To wonder which planet DH is on?

[carocaro]

DH's birthday on Saturday. I have no idea what £ we have to celebrate this as he has decided to be all Victorian about £ eg: I get when I ask for it for food and house stuff and then have to say exactly what it is for. He then says last night he would like to invite some friends and their kids to stay for the weekend and have a big BBQ on Saturday.

I am working Thursday (volunteer whilst DS2 is at preschool) and have 4 DS year old the rest of the time. I asked him who was going to mow the lawn, cut the hedges, clean the bbq, plan and shop for food, make the food, organised the beds and bedding, get the drinks in etc etc. 8 adults 5 kids.

Oh I think that would be me then?

I have also just come back from the supermarket to find he has gone to work and left all the windows open upstairs eg: hello burgulars do come in and rob us.

I have also asked him, no joke, at least 10 times to sort out a Talk Talk issue and call Orange to get my faulty phone (have no mobile at present) replaced (his name is on the bill so I cannot speak to them nor has he authorised me so I to talk to them). Also our mortgage fixed rate is up and I have looked at a few other options and left him some details to look at; has he looked at them? No.

Then he just emailed me about ironing his shirts for his trip! WTF?!?

So forgive me if I am less than motivated to plan you a birthday bash when you can't do a few simple necessary household things for me.

What planet is he on, because it's not the one I am on quite clearly.

I think HandDived has got it right. The OP said in her opening post that she has to ask for money and to describe "exactly" what it is for. That's not the sign of a healthy relationship where the woman simply doesn't have her own bank account. Who the hell doesn't have a bank account these days anyway? Most people do - a joint one if not their own. And if it's joint surely she should be able to access it just as easily as he does?

A relationship doesn't have to descend to violence to be abusive. Violence is at the end of the spectrum. The really clever abusers never need to lift a finger.

You are all right especially fastweb, you say what I want to say and I feel just like that. EG:

"Even when not actively sought it can have a corrosive effect on the relationship as one learns to flex their muscles, little by little, and the other festers but worries about rocking the boat because while they were distracted with small children all their power seemed to have drifted away."

Totally!

We have been together 22 years since we were 16, and when working it was always all money in the pot, but there has been this subtle shift, he is a great Dad but at present I feel he just see's past me and my needs. I did really well on an OU course recently and I go NO support/congratulations, not a sausage. He does have them on his own, I went away with some friends for the weekend recently, but he still said "well how much do you think you will need?" then asked me when I got back if there was any £ left -does it really matter? Kinda felt like he pissed on the good time I'd had.

He is slow and lazy in his actions, for christ sake the man has had a veruca for over 10 years and never seen anyone about it! He is not a bad person but thoughtless and incapable of seeing past his nose. He does think, sometims, and got me some Clarins hand cream from duty free from a recent business trip.

Arrgghh! I just need him to get it, I ask, I write it down, I scream and shout all to no avail. He just needs to wake the fuck up, listen, absorb and appreciate.

It's not as simple as saying its not her fault

No you are right, it is not.

Part of the process of sorting out the mess we had made as a couple (by allowing an economic power disparity to exist, become entrenched and start to impact the dynamic of the relationship) was to stop blaming each other and both acknowledge we had a role in the creation of the issue as well as a responsibility to formulate the resolution.

At the same time, it is pretty easy to perceive some of the comments here as a little disdainful of the woman at the sharp end. Which I think risks putting the OP on the defensive and could spark up the potential for her to start to justify and minimizing the economic disparity they have as a couple.

I really got the impression that she was keen to seek confirmation that it wasn't just her that thought it was an unequal, unreasonable situation, possibly as a strategy to beef herself up enough to tackle it.

The question is will she walk away from the thread feeling beefed up and ready to take on the issue, or feeling diminished and less up to the task because she ended up with less belief in her own worth than she had when she originally posted ?

I don't think people should be so quick to call it abuse. Lots of couples go through life splitting the bills and having their own money, then when dc come along they fail to have the talk about how it's all going to work financially and end up with this piece meal solution.

I've looked back at the OP's posts and whilst she sounds pissed off, understandably I don't see where it say's she is under threat somehow or being purposely controlled. She describes him as being 'on another planet' That he just doesn't understand or appreciate how his actions (or lack of them) effect her day to day life.

Good grief all this talk of abuse really is hysterical nonsense at this stage perhaps the OP will come back and tell us more and then it might be possible to judge a bit better.

I doubt she will though, I think she's probably been scared off.

Sorry, I took so long writing that, I see the OP has come back .

congrats on the OU Course Caro I've just finished my first module , it's really hard going.

No threats of violence at all or other sorts of controlling behavior, just his £ thing.

To answer some queries - We have seperate accounts as DH was redundant for 18 months, after a gruelling unfair dismissal case which he won, but it was financially breaking, nearly lost the house if it were not for family helping etc. I tried to go back to work but was up against so many people who had been made redundant 5 mins ago whereas I had not worked fully for 5 years. The bank took away our switch cards and we only have cash cards (until 6 months have passed then we can have debit cards back). We both have Orange phones and it was a cheap deal to add me to his, hence it's in his name, did not think it was a big deal at the time.

