AIBU to expect help when I'm this ill

[MissesBloom]

Ok first time on Aibu so go easy on me.

Have had over the last few days some sort of virus, which has left me unable to get my head off the pillow. Am feeling a little better but yesterday and night before was horrendous. Have had a raging fever, aches and limbs feeling heavy, sore throat, severe headache and stomach upset.

Anyway dh has a pretty demanding job, I am a sahm. He is a director of a company so works very long hours and doesn't have an assistant or anyone helping him so pretty full on.

The AIBU bit is that he just refuses to take a day off to help. I was up most of Monday night was in too much pain to sleep, and warned him I wouldn't be able to take care of kids. I managed to grab an hour or two on the sofa in the end and I woke up to him telling me hed taken my ds to school and that id need to take care of dd (2) and the puppy as he had a busy day ahead.

As the day went on I got worse and worse and was worried about dd. I couldn't get up without feeling dizzy and very very sick. In the end I called dh in tears telling him to come home and he basically just said sorry not possible as he was interviewing people. He refused to cancel and carried on with his day. He did agree however to pick up ds from school and drop him home.

AIBU to ask what do people do when they don't have any help with childcare from family (ours don't live nearby and work full time). How does it work for everyone else when you get something like flu and you just can't function?

I was fuming tbh that dh wouldn't just take a day off to help with his own kids knowing how sick I am. I basically said that If he went to work today and left me again that would be it. He's taken today off (but has worked from home). Hes not lifted a finger in the house just been sat on laptop all day. I ventured downstairs to find every counter covered in stuff and not a single spoon or plate clean. Now he's parading around saying he's so stressed out he thinks he's having a stroke and how he can't 'keep this up'. Its one f*cking day!!

I've never had a job where I couldn't get an emergency day off so maybe I'm not seeing it through his eyes. But when he's sick (with even the tiniest sniffle) I take care if him...and of course he'll take a day off. Its infuriating!

So he does the grand gestures but none of the day to day reality? What a pig

By the time he retires, your children will be grown up and won't want to spend time with him.

Love isn't buying thoughtful gifts, love is caring for your partner, especially when they're ill. Love is the small things, love is being there for your partner. Love is sharing the problem solving. Love is sharing the care (as much as possible) of any children you've made together. Love is respecting your partner.

What you've described isn't love.

He may well love you insofar as he is able. But is it enough?? I cannot believe the turd has cancelled stuff for himself.

I have this feeling that he is going to be raging if his business deal goes bad because of this run of illness and his lack of business continuity planning . ?

What if you were in hospital, or had a slipped disc or detched retina, were in labour, or had just had GA and needed a capable adult with you?? All these people who say he can only take a sick day for himself... nonsense, it sounds like you need taking care of, not just the kids. He needs to man up, put you first and make some phone calls to get work rearranged... the way that working mums have to all the time of kids are ill/childcare falls through. for you

THere are some very poor DH’s and fathers here. There are very few, if any jobs, where you can’t take time off work in an emergency. DH is a partner in a local GP practice but has had to cancel his afternoon surgery appointments when I had the flu when our DT’s were 4 months old.

OP your idea of love seems to come down to spending money and buying you nice stuff. You do know that there could be a helpful assistant in his office delegated to do all that don't you?

I know my DH loves me because my happiness is his priority.

He's kind to me on a day to day basis: he brings me cups of tea, makes my favourite complicated sandwich for my lunch, de ices my car on freezing mornings, does more than his share of being the designated driver when we go out with friends, turns on the charm to my sometimes difficult family, gives me the deciding vote on all family holidays... the list goes on.

He's not big on the grand gestures; doesn't really buy flowers, buys my Christmas list but doesn't go off piste with imaginative stuff. But he's happy to nip to the corner shop and buy a chocolate bar for me if I'm in my PJs and he was a god among men when I had D and V.

I hope you took a really long time doing the school run. Given it's so easy to look after children and be ill, he shouldn't have had any trouble doing so

Early retirement, the DC won't have a relationship with him by then!

OP
You never get these years back.

-op just read your updates,

So sorry he is such a shit, l see it is much more than just this bout of illness...l hope you resolve it one way or another.

OP, I totally don't think YABU. However unfortunately I know how it is not to be able to take a fucking day off because of the responsibility that EVERYONE throws at you.... it's just crap, it seems like you never manage to please work AND family...

Seeing your update, id pretty much tell him he has behaved like a selfish shit who doesn't care abut his family and if he doesn't change he won't have his family anymore. I hope you made the school run take hours, haven't cleaned the house and moaned to him that you had to make dinner. Has he apologised profusely for suddenly being able to cancel his appointments?

Slightly unrelated (and yes sorry he is being unreasonable, glad you have been able to express this to him and he seems to be understanding), but... there's an app called Bubble that makes is extremely quick and easy to find local babysitters, you can read reviews of other people who've used them. You can book people to turn up in an hour. Next time you are I'll book them in - you'll be in the house at the same time so can see how they are getting on.

Panacott that sounds amazing I'm going to have a look this evening. As someone mentioned before I don't have any local friends or family. We moved here a couple of years ago, and whilst I know some of the school mum's to say hi to I don't know them well enough to ask them to baby sit. Most work anyways. I think as dh is also their parent this should also be his responsibility. If he is sick i pick up the slack, i expect him to do the same.

