21 tweets · December 2024 · 3,997 likes · 120 retweets · read on Twitter
(there have been good moments and I'm sure it'll get better but) ...4mo into parenthood... I mostly hate it so far. I've been afraid to think/say this but I figure if I just tweet it then I might feel more free to have my real thoughts whatever they are.
this post from just before my baby was born has definitely been helping me hang in there
wow this is getting... attention. thought I'd become one of the dads with the cool dad posts. the universe was like "lol. lmao." I've been practicing saying what's so even when it feels hard, but this was a new edge for me (on a flight, not reading replies, btw 🦅🌎✈️🌏🦘)
okay flight hasn't taken off so I skimmed the replies. thanks all. I want to be clear, I don't expect to hate [parenthood] as a whole. And there have been lots of lovely moments. I just wanted to stop pretending that my experience so far is anything approaching fun or rewarding.
Also as I said to a few dad friends... I'm still proud of embarking on this journey and am expecting to be transformed by it. And proud I didn't wait longer. I was kinda telling myself I would have my shit more together as time passed but that was mostly bs.
re fun/rewarding... it's not that I thought that it would be, exactly. I thought it'd be difficult, maybe underestimated how difficult. thought I'd be more immediately engaged and interested in the challenge though! legit failure of self-knowledge there!! x.com/Ann1393676/sta…
but also some of this isn't directly about parenting but about a more general pattern of trying to present myself as having a good time even when I'm not. connects to some social pattern of being the "guy who lifts others' spirits". optimist/enthusiast
yo tracking "what mom is going through" is very salient to me. but my experience is not defined in relative terms! it is bullshit to say that because someone else is suffering/hurting more than me, I'm not suffering/hurting. I'm giving up that denial here x.com/Sarah_Comedy/s…
also my wife, sitting next to me on the plane, suggested I remark: imagining what mom is going through is the foundation of my marriage is based on. baby loves flying tho so far and we're taking off byeeee
this thread has escaped its context, and I'm getting commentary from people who really have no background on me and the scene into/from which I'm expressing this. if it helps random other dads who've never heard of me feel less alone, great, but my intent was more personal!
this is sort of the core of what I've been finding surprising here. it's not just "being a new parent is hard". duh. it's "I thought it would be the kind of challenge I'd be able to lean into and I'm having more trouble *with that* than I expected"
anyway, when I manage to zoom out from the hour-to-hour chaos and look at this as an arc, I'm not worried about who I am & who I'll be in relation to all of this. I trust my transformation process, my ability to adapt... my ability to find out what integrity means for ME, here.
on a different level, getting this off my chest—in public, not just in private confidence to a few friends—has been liberating, as intended I feel more space to notice all the ways in which I'm really enjoying this already, and more capacity to creatively find new solutions
Listen by Patty Wipfler talks about the importance of venting to someone, and I've so far found that to be very true. to other parents out there, if you haven't had the chance to just speak openly about what's really going on, to someone, I highly recommend it. I've had lots of people offering this to me in response to this thread, and I don't think I need more of it from internet folks (tho I do need to make a point of connecting with my friends about it) but if you don't have someone at all you might consider DMing someone who has offered in the replies
thanks for sharing this. I've been coming to realize that it could be okay for me to be like this. and then it feels more spacious to ask how I might enjoy this stage more, from a place of not feeling like I have to
also I've been having a great convo with my wife about all this, and we're very glad to not be the horrific images that a few people in the replies are projecting on us 😛
and also we're seeing parenthood as something to be enjoyed not just endured. which is a creative challenge, and will take skill and patience! it will be hard. but yeah.
oh also it's striking to me how obvious it is why the sense of "hate" comes up here, given this observation I made back in May (also, my wife is helping me re-learn how to calm the baby, which is reducing the powerlessness and therefore the hate)
one of the best descriptions I read of the particular flavour of awfulness that newborn life can be: > being a slave to a petty tyrant that was barely recognizable as human (from one of many DMs this thread got me, saying "I also hated the first few months, hang in there")
also things have gotten a LOT better lately fwiw. I knew there'd be a turning point I just mistakenly thought it'd be around 3mo for me instead of 4-5mo.