The Real Deal
‘Does My Bum Look Big in This?’
How many times have you asked this question and received an honest answer? Well The
The Real Deal.com.au gives women an opportunity get the truth, by confidentially posing questions on any topic to a panel of REAL DEAL men.
The
The Real Deal.com.au is a unique proposition that exploits a gap in the market for women’s advice forums. It provides a high degree of interactivity and offers women an alternative to their girlfriends, giving them the chance to seek advice or an honest opinion from men.
Every woman in her life has questioned or been baffled by the behaviour of male friends and/or partners, and The
The Real Deal.com.au offers a forum for getting a better understanding of the male psyche - direct from the source.
The website forum consists of four men; one single, one in a new relationship, one married, and one divorced - representing the relationship stages that women might find themselves in. This will give women a chance to ask one man or ask all the men for their advice.
All four men are profiled on the site to ensure women that it is REAL, and that it is a confidential, non-threatening and anonymous environment.
The next time you feel the need to start figuring him out; ask someone of the opposite sex. You will be surprised how much they can help you better understand what he is trying to say.
The Real Deal.com.au
Meet Cam (pictured above), he's 32, and has been married for 5 years.
A happy-go-lucky person, he's not the competitive type, and likes a good laugh. Work within the IT industry, he's not your sterotype geek. He enjoys surfing, snowboarding and mountain bike riding, oh and the occassion handyman workout. He's just bought a house so knows the pressure of starting out.
Let's put him to the test with a Question:
My husband and I have been married for 4.5 years. We have a 3 yr old and a 6 mth old. We are older parents (in 40s). When we were dating we used to go out for a couple of drinks then dinner. When our first child arrived, my husband would have a beer and sit him on his knee while I cooked dinner. Then he started
having his couple of drinks at the pub then coming home to dinner. It has become almost impossible to cook dinner with the two of them needing bathing and feeding in the evening.
Now, in the last few days he is coming home, having something to eat, then a shower, then going to the pub and coming home at his normal bedtime. He seems to love the pub and takes every opportunity to go there. He even makes up stories about close friends going to the pub who he has to go and see, when they aren't really going at all. I'm being left alone with the kids by myself virtually every day and am getting very upset. Yesterday I went out to stop him going out. Why is this happenning and what can I do about it?
Cam's Answer:
Dear Yummy Mummy,
I'm not lucky enough to have kids yet (though ask me in a couple of years and I may well be looking back in fond hindsight at the easy life I used to have), but I have lots of friends who are new fathers. Some of us
blokes tend to struggle with the massive changes that the arrival of children bring and I know that Mums also
struggle with this - its natural, and all of that doubles and triples when number two or number three comes along.
A friend of mine recently moved from his chic bachelor pad into a house with his girlfriend, to be followed a
fairly short time later by the arrival of their first child. He was pretty stressed about it all (as is natural), and he talked about how before, living in the bachelor pad, he'd come home and unwind from the day's work with a couple of beers, watch some TV, maybe fiddle about on the Internet for an hour, play some music, stuff like that.
For him it was important to get an hour of chillout time at the end of the day before he was ready to face whatever the evening had to offer. When he moved in with J and then the baby came along, he often walked in the front door after a tough day at work straight into a warzone - J stressed out, crying, and desperate to hand that little bundle of joy over so she could at least get a shower and a few minutes to herself. And don't start him talking about changing nappies! He really struggled with the change to his idyllic lifestyle, that it was in some ways a loss of identity. But he did realise that his role in parenthood was a partnership, and that he wasn't the only one having a hard time of it.
Blokes can have a hard time with change. For my friend S, before the rugrat came along there was going out to dinner, cafes, sunset walks along the beach, movies, holidays, lots of great sex .... all with his happy smiling beautiful J. Now when he gets home its like Lebanon in the 80s - a warzone, kids, mess, nappies, and J has been replaced with some stressed-out screaming crying person. Deep down, S ultimately knew that it was actually his job too, not just J's. I think sometimes us blokes fail to realise that actually it was our handiwork that got us into this in the first place! But that doesn't stop us complaining about it.
Us blokes can find plenty of ingenious ways to avoid going home to the warzone, this can manifest itself in lots of ways: putting massive hours at work, going to the gym, joining a club or going to the pub. This happens because we are having a hard time at work or at home and need a bit of relief and we often find it hard to talk about with our partners, especially if its the daily grind at home that is what we are finding hard.
Other friends of mine K & M have recently had their second child. It was hard enough with the first, but with the second it really put a lot of strain on their relationship, as you just can't do the job by yourself, and you can't do it all the time. Those guys really struggled, even just to get out and meet friends for a coffee, it used to take them the best part of the day just to get out of the house - I used to watch them lugging two prams and a whole pile of gear up the street just to meet up with us at a cafe for a quick coffee.
Whilst I can't speak from personal experience, the experiences of my close friends are similar to yours, it is impossible to do it all yourself, all the time. It's hard. You feeling abandoned is perfectly understandable, you can't do it all on your own and you shouldn't have to. You both need a little Me Time, your own space to be yourselves, though it sounds at the moment like only one of you may be getting all the Me Time. And you need some Us Time as a couple, a little of the dinner, sunset walks on the beach, etc that you used have, and this is where family and friends are so important at this time. Get your family or friends to look after the kids sometimes and get yourselves some Us Time.
Good Luck and Hang In There!
Cam
The Real Deal.com.au
