You should not be working 60 hours. No one should be. Being over-employed is just as harmful to your life as being unemployed, sometimes more so. You need time to do the things you originally went to work to be able to afford doing, otherwise what’s the point?

Just keep On, keeping on. One day at a time. Anything for the kids. Then catch up on sleep 20 years later.

My youngest is now at college so I can finally just chill. But I’m “lucky”, he’s been calling me a lot since no one else answers after midnight. Struggling to get up for work reminds me of the good old days of getting up for diaper changes

60 hour weeks yikes

I work 37.5

Try that

thought: Find something strenuous or stimulating for the youngest to do an hour before bedtime, could even be learning. Sometimes the right amount of exercise before bed wears them out enough to stay sleeping.

thought 2: noise maker, ocean sounds or rain playing in the room can keep them from popping out of light sleep when they hear sounds from the rest of the home.

Wife and I split AM/PM duties. I do 6am and drive the eldest to school, then come back and prep the youngest before I go to work. but my youngest is order than yours, that mercifully tends to improve with age.

It’s better if the house duties are shared as well, but some people have different situations. If your partner is able but won’t meet you in the middle, there’s counseling. What often bites you in the butt is if your partner is depressed. Depressed people fail to engage; it becomes almost contagious as you try to pick up the slack and fall to it yourself.

Finding a better job with less hours can be part of it. Sometimes you need to look outside your familiar area for work that pays better, that’s assuming you can afford to move or find a job willing to pay you to relocate. There’s also more WFH jobs out there than ever before.

The 60 hour week alone would wipe me out. You need a day to yourself and you’re going to have to bargain with your family to get it.

Hard to make any real conclusions or make any specific helpful recommendations/observations without making a lot of assumptions. If I were going to, though, I would say that it sounds like you’ve taken on too much and you’re burned/burning out. And it might be worth a little introspection to try and prioritize what’s important to you, then trim expenses and activities if there are any that can be cut.

When I see myself headed towards burn out, that’s what’s worked for me. Granted, this is still a lot of work and can take a bit of time and effort to get to a better place in life.

Sometimes there are low hanging fruit you can tackle. For example, some nights we just have cereal for dinner. Not the most nutritious thing, but easy to fix, easy to clean up (relatively speaking). Maybe it only amounts to 15 less minutes of work that night, but 15 less minutes of work goes a long way when you’re exhausted. Also, the kids are taught to help out with basic stuff like putting away toys, making beds, and even feeding the pets.

Another low hanging fruit is simply learning to say no (to yourself and others). If you’re the type that’s overwhelmed because you can’t help but take on more or you just can’t find yourself being content and enjoying the moment, then you’ve gotta put the work in there, realize you can’t keep it going or that it’s simply not worth it. Easy to say, I know.

A bit of an anecdote: A buddy of mine ended up having a health scare and basically cut back at work to the point where he qualified for various forms of government assistance. I know he wasn’t exactly proud of it, but it kept food on the table and a roof over his and the kids’ heads, and gave him the time and space to focus on his health and be more present for the kids.

You are just overworked and therefore tired. 60h plus kids? It’s a matter of time when your physical and metal health collapse. First thing to do, consider how to move to a 40h per week job. My 4 year old and 1,5 year old sons sleep at 8 or 9 p.m. Could you change the kids habits so you all could go to sleep earlier and thus get more sleep?

I handle it just fine now, but I did lay some groundwork before kids to make sure my life was going to continue to be easy even with the added responsibility of parenting:

• Insignificant commute. I can leave my house and be at my desk at the office in about 10 minutes, even during rush hour, because the bike lanes still flow efficiently.
• Small home. I don’t want to fuck around with house maintenance or even cleaning up around the house any more than is absolutely necessary, so I don’t have excess rooms in the house and don’t have big spaces. I also don’t fuck with yard work so I have only a small patio with a few planters for a modest garden.
• Flexible career that I actually like. I have a decent chunk of work to do in any given week, but most of it can be done on my own schedule, so that I can start my day late or end my day early as needed, so long as I can find the time elsewhere to fill in as needed. This did take some work to find a career that I like and that actually complements my strengths (several complete resets in my 20’s and 30’s, including going to law school as an older student), and then advancing in that field long enough to where I just have credibility to get things done without other people supervising me. I do work more than 50 hours per week fairly regularly, but I largely do it on my terms.
• Money. My wife and I both earn more than average, and we were already rich before we had kids. That gave the flexibility to do things like take unpaid leave for each kid being born, paying for childcare when they were young, grabbing takeout on days when time is tight, etc.
• Social support network. We have some family nearby, and they can help in a pinch (and we in turn help them as necessary). Our neighborhood social group is amazing, with a lot of other parents and similarly aged kids who can provide the social and emotional support for navigating the very real challenges of parenting. We don’t feel like we’re doing things alone, and we have a village. Many of these relationships predate parenting, too, so in a sense we knew that we had that ecosystem of friends and family to continue to grow with (even if we wouldn’t have been able to predict in advance exactly which friendships would thrive and which would wither after kids, we had the baseline to be able to be flexible with that).

