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.

I also noticed that he has four (!!!) paid-for hobbies, at least one of them pretty expensive, plus goes on nights out etc, and yet dared to bring up you going for a monthly coffee during the school day. And yet he still has you running around after him giving him 'time to write' incl in lockdown. Bet that MA cost quite a bit too (is it part of the CC debt)? I'm sorry, but I think he's done a number on you.

OP if you go along with this insane plan make sure he sets and you agree, SMART objectives so that you have a clear time length and minimum income requirements defined so that it doesn't just rumble on and on forever. You need to define what good and bad look like in advance so that it's evident when it needs to stop

You need to remind him that we are no longer in the EU and have no right to reside in France.

Does universal credit just pay thousands in top ups for people that only choose to work part time?

I worked part time for quite a few years and, like you, could list all I did housework, presents, homework with children etc as things I did that my husband didn’t. Of course I did those things but it didn’t fill the 3 days off I had per week! I now do those things around my full time hours.
look at it this way, you get 3 days a week on your own, 2 days at the weekend off but with the children, 1 if you’re working. He gets 2 or 1 days/day off but children are always there and it’s not as relaxing as having time to yourself.

Sounds like he has more of a social life and you do medical appointments so it balances it out more but consider how you could adjust things to make you both feel things are fairer by sitting down and discussing it all.

Getting and keeping a VISA to live in France is a pain in the arse and he'd probably leave all that to the OP to sort. It is also expensive, what with the medical insurance and all the hoops you need to go through.

That's if they had enough to cover their costs as inactif residents, as it looks like starting and maintaining a business here would be too much hard work for him.

Very well put.

Nope.

My God, OP, reading this thread is like watching a car crash in slow motion. I'm sorry to say but from your posts your husband comes across as a selfish, deluded brat, his possible depression notwithstanding. I also detect frog-in-boiling-water syndrome in you. PLEASE don't let him do this to you and your children. Again, based on what you say it comes across that your husband simply does not want to be in this family. No amount of concessions and you bending over even further will change this, trust me. It will just get worse. I suggest you stare this fact in the face and look beyond it. Plenty on here will tell you it is a lot less scary than you think.

Good luck, OP. Sending good vibes to you.

I agree with this, OP. He's playing the victim, but making sure you're in a double bind where you can't come up with any solution he'll accept. He's also a fantasist if he thinks he can earn a significant, steady income from writing.

Don't move to France unless you absolutely want to. It's not easy to integrate there. I've seen many people make the move only to return five years later.

@Karmaisagod nails it.

Your DH sounds selfish. You need to step up your earning potential so you can be independent of him just in case.

I suggest that you agree to him dropping his job but not yet. First you have to Identify what you can do to earn more. Say you will retrain and do full time work and he can work part time and do the free lance writing and step up on the domestic front. He needs to realise that will be a time commitment.

Also you need to cut back. The debt needs to be paid off before he drops his job and he will need to stop his football/gym etc. He needs to make some sacrifices to pursue his dreams and you will support him by stepping up on work front on the condition he steps up on domestic front.

Hold your nerve on this one. Something has got to give and he is expecting to have his life the way he wants it without any thought to his family. Make it clear you are happy with the current set up and a change is going to impoverish you all. Say that you agree to change the life you are happy with but it has to be a sensible plan, expecting to make money from an unstable income source is bone headed when you have a family to support.

I don’t necessarily think he’s selfish, more that he thinks it will fix him and it won’t. My concern would be that he will perceive any attempt to be realistic about the situation as you ‘stopping him being happy’ and resent you.

The poster who suggested he gets sick leave in order to sort our his mental health before doing anything else is spot on. He is not seeing his mental health as the cause of his dissatisfaction with life but as the result of it.

Your husband sounds like his mental health is very fragile to me. He is likely to be grieving and has also hit that 'what's it all for' stage that some of us have gone through at that age.

I hit that stage. I changed my job and really reassessed everything in my life because I felt trapped and unhappy. Debt doesn't help. But I also needed anti-depressants sadly because I could not lift myself out of the fug.

Stay strong, op. 🌻

I don’t think DHs plan of quitting his job is a good idea.

BUT. Your suggestion that he uses his five days a year to write is actually offensive. Poor chap. The lack of empathy shown in that one suggestion…..

If you’re managing financially on 53 hours a week, then divide that equally and do roughly 26hrs a week each. You would still be part time, but your husband would get a day to himself to pursue his writing and potentially make money off that too.

No excuses for sticking with 18hrs while your husband is massively struggling really. A flexible wfh job will allow you and DH to share medical appointments.

I think you also need to factor something else in, in light of your update and his 'plan'.

If he really is depressed, suddenly finding himself with a lot more free time, then having the self-discipline to actually use that free time to 'write' is going to be one hell of a stretch.

With no pressures, deadlines, structure to his day, there's a huge risk that he will procrastinate, fill his days with 'getting ready to start writing' (i.e. watching tv/listening to the radio), claiming/developing 'writer's block' and generally faffing, not writing. He'll claim he's too stressed with distractions and responsibilities in the home to be 'creative' or 'inspired' to write.

Then you'll have no income, and no way out of the hole he's got you into because he's not writing and working towards the goal in his 'plan'...

Edited as another thought occurred to me. I think he needs to show dedication and commitment to writing before he jumps ship from his job. Can you carve out 'writing time' in the current weekly routine, where you hold down the fort for a few hours on a regular basis? Stick with it for say, a month or six weeks, and see if and what he actually writes in this time that has been set aside for him.

