Q: Dear Dr. Dave: Life has become a nightmare. My husband and I married seven years ago, and for the first few years everything was wonderful, but lately all we seem to do is fight. We have two beautiful children, our son is age six and diagnosed as ADHD, and our daughter aged two. I work as a salesperson for a large corporation, and my husband is an attorney. We have everything that life could ask for, but we are miserable. Can you help? Please!?
A: Your problem is all too common today. Basically, deceased actress Betty Davis summoned it up years ago, “There are three parts to my life: My marriage, my children, and my career. I can only handle two.” Few of us are ever properly warned or advised about what a stressful toll it is to try to pursue all three: career, children, and marriage.
You have what can be called the Modernist Marriage Contract, where you attempt to fulfill all three parts of your life full time. Sometimes I refer to this as the Great American Failure, because it is almost impossible for most people to balance all three without being enormously stressed. This is what makes us perhaps the most stressed out nation ever. You are tired, exhausted, spent, and angry. You wake up every day to the nightmare of fighting traffic, rushing to get the kids ready in the morning, dropping the children off at daycare or school, working intensely stressful careers, getting home late, rushing to eat, helping the kids with homework, fighting to get them bathed and ready for bed, and so on. You are doing everything possible in order to just “keep up,” but who do you blame when it all is not done? Your spouse, of course, and he does the same to you.
Marriages fail under this kind of pressure, and children’s needs for nurturance and for the cultivation of values necessary to sustain them through the long years of education are not being met. Your needs for affection and sex are often not met, because both you and your husband are too tired every night. Weekends are not restful. You rush to get the house clean, laundry done, shopping, etc., etc.
There are many different types of marriage contracts, and there is not enough space in this column to cover all them. However, the main idea is that you and your husband must sit down and work out how to restructure your lives. You may need to downsize your standard of living in order to be able to have a more peaceful life style. I suggest that one or both of you need to reduce your career time, and stay home more to care for the house needs and the children needs. It may even necessitate one of you suspending your career until the children are at least in high school, for the sake of both your children and your marriage. I warn you that if you divorce, the person who has custody of the children will have ten times the nightmare that you are now dealing with. Sorry, but some sacrifice may be necessary.
In addition, you may need to go through a trial and error process in order to readjust the contract until you get it right. The best gauge for success depends on whether or not you and your spouse feel more rested and have more energy at the end of each day, and whether or not your children appear to be happy, at peace, and doing well in school.
ADHD, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, is not a disease; instead, it is the result of this pressure lifestyle, and excessive time in daycare, where they do not learn the three cardinal values: love of learning, love of reading, and respect for authority.
It takes nurturance, lots of time, and lots of attention to inculcate these values in children, none of which is occurring under the current circumstances. Children do not only need quality time, they need lots of time.
