Midlife crisis or DH problem?

[Amidlifecrisis]

I feel a bit stuck and not sure if IABU or not! (Sorry in advance this is a bit long).

I’m mid 30s with 2 small kids (5 and 2). I work full time in a demanding job in the City (of London). DH works in a creative field and is self-employed. I earn 10x what he does but he is one of the best in the world in his career, which is a vocation he has pursued since childhood.

Both of us from poor, working class families who live far away, so no parental help either financially or with childcare. We live in a terraced house in a shitty bit of London. It needs loads of work done which we can’t afford to do now.

I enjoy my job and am excellent at it but have been passed over for promotion because it’s basically a sexist environment and with 2 recent mat leaves/2 small kids I can’t compete with the men who have stay at home wives so future prospects are unclear.

I want to work part time to spend more time with the kids when they are small. I want to have another baby. I want a bigger, nicer house. We could achieve all of these things if we moved out of London, but DH needs to be here for his work. His talent and passion for it is something I have always loved about him. I can’t ask him to stop or do something else but equally I feel like I’m carrying the burden of our entire lives and he essentially gets to live the dream while Im paying for it all, both in financial terms and at the cost of my happiness. I’m penalised at work for being a woman and by society by not being around more for the kids. I feel like the sums don’t add up anymore but I don’t know how to fix it.

Op

Your husband has a lot of solutions to your desires.

You have clearly supported him enormously but his career path is causing you significant problems.

I know you seem happy for him to pursue his dream and yes it is fantastic that you think so highly of him but you are essentially paying for him to have a career.

Why can’t he work part time? Or indeed find a job that works around you all much better?

Can you have the conversation with him? Can he take two years out and take over the nanny role?

I think you need to have a serious conversation with him and lay your cards on the table.

And I hope his flights are not paid for out of his 35k income! I do feel that he is taking you for granted a touch.

It's true that if lack of DH support is getting in the way of your promotion he is probably costing you more than he is earning.

He needs to accept that he'll have a longer commute. There's are lots of cheaper places to live with an hours train ride into London .

I meant for her husband.

If the wife was a staff nurse she’d be working weekends or nights and looking after the kids, the home and prioritising her husbands career! Or dropping them at day nursery and doing her bank hours around the childcare while hubby worked late and got his promotion. I doubt hubby would be giving up promotions and leaving at 5 to prioritise her working schedule.

If she was a creative type I expect she’d be working on projects at home or teaching music/art etc around her husbands hours.

You can afford a nanny, more help
You can go part time still have a high income

He earns c.25-35k (fluctuates) and I earn £250.

It’s funny because I’ve started feeling a bit shit too. At the moment I earn just under £100k, husband £35k and you’d think with that we’d have a reasonable lifestyle but we don’t really. No foreign holidays, no expensive car, no big house.
I’m actually starting to think about whether the south east is right for my kids. In the North West although very well paid jobs are fewer (don’t have a go, it’s lived experience) I think there are more opportunities to get on the property ladder. My 5 year old told me she wanted to be a teacher and I just thought well you won’t be able to afford a house or family then if you stay round here. We don’t have any big inheritances coming to help them etc. It’s pretty rubbish that’s what you need for a basic standard of living.

Your husband is doing rather well out of you.

His earning potential doing literally anything else, but virtue of being in London, is there. I’d suggest he do another job, something that isn’t his first love or whatever, but will net him more than a paltry £25k (and it is paltry in London before I’m flamed). Then he can continue his thing, which he’s apparently insanely good at but earns peanuts doing, in his spare time.

It's a you problem really. DH hasn't changed, you have. He's open to compromises, you don't like any of the options. You basically want him to be someone else. Someone who earns more, has a different job so you're not default parent, someone who likes kids more. That's not who he is though.

So you need to ask yourself if he's still the man for you. Nobody is perfect and this looks like a good relationship with lots to stay for, you're not necessarily going to be happy searching for (and possibly not finding) Mr Perfect. But if you stay in a situation where you're feeling this much resentment, it'll eat you up and destroy the marriage anyway.