I think it has to do with the fact he feels like he is back in control, being the bread winner, earning the £ again, loving his job - but this power position has gone too far without him realising it.

I do volunteer work at a local heritage park, have done an OU course and am doing another in Oct.

MsTeak you are right too, to a certain degree, but am between rock and hard place.

Youngest DS starts school in Sept and I want to get back into some sort of work, but not full time, DH is away at least 2 nights a week with work, and I can see that if I did work full time it would always be me picking up all the house stuff and the children and I don't want that. And I want to be at home for the children after school at least some of the week,

I am noth happy, but not in a way that would make me leave DH. Jesus this is a kind of THIS IS YOUR LIFE red book type post!

It sounds horrible. And it is controlling even if it isn't deliberate IYSWIM, it might just be what he thinks is right - is he quite old fashioned like that? It seems like he thinks of you as the little woman to cook and clean for you.

Either way it's not right. :(

The BBQ example - have you explicitly said "if you want this weekend party then YOU need to sort it all" - and if so what did he say?

TBH I think he is more scared of me, I can go ballistic at times!

What OU module? I did Intro to Psychology and starting Social Science in October. I loved it, so delighted I can write a decent essay!

I don't think he is scared of you carocaro otherwise he would definitely made the changes you asked. All the other things you've mentioned as well e.g. BBQ, ironing his shirts are incredibly selfish and really putting you in your place in terms of the pecking order. The power dynamic of the relationship is definitely in his favour and he doesn't sound like he wants to give it up

I don't think he is just being crap about organising stuff. It is deliberate, or he wouldn't be expecting you to account for every penny and asking for money back. My DH and I don't have a joint account and I have very little income of my own, but his cash card is generally in my purse and I know the PIN so can help myself whenever I want/need, without having to account for it. It is our money, not his, because we are in an equal partnership.

TBH your husband's reaction to you doing well on your course says it all. He doesn't really want you to do well because then he wouldn't be in charge.

All my opinion of course.

It's scary being made redundant;it's happened to dh twice and the threat of it hovers over us as we speak.

I can imagine he is pleased not to be in such a state any more but, he needs to loosen up a bit if he wants to keep his happy home life.

I've just finished from Enlightenment to Romanticism which I hated, but managed to get pretty good results in my TMAs; who knows how the exam went, but a boost for me after being out of education for 15+ years. Living political ideas for me next I think.

Trust yourself and your relationship Carocaro (love those birds) you know what the real situation is, it's easy to whinge on here in a way, but you know you have to have a big talk with your dh and none of us enjoys confrontation especially with people we love.

Arrgghh! I just need him to get it, I ask, I write it down, I scream and shout all to no avail. He just needs to wake the fuck up, listen, absorb and appreciate

That sounds familiar, I talked above about resolution, which sounds a bit too civilized considering that it involved me menacing him with a piggy bank and yelling myself hoarse more times than I care to remember.

It is not a low risk strategy, and I don't advise it lightly, but after months of arguments that went nowhere I gave my husband a single month to turn it around by resolving our primary issue. The month included the actual creation of the joint account, not just agreeing we should have a joint account and then procrastinating.

He knew I meant it because I did. I was spending my time focused on the nuts and bolts of starting over without him. Not for show, I honestly didn't feel I could bank on him coming through and I couldn't sit back and not plan for the worse. The last thing I wanted was us to split up, but I just couldn't go on much longer cos I knew I was going to start actually hating him. Which was almost a worse prospect than just not living with him anymore.

I'm not going to waggle the above as the perfect solution, because I took a huge risk. I have much practice at walking away from people when I lose hope, at some point after making my line in the sand something could have snapped inside of me before he'd had time to get himself into gear and I could have walked regardless of any stated timeframes. But even in retrospect I don't know what else I could have done at the point, he was being an uber ostrich and my tolerance for feeling unheard and under valued was at a dangerous low.

can I just add a bit of perspective to this? not to defend your DH's behaviour because it sounds like he is a bit controlling but just that I think this can creep up without one being aware of it. I was in a similar situation to your DH when for complicated reasons that will take too long to explain my DH was out of work for a period of time and didn't have a bank account. I was not only the breadwinner I was the only person earning anything at all. DH found it exceptionally humiliating, understandably. And although I sympathized, I think in certain ways I fuelled it without realizing that what I was doing made his position worse. For example, he would ask me for money for food shopping and I would ask him what he wanted to buy which used to make him feel incredibly angry. In retrospect I should really have given him a weekly spend and allowed him to do with it what he wanted. I'm just saying that I think this kind of thing can be unwitting and while not to be recommended, doesn't necessarily make the OP's dh a monster.

I'd iron his shirts, mow the lawn, get the party ready, then bill the fucker for all the housework at commercial rates and refuse to do another stitch until full payment was received.

This is financial abuse. It's control. Your Dickhead Husband is an insecure man who doesn't like the idea of you being autonomous. You've made your point again and again and yet he does nothing.

DW and I do our finances together every month, we know how much is in each other's accounts, we divide the household bills by agreement, we share the housework (eventually, it's taken a while to get her to understand that you have to wash up more than once in a lifetime). I can't imagine being in any other sort of partnership.