Does DH have a point- workload

[Allthescreens]

Just had an interesting conversation with DH. He is feeling rather fed up at the moment (I suspect depression may be playing a part) & rudderless & feels like our life is rubbish. I said I don't feel that way & it makes me sad that he does.

Anyway, it seems a large part of his depression/resentment stems from the fact that he feels he works a lot more than I do & I enjoy my job. He feels I have a lot more free time.

He works 35 hours per week, 3-4 days from home. He then runs DS1 to football training twice a week in the evenings. He will do the dishwasher once when he's wfh & will cook about 3 nights per week, but I plan what we have. He does have our 3 DSes every other Saturday as I work 9-5 then, usually takes them to see my parents or his dad (120 miles away) & watch football.

I work 18.5 hours, including every other Saturday. I have 3 days not in work per week & I do all other housework, school stuff, medical stuff (averaging an appointment every other week as DS2 has autism, ADHD, epilepsy, asthma & more, then picking up prescriptions as he is on 5 meds for which the dosage is ever changing), present buying, decluttering (selling on to get more cash) etc. Plus all homework with DS2 as he can't do it himself & is very slow, that's usually an hour per night. Dses are all school age.

He wants to work less or get a job he enjoys more but feels he can't as we neer his wage coming in. I have offered to take on overtime or get a second job, but DH says this will not make much difference. So I feel a bit floored & floundering, at a loss as to how to make things better.

Christ he’s knee deep in delusion land. Bluntly he needs to identify how the 36,000 shortfall him changing jobs will be picked up.

he may work in TV but that could mean a million different things. The blunt reality is less than 20% of authors have writing as their sole income

id focus on the financial practicalities. What impact will losing 36,000 a year have on your mortgage/bills

and gently OP if his plan is just to bully you into agreement by going on and on until you say yes without any thought of the wider impact on the family as a whole then you have quite serious relationship issues x

How much do you earn, OP? Does he assume Universal Credit are going to give you £36k every year if he suits his job?

He wants to take a 15 hour a week job, earning 36k less a year, and he won’t commit to picking up more of the housework, childcare and life admin?

Let me guess, he won’t drop any of his several hundred pounds a month hobbies or activities either.

Writer, my arse.

This genuinely would probably be marriage ending for me.

I would not agree to anything until he’s been to the GP and has actively been treating his depression for at least 3 months.

I think you should ask him to come to you with a plan for how this is affordable, which reflects your annual outgoings. He wants a change, he needs to show how it works.

Also, bluntly, he may not even get the admin position- I’m sure he thinks it’s a breeze but those positions are sought after and a depressed man with (it sounds like) no admin experience is not going to be their top candidate.

He clearly does need a change OP but this isn’t it.

How old are the DC?

What is your job, can you do more hours (assuming he was willing to do more child related stuff) and what would that pay if you did? I think you need to consider this regardless of the sense of this particular plan - it seems clear he is going to end up out of his job one way or another.

I don't think his plan is reasonable at all.

There is surely no scope in the budget for him to drop from 45k to 9k in one fell swoop.

He is not thinking fairly here.

That's unacceptable. 35 hours is standard full time work. He's just lazy, he's crying and moaning about working and cleaning up after himself. That's what grown ups have to do. I bet he won't pick up any extra slack at home. How does he suggest you afford to live?

As someone else said, the school may not even want him.

What happened at gp, it still all sounds like depression and the worst time to make such a huge decision

Hmm, he has depression potentially.
I don't think his plan is OK, but calling a depressed person lazy is just not on.

OP Did you say he wrote while you wrangled the DC and worked during lockdown?

So he has in the past let you take on the burden of earning and childcare etc while he wrote. Did that writing earn any money? Did it make him happier? How did it work for you?

Hmm tricky because not liking your job can have a monumental impact on wellbeing. And whilst I agree op you take on most of the life admin due to part time work, it is true that life admin is in your control and done on your terms. Being an employee is not. I think it's OK that he's fed up with his lot. Doesn't make him a bad person. He wants a change but you need to work through what that change looks like. Could the roles be swapped? Could you go full time?

The media industry is huge. And moving from one part of it to another is as difficult as getting your first job in it. My DH works in media, does a lot of TV work, and the idea of him being able to just move across to writing is ludicrous!

