Recently I learned that my partner really struggles with time management. I have always been aware that there was a problem, but it usually only seemed to affect me or the kids’ stuff. It felt like if he was not interested that he completely blew it off.
Now that the kids are out of the house, we have been able to focus on our problems in couples therapy and he finally admitted to how his inability to be self aware has hurt things in his own life, things that he has wanted or planned to do.
It was an eye-opening situation. It felt like it was always the stuff that had to do with us and not his personal or work stuff. However, he has been struggling with those as well.
Then came the issues I have been feeling which is that I feel like his mother. Our kids had terrible time management as well. I was constantly having to be on them about getting their stuff done for school and helping them juggle their other commitments. I did not want to do that for my partner. It made my relationship with him feel different. Like he is one of my kids and it was hard to reconcile that with wanting to have any kind of romantic feelings.
I was honestly on the cusp of divorce over this. I was so burnt out. Now he has admitted to these problems and the therapist is keeping him accountable. Last session ended before we could get into the last issue we had which was him being mad at him for not reminding him when his D&D game started. He knows it starts at 6. He was on his phone which tells him what time it was. He still wanted to order dessert. I did not correct him or remind him. He was late to D&D.
He tried to blame me for not reminding him. I said what else could I have done that looking at your phone or watch could not have done for you. The last time I reminded him, he snapped at me and said I was not his mother. I let him fail. He tried to argue that if we were partners that I should want to help him. I reminded him what he said in therapy that I am not supposed to be doing it anymore. That the therapist told me to let him fail so that he will be forced to create ways to keep himself on track.
We talked about in therapy the difference between helping out and relying on someone else to handle the functioning of our lives. He has been relying on me in order to function and then being mad when I “nag” him. She told me to stop. I did. Then he was mad because I was not helping.
The drive home was tense. I stood my ground. He tried to equate it to me losing something. The last thing that was lost that he was trying to help me find was something of mine that he actually lost. Typically my lost things happen because somebody decides to move my things or to “help” by not putting things that I need in their designated spots.
It was a long talk. But seeing that he also struggles with managing his own stuff at least helped with my seeing it as not a personal slight against me. It is not my stuff he does not care about, it is his own executive functioning that he has never learned to deal with himself. It shifted a lot of things for me and we are no longer straddling the line of divorce. Now couples counseling is about taking responsibility for ourselves. And not equating things that are not equitable.
Telling me about work meetings or hangouts with friends is not to make me the timekeeper. It is to let me know when he is unavailable to me, so I do not make plans that include him for those times. He still needs to manage his own time if he wants to do these things.
It is a work in progress and seems like such a simple small thing in the grand scheme of things. It did not even bother me before the kids, but when I had to equate him with having the same needs as the kids’- It was a wake up call for both of us that this was not right.
Mother of Trauma 
Leave a comment