Husband RANT. Help!

He's a manchild. Why can't he get up and stay up? Getting the kids ready should be a joint enterprise. And if he's not ready when you need to leave, just leave. He won't be late often, that's guaranteed

To be blunt. If you're at the point of wanting to step into traffic because of your husband. Then it's probably time to split.

Life is hard on your own but feels easier when you don't have an adult reluctant team member knocking about.

I don’t agree - it’s not ideal and I resent that but it’s clear the kids love having us both around. I have a stepchild too, who is massively affected by her parents’ separation and having seen the emotional fallout of that I would not put my children through it unless things were a lot worse.

Homes are not “broken” by getting two small children up and out the door in the morning. It doesn’t take two adults and it certainly shouldn’t break a marriage.

I’d rotate mornings so he has to do everything you do. But frame it as a joint decision to avoid conflict.

id then leave some mornings, getting up before everyone to go to the gym or do my own stuff. It’s not being harsh, your children have 2 adult parents. He didn’t double check on you when you did all the mornings, so don’t do it for him. He will learn and find his own way.

But the home is already broken

He does realise that unmedicated ADHD can knock 12 years off his life.

Honestly OP. This sounds so much like my relationship it is unreal. Right down to ADHD child and suspected ADHD DH and own autism! I feel like a bitter miserable cow, and our home is nothing like the safe, calm haven I wanted for my children. My husband for some reason thinks he has a god given right to watch the football with a beer - and fuck the children’s routine, bed times, behaviour etc. Then when it all kicks off he is ‘so stressed it’s making him ill’ and needs to lie in bed. Meanwhile, I plough on doing what has to be done and acting bad cop 24/7.

It hard to ‘just leave’ because then your kids are going to be from a broken home and it’s the last thing I want. My children love their dad very much. However our relationship is now non-existent and he cannot see his own role in that. So no advice really but know you are not alone.

It’s actually ridiculous how many ‘man child’s’ there are, stuck in their old fashioned gender roles of thinking housework and childcare is below them.

whilst many women have to balance modern life to help contribute 50/50 working fulltime on top of doing what a 1950’s housewife would do it’s just unrealistic and not sustainable.

He needs to pull his socks up. He needs figure out what he can do to play a part and help out - no excuses.

I know how exhausting this behaviour is as I have been here myself and still find myself in this situation.

Id recommend joining ‘Bridging the Gap’ community page on Facebook for support and advice.

You have a third child here. A manchild.
if you were solo-parenting your two children it would be actually LESS work for you and less stressful.

Bloody hell get rid what does he bring to anyone's life

Please take this kindly - here are my observations: your morning sounds like hell, I thought ours was bad. But it really sounds like utter chaos for the kids, not relaxed in any way. Your husband & you are clearly opposites in your styles of organisation/lack of. You arent his mother, he isnt a child. Accept what he is. Don't do the Tea in the morning. Having to wake him is insufferable to read - just stop that. I'd detach from him & the morning routine, it sounds too regimental - let the girls do a little more for themselves, maybe a visual plan so they know what to do next. It can't be as complex as explained.

He can have his chill morning in bed but he's a grown f^^king adult & should then be able to get himself up without being made to get up by his wife. Adhd aside - sounds like a lazy a-hole.

I care for my husband and am very definitely attracted to him. This is absolute nonsense.

@hanste123

The thing about untreated and unmanaged ADHD is that it turns dark.

Tread carefully.

once you start treating your ADHD spouse as a child, because you have to help them to adult otherwise everything goes haywire, contempt steps in. Contempt kills relationships.

We are not attracted to those we care for. It’s biological. You can’t be the parent and spouse of your partner. Ask me how I know.

Look inward and you will see clearly the way forward.

That's fine for him to not want a label or medication, but he needs to accept that he is an individual who struggles with time and he needs to work on that. There is so much advice online for people who need support with time management, so he has no excuse not to try.

I'd start with creating a morning plan together, outlining what needs to be done, by whom, and by what time (perhaps with a picture of a clock showing that time if he's a visual person). Also, think about anything that can be done the night before (e.g. packing school bags, making lunch ready to grab from the fridge in the morning), again sharing the responsibilities, and record it on the plan. Try to find a calm, quiet time to discuss this and make sure he does get a say in it all, so that on those mornings when he's not sticking to the plan, you can remind him what you agreed together, rather than what you've told him to do.

Good luck!

My DH has ADHD and I'm autistic and I recognise a lot of the struggles in your post, mornings can be a complete disaster in our house.

I would walk away if my DH didn't take some ownership of his difficulties and make an effort to reduce the impact on the household. He's medicated now and goes to regular therapy. I take on more responsibility for running the household, and he takes on jobs that play to his strengths more (like cooking). We are both compromising and trying to meet in the middle. Things are not perfect and we do clash from time to time but the good far outweights the bad. Your husband sounds like he adds nothing but stress. I'm sorry. I don't know how you can improve things when both of you need to be onboard for that

Normandy29 · Today 11:47
You sound like an absolute control freak and your husband is living with a dictator

Is that you OP's lazy partner?