If your DH really wanted to become a paid writer he would be practicing his craft now, unpaid and in his own time.

No, he doesn’t have a point. 35 hours is a fairly short working week. Most people work 40 hours and often with awful commutes.
He somehow manages to find time and money for all his hobbies, willingly drives 120 miles every weekend to ( presumably) get out of the house and leave you to it, can’t stick to a job, and yet begrudges you a coffee with a mate. I’m sorry for the loss of his mum, but he still sounds like a selfish, self obsessed twat.

Read all op s post
He can't give his job up when he has kids ,,.....
He's coming across as very selfish I'm afraid

THIS

He doesn't sound like school admin. There's no space for feeling sorry for yourself, for a start, so the chances of a Head thinking 'Oh, I'll employ this extremely well paid, highly qualified but completely inexperienced bloke who is the parent we don't see at meetings about his kid to make his family dependent on the State and force his son's default parent to take on fulltime work whilst he sits at home being An Author - and it can't possibly be that he's actually intending to slum it for a bit to write a few episodes for that godawful Waterloo Road before fucking off again' are somewhat low.

Has he even applied for the admin job?

He sounds completely delusional.

Has he seen his GP yet?

And THIS sums it all up perfectly.
I wouldn't stand for this nonsense.

Do you love him OP? Is he a good, supportive husband and father when he’s not depressed? Fun to be around, etc? If not, the obvious answer is LTB.

Your posts don’t give the impression that you dislike him though, or that either of you want to end the marriage.

What I’m seeing from your messages is that he wants time. You get your three days off during the week, where - even if you’re doing things for the family - you can manage your own time and move at a slower pace. He has one day ‘off’ on a Sunday, which is presumably a day you all spend together, so he doesn’t really get down time.

In return, you want him to take on more life admin.

This feels fixable. If he could reduce his hours, or ask for condensed days, and you could pick up another shift at work, he could get his day off during the week and you could reassign some of the life admin. That’s just one idea; I’m sure there would be others - less dramatic than a 75% pay cut or LTB.

He’s a bit fed up and that’s not uncommon at this age. Is there any way you can each organise it so that you get days to yourselves? My DH and I regularly give each other ‘a day off’ on a weekend to go and do whatever we like - everyone needs a break sometimes as it can feel like one job after another. My DH tends to use his time to go for a surf or do an activity with his friends - it’s a nice reset. I tend to go to somewhere naice either for afternoon tea or shopping with friends.

That sounds like an insane plan, I'd be concerned about his mental health

Both of you do less than me and my DH…and personally I think his current life sounds easy/unstressful.
but that’s by the by…

it sounds like some kind of midlife crisis to me but who knows… whatever it is I assuming you can’t cope with a £35k drop in household income?

I would support a planned changed that is sustainable. Ie Dossing about on 9k PA in a no….

moving to another job on £50 PA and working a 4 day week so salary is pro rata ed to £40k - I could accept.

an adult cannot support themselves on £9k Pa let alone a family.
if he wants to press ahead with that exact plan I’d want a divorce honestly.

I wrote my comment two minutes before seeing the update - what the actual fuck? He’s absolutely barking mad, and would be out of my door to go and live somewhere else with his 9k job he won’t get anyway.

There are three types of work - housework (including gardens, maintenance, diy, decorating and improvements); child work (including school collections, remembering birthdays of best friends, extra curriculars, listening, hugs, massive mental load); and paid work.

You have to figure out how to share out all three equitably, but to do that you have to be able to see it all.

Fair Play by Eve Rodsky gets recommended on here a lot. It might be the wrong approach with him right now because I doubt he’s open to thinking about gender bias when he’s already convinced that he’s so hard done by. But it might help to get it ALL on paper and negotiate a complete restructuring of his responsibilities.

What would concern me more is that he’s brewing a lot of resentment and frankly it’s hard for a marriage to survive that. I’d be approaching this discussion with the possibility of separation in the back of my mind at least.

He has been to the GP & was given a number for a helpline.

He has previously had creative roles in TV, developing programmes. But was contract work so not stable, hence taking his current job. So in a way, he has some experience of writing/creating.

He says he has done the figures & we would be ok financially. DS2 gets MRC DLA, so that means we'd get more than a 'normal' claim. My job is £11k, but no commuting at all, no scope for more hours.