There were tradeoffs, to be sure. We were older than average when we had kids, and that might translate into lower energy levels for each stage of childhood, and may eventually mean that we get to enjoy less overlapping time as adults. We live in a small place so we do need to basically leave the house regularly so that our kids don’t get bored, and that’s more of a challenge in the winter when outdoor spaces aren’t all that pleasant. During COVID, while working 100% remotely, being close to the office wasn’t all that much of a perk.

And we got lucky on other things. Our children are healthy and (mostly) well behaved, so we don’t have to worry as much about a lot of things other parents have to deal with. We also really get along with our own parents, so there aren’t challenging dynamics with the grandparents/in laws.

I don’t understand how other middle age men have time for an affair.

Christ, I have a 37 hour work week, and I still don’t feel like I have enough time to myself. I don’t even have kids. I don’t understand how americans handle that shit.

Middle aged family man here. The way I think most “handle it” is by having less on their plate and balancing work and life in a different way than you’re describing.

1. For me the most important factor is partnership. My wife and I split up our responsibilities equitably and we each play our roles well. We’re also flexible enough to cover and support each other when needed. If you can’t do that for each other you don’t have a partnership.
2. The second most important thing is a strong support system. We intentionally moved to a place where we have a lot of family close by before starting our own family. My inlaws make it possible for my wife and I to each work a 40 to 50 hour week while ensuring our kids have a rich home life and don’t miss out on anything. That doesn’t have to be family though. It could be a mix of school and after care, or a church, or friends, but if you don’t have some support system you will eventually collapse under the weight.
3. Pick your battles. It’s OK to have takeout or heat up a frozen dinner if you don’t have the bandwidth to cook sometimes. My house is always clean and sanitary, but it’s also constantly messy.
4. Like many things in life there is an element of attitude to it. If you give in to defeatism it’s easy to spiral. If you view your family or home life as a weight on your shoulders you’re doomed. That should be the wind at your back. That should be the stuff that lifts you up. That’s entirely on you to sort out. IMO you should probably talk to someone about it.

Overall What your describing is that you’ve built your life in a way that doesn’t work for you. And to your point a lot of men who do that opt for solutions that make it worse (affairs, substance abuse, etc…). You’re not going to wake up tomorrow and things are suddenly better. At the very least , you need to take active steps to find a better job or work out a different balance of responsibilites with your partner.

Good luck, stay strong, I’m rooting for you.

No society should expect it’s people to maintain such a life. You are a victim of a social disease in which resources are shunted upward - to those that already maintain wealth.

Pro tip. Work 40 hours a week.

That’s an absolutely crushing schedule.

When I think of “middle aged family man”, I think of a salaried employee or tradesman working a 40 hour work week, and supporting kids with the help of a spouse who’s either a homemaker or earns additional income. Which mostly describes me.

You’re comparing apples to oranges when it comes to lifestyles. I work occasional overtime and it always knocks my dick in the dirt for a week or so. All things considered, just surviving what you’re describing is an achievement.

You’re doing an amazing job and I hope you can find a situation that gives you more time off soon. You deserve it.

Open communication back up in your relationship and get over that first hump of stress and emotions that you’re avoiding from this communication.

You may want to get a therapist first to help you formulate what your needs and problems are. No time for therapy? MAKE FUCKING TIME. Jesus christ, who is going to help take care of anyone if you collapse mentally or physically. If you get diagnosed with cancer tomorrow, I fucking guarantee you will make time to go get your chemotherapy or leeches or whatever the country’s new health plans are like.

A mental health crash can be AS BAD as cancer, it has high levels of lethality and can leave lasting harm on you that never goes away, and ruins your plans for a better future.

So what cultural norm or image of yourself are you preserving by pretending to be stoic and invincible? Who are you protecting? What is your end game? You have to ask yourself some harder questions than you’ve been so you can prioritize getting healthier and reorganizing your life.

Likely you have a lot more options and solutions available to you to make the grind less soul-crushing but you can’t see those options because your soul is crushed. You have to repair one little thing at a time so you can get to a high enough place to see more options, and this is hard as fuck to do alone. Get your partner onboard with you or get a therapist or both or you will risk losing everything.

edit: I want to add something, to all the people out there suffering in their lives… Nobody is going to notice. Nobody is coming. Nobody will one day realize how much you sacrifice and give you some kind of reward or sudden, new appreciation. As awkward as it feels, if you want people to appreciate you, you have to ask for it, you have to tell people you don’t feel appreciated, you have to tell them how to make you feel appreciated and what you want to feel appreciated for doing. If you don’t do this early on and regularly, you are going to forget how to feel appreciated entirely and nothing anyone does for you will feel good anymore.