99.9% of the time in in the LTB camp. This time I say he isn't a B, so get therapy for yourself to work on the mental barriers that are causing you to see everything in such a negative light.

You have a DH who's willing to work with you to make changes in life and even though he doesn't want a third DC hasn't said no to it. So work with him, instead of throwing barriers up at every turn. Unless you want to take your chances with someone else?

Maybe if you got more job satisfaction and were not diminished by working for such a sexist company you wouldn't feel the need for things to be so different at home? Are you transferring workplace resentment of rotten men onto your DH? If you can't afford work on your house can you and DH learn to do the work yourselves and renovate it in your spare time? Might bring you closer together 🤷

Hmm, my husband earns less than me but I don’t really mind. Doesn’t bother me. He’s present for the kids, is a great dad, we have a nice life etc. It’s up to him how much he earns and what field he chooses to work in. Likewise i could quit my job tomorrow for a minimum wage one and he wouldn’t have an opinion on it. We kept our bottom line low so we always had freedom to choose. I guess we are together but live very interdependently too. He has no say on my career and vice versa. It would only be an issue if he wasn’t working at all and just being a freeloader.

How can he be a "great dad" if he prioritizes "pursuing his dream" over being with and providing for two young children?

People who want to "pursue their dream" and can't earn much of a living at it should be honest and refrain from having kids.

Having agreed to become a parent, he needs to get a better-paying job and stop disappearing nights and weekends. He can pursue his dream when the children are older and more self-sufficient.

Don't confuse being jolly with being "a great dad." A great dad puts his kids first rather than indulging his artistic side.

Agree with this.

You don't sound happy op but you don't sound like you really know what you want.

You want to be a good mum and spend more time with your kids, yet are upset about being overlooked for a promotion which would likley entail less of a parenting role at that kind of level job. You then say you want another child which also seems crazy given everything else.

Life is one big compromise and you need to make some decisions.

I think you need to talk to your H though about how you feel. Have a hard think about what it is you want.

You are in the thick of child rearing- the younger years are a slog. It's ok to tick along at work for a bit if your focus is on leaving on time to be with your kids etc. You have time to climb higher corporately as they are older, if that's what you want.

I also don't understand how the house is run down etc and you can't afford to do it up.

To put the husband's perspective here. There are lots of roles in the arts which only pay £25-30k a year and which are often freelance, so there's no consistency in terms of when you're required to work - maybe nothing for a couple of months and then very full-on for a couple of months. They don't always give you the skills to move into another better paying job even if you want to. He may also have limited opportunities for progression, even if he's at the top of his game. For example, he could be a brilliant theatre director, doing shows at major theatres, and still only earn about £30k a year. The only way that would change would be if he got a West End contract, and the show was successful and earnt him royalties, or if he went down the route of becoming an artistic director. At which point he might go up to £60k a year, would have his workload triple, and possibly have to move to another part of the UK. Its a real challenge.

The nanny costs £30k per year. Plus cleaner costs.

Sometimes the DH only earns £25k per year GROSS. He is never going to earn more than £35k GROSS.

There is also the expensive travel costs to come out of his earnings unless they get refunded?

I think if I working to fund my partner to do a job with it not being for long term future benefit I think I would feel resentful.

Perhaps he needs to suck up doing more childcare even if he doesn't enjoy it and work less.

You say your DH is in a creative industry, self employed, and is at the top of his sector. If so, surely his services/creativity is in demand? If so, he should consider an increase in charges for all customers. a greater increase for new customers, and thus increase his pay for less work.
My best friend's DH is self employed not in a creative industry as such but has a particular skill of value to the arts industry, and as such is quite in demand. He's progressively increased his charges and literally picks and chooses the work he wishes to do, and turns down the work he doesn't want to do - most work has a deadline so if he says sorry am booked out on that day it doesn't mean he's working just that he isn't available. He never advertises, it's all by word of mouth, and within the industry is the person of choice, and the customers all wish to use him in preference to others, and refer others to him too. He could work 7 days a week but opts not to. As a result he's now considerably decreased his days of actual work with no loss of income.

