I have a close friend who has unburdened herself of her relationship woes to me but she thinks my exclamations of “Why the fuck are you still together?!” are “a bit much”. I’m interested to know what you MNers think.
They’ve been together 10ish years and have 3 young DC’s. She works PT from home, he works FT out of the home.
From what she’s told me (and what I’ve seen) her role in the family covers :
16 hours a week work, all childcare (including helping with homework/attending open evenings etc),all meal planning/shopping/cooking, all cleaning/washing/ironing, all birthday/Christmas/holiday planning, all gifts/cards for his family, all budgeting.
His role is :
Working (5 days a week, leaves home around 6am,returns around 7pm), organising tax/insurance etc for his car, taking the DC’s to their swimming lesson at the weekend.
Ikind of knew most of this but she has never asked for my opinion on any of this so I have never given it.
What she has recently told me, and what has prompted me to more actively question why the hell she is putting up with it, is that he is currently under some sort of financial order (I can’t remember what she said it was called) because he had, unknown to her, run up debts which he couldn’t pay back. She has no idea how much the debts are, nor what the money was used for and he point blank refuses to discuss it with her.
She pays all the household bills from her account and has to ask him for money to put towards them.
To me, all this is intolerable. She is upset and angry about it but doesn’t seem to realise quite how far from reasonable it is! She says “he’s a good dad” as though that somehow excuses the fact that he treats her like this!
Admittedly, after some disastrous relationships, I can be pretty anti-men so quite often keep my mouth shut when friends talk about their partners but I don’t think my reaction to this is unreasonable!
Incidentally, she is currently on anti-depressants due to a period of depression and anxiety which led to her not wanting to leave the house and him telling her she needed to sort herself out because he was “Sick of her being a miserable bitch”.
What the fuck?!?!
The sheer number of intelligent, funny, capable women putting up with shitty relationships never fails to amaze me!
I'm afraid I did go into a bit of a rant about him taking the absolute piss out of her but I am gobsmacked that she seems to think I am overreacting. (I did apologise for my ragey rant) but am interested to know whether other people think that this relationship is anywhere near normal?
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AIBU?
To think this is NOT a partnership?!?!
50 replies
Flypaperforarseholes · 30/03/2017 10:16
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