Have had yet another conversation about it with him today (although difficult with him now feeling as ill as I was). I haven't needed to rub it in tbh as he's sort of made a twat of himself and today had to try and keep going to save face. He was really really rough but kept saying don't worry I'll do the school run...ill walk the dog...ill do that blah blah. He had no intention of doing any of these things and knew he wasn't well enough to do so. I could have been a cow and allow him to do it but I couldn't stand it anymore. The house was a tip the dog was climbing the walls and the house descended into chaos.

So to the posters concerned about me mentioning dh buying me lovely gifts, I did say it's not just about the gift..the value...its the time he's spent planning it. It could be worth 10p but he always finds something that I would love..he knows me really well and I find it romantic that he understands what I want or need. I just used that as an example.

Don't get me wrong dh can be a shit (as can I at times I'm sure) but he does love me. He has project managed my parents build on their home which is extensive and has taken god knows how many hours of his and my time. He spent weekend upon weekend working on their drawings, planning, visiting different suppliers with them, arranging all of the work, visiting site if he could cram it into an already jam packed day, not to mention the flak he's taken from my parents unfairly when things didn't go to plan. He does this because he loves me, He loves them and he is a caring person at times.

He is just bone bloody idle as my late grandma used to say. He was spoiled rotten by his mum who allowed him to never lift a finger. He's learned to get away with doing as little as possible by claiming I moan too much. At work he is a different person, at home he expects to be able to come home and sit on his computer or watch tv all night/weekend. Life just isn't bloody like that.

To the poster who said I shouldn't have expected him to cancel his interviews, I didn't. I expected him to cancel the rest of the day. I understand if someone has had to book a day off work they can't just change plans an hour before they'd be due to see dh. He could have done both (They were at opposite ends of the day) and came home inbetween but he wouldn't. He went out straight from the school run knowing how ill I was.

I've warned him several times that if it carries on he won't have a family to come home to when he retires. The kids already are disconnected from him particularly the eldest. He vehemently takes my side if dh says anything negative towards me, and is generally very protective of me. He dislikes his dad and finds him short tempered.

Anyway we both agreed about the emergency childcare as a good option. I just need him to see that I'm fed up of being the invisible wife. More to the point I don't want the kids to think this is how a marriage/partnership should work.

I'm not surprised he was glad to help your parents out - it was just another way to opt out of family life and all the unglamorous bits that go with it.

The grand gestures and thought full gifts are also glamorous to him. Looking after the kids isn't glamorous. He's cherry picking the bits he likes.

How does he react to the idea that the kids don't feel very warm towards him and his eldest actively dislikes him, OP? Because that ought to be a real blow to him. It doesn't sound like it was.

He may love you, but it doesn't stop him thinking of you as a lesser being than him. Someone who can get on with the boring jobs (like childcare) while he does the ones he finds rewarding and challenging.

He’s saying negative stuff about you to the kids?! He just gets worse and worse.

He hates it that ds feels that way. He tries to spend time one on one, which I encourage because I know children sometimes favour the parent who they spend most time with.

He sometimes blames me for it, he thinks I've encouraged it somehow. I haven't..if I catch ds being cheeky to his dad I always pull him up on it. I just can't always agree with his discipline. It's erratic. If I think he's being too harsh with ds I do intervene and try to get him to be more reasonable. He expects an awful lot from a 5 yr old boy imo.

Again him doing my parents home is another example. He does many more things , I know He loves me, I've known him since we were 13 years old, we enjoy eachothers company, we sit and talk sometimes about what well do when the kids are grown and we can start to enjoy eachother again and all the places well go and things well see. Perhaps we have just stopped doing all the small things for eachother that couples in love do? Maybe I've not paid enough attention to our relationship. The arguments we have now are more or less the same as we had 11 years ago. He was the same when I moved in with him in the beginning. I've never managed to get him to care about his home.

He has formulated a plan recently that one of us puts both kids to bed while the other cleans the house, and it works for the most part (before I basically did everything and he would put one kid to bed). It's just he doesn't care if the house is messy, He doesn't care if the dishes aren't done, the recycling hasn't been done, bins taken out and he always does the bare minimum he can get away with. It's tiring sometimes.

There aren't many little shows of affection or cups of tea. Might get a bacon sarnie on the weekend if I'm really lucky

Sorry hit the button too soon.

Neither of us are really doing nice little things for eachother. Im not because I'm exhausted most of the time , and I'm sure he's the same. The difference is that if he expressed to me that something was getting him down id fix it. He just complains I ask too much

Why are you in a marriage with someone whose own son doesn't like him?

That virus is exactly what my son had (and I now have too!) I took him to the doctor as he lost so much weight and she said it was an adenovirus, if it is the same one it ends with an eye infection! I hope you are feeling better. My DH left on wends for two nights away and hadn't lifted a finger for our DS birthday which is tomorrow. My boss sent me home because I looked so terrible yet my DH doesn't bat an eyelid and goes on his merry way (I also have a 3 year old) I honestly feel like leaving him. Sorry massively unhelpful but I know how you feel!

He does sound pretty awful.

If it makes you feel better I am mid divorce with one of these. I literally felt that I was not allowed to be ill.

Also very familiar the kids not wanting to be with him and then blaming me for the fact they want me.

When they are bone idle like this they secretly like their kids not wanting them I think as it's a great excuse!

I think your DH is out of order not to take a day off when you need him to. However, I also think you need to sort out back-up childcare in case of situations like this. I have a list of local childminders and emergency nannies to call on in times like this. My DH has a demanding job and often travels abroad. There are times when he simply can't get back or take time off and we have no family nearby.

Also a good social network would help. I'd be happy to look after a friend's toddler for a day if friend was unwell or had some kind of emergency.