Children generally need a forced time to go to sleep. If you make this time early (say 8:30-9:00pm) and enforce it, the kids will desperately want to stay up later.

So tell them that they can stay up as late as they want, so long as they are reading at bedtime. They will start reading like mad–kids just don’t want to go to sleep when we want them to.

Not only will they become much smarter and more literate, generally after an hour or so of extra reading, they fall asleep anyway.

A great way to make our next generation less video-game-addicts and more intelligent than the alternative.

It worked out well for them, but only because he had some clout with management, and managed to get her transferred to a different office location.

With 40 hours per year of required CPE, and 17 years at law firms that would not give me the time off to keep my CPA license active, it lapsed long ago. I was not about to use my meager vacation time at biglaw to attend accounting CPE classes. So now I am trying to re-activate my CPA license, and it is proving very difficult. How did you manage this?

Ask him what he wants out of your relationship and your family. And feel free to drive home that you know he’s depressed and unable to work, and that you were as supportive as you could be, but that he’s overstepped the bounds of what you will tolerate and is setting you up in his daughters’ eyes as a doormat. I’d calmly detail the sacrifices everyone has made for him, and tell him that all you expected in return was for him to make those sacrifices that he was capable of making (going to get treatment, taking meds, staying faithful, trying to be as productive/helpful as his mental health allowed).

Now then, to you. Examine what has happened to you and to your interaction with him in the past several years. It’s very possible that you’ve done nothing wrong. Or it’s possible that in taking over the household and serving as caretaker, you’ve become more his mother, and less his wife (understandable, esp. in his condition). The cruddy thing about that is that he can come to regard you like a teenager views his mother – a person who takes care of him, goads him about doing work or his health, and acts like the “adult”, making the family work , being unfun. Has he become your third child? ny marriage is hard, and humans (despite our best intentions) seek out the things that feel new and different and make them feel alive. That’s hard in any long-term marriage, esp. one where the dynamic between partners has been so skewed. There is a lot of infidelity, and it’s not insurmountable – a lot of people just get caught in a bad situation. But I would stop parenting him – unless he needs you to do things for him (i.e., he can’t drive). Tell him that you married an adult, and that you will help him with the things that he cannot do on his own, but otherwise, he’s resourceful and can find a way to accomplish the rest. While you did just find out about the affair, you sound as if you didn’t respect him much before, and he probably resents you (and wants to act like an entitled child).

But give serious thought to whether this is something you want to salvage. If you’ve done your best, you’ve done your best, and you need to set a good example for your girls. That isn’t necessarily staying together for the kids.

I don’t know you or anything about you except for the few things you just posted here but know that you are deserve more and you are worth it. Decide on your expectations and go get them – there is such a thing as being too nice and supportive.

Good luck.