to have zero empathy for DHs 'mid-life crisis'

[nincompoopascoop]

I'm currently five months pregnant with dc4, who was a surprise, though we always planned on having dc4 at some point. Our other children are aged 6, 3 and 2 and DH also has a son from his previous marriage who is 8. Recently DHs behaviour has changed and I think it's a because he's made friends with a young (male) colleague who has expensive cars, clothes, holidays, night's out etc.

As examples - in the past three months DH has had seven nights out. More than he's had in the past three years. Now, while I have no problem with him going out per se, I think he's massively taking advantage of my good nature. He's arranged them and told me after the fact, expected lifts to get there, spent the day before shopping for a new outfit/getting his hair cut, stayed the night at his friends house 'so he wouldn't wake us' and not surfaced until the following evening because he's so hungover. Obviously its irrelevant now because I'm pregnant, but I haven't had a night out in four years and DH would be livid if it took days to have one.

He's volunteered for extra work which has meant working away with his friend, again - telling me after the fact. He and his friend have then been sitting in the hotel bar drinking the extra they've earned, while the kids and I are left home without a second thought.

His friend has made some - what I consider - really disrespectful comments about me. We're moving soon to closer to this friend and he joked to DH that he should leave us where we are and houseshare with him 'because he's fun and not just a freeloader' and then in the same conversation 'i guess I see why you'd pick her though, she does have a cracking arse.' DH hasn't pulled him up on this, which is out of character.

The final straw for me has been with regard to my dss. We've spent a great deal of money and time in court to achieve a court order as his mum was obstructing contact. As a result, we haven't seen dss for three months now. Finally last week we received good news and the first scheduled contact weekend is this weekend coming. However, DH came home from work on Friday saying he'd volunteered to go away (several hundred miles away) for a few days with work as of Tuesday, but it could end up oveerunning. I asked what that meant for dss and he said he'd tell exW/court he had no choice. His only concern was whether he'd get in trouble with court, not that it meant he might not see dss for several more months! You won't be surprised to hear that the friend has also volunteered to go...

Aibu to tell him to get a grip and realise he needs to face up to his responsibilities at home rather than making decisions like he's a single man?

When it comes to a head he'll doubtless break down and plead mental and emotional instability, suspected ongoing unrecognised depression and complete absolution of any direct responsibility for his behavior and creating this situation. His parents were mean. He was misunderstood as a teen. He's been miserable for such a long time but been soldiering on for the family. And other assorted boo fucking hoo. Looking at you BFF.

Freeloading fanny says just how he feels about you op. He's horrible and his friends are horrible.

He's supposed to defend you, help you, love you and if needed die for you and his children.

Nasty nasty yeuk!!

I do not offer advice of LTB casually and I suspect very few here do, certainly not those of us who did go on to LTB.

I accept it is not easy, certainly not with four children. Would i have made the same decision if I had more than 1 child, if I hadn't had the reassurance of knowing I could go back to work and earn enough money to give me and my daughter a good life?

I don't know. Perhaps I would still be with him because I would have been afraid of the future as a single parent, poverty, loneliness etc, etc.

But I NEVER regret that I left him. Financial poverty and loneliness are real and are hard. But so too is the utter emotional desolation of knowing that you are trying to love and support someone who fundamentally doesn't give a crap about you, that your only importance and worth to them is if you are prepared to keep their house and mind their children whilst they go off enjoying their life. That is utterly soul destroying in the long term.

Men only get to do this because there are women who let them.

My ex is still living the life of a 20 year old. Bully for him. As he approaches 50 this is going to get harder and harder to sustain and he may yet realise that by attempting to make himself the priority in his life at all times, he will end up with very little or nothing in his life to sustain him once he can no longer attract younger women to sleep with him.

But why would you want to accompany any man on this increasingly sterile and desperate journey?

He has also manipulated you into not complaining.

He knows his behaviour is beyond the pale. All he needs to say is how wonderful you are for not nagging like his "terrible" ex would have (rightly) done.

