[relationshipa1]

I need advice on my 5 yr relationship with my boyfriend. We have 2 wonderful little boys together and i love him but it seems as if our relationship is non-existint anymore. I believe that a lot of our situation has to do with the fact that we fell on really tough times and had to move in with my parents the beggining of this year. He drives a truck and has done this since before we met but the company he is with now he is gone all the time he is home maybe ten days a month at the most. I have continually asked that he try to find a job that would allow him to be home a little more but for him it’s all about the money. He says he won’t make enough at another job. We don’t talk to each other anymore unless it’s about the kids and what bills I need to pay that week. I am so frustrated and depressed. We do not spend time together even when he is at home and our sex life is non-existent also. i feel like i am being taken for granted and our kids are missing out on having their dad around. I feel like he is cheating them out of having a relationship with him. I try talking to him about my feelings and he puts it all on the fact that we need to get our own house. I would love to be able to be back out on my own again but that’s the problem i feel as if i am all on my own. I don’t know what else to do to make him understand that he is part of the problem too. I want to be able to have him as my best friend again not just a mother, laundry washer, and bill payer. Please help me! 😥

[April Masini]

I’m sorry, but I’ve got to stick up for your boyfriend here. Your relationship may feel non-existent, but it’s not. Wake up and look around you. You have two young children together, and your boyfriend is doing his best to make money to pay the bills and get the four of you a home together so you can move out of your parent’s house. Do you know how many other women in your situation don’t have a man who wants to support them and their children? You may not agree with your boyfriend’s idea that making better money trumps being around every day of the month, but let that one go. Try and be grateful that your boyfriend is working to pay the bills at all. You’ve already said you don’t like his job choice. He’s not changing it. Now, let it go. You lost that one. Don’t make it be a deal breaker.

The fact that he’s only home 10 days out of the month can be tough, but many men work long hours at in town jobs and still only spend the equivalent of 10 full days a month at home. Some men are overseas serving our country and their families don’t get to see them for months on end. Try and be grateful for the 10 days that your boyfriend is home, and when your children miss their father, you can explain to them that daddy is out working so we can afford things and save up to buy a house for just the four of us. It’s a good life lesson for your boys.

What you can do is to make those 10 days out of the month when your husband is home wonderful days for him and the two of you as a couple and the four of you as a family. You have to find a way to be the one who breaks the stalemate you two have on not talking about anything but bills and raising the children. You have to find a way to get out of your funk and be loving and affectionate for those 10 days he’s home.

So stop telling him he’s cheating the boys out of having a father around. He’s not. This is what your family looks like — and frankly, it falls into the range of normal of all the different pictures of what families look like in this world. Their father sees them for 10 days a month. That’s the way it is. Don’t make it a sour 10 days. Make it a celebratory 10 days.

Make a couple of date nights in those ten days. You’re lucky that your parents have allowed you all to move in with them. Now, let them babysit while the two of you go out. Find a way to put the romance and your sex life back together.

It’s going to take a big first step on your part, but the fact that you’ve written me and the intelligence with which you’ve written means to me that you have the goods to deliver the solution.

[Author]

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