AIBU Expecting house-husband to start employment after 15 years?

[casbie]

After being the sole-earner for the family for 15 years (12 years employed and 3 years self-employed), do you think I am being unreasonable to expect my house-husband to get employment?

This has issue has risen after him failing to get work in retail, so I took him on as a book-keeper. However, everything else takes precedent so rather than working for me, he drags his heels and finds every excuse to do something else which is more important.

After paying for him to go on a book-keeping course, paying him for the work he's done and letting him do the work when he can, I still can't get him to do just do what I have asked him to do.

(My books still have two months left to do).

We have had a blazing row about file record keeping, ie. creating back-ups.

I have tried to be patient, understand there is a recession, understand that he is nervous about getting a new job. But am p*ssed-off that the house is a state and that he cares more about online gaming than getting stuff done.

Since I have banned him from the iPad, suddenly the house is a bit tidier as he is trying to prove that yes, really housework does take 8 hours a day, when the children are honestly old enough to do most of it themselves.

I have even taken out the bins because he won't get up early enough to put them out.

Am I Being Unreasonable expecting house-husband to get employment after 15 years? Youngest is nine, by the way!

[mathanxiety]

Two things jump out from your recent posts --
Stress on your part.
Some sort of competition and resentment dynamic is at play here as to who does the most/least.

You are not managing the stress element of running your own business very well. How much discussion went into the decision to run your own business? How much ongoing discussion of time issues has gone on as the business enters different phases? How has this been couched?

• general resentment that DH has an easy life while you work your fingers to the bone ('I work hard on starting a business, get it to a stage where I can actually look further than next week and I find him on the sofa again playing computer games')..
  
• irritation at specific jobs not done while you are out bringing home the bacon (you mention the bins)..
  
• hurt at lack of appreciation on the part of DH for your efforts on behalf of the family (he took money for gambling that you had worked for)..
  
  You need to ask yourself a few questions:
  Are you better suited to the domestic end of things or is DH?
  Are you better suited to running your own business than DH might be to having a job?
  Why have you been involved to the extent that you have over the years in running the home and organising the children's lives?
  On some important level do you have little confidence in the ability of your DH to get things done? Do you want things done your way? Do you believe deep down that you do things better?
  -- Why not leave the bin, and let DH deal 100% with the consequences of a bin that is not collected?
  
  Are you able to let DH run the home the way he wants to?
  There has been much talk here on this thread of how this would have been received if a man had posted instead of you. Fundamentally, this discussion is apropos. (Some of the comments have been a bit though -- stay at home partners, whether men or women, are not like children who can be directed and instructed as to how they should conduct their lives.)
  
  A lot of happy relationships 'business/domestic partnerships' if you will where one partner works outside the home and the other keeps things ticking over at home have in common the ability of each partner to let the other get on with their own sphere of work and neither has the impression that they answer to the other for small details such as putting the bin out. In other words, each has an area of complete autonomy and nobody is 'the boss'.
  They also tend to have a joint or family bank account used for family expenses like food, phones, family entertainment/TV/broadband, children's clothing, shoes, activities, mortgage, utility charges, insurance, cars, council taxes and holidays, etc., and individual spending accounts for each person, with the joint account available to each for scrutiny and perhaps one person as administrator but not 'owner'.
  It seems he is certainly not suited to working for you as bookkeeper there is a lot of passive aggression in his performance of that role (not good) but perhaps you have brought the same management approach to domestic management i.e. is it a mistake on your part to be so involved in managing the home and the children's lives, and how much room have you left him to do things his own way?
  
  Are you edging him out of a role he has been competing with you to fill over the years, now that your own business has reached a certain plateau? Are you in effect horning in on his racket and expecting him to accommodate you by finding another role?
  
  Yes, I think I can do it in a couple of hours, take youngest to school/walk the dog and still get my work done, before he gets back.
  I think you are that capable person I referred to earlier.
  What will accomplishing all the housework and walking the dog and taking the youngest to school and getting all your own work done achieve? Do you anticipate a good deal of satisfaction in being able to tell him 'Ha! I told ya'? There is a certain amount of passive aggression in your plan too. This is not good.
  
  ...I can't lead him there (like I have done with everything - I have to do it first, show him it can be done and then he reluctantly does it, then he actually realises he can do it and then tells me how brilliantly he can do it).
  
  For example: He had been learning to drive before me. I took lessons and encouraged him to do so too. It took me twice to pass my test. He took three times to pass his test. Would he have even got a driver's license without the nudge?
  
  Am just very exasperated in that am trying to help him out and yet I suppose I can't. Think he does need to get a grip and sort himself out.
  
  Has he been your 'project' right from the start? Are you a person who finds projects and devotes yourself to them? Is this a feature of your relationship? Is this part of what attracted you to him?
  Is there a certain amount of self-fulfilling prophecy going on here?
  
  What I am suggesting is that you have a script in your head about life in general and this man in particular -- it is something to be tackled and moulded into something more to your liking and under your own control (hence your decision to run your own business and your high level of involvement in the home even though you have someone there who might be able to tackle it all instead of you, and hence also your decision to send DH on a course and then employ him). This is part of the boundary issue that you have. People are not just pieces that can be moved around a game board, or clay that can be moulded and remoulded according to your own vision.
  
  You may be completely right that a qualification and a paying job would be great for your DH, and your motivation in trying to light a fire under him may be perfectly unassailable, but you can't just do that with people you share a bed with and expect them to say, 'Yes dear, I'll bend myself into any shape you want. Other people have done what you want me to do and I will too'. You are dealing with a specific person here, not 'other people'. If you got involved with this man in hopes of eliminating what was already there and creating something different entirely (he had a gambling habit when you met him) then you really need to examine your approach at a very fundamental level.
  
  On a practical level your approach to the question of a job is flawed. In the first place, you have already seen him fail to get a job in retail this has to have been a blow to his confidence btw but you are still insisting on him finding paid employment. There are specific circumstances you seem intent on ignoring here, namely that he has not had a job for 15 years, and this is a circumstance that is not to be taken lightly.
  
  Your management style is not efficient. It seems to be emotion driven - resentment being one of the main feelings. You have not looked rationally at the state of things and seem to have chosen a course based on a cost threshold and with your own convenience in mind (handy to have your own H as a bookkeeper and not to have to recruit one) rather than looking at what might suit his talents or his aims in the long term. That £200 was money poorly spent.
  
  It would be far smarter to sit down with DH and try to find a long term prospect for him, if that is what he wants. Or better still to spend money on marriage counselling initially and then in another year or so after a good deal of work on your relationship and your unexamined assumptions about people you could try discussing it all again, if it still seems important.