its only a drop in the ocean, but it might help, and ... most importantly..... it teaches them skills for life as well.

well done hun on getting some of your uni work done today!!!!!!!! (remember them positives hun) xxxx

Thanks for the really positive and warm reply, jus, its what I need.

my tip... do teh census online - dont even look at the book (apart from to get the online code etc) cos the book is scary... online is easy

I never even knew you could do it online! Thanks for the tip, I am going to give that a try!

[Benway]

Hey this video kinda encapsulates the thinking of space clearing. (clutter cleaning)

Its entitled Depression & Clutter

On youtube -

It's very helpful for ones state of mind. And it makes really good sense imho!!

[Benway]

Wade that is a harsh thing to say to anyone.

Data did not post to be flamed i am sure.

[DJJK]

Could it just be that Data is venting his frustrations, which happen to involve in this instance, his wife and children?

I would like to think that if I had issues with my relationships, I would be able to discuss them openly on the forum.

After all, what are we here for, if not to discuss our issues and concerns?

[Dani]

ffs give the guy a break!

i tell you i never get into all this...eventhough i see data posting and as usuall the negs and attacks begin.

i stay out of it.but-i noticed you hadnt posted for a while until recently data...im not suprised cos every time you do you get jumped on.im glad you

have began to post again.

none of us are perfect...i struggle some days and wish i could get on with my work and get peace from my kids.i wish when i was with my ex he had helped more...tided up ect.does that make me a bad person?erm...no.

does that mean i dont love them??no.just means im human.

data...i know its an ongoing issue with your wife and the tidying ect.something that in the past youve had some great suggestions from members so

i really do hope it improves for both you and your wife.its frustrating im sure for both of you.cant be easy for her either with your drinking.

i think any member should be able to post on here without fear of being lynched.this is a sounding board for many members...me included so as its an ongoing issue with datas family thats probably why its being re-posted about a lot.

again youve had some good suggestions and postive comments so i hope you can work on it for the sake of you and your family.

everyones entitled to an opinnion...just some are way below the belt.i know as much about data and his family as i do about how to keep sane so who am i to judge?so i don't...and i wont.

[Dani]

ive said things about my family i wouldnt want them to read.cos id rather let out my frustrations here and sound off safely than at home.we will never know the full story...

[Dani]

with the negs i was just giving my opinnion...a lot of his posts are negged.

thats not a problem...just an observation.im not here to defend data..im just giving my opinnion on his post.

[Data]

I say what my wife does and how that makes me feel. I do that because it makes me feel better to "let it all out". What I see and how I feel is not wrong, my feelings are not wrong they are as valid as anyone else's. How can people say they disagree with my feelings? Nobody here knows me well and nobody here is in the same situation as me.

And its not wrong for me to discuss my feelings that is what this place is for. I do have serious issues, eternal says, but most of us here do! There are no simple answers to those issues, though. If I leave my wife, I am concerned that she might not cope well with the kids. And counselling will only work if both parties are willing to engage and to change, I have a feeling that counselling might not get anywhere with us as my wife doesn't seem that willing or interested. If there was a simple answer to the problems that would actually WORK, I'd have done it years ago.

I am tempted to say, if you don't like my posts, stop reading them. But I have a feeling that a lot of people enjoy jumping on the bandwagon of having a go at me. There is a LOT of cherry-picking going on. People focus on the most negative parts of my posts, and dredge up negative things from my past posts without balancing them with the positives. And people make all sorts of unnecessary and inaccurate assumptions, for example someone said something like "my husband doesn't get a day off on a Sunday".... I never said I demanded a day off, just more help would be nice.

But the thing is, there is no point in arguing my corner, or countering the criticisms with logical argument, if people don't want to hear, and what they are in fact looking for is an easy target to serve as an outlet for their own internal anger and negativity.

[Data]

so what do you intend to do then about you and your wife?You say that you won't leave her or she won't have concelling?This will go on and on for years and it cannot be healthy for your kids sadly.

Good question. At the moment I am going through a period of high stress in my life since I am doing a PhD degree and working as well. Once that degree is complete then I will more than likely end up moving to a different part of the country to get work. That would be a good time to review our relationship. I will hopefully be in a stronger position financially, have more free time and feel less stressed.

I wouldn't describe the current situation as unhealthy for our children. The bad times are hard for me to cope with, and hard for my wife, but we try and shield the kids from this as much as possible; I don't discuss my mental health problems with the children. I tend to go places like this to discuss things, rather than blurting them out in front of the kids. We give the children a lot of our time and we regularly have lots of fun together. Sure there are arguments, but there are lots of nice times also.

[Maize]

((((Data)))) I'm so sorry you are getting the neg points here. It is appalling.