Now you're in the position of feeling like you won't be a great wife if you voice your concerns.

Works well for him!

Threatening to withdraw his (apparently) good opinion of you only works as a manipulative tool because he knows you place value on it.

these threads are so depressing.

Also, nothing will change, OP will have a little vent here and all will continue as normal. "Ah, the poor dear has a midlife crisis!" No. he is just a dick. WHY why whys why whyyyyyyy do woman have kids with this kind of guy?!

what a way to live.

Because 'these kind of guys' are sensible enough not to behave as badly as this straight away, Brave. This is NOT the op's fault. This twunt has hoodwinked and manipulated her and made sure that she knows her place by taking advantage of her goodwill, kind nature and sense of responsibility. These are good characteristics to have and an unscrupulous man has taken advantage of them and spent years ever more subtly crushing her. Good on her for recognising that this isn't normal, that's jot an easy thing to do when for years you have been being controlled.

He may well get around her this time. Possibly next time too. But now she's aware of it, there is hope that one day she and her children will get away from him.

Be patient, Brave. It is harder for her than it is for you. We are on the outside looking in.

OP, sorry to talk about you as if you weren't there. Please think about what people are saying.

There is another issue here.
The op, whether she realises it or not, is doing the same behaviour for her little ones.
Putting herself well and truly last.

It may well be ok and in fact is ok up to a point at the moment. But will she change later on? I doubt it.
So the kids will most likely turn into mini mes of her husband.

Well said Jux

What was the time-scale of your relationship? His eldest is 8 and yours by him is 6 so potentially you were pregnant when his first was no more than 15 months old. Had he left his wife when you met him?

Did he seem like a viable option as someone you'd plan to have 4 children with? I do wonder as Rebecca2014 why it's come to this pass.

Agree with Jux. These men don't show their true colours straightaway.

Either because for the brief honeymoon period they genuinely did feel enough love and affection to override for a short time their basic hardwired asshattery - that is what happened to me; we had about six good months which I desperately tried to recreate for the next couple of years.

Or they on some level realise that they won't get away with it for long without first hooking you into a relationship where you become attached, where you develop dependency (particularly if you are at home with small children) and this makes it more difficult to leave.

Also - and we need to be honest about this - sometimes the women in the relationship will ignore clear warning signs or desperately try to explain them away because we don't want to be alone, we do want to be loved and we have already invested time and emotion in this man.

I certainly fell into that category and although I wish I hadn't wasted my time I don't think it makes me a bad or stupid person that I wanted to be loved and I wanted a family. But it did make me resistant to accepting reality for quite some time and that's dangerous.

His wife left him just after their son was born. We met when dss was 7 months old. He isn't a useless father, he is great at playing and being fun but poor at organising, planning ahead etc.hence I tend to end up being practical while he's the fun one. He isn't sulky and mean and all the other things posters have presumed, ifaanything he is sickly nice to me. He has never raised his voice and we've never had a cross word. I don't feel manipulated into keeping quiet, I don't have a problem with him going out as such. It's the it taking up days that I think is taking the piss. I don't mind him taking on extra work - it's the feeling spero described above that I resent - that I'm effectively facilitating him enjoying and succeeding in his life while the kids and the kids only are my life and that isn't liable to change whether I stay with him.or not.

Spero up until this baby is born I've never been dependent on him. I've always been freelancing since we met and we've lived apart when work has taken him away so I've very much been independent. He is the needy one in our relationship.

we've never had a cross word.

Why? Who is keeping quiet? Who is keeping the peace?

I am aware that I may be cynical here, but this always raises alarm bells to me. [and from what I have read purely on mumsnet, I dont seem to be the only one]

Though actually, I do know a couple in rl like that, that both seem happy after umpteen years of being mariied. Though I dont know him that well behind closed doors.