London airports aren't in London . You could move west and still be closer to Heathrow, south for Gatwick and North for Luton...

This is off. Totally skewed. Reduce pension contributions and increase spending to make you happy in the here and now. Because if you divorced from unhappiness DH is going to get half that pension, so saving it is a false economy.

Totally reasonable as you're the breadwinner to expect DH to facilitate your career by fitting his around yours, even if that means he can't do exactly the job he wants and has to compromise. You're putting him on a pedestal by saying "I can't expect him to xyz", yes you can. If he wants to be part of this family he needs to make comprises too.

I live in Kent and my husband when he worked in London consistently got in faster than his London based colleagues. Look at anywhere on the HS1 route, it’s absolutely brilliant. So, so fast.

He doesn't "enjoy" childcare.

He doesn't want to retrain or change jobs.

It doesn't suit him to move away from major transport hubs.

If I was the main breadwinner in my family as well as the default parent, while my husband was travelling and feeling "fulfilled", I'd most certainly feel resentful.

Ok so many really helpful responses and has actually helped clarify my thinking which is definitely mega confused. And so many people have actually nailed it. The person that said I didn’t seem like a part timer and the one who said that I might be transferring workplace resentment onto DH both really struck a nerve.

To kind of explain the inconsistencies about what I’ve said re work, I felt and feel I need to go for a promotion because my industry is an up or out model. It’s not really possible to stay still so I can’t choose to tread water or I’ll eventually be managed out. I’ve also got a bit of imposter syndrome as am surrounded by people who are so different from me and I find it hard to see myself succeeding. At the moment I feel like a better work life balance - going down to 3 or 4 days per week - might be good for all of us. But I would have to change jobs to do this (potentially to something like public sector which could be done outside of London) and take a huge pay cut.

It’s also true that DH hasn’t changed and I have, but to be fair I don’t think It’s unusual to completely reset your priorities after having kids.

Re DH’s job, he can’t demand more money or earn more doing what he’s doing. But at least his expenses are all paid as part of the work so that’s something.

Re moving somewhere commutable to London, that would help with getting a bigger house, but I’d be doing the longer commute too. Atm I can get to work within 25 mins which really helps. If we left London I was more imagining we’d move much further afield and I’d swap jobs to something local, but then the issue would be DH still needing to be in London a lot.

Clearly the answer is just deciding where we want/can compromise and me accepting that I can’t just have everything I want!

Is your partner a fine/visual artist? More and more self employed creatives are leaving London for creative centres like Liverpool and Glasgow or even down on the south west coast area and commute for shows /fairs/presentations etc. It’s common to have a studio in an entirely different location from where the majority of sales or business interactions take place. The lifestyle changes, fewer openings etc but if he’s already established then he doesn’t need these as much for networking and he’s only going for the free booze and social life.

if he has customers as a creative it’s because they like his work not because he lives within the m25 boundary.

I’m not saying he should give up what he does but a lot of creatives need to have additional jobs, often in teaching if they’re successful in practice - it’s expected of mother creatives it should be the same for fathers. Being a vocation doesn’t mean the responsibilities towards family are lesser. Get him to lose the ego and share the financial load.

If you moved far enough out could you have a live in nanny which would work out cheaper and more flexible in terms of £ out of the account?

I agree! How much do you earn op? And congratulations on the great career.

I'm not sure why you need to sacrifice your dreams (to spend more time with kids) for his (to be a full time creative). Being the best at whet he does doesn't mean he needs to do it full time, couldn't he do it one day a week or on weekends?

If he work central he could could commute in from a home county station easily, probably in a similar journey time - just more expensive on the trains that bus or bike.

I would move to Essex- get into the city easily and easy to fly from stansted south end or London city. The other airports are doable too just longer commute.

You accepting you can't have everyone you want... but it seems DH can!