It's just wrong and a good example of how the rep system is getting misused by some. You write really well and I felt so much empathy for you and then I was shocked when I saw the negative points against you on your posts here. It makes me sick.

Edit: I'm out of positive points for today and would have at least countered them if I could, Hun. xxx

[Dibley]

Data, I think the problem here that instead of you saying "I just need some help", you are saying I have to this and I have to do that. You are not living with your parents, you are living with your family. You should do things together. We all do things or don't do things. My boyfriend always leaves the sit up, so I put it down, I never replace the toilet rolls straight after, so he does it himself. We are a team, we run the house together.

As for your children, I have told you this many times, but because you don't like my opinion then I am obviously wrong. I come from a broken home, with parents like you, worse than you admittidly, but still in an awful situation. Your kids play up because they want it to stop, they want that attention. I'm not saying you don't love your children, you just need to step back and realise what it's doing to them. But you don't, you feed the sitution. They will end up on here one day, or maybe worse.

[b0bulat0r]

I can relate to Data's wife in that when you are ill it becomes alot harder to cope with things such as housework etc,

but have you guys considered that Data is not well himself?

I do a VERY large % of the cleaning and tidying in my house because my entire family is bloody lazy, There are 4 humans and 4 cats in my household and only 2 of the humans (myself and my dad (Although he wont seek help for his) have severe mental health issues).

I clean and I tidy because I can't stand the mess it frustrates me and I'm very OCD about it, but sometimes I get so angry and frustrated just wishing that someone else would take the time and effort to bother to do it,

I'm not saying his wife is to blame because I can relate to how it feels when your mentally ill but does that mean that it should always fall upon data to do it?

sometimes he needs a break as well.

There was a tourist camp which had donkeys and they would take people up the mountain, a man commented one day on that the two different groups of donkeys looked so different, one group of donkey's was strong and healthy the other looked withered and weak, When he asked why he was told, one group of donkeys carried people up the mountain 6 days a week and on the 7th they were rested and very well fed, the other group of donkeys worked 7 days a week and never rested,

Likewise after the revolution in France an atheist movement scrapped the idea of sunday as a day of rest to increase productivity, during that time productivity fell to a record low, which was quickly revoked,

The Point If donkey's and Atheists can work out the importance of having a day of rest why should data not be entitled to a break?

So some of you work sundays? you likely have a day off in the week, or if you dont perhaps you love your job and its what you would do by choice, I don't know, but I DO know that if i was to work 7 days a week without a break I would have a nervous breakdown,

I personally handle my relationships differently I would not have the kind of interaction with my wife (if i had one) that Data has with his and its easy to blame him or label him because of his actions/comments, but I'm not him, your not him,

none of you understand what he is going through and quite honestly in his position would likely do the same,

Its easy to sit on a high horse and say someone is wrong, but you try being in their shoes, the situation looks alot different when your brought down to that level and its right infront of you,

Instead of having a go at him and flaming him (which quite frankly is damaging to him and unhelpful) why not be constructive?

Look I get it you get frustrated that his posts are always negative, oh well this site is about mental health issues, if you want happy posts go join the sunshine and rainbows forum,

I'm not rushing to data's defense here please dont be misguiding in thinking that i'm saying he is blameless and completely in the right, he knows himself that he has issues and that he sometimes handles things poorly, BUT HE IS TRYING!!

Negative comments and attacks against him or any other member of this forum for that matter causes 2 things

1) it causes us to feel that we cannot use this site to post about our personal feelings without getting punished, this is very dangerous when this site is the only support for some people, these attitude can leave us unwilling to post when we need which makes it impossible to get support when its most needed,

2) it causes people to get angry and resentful at being attacked and often causes a worse mood or reaction to the situation than people would have originally suffered,

Whilst I agree that "tough love" or "being cruel to be kind" can SOMETIMES work in someones favour or push people to change for the better it should be obvious that in Data's case attacking him is not helpful,

instead of which post comments which actively help to support him and help him to understand how to react to the situations differently,

if you cant do that then simply don't reply to his posts,

I know I would rather have a topic I post completely ignored (even though that in itself is upsetting) than to be heavily flamed on it (which just makes me angry)

Sorry for the rant,

And I hope your doing better today Data.

[b0bulat0r]

Now I sit and wait for someone to do EXACTLY what I know they are going to do and Flame me for my response .

[Data]

I am at work so I will read bobulator's response in detail when I get a chance.

I think the biggest danger here is that people are comparing my situation (or what they THINK my situation is, from reading my posts) with their situation. Thats a very dangerous thing to do, every person is different, every family is different. People are too quick to assume, then to criticise.

