To think this is NOT a partnership?!?!

[Flypaperforarseholes]

I have a close friend who has unburdened herself of her relationship woes to me but she thinks my exclamations of “Why the fuck are you still together?!” are “a bit much”. I’m interested to know what you MNers think.
They’ve been together 10ish years and have 3 young DC’s. She works PT from home, he works FT out of the home.
From what she’s told me (and what I’ve seen) her role in the family covers :
16 hours a week work, all childcare (including helping with homework/attending open evenings etc),all meal planning/shopping/cooking, all cleaning/washing/ironing, all birthday/Christmas/holiday planning, all gifts/cards for his family, all budgeting.
His role is :
Working (5 days a week, leaves home around 6am,returns around 7pm), organising tax/insurance etc for his car, taking the DC’s to their swimming lesson at the weekend.
Ikind of knew most of this but she has never asked for my opinion on any of this so I have never given it.
What she has recently told me, and what has prompted me to more actively question why the hell she is putting up with it, is that he is currently under some sort of financial order (I can’t remember what she said it was called) because he had, unknown to her, run up debts which he couldn’t pay back. She has no idea how much the debts are, nor what the money was used for and he point blank refuses to discuss it with her.
She pays all the household bills from her account and has to ask him for money to put towards them.
To me, all this is intolerable. She is upset and angry about it but doesn’t seem to realise quite how far from reasonable it is! She says “he’s a good dad” as though that somehow excuses the fact that he treats her like this!
Admittedly, after some disastrous relationships, I can be pretty anti-men so quite often keep my mouth shut when friends talk about their partners but I don’t think my reaction to this is unreasonable!
Incidentally, she is currently on anti-depressants due to a period of depression and anxiety which led to her not wanting to leave the house and him telling her she needed to sort herself out because he was “Sick of her being a miserable bitch”.

What the fuck?!?!
The sheer number of intelligent, funny, capable women putting up with shitty relationships never fails to amaze me!
I'm afraid I did go into a bit of a rant about him taking the absolute piss out of her but I am gobsmacked that she seems to think I am overreacting. (I did apologise for my ragey rant) but am interested to know whether other people think that this relationship is anywhere near normal?

Do I think the relationship is healthy? No.

But unfortunately, your job as a friend is to let her have a moan and give your tuppence (which you have done). All you can do is leave it there, and maybe in time she'll agree with you.

ShowMePotatoSalad, your original post stated you didn't think it was "that bad" and your subsequent post stated "if he's being verbally abusive then that's a big issue and something to end the relationship over."

So the way the comments read was that you didn't think he was abusive and they weren't issues to end the relationship over but that on re-reading the part detailing him referring to her as a miserable bitch, you found that part abusive.

mickeysminnie that's about the long and the sort of it, yes :-/

I said I'd re-read it. My original message was a mistake because I hadn't read your message properly first time round!

What do you want from me? Ive already told you I think he's abusive.

It's making sense to me that your friend is being defensive. I feel defensive now just communicating with you.

I think you are absolutely right to express your rage about him. Now that you have stay friends but don't dwell on this.
Even if she doesn't want to hear it it may make her think.
Unfortunately there are none so blind as those that will not see, as the saying goes.

He's a peach, isn't he?

Give your friend the number for Women's Aid. Encourage her to go on the Freedom Programme. Suggest she hunt about for financial documents, because she needs to know the family's financial situation and atm she only knows about a quarter of it.

If she were to suggest that they both put their wages into a joint account from which all household expenses are paid, what would he say?

Good luck to her.

ShowMePotatoSalad I don't want anything from you, I'm simply responding to you. I'm not sure where you got that my friend was defensive from, she wasn't. She agrees with me that the situation is shit, wasn't offended by my incredulity and our relationship is in no way altered by the conversation we've had. I'm sorry that communication with me has made you feel defensive, perhaps you should stop?

Mickeysminnie I wont bring it up with her, she knows how I feel about it and knows she can come to me for a rant or support or anything else she needs. She knows it's not reasonable to be living like this, I think she just needed to hear it from someone else to bolster her a bit.
Jux She suggested a joint account and he was adamant he didn't want one. Now she's found out about all this debt etc., I think that's a blessing as she would be financially joined to him which would adversely affect her rating.

she thinks my exclamations of “Why the fuck are you still together?!” are “a bit much”

she seems to think I am overreacting

Isn't that your friend being a bit defensive?

Thank you flora

Women's Aid has an advice section for people whose friends and family are living with abuse. Do have a read through it as it will really help you support your friend.

His behaviour is abusive but it can be very difficult to see the abuse of its your 'normal'. All you can do is reiterate that his behaviour isn't normal and that she deserves to be happy and safe.

You're friend isn't looking for your help or you opinion, she just wants to offload. She knows her H is a twat and her relationship isn't healthy but she doesn't want to or, isn't ready to do anything about it. Next time, zone out when she starts moaning or tell her that you would rather not hear it or, recommend she talks to a professional therapist.