Hmm... interesting what you say about developing dependency Spero. I once worked at a company where a particular group of blokes would frequently go on 'lad' nights out. Their ages ranged from early 20s to mid-50s. These nights always involved female work colleagues and I can't think of a single member of that gang who hadn't had some kind of sexual encounter with one of their female colleagues at some point. They just used each other as alibis. It was utterly disgusting.

One very senior member of staff was shagging a junior colleague while his wife was having chemo... as well as taking care of their home and kids. The affair lasted YEARS - during and after her treatment and I always wondered whether a) his wife knew about it but chose to ignore due to her dependency on him or b) she really believed he was a hard-working, doting father who happened to like a few too many massive blowouts/visits to a strip clubs nights out.

Dependency covers many domains.

It is great that you have the ability to work - but how realistic is this with 3 young children and a baby on the way?

i know I also felt some degree of dependency on the status of being in a relationship - I think women are given the message that we are worth less if we are NOT in a relationship, single men seem to be much more 'acceptable' than a single woman.

I certainly get much less invites to parties, barbecues, etc now than I did when part of a 'couple'.

And I just don't see how he is the 'needy' one in this relationship when he is perfectly happy to live his life without you in it??

WHY have you not enjoyed any nights out/socialising? Why doesn't he organise something for the two of you to do together?

It's just not right or fair that you are left at home as cook, cleaner and nanny whilst he lives it up, at the same time denigrating and criticising you as 'freeloading fanny'.

I will also bet a million pounds that 'his wife left him' means 'his wife was desperately unhappy and made a desperate decision hoping to shock him into changing'

I don't think many women with seven month old babies just blithely leave the fathers of their children. I would say it is far more likely that she felt pushed into making this decision by his behaviour and now he gets to swan around as the victim of a horrible ex wife who kicked him out.

he is great at playing and being fun but poor at organising, planning ahead etc

Easy for him to play Disney Dad - taking on the fun, playful side of parenting without accepting that there are also dull aspects to it too. Makes it harder for you to justify leaving because you'll be taking the kids away from their wonderful father who plays with them and entertains them (but can't/won't put them to bed/make plans around them). He's being a cock and you're continuing to defend him. This must be an awful situation for you, but it won't change if you sit there and defend him. This is your chance to say "Wow - look at all these people saying YANBU - what am I going to do next?" Doesn't have to be LTB, but surely it needs to be more than sitting back and watching things continue as they are/get worse?!

kins besides the recent issue with working over seeing dss he's never really pissed me off besides minor things like not picking up after the kids but that's just because I'm more tidy than him.

spero he can only go to work happily and chat with his friends about us all if we're in his life. It'd be a very different (and lonely) existence to come home to an empty house and have days off all alone. He hates being alone whereas I quite like it to a degree. We don't have childcare to go out together and neither of us particularly want to leave the kids, we're happy just having time together once they're in bed.

How much will he be involved with the care of his stepson this weekend? Whatever his roll with your joint children he should very much be the primary care giver for his own child when he is at your house, particularly after not having seen him for so long.

Going back to your original post, I think even suggesting that he wouldn't be around when his own son comes to visit is evidence of a personality disorder.

Spero there's little point speculating about why his wife left him. I know for a fact (from her) that she left him to move in with OM. She believed dss was his and had been waiting for OM to return from overseas to live together.

merry he does anything and everything for his son when he's here. It's just not often enough imo but we're working on that.

He is the needy one in our relationship

what ?

He is the needy one in our relationship

what ?

ok, fair enough. he was unlucky enough to marry a right cow who left him.

How are you going to explain away how he is treating their son?

And sorry, any man who will talk about you or allow other men to talk about you as 'freeloading fanny' is all the evidence I need. This man does not value his family. Or he doesn't value it as much as he values his opportunities to go out on the town with his mate.

sorry, I don't mean to be harsh. You obviously know there is a big problem or I assume you wouldn't have posted in the first place.

So what are you going to do about it?

Why did you post this thread OP? What sort of responses were you hoping for?

Playing is not the main role of a father, or rather being able to do that well doesn't make you a good father. It might make you a good uncle, or grandpa, but not a good father.