Thinking about divorce

[IThinkIveHadEnough]

I didn't think I'd get to this point but I'm getting pretty close and would appreciate any advice that anyone could give me please.

The past 18 months (ish) with DH have been (mainly) shit. Don't get me wrong there have been some good points but more and more I find myself incredibly stressed and unhappy. He has had depression for a long time - it comes in peaks and troughs but has been a constant. He is still classed as employed but has been signed off for the majority of the past year. He is at the stage where he isn't even receiving ssp anymore and I'm struggling to manage finances as I don't earn enough to support our family. I have been very lucky that I have been able to build up some commission in my job but this has now reset, so after this month we are severely screwed.

I have tried to pull DH out of his depression. I have begged, I have cried, I have even shouted. I am tired, I am stressed and I am starting to snap all the time. I have tried to talk to him, to get him to try and find another job...I understand it isn't easy as that but I am desperate. After working all day I have come home to the house being a tip and DH has slept or been on his computer for most of the day. It's infuriating. I broke down a couple of weeks ago and told him that I didn't know if I could do this anymore. I think I still love him, but maybe not in the way I should. He seemed to be open to the idea of a separation of that's what I wanted. I don't know if it is. I'm incredibly scared...scared of being alone, scared of not knowing where to start...and it's not just me I have to worry about. We have 3 DC who love their dad very much. I don't want to tear up the family. I don't want them to hate me. But I can't see a way to make this any better. DH is showing no signs of getting better. He hardly leaves the house and can be snappy and sleeps a lot. All symptoms of his condition. But it is making me ill. We are close to having to take the DC out of childcare as it isn't affordable any more. 2 DC are in school but youngest DC is in nursery. I worry about leaving DH to do the childcare. Not because he can't look after his own children, but because they'd most likely be stuck in the house all day every day. Stuck in front of the TV or something. In one of our chats DH swears that he would teach youngest DC and try go out but how could he if he can't even do that now?

If we were to seperate where do I start? The house is mortgaged in DH name only. My basic salary only just covers all of the bills - we don't have sky/virgin, just Netflix so no to licence either. I will be lucky if I can bring in a few extra hundred a month through commission in a couple of months as the earning potential has been capped slightly. There are no family near by and I wouldn't want to uproot DC from school etc at a time like this. If we were to stay in the house (if we could? I don't know?) then DH would have to move back with his parents about an hour and a half away. Would I be able to continue working full time? We did get help with childcare through working tax credits, which will be stopped soon anyway if DH loses his job. Without those I couldn't work full time as a single parent due to childcare costs.

Neither of us have any savings. My job, which I started a couple of months ago, was an opportunity to put anything extra I made into a seperate account so we could start to sort ourselves out financially. With DH receiving virtually nothing I've had to use whatever I've pulled in extra as a float. There are two loans in my name (not huge ones) but they were used to consolidate both of our debt. If DH moves out he won't have a job anymore, so he won't be contributing financially at all.

I'm sorry if this is so jumbly. I've spent a day feeling angry and sad - I've snapped at DH and the DC. I'm feeling like a really shit parent and I just keep thinking that maybe, after all the years of trying to keep the plates spinning, that I need to stop now. I just don't know if this is 100% the right thing to do. I hesitate because I'm worried about the DC and money and what to do. Any advice would really be appreciated.

[sandy30]

I'm so sorry.

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable will come along, but my first thoughts are:

• Does he have mortgage payment protection that will pay out if he lost his job?
  
• Would he be entitled to any benefits if he lost his job?
  
• Is only his name on the property title as well as the mortgage?
  
• Has he been given any formal return to work support via his employer or GP, and is he engaging with treatment?
  

You cannot pull him out of this; I say this as someone who has had multiple episodes of severe depression. Damage limitation is all you can do.

[fusspot66]

Sounds hard. There's a website called 'entitledto.com ' which tells you what you could get as financial support as a lone parent eg tax credits. It's more than you think.

[IThinkIveHadEnough]

Thank you both for your kind replies. I feel like I'm being really harsh on him and that at least for some part of his behaviour he can't help how he is. It's just getting/got to that point where I can't take it anymore.

I'll try to answer the questions as best as I can:

• As far as I know he doesn't have a payment protection for his mortgage. The house was bought with his parents (now retired) acting as guarantors when he was in his early twenties and still at uni. The mortgage hasn't really been paid off any as we've muddled along paying the interest due to finances being tight. This is something we were hoping to start sorting shortly but is now on the back burner
  

• He may be able to claim ESA. He isn't really fit to work in his current condition. As I said he's constantly tired/lethargic, sleeps a lot and doesn't leave the house. He has panic attacks and avoids social situations as much as he can.
  

• Yes it's just his name. His dad may be on it also still. We tried to get me put on everything when we got married 6 years ago, but it wouldn't have been possible as our combined income wasn't enough to take his dad off and put me on.
  

• His employer was really shit at first and didn't show any kind of compassion towards how he was feeling/how ill he was. He did force himself back in to work with the promise of a phased return plus regular meetings with management. None of this happened. The phased return lasted two weeks at most. This resulted in him going off sick again. They were much better the next time he attempted to return, a lot better at phasing him back in. Still not so good at the meetings. He is customer facing so wasn't able to just do something else upstairs or whatever. He saw occ health who said it was a management problem and refered him back to them. He went off again and then when I got made redundant went back in for a bit, but he's been off again since after Christmas I think. He may have worked a few days in January.
  

One of his problems is that he has severe anxiety of making a phone call. I've seen him try to ring to let them know he's not going to be in and he just can't do it. He'll build himself up and lose his nerve or try the work phone and they don't answer. There isn't an answer machine or anything so they have to believe him when he says he's tried to ring in. Originally management asked for him to text in just so they knew and he did do this 9 times out of 10, but head office have said that this is not acceptable and he must ring in. This is near impossible for him so he hasn't been able to sometimes which obviously looks really bad. Another issue is his sick notes. It takes a lot of him to get out to the dr and he will come straight home after, as he can't face going anywhere else. This makes it problematic to get the sick notes to work. I ask him to sort them so I can post them but he rarely does. This means a delay in them receiving the sick notes. I doubt they will put up with it for much longer and I'm waiting for the inevitable letter that tells him he's fired.

Apart from this he has been taking medication. He's been on a couple of different AD's and the ones he's on now seem to be helping less and less. He does generally go to his doctor for his reviews but has had to get telephone consultations sometimes. He also misses some appointments due to how he is feeling and the last time he went the Drs he said he would go to work and drop his sick notes off. I'd dropped him off that morning and he wasn't really himself - he'd been awake most of the night and seemed very down when I left him. Usually he will text and let me know how he's got on but despite texting him and trying to ring him I got no answer. This continued for 5 hours before I ended up calling the surgery to check he did actually go. The dr was concerned I couldn't get in touch with him and I made a tit of myself at work because I was so worried about him. He'd come home and fallen asleep, not waking up until 6 hours later. He hasn't been back to the gp since. The GP has apparently refered him for counselling but that was weeks and weeks ago.

I will pop over to entitled to and have a look. I'm just going through my options at the moment because I think I really need to. Sometimes I really want to run away from it all. Today has been a hard day and I've just wanted to cry for most of it.

Thanks again, it means a lot