[Data]

Data, I think the problem here that instead of you saying "I just need some help", you are saying I have to this and I have to do that. You are not living with your parents, you are living with your family. You should do things together. We all do things or don't do things. My boyfriend always leaves the sit up, so I put it down, I never replace the toilet rolls straight after, so he does it himself. We are a team, we run the house together.

As for your children, I have told you this many times, but because you don't like my opinion then I am obviously wrong. I come from a broken home, with parents like you, worse than you admittidly, but still in an awful situation. Your kids play up because they want it to stop, they want that attention. I'm not saying you don't love your children, you just need to step back and realise what it's doing to them. But you don't, you feed the sitution. They will end up on here one day, or maybe worse.

The reason why I am not saying that I need help is because I don't know who could help.

There are many jobs that my wife does, there are some jobs that I do, but we struggle to work together as a team since I don't think she does enough, and the things she does do she doesn't do well enough. Also she is a very sensitive person and she can't take any criticism, she panics if I say too many things to her also. I am not asking for perfection, just a certain level reasonable standard, but unfortunately my wife struggles to reach that level. I think she struggles because of her mental health problems, her dyspraxia, and nobody has taught her to tidy up as a child.

My daughter in general does not play up. My son plays up because he is autistic. Simple as that!

[walker]

havent read most of this

just

sick of people saying 'just leave'

it sounds so easy

it is NOT

and giving children a broken home, is not always going to make things any better

[CrippleAndStarfish]

I have no interest whatsoever in getting involved in arguments, but I just wanted to say to you Data - that in your first post here, I can see you made a real effort to not only consider why your wife behaves/may behave the way she does, but also you included it in your post.

I know I have read things in the past by you and have not been able to respond, as it has upset me seeing the way you have spoken of your wife at times.

However, I do understand that things get very frustrating for you, and I just wanted to say that I've noticed how much fairer, grounded, and perhaps more in the grey area this post is - as opposed to it being "my wife is terrible, she does nothing" - very black & white thinkingish - you have said "i'm struggling with my wife, she doesn't do much around the house and this frustrates me, however, i understand that she is struggling herself too".

Aaaaaanyway, i've waffled on loads there, but just wanted to let you know that I've noticed, and I think it's certainly a step in the right direction. I really hope things improve for you soon.

xx

[Data]

My wife rang me at lunch today and she is really upset. Her church group are now having coffee mornings in their own homes and our house is so messy, we can't have people around here. She says that because of our son's behaviour and the way our house is, its isolating for her. She says she does not know how to tidy, she does not know what to do. She also says that when I come home and am critical of her it really upsets her. I think there are a lot of issues here and there are no simple solutions. In the long run I am hoping i can get us a cleaner, and maybe have a spring clean, but I am only on a trial at work at the moment so I need to wait until we are financially more secure before we start laying out money for cleaners. Also, a cleaner wouldn't be able to do his/her job until we tidy out, so we'd need to do a spring clean.

My wife says she wants me to make her lists with all the steps in it, e.g. instructions for how to clean the bathroom. She says she gets distracted. I could try doing this, but I do not understand why she needs a list (This isn't a criticism by the way).

Against all this, I struggle to do my uni work and deadlines slip further and further back. If I have a week off, I could do with doing that, not tidying our house. My dad suggested the other day that I should give up my doctorate. If I did that... the bottom would just drop out of my world. I daren't even think about the black hole of despair that would open up.

I am calm about this now but when I've had a hard day of work and I come home and the wet bath towels are on the floor and the house is filthy and the perishable food left out on the side and the tap dripping and mess everywhere... it makes me go MAD. I do things, and when I come in other people have UN-DONE them! I can't change how i feel, although I try to control how I express it .

[CrippleAndStarfish]

My wife says she wants me to make her lists with all the steps in it, e.g. instructions for how to clean the bathroom. She says she gets distracted. I could try doing this, but I do not understand why she needs a list (This isn't a criticism by the way).

Just wanted to focus on this little bit, as I think it's quite important to notice something here - You say you don't understand why she needs a list, but, Data, she has explained to you that she gets distracted.... so surely that is reason enough? I think that if having lists of how to clean the bathroom, clean the kitchen etc would help her, then even though it may be a bit of a faff to do, it could be worth it and you could both get some very good results.

Maybe you could set aside an hour one day soon and go through with her, find out what she does understand about each task, what she is already capable of doing, and then what she feels confused about, or what she feels she may need reminding of, and then work together to compose these lists.... that way, she is involved too, and it's less as though you are dictating to her what needs doing, but you are working together to get over this hurdle.

you may not fully understand how or why she feels the need for lists, but i think if it could help her feel more able to do a bit more around the house, then it is an excellent idea.... and if it doesn't work? then it doesn't work, but try it - you could both be very pleasantly surprised.

xxx