Prepare for separating. Get those ducks in order.This won't improve.

Give him notice and get a job outside his business. You need financial independence. You are his support system at home and at work and to enable him to be a functioning adult and it's holding you back in every way. You are not his mother.

Stop waking him or taking him tea. If he won't take an OTC pain med, he's not in that much pain, he just wants to whine and he's using it as an excuse to get out of doing things.

Leave when you need to to get the kids to school on time. He's not ready, tough.

Say you split, and one of the girls wants to go live with dad. Put it in your parenting agreement that he has to meet standards, like getting her to school on time with all her supplies and things that she needs every day. He likely won't deal after long because he's chosen to not be a functioning adult on his own, much less when he's supposed to be caring for his minor child. He won't want the responsibility. In the unlikely event that he steps up and parents, that means he can do it when he has to.

If it was me I’d all get up an hour earlier and do something before school. I certainly wouldn’t entertain divorcing someone who is crap at mornings and appears to be exactly like one of his children who you give extra support to.
Surely you just get better at the morning yourself (2 children up and into uniform ISN’T insurmountable solo) and he picks up something you are rubbish at or don’t enjoy or just is easily off loaded?

I can't add to all the advice other than tell you about my mother's trick to getting multiple teenagers out of bed on school mornings. There were too many of us for her to nag us all so she would arrive in out bedrooms with cups of tea. The mug would be inserted into the sleeping teenager's hand(s). We now had the option to either
a) wake up, sit up and drink tea or
b) continue slleping and, either burn our hand or at some point roll over and spill tea all over ourselves.

You can't lounge around in bed shouting instructions if the bedding is soaking though I would be tempted to initiate the spillage on purpose occasionally

There's no way I would tell a grown man to get out of bed four times. Don't involve him just get the children ready yourself. It will be less stressful. Get them ready, get them in the car and take them to school. And don't take him a cup.of tea FFS. You have to be completely ruthless. And if he's affronted just say look,you make the situation worse, not better so you aren't included anymore.

YABVU for all the armchair diagnoses of neurodivergent conditions.

YANBU AT ALL to be sick to the back teeth of your husband lounging around in bed every morning while you run around doing everything.

OP, I feel your pain. My kid is older now, but my husband also has some time blindness. He will leave everything until “last minute” before we go, not understanding that you can’t do more than a minute’s worth of stuff in the last minute.

I recall just after my daughter started kindergarten, my husband sitting down to play with her in the morning, instead of helping her form good habits by getting ready. So the good habit that needed forging was not some thing jointly wanted by both parents, it was one parent fighting the other to develop it. And guess who got to be the bad cop? I have had to be bad cop so much.

I remember trying to give my daughter some music lessons when she was small (I play an instrument). She asked if Dad (the fun one) could be instructed too. Yes, I said, of course. I then noticed, as I was trying to talk, he was sticking out his tongue at her as I was talking, laughing, basically encouraging her to not listen to me, and turning it into a game and a them-versus-me situation. I still feel hurt about that. It would be pointless to talk to him about this, because in his mind, “he was just being silly.” Or some stupid such thing. My daughter will remember this incident from the point of a small child. There’s no point in trying to shine light on it to either of them.

Even though my daughter is older now and musically capable, we don’t do musical things together. There are still some bad feelings there. I wonder what it would’ve been like, now, if dad had been supportive and respectful of the lesson setting, rather than destroying the dynamic.

Things are better now, my daughter is older and can organize herself time wise in the morning. But I think it has done lots of lasting damage on my family. I hate it. I feel it is been unfair to me, that I had to keep pushing in order to do what was right in the long run for my kid, e.g., provide structure and good habit training, and just accept the Bad Cop role.

My husband, in general, is a sunny side up sort of person. He doesn’t worry about things, which means that I have to worry double. He also secretly thinks, I believe, that worrying is somehow bourgeois, and possibly looks down on me for it without realizing it. He outsources the worrying work to me, then feel superior.

I pointed out the “we both need to worry/plan/nag kid” dynamic several times over our 25 year marriage, many times angrily, and things have changed much for the better, with him helping if he sees there is something to worry about. I don’t think he’s a bad person, or that I should walk out and leave him. But there was a lot of stress getting to this point. I’ve had a lot of counseling, and that helped too. Someone who can help you stick up for yourself and be an ally is a beautiful thing.

I don’t have any advice, other than to keep trying to make your point. It sucks, I’m sorry.

It would be easier to bring them up on your own than suffer this bullshit.

Can you get a job for someone else? Step 1 towards independence from the supremely useless fucker.