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So worn down and fed up

42 replies

ColdAndSad · 04/12/2017 09:47

I can’t do this anymore.

My son rolls his eyes and complains whenever I ask him to do anything around the house. And even then he does the bare minimum, and has to be reminded several times to even put the dishes away.

He goes out every night, in the car we bought for him, and complains when I ask him to do anything to help clean and tidy the house. We have mice in the house and his bedroom is badly infested because he takes food in there and leaves it lying around, but he won’t sort it out. He interrupts and argues with me whenever I ask him. He has learned this from my husband, who is often very dismissive of me.

Neither of them make any effort to tidy up after themselves. They bring things into the house, put them down, and rarely put them away. They never tidy up or clean unless I ask them to do specific things, and then they only do them after several requests and several reminders.

We bought our house many years ago and it’s still a building site. Three years ago, my husband got builders to strip the plaster from the hallway walls the week before Christmas and it's still all unplastered. Four years ago, we bought a stair carpet which has still not been put down because my husband insists we need to do other building work first so we have bare stairs. I used to try to get builders in to do things but my husband was critical of them, and blamed me when things went wrong with them. I couldn’t stand the shouting so now I leave it to him—and nothing happens.

The house is huge, and every room is full of mess and untidiness and dirt. I can’t stand it. A month ago I told my husband and son that I wasn’t going to do anything for Christmas unless they stepped in and helped me clean and tidy so it was nice. They have done nothing. I reminded them both on Saturday and they looked blankly at me. My son has since done nothing. My husband put the kitchen bin out yesterday and scooped out the cat litter tray while I was out, but only because I asked him.

Last year my husband pushed me into agreeing to remortgage our house in order to buy a business that he said would make us hundreds of thousands of pounds every year. We bought the business but he has done nothing with it in the year since (it involves heavy manual labour, which is beyond me, otherwise I’d do it). It has earned us very little. I don’t know how much because he makes excuses when I ask him.

Yesterday I went to the optician to get my glasses adjusted and they told me I might be losing the sight in one eye. I came home and told my husband and he didn’t even comment.

My husband snores very badly when he drinks. He now sleeps in another room away from me, because he’d rather drink and snore than remain sober and sleep with me. He’s drunk almost every night but denies it and gets angry with me whenever I try to speak to him about it. He shows signs of alcohol dependency (sweating heavily in the mornings, hands shaking, looking pale). He drinks at least four times the maximum recommended amount, usually more, and he drinks every night, but insists he doesn’t drink too much. Three times in the last year he’s pissed himself in the bed at night, and not even noticed. He denied it when I told him last time, and got angry with me for washing the bedclothes and cleaning up after him. He said he wants to see evidence of it next time it happens. He obviously doesn’t believe me that it’s happening.

I cannot bear the mess and squalor in our house. I really can’t. The entrance hall is caked with mud from everyone’s boots (we live in a farm). There are coats all over the place, and shoes and boots. Tools all over the floor. There’s a generator, a workshop heater, and lengths of cast iron guttering in the entrance hall which my husband put there over a year ago and hasn’t moved since. I have panic attacks when I think of how much work there is to do, and how little help I have with it. I want it to be nice for Christmas, as our eldest will be coming home from university. It wasn’t so bad when he was at home because he would help me clean and tidy. I am going to have to tell him not to come home because of the state of everything, because I am going to stick to my guns and not do anything until my husband and younger son put some effort into cleaning—and I know they won’t.

We have had numerous discussions over the years about how things have to change, how I can’t live like this anymore, and they always end up with me in tears and my husband shouting. The only time he didn’t end up shouting at me he went downstairs and told my son he wasn’t going out and had to help with cleaning because I was upset. They swept out the hallway and tidied it up a bit (ignoring the guttering, heater and generator), and that was that. Nothing else happened, and nothing changed.

I feel like driving off to a hotel somewhere and not coming back until it’s done, but I know my husband will just be angry with me if I do. And that they’ll not do anything to the house anyway. I will just come back to a house which will be even worse than it is now, because they’ll not do anything while I’m gone.

And I can’t even leave him because we can’t sell the house as it’s in such a state no one will buy it. And if we sell it, we lose the business we’ve invested in so heavily (it’s in our outbuildings, lots of heavy machinery that can't be moved easily). And if we don’t sell the house, I can’t afford to live anywhere else.

Also we earn money through the companies we own. We are paid minimum wage, and then get dividends. I am certain that if I leave my husband he will be difficult about paying maintenance, because he controls the companies and has made sure I am not very involved. I am in my late fifties and in poor health and gave up my career to bring up our children and move to the country, where I’ve become more and more isolated and friendless (I can’t invite friends here because it is so awful and couldn’t work in the industry I trained for because it only exists in London).

I just don’t know what to do. I can’t see a way out and even if there were one, I’d be alone and friendless and homeless, with no money and no chance of working. I don’t know what to do. I just know I can’t do this anymore.

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TammySwansonTwo · 04/12/2017 13:20

Oh sweetheart - I am so sorry. What you've described sounds like a living hell. I'm so sorry you're having to deal with this.

I don't think there's an easy solution to this because it involves them changing and that will be an uphill struggle. I can also see that you're very financially trapped with the house in this state.

I would say you need to make a list of everything that needs to be done before your house is saleable / all the work is completed. Write out everything, even things like "hire a plasterer" and ideally a date by which things need to be done. Assign tasks to people. Take some on yourself, delegate some to your son, assign some to your husband.

Make sure that "gain an understanding of the company finances" is on this list and insist on a meeting with your accountant and sight of all the company accounts. Personally I would also include "action plan for businesses" on there - time to be ruthless - if something isn't profitable, can it be made profitable. If not, you sell it. If so, what needs doing and by whom.

Prioritise the tasks that need to be done by Christmas and sort the list by date order. Colour code it by who is responsible for each task.

Call a family meeting with DH and ds. Don't blame them (even though you should) but say you've all let things get massively out of hand with the house and you can't go on like this and you've made a plan to get it all sorted. This is more than reasonable and if you are completely reasonable about it then it's harder for them to argue. Give them copies of the list and stick one on the fridge and tick off what you do as you go. They need training up to be responsible family members!