Tell her that offloading, whilst doing nothing to improve her situation, is causing you discomfort.

floraeasy
No, I don't think she is being defensive. She wasn't offended, her "that's a bit much" reply to my asking "Why the fuck are you still together?" was said with a laugh. As I previously said, she agrees with me that it's not the way she should be living but she is under the impression that her relationship isn't that different to most others, hence why she thought it may be an overreaction on my part.

That is also the reason why I posted here - to get an idea of whether perhaps this is more normal than I perceive it to be.
The only "defense" she has made of him is that he is a good father. But he can be a good father and a good partner, the two aren't mutually exclusive.
I would also like to point out that I haven't private messaged ShowMeThePotatoSalad - not that she suggested the messages were from me, but just to prevent any possible confusion.

Isetan I don't want her to not be able to offload to me, that's one of the things friendship is for as far as I'm concerned!. I have offloaded to her on plenty of occasions and she has, on these occasions, offered a listening ear, advice and a kick up the arse when needed :-D I wouldn't dream of withdrawing my support from her. Sometimes, having someone to listen and offer an opinion is all the help we need to start seeing our situation in a clearer light.

flying - in answer to your question to me - I don't see it as 'doing more' than him because all the household and organisational stuff I do, I am effectively doing whilst he is at work. He works long hours and whilst he works at his job I work at mine - I sort the house and DC out, I do some voluntary work, it's my job, is how I see it.

When he is not at work we split childcare and cooking / washing up duties between us, and leisure time is equal, but there's no need for him to do washing or cleaning or present buying for example because I get all that done during the week whilst he's at work.

Obviously if I worked in a part or full time paid job outside the home it should be a different split, but it seems fair enough to me now.

But l yes - of course it would be a deal breaker if I didn't have access to finances or if he was twatting about getting us into debt because as others have said, that's abusive.

Flypaper - the housework "split" as you describe it is not massively out of the ordinary - e.g. I'm a SAHM with 3 DC and do pretty much everything and I can't imagine that would dramatically change if I worked from home 16 hrs p/w. My DH does work longer hours than this one though.

What I can't understand is -

a) Why they still have separate finances after 10 years and 3 DC!!

b) Why on earth she has to ask him for money to pay bills

c) Why are the bills coming out of her salary as defsult anyway, when presumably he is a higher earner?

d) What is he actually spending "his" money on?

Plus if DH ever spoke to me using that kind of language that would be the end.

If your friend knows you are posting sbout her on MN, won't she be reading this?

Not sure if I should even say this but apart from the financial/debt part it is not unlike several families I know.
A partnership can be 2 people doing unequal amounts of work or 2 types of different work.
He does work long hours.

If you are letting her offload ok, but is she asking for advice about the financial side, not the rest?

Dietcokeandwine Sounds like you've got it pretty sussed and you're both happy with the situation. I'm not entirely sure but I think she thought she had a fair idea of their finances and all this about the debts has come as a bit of a shock to her. He has minimised it as "it's not in your name so it's not your business" :-/

She is a very smart and capable woman so I don't think it will be long before she flips the tables on him.

Why does she put up with anything less than completely joint and transparent finances when it's her job that's been reduced due to childcare? How does that work?

OP, your friend is married, right? Because if not, she has seriously limited rights if the relationship breaks down (it's not great even if you are married these days, but at least better than if unmarried). She needs to stop being financially dependent on him, increase her working time (or at least have the potential to), make him take more responsibility for housework and childcare (or for him to pay someone else to do it). Otherwise she will be up shit creek when this relationship inevitably bites the dust. Hopefully house etc is in joint names.

I knew she did the majority of housework/childcare etc and apart from the odd "lazy git" remark, she seems to have been ok with the dicisuin of responsibility (not my idea of fair and equal buy not actually my business if she's happy with it). What has made her reassess the situation is now finding out that he has been running these debts up and has got I to such a mess with the repayments that he's had to enter into some financial order which means he can't have anything other than a basic bank account. So he isn't contributing to running the family and is resentful of contributing to the finances, too.
The house is hers - no mortgage, left to her when her mum died. She works while the children are at school, can meet their basic living costs on the money she earns so isn't financially dependent on him. It doesn't make sense for her to increase her hours because she would then have to pay for childcare. From what I can gather, his money is going on running his car, whatever financial agreement he's entered into to clear his debts and whatever she manages to get him to contribute to the family finances. She has some debts but these are all family related - furniture etc. bought in her name on credit agreements but he was in agreement to the purchases.

OK, that's good. She should be fine then if she decides to leave him.

Amar1na she isn't on MN but I will show her this if she asks about it.

If they're married it's his house too, and so are his debts. Please tell us they're not married.

If they're not married then he's a cocklodger isn't he? Now that he's not contributing, and not being open and honest with her.

Jux
Not married. But she does love him, rather inconveniently.