Dear Pepper is an advice-column comic by Liana Finck. If you have questions for Pepper about how to act in difficult situations, please direct them to dearpepperquestions@gmail.com. Questions may be edited for brevity and clarity.

Dear Pepper,

I’m a philosopher, an independent curator, and an art educator—also a mother, and an immigrant with no support structures—grappling with the joys and the burdens of child care and fighting for personal space.

I have a partner who’s a super-father—I suspect compensating for never having that kind of father himself . . .

He monitors my parenting non-stop, even now that our son is nine. We are from different cultures (he is an American germaphobe; I think of myself as an easygoing, eat-the-cookie-that-fell-on-the floor Colombiana). He is a very smart, art-sensitive guy, and quite progressive, but sometimes his steadiness exhausts me. Maybe steady is too kind of a word. Controlling? His punctiliousness is especially strange for me, coming from a Latin culture, where the ideal husband is full of charming, romantic gestures for his wife, even if he isn’t a perfectly equal co-parent.

As a dad, my husband gets to pick where his attention goes. Not the dirty labor (tidying up, planning meals, etc.) but, rather, programming our son’s activities, helping (too much?) with his homework, taking him to the doctor whenever he’s got a stuffy nose, teaching him to ski, flooding him with gifts.

Part of my gripe is that while he’s being so over-the-top as a father, he seems to have no interest in being a husband, or in my emotional needs, our intimacy, or our partnership. He loves me, he says, and I believe him. But I️ don’t feel loved. It made sense while our son was a baby and toddler, but I️ think the balance should have evened out a bit by now, and it hasn’t. Over the years, I’ve begun to feel like a piece of furniture. The child, meanwhile, is in the middle, sucking attention and living a rich life (which I am happy he gets to have).

When we walk outside, my husband wants to hold our child’s hand, not mine. He is always telling our child educational tidbits about what we are doing and seeing, but he doesn’t talk to me, except about logistics.

Second kid? I️ chose not to have one. How many of my life decisions have been made in reaction to feeling unhappily married?

Something isn’t right! What do you do when you feel invisible to your partner?

Dear Invisible Woman,

This is tough. It’s hard to criticize a partner (and I speak as a classically loyal dog)—doing so leaves you and your children vulnerable, and you risk isolating yourself further by coming off as cruel or unhinged to the people you confide in. And, as you say, your marriage is not the cliché of the put-upon wife invisibly carrying the household while her husband gallivants. This is a different kind of invisibility—emotional invisibility. Something is deeply off in the harmony of your family, and you’re trying to rebalance things while your husband is quietly pushing the status quo.

I’m going to say something validating or painful—I’m not sure which one. Your life sounds unpleasant, and I️ (again, a random fictional dog) think it should change. But I️ am not saying that your husband sounds like a bad person.

If you want to work on your marriage, I think you can. The task would not be simple, but what I propose would at least be relatively passive: listen. Not forgive, not empathize, just listen with an open mind. Invite him to speak.

The rest is your husband’s responsibility. Could you encourage him to talk to a therapist about all this, if he isn’t already? And, if it’s feasible, the two of you should talk to each other with the help of a couples therapist.

It seems to me that, logistically, you haven’t agreed on who is in charge of what in the marriage, so, from your perspective, he oversteps his role. People often make charts delineating roles in marriage for the opposite reason—to make sure each partner pulls their weight—but I can’t see why it wouldn’t also work the other way around, to make sure that one partner doesn’t take on too much, whatever their motives.

Maybe this way, you could carve out some quality time with your son, during which your husband isn’t allowed to nitpick or criticize the way you do things. And perhaps you can also figure out some concrete ways to spend some more time with your husband. The biggest question, of course, is whether your husband is willing and able to try, and whether you are interested in trying.

Finally, whether your marriage improves or not, please let me gently remind you to nurture your life outside of husband and child. Having friends and meaningful interests takes the pressure off of things at home, and in your head, too. Sometimes that’s all we can do.

Love,
Pepper