My husband never helps with our baby and now claims he never wanted to be a dad

My husband and I have been married for 4 years. I’m 29, he’s 30. We have an 8 month old son that, who, according to my memory, we planned for and intentionally got pregnant with. I’m pretty sure my memory is good.

My husband doesn’t help with the baby at all. We both have full time jobs, but he likes to claim his is more important because he makes more money and has a lot more pressure. There’s a lot more riding in his job than mine. Although my income contributes to our household bills and he requires that I give him money from each pay check to pay the bills, he acts like my job is just some sort of fun little hobby instead of the actual time consuming and stressful job that it is.

He travels for work sometimes too, and has a non-standard schedule, so you know, of course when he’s home he just wants to be able to relax and doesn’t want to have to take care of our child.

I’ve even tried assigning him certain tasks. Like, doing the bedtime feeding and putting our son to bed. He’s usually always home at that time, even with his ever changing schedule. It was the only job I asked him to do at home. Half the time he does it he sort of huffs and complains, and the other half of the time he’s trying to convince me to do it for him. I do literally every thing else for our son. I consider it my job as his mom. He’s my priority. But I thought I was having a baby with a partner and co-parent. Instead, it’s like I’m a single mom most of the time.

He’s now trying to convince me that he never wanted to have a baby and claims he told me repeatedly when I was supposedly trying to get pregnant all by myself that he didn’t want to be a dad. He never told me that. He was a willing participant. I wasn’t some nutty, baby-crazed woman who was so focused on motherhood that I didn’t hear my husband saying he didn’t want a kid. I would have remembered that. I would have paused at that.

I just don’t know what to do now. Divorce is the obvious answer but real life isn’t really that simple.

I feel so heartbroken for myself and our son. I feel like I’ve made a huge mistake marrying him and now giving my son him as a father.

I keep hoping maybe it’s just the baby phase. Not everyone loves babies. But who can’t love their own baby? I’ve heard of some men not really bonding with their kids during the baby phase, but living being dads once their kids were like @real people.” The problem is, I don’t want to be married to someone like that. I don’t understand that mindset. I’d give my life for my son so I do t get how he can’t give a half hour of his time to our son at bedtime every night!

comments

So your husband wanted to be a parent, discussed it with you and contributed to your planned pregnancy and now that he sees how hard it is to take care of a baby he is trying to gaslight you into thinking you were the only one who wanted the baby? He is trying to make you feel like a crazy person so you will do all of the hard work. F*ck that. Better to be a single parent by yourself than a single parent with a spouse who makes your life harder. I don’t see how you don’t divorce this man unless you want your son to end up like him.

My parents divorced, and I 💯 agree that it was better for me. Now, at the time, I was unhappy about it, but I was 8 and didn't understand. My dad put me in therapy for a bit to make sure I understood that the divorce wasn't about me. He also got a bunch of kid books to help explain it. I can't remember where I got this quote, but "it's not the event that traumatizes people. It's the story they tell themselves."

As long as you make sure the story the kid tells themselves about divorce is that "Sometimes people change and stop being compatible. The kid won't build an internal stroy that they are the reason their parents aren't together." Divorce doesn't need to be traumatic for kids. Adults make the divorce traumatic.