If he can't do it in this specialised time, he won't do it when he has many, many more hours spare. I can't remember what it's called, but there's a psychological phenomenon where a task 'expands' to fill the time you mentally allocate to it. This means that 'writing' will become this indefinitely long task that never gets tackled or completely finished.

He needs to have a firm plan and stick to it. X no of hours a week writing, do Y when Z no of pieces are completed for his portfolio etc etc. He needs to work towards fixed small goals, not just be a creative type that writes when he feels like and spends the rest of his time 'working up to writing'.

Op I would try and slow everything down for your husband. Don't let him make any quick/rash decisions. He sounds like he's depressed or having a bit of a breakdown. I would get him to the doctors and get him signed off work for a few weeks. Or can he book some unpaid leave if doctor won't sign him off. Let him rest. Then reassess everything once he has had a break. See if doctor can give him anything perhaps?

It's a huge decision to quit a job worth 45k for a £9k job that I assume he doesn't even know if he could get. Are there not other jobs he could do that he would enjoy that are paid around £30k? Could he keep existing job but change to a 4 day week so that he can spend 1 day writing?

Absolutely ridiculous plan. I know a LOT of writers, like lots and lots and all have seen their income fall loads because of a swarm of people into the industry (anyone with a laptop can do content creation) and now Chat GPT which isn't taking the top jobs but anyone can fill their websites. There are writer's websites where jobs get posted, and anyone in the world can do them, driving down their pay. Everyone I know who is currently writing for money is usually the additional earner, not the main earner, or they are really not well off. Plus the writers I know don't just write on the things they fancy, they write on boring topics, for uninteresting websites or on books that aren't their interest, as well as their own stuff because that's what pays the bills.

This isn't an industry I'd recommend, and I'm guessing TV writing isn't under-supplied with writers either...

I write in my job and also as a hobby, my hobby writing is done around my job! His hobby is not a job.

Plus if he has time to fart around in the Freemasons and spend money on that and football, he doesn't have the mentality to live off £9,000 a year. Teaching assistants are wonderful people usually, but often overqualified, it's known for shit pay!

He's just having a mid-life crisis/breakdown, but you need to be careful he doesn't pull you down too. I wouldn't be offering for him to do more writing or making yourself ill, I'd take extra shifts at work and build up to working f/t yourself (which he turned down, because he knows he'd have to look after the kids!).

If your children are over 6 and 8, you can write with them around, I've done it.

He doesn't want to be a writer that much, he wants a very easy life which sounds fun, don't we all?

Wow OP. I feel sorry for your DH as he's obviously unhappy, but this seems like a really bad idea. You say that you "have nothing to say" but I think you need to keep on and on talking about things like childcare and the cost of his hobbies and socialising. Is he prepared to give all those up?

Could you agree to look for a full time job and then he can put his plan into action if you find one?

@Greycottage as I understand it the Op offered to do extra shifts or get a second job. So, she's happy to step up to earning more. But the OP's husband isn't wanting that as he would have to do more childcare which interferes with his romantic notion of writing.

Why does everyone want to write?

I write (on and off) for a living, it's not even fun most of the time, it's horrible facing the page and battling with yourself. I do get a lot out of it, but it does seem like everyone wants to be a writer these days, but 95% or more don't seem to understand what writing daily is like, or how fast you have to do it to produce a book a year, or how much writing crap most writers do just to make money.

It's like little boys wanting to be footballers, it's not a realistic dream for most of the population and it's not a career plan for anyone, even for the brilliantly talented as anyone can injure themselves (see Gordon Ramsey for good illustration of how not to get bogged down in one career path or idealism).

Is he sure that he will get Universal Credit?

I wouldn’t believe the finances unless I saw them, it sounds like he will say anything. You need to get much much tougher there. ‘You are quitting your job to do what you love- the season ticket and hobbies have to go until you’ve shown me the finances work, and you need to tell me how many hours you plan to work and what extra you will do around the house with the kids. It is totally absolutely not ok for you to not even call the helpline the gp gave you, quit your job so we are broke, keep your expensive hobbies, refuse to step up at home although you resent my having time to have a coffee with a friend once a month even though you go out far far more. If you keep going with I want to have my cake and eat it and you dear wife will bear all the brunt of my misery, stress out about finances as I’m not, and care for our kids and home while I’m rude and grumpy to you. I bloody well won’t.

I get that disliking every job he has after a couple of years, going through that phase myself at the minute, but generally adults just get themselves through it as best they can or move sideways.

He won't earn his fortune writing. That's just cloud cuckoo land.

I don't know what you can do though in the long term, other than separate. The idea of getting himself signed off on sick leave rather than resigning sounds sensible, if he will go for that.

This sounds like me and my other half. I work FT and do some housework and DIY and get a fair bit of free time. Other half works PT, does much more housework and kid stuff, and gets much less free time (though I really do try to make sure that - unless I already have other plans, which is rare - she can do what she wants when she wants in terms of meeting friends and going out). We are fairly comfortable, but not excessively so.

I don't have huge amounts of musical talent, and I am a little old, and I am very lazy and struggle to get around to practicing. But I would very much like to give up work, fuck around full time with music, get my one in a million shot at becoming a star, and let my other half pick up the slack financially.

On balance I think I probably ought to stick with working and try to do something approximating my fair share. Because I am an adult with responsibilities. I am not a child.