I need to know whether I would be unreasonable to blow my top when DH wakes up

[Namechanger20183110]

Some perspective please, as I've been up all night with a teething baby and I'm not in the most rational of places right now.

DH is working from home and has been since lockdown started, even on the weekends to "catch up", even though he's doing more hours now than he's ever done. He spends the whole day working in the bedroom while I entertain a baby and a hyperactive pre-schooler. I feel like I get no break. He has done one "night shift" with the baby in the 6 months since he was born. We sleep in separate rooms as I don't want him to be disturbed from when the baby monitor wakes him up as he will then moan about how tired he is the next day.

So I'm stressed from looking after the kids all day and being confined to the house, I'm sleep deprived at the mo, and I'm also anxious generally about the family contracting the virus. So as you can imagine re the latter, i am trying to minimise how much we go to supermarkets etc.

Except DH just won't stop eating. He has form for eating a whole loaf of bread in one sitting for endless ham sandwiches, just as a "snack". He will hoover up anything that's in the house : chocolates, crisps, wraps, pittas, cheeses, leftovers, frozen ready meals, pizzas, noodles - anything and everything has snack potential to him. I make healthy meals with huge portions for dinner, but it's never enough.

We are spending an obscene amount on shopping every week. Given the limit on buying only 3 of certain items, i'm trying to explain to him to we need to be considerate about what we eat as I don't want us making multiple trips out to re-stock the fridge and cupboards , we're in the middle of a pandemic here and surely need to make some sacrifices?! It just falls on deaf ears.

He is 16 stone, so not obese, but is definitely overweight. He is 38. He was told by a doctor only before Xmas that his bloods showed that he is borderline diabetic. He has history of type 2 diabetes in his family. But still he eats chocolates, biscuits and cereals like there is no tomorrow.

Ham! Endless amounts of ham. I have to buy it as DS wants it in his sandwiches, but the packet is gone within a day. 30 slices. I have told him about the links with ham and processed red meat with cancer and that it's risky for him to be eating up to 60 slices of wafer ham in one week (yes, 60, I'm sure he's had more than that in some weeks) but it's like he doesn't give a shit!! If I was constantly doing something that increased my risk of getting cancer, he'd go mad at me

He's not overeating because of stress about the virus by the way, he has eaten like this for years.

Last night after putting both kids to bed (which also seems to be my sole responsibility), I made a really nice dinner of Mediterranean sea bass with loads of veg and a shit load of rice , enough rice to fill 3 dinner plates to the top, as I wanted to make sure he was full up so that he didn't feel the need to snack again before he went to bed. He ate the shit load of rice, all of it.

I cleared up the kitchen and went up to bed at 9. He came up at 1am as I was awake with the baby and heard him. While I was tossing and turning at 10pm ish, I heard him in the kitchen helping himself to more food.

I've come downstairs with the baby at 5.30am and the kitchen looks a complete state. A sink full of dishes. Rubbish everywhere, condiments left out with their lids half hanging off. So last night, after eating the huge fuck off meal I made, he then went on to eat half a bag of Birdseye chicken dippers, 2 wraps, 4 slices of bread, lots of salad, lots of cheese, nearly a full packet of ham (which has 30 slices in it) and about 3 bowls of cereal. I'm not scavenging through the bins by the way, he's left the evidence on the worktops.

I'm so fucking fed up of having this same tireless discussion with him. It's so selfish, why the fuck does he need to eat so much when I'm making him filling dinners every night!? And to leave the mess for me to deal with in the morning!! Every time I raise this with him I'm made to feel like I'm neurotic.

Am I just dealing with this irrationally because I'm overly stressed, or am I right to be annoyed??

I need a big coffee

I couldn't live with him. How incredibly selfish. He deserves you going mad but will it make any difference?

No wonder you've asked to separate. I wouldn't be able to cope with this either.

It may be harsh to say but disordered eating or not (it definitely is), it's not your problem.

People have disordered drinking, drug and gambling habits and it's always ok to leave a relationship in which those are happening.

If this wasn't a pandemic it still wouldn't be ok to eat all the food in the house and expect you to buy more to replace it before the next shopping day. It's entitled, it's inconsiderate. It displays a complete lack of any respect for you.

Make him do the good shop. Make him organise meals for himself. You just do yourself and the kids.

I agree with the posters who have drawn a distinction between the eating and the other behaviour.

Absolutely unacceptable to leave all the parenting and cleaning to you. Wake him up now and go mad at his lazy selfishness!

The eating pattern sounds genuinely disordered, so asking him to be considerate during the pandemic may not be possible for him without external help.

God the mess is what would break me. You’ve been looking after the kids all day and all night by yourself with no help and then you come down in the morning to that? It’s so disrespectful not only to your time but also to your role in the family. You can clear that up. That’s your job.
If this was the first time he had done this, or you had never tackled it with him before, my response would be much different and much more sympathetic to him.
Yes he clearly has an issue with food and if he won’t seek help there are ways you can segregate family food from his, get him to shop more frequently etc. There are coping strategies for that.
But the fact he leaves all the parenting to you? He does nothing to give you a break. And then he leaves a shit pit for you to come down to in the morning after being up during the night with your children?
That’s the breaking point.

You say you have mentioned separating twice during lockdown. He’s not taking you seriously because you don’t know yourself if you mean it, or if that’s what you want. Only you can decide OP.
One day of him being ‘sorry’ wouldn’t be enough for me. I’d be telling him to start looking for somewhere else to live. And mean it.
I bet your anxiety improves 10 fold once he’s gone.

@Namechanger20183110 your posts are so sad to read I’m so sorry you are having to live like this during lockdown. Looking after 2 young kids by yourself is hard enough when you can get out of the house and entertain them and yourself. But now being confined it’s even harder. I sympathise a lot and feel so lucky my DH helps with bed time and takes it in turns to get up in the morning.

I’m sorry but I would find that behaviour so unattractive and very hard to live with, it sounds soul destroying. He obviously hasn’t taken your earlier chats seriously. Like a previous poster said I would be really concerned about how his behaviour would influence the children. And seeing their food locked away in car boots and padlocked boxes can’t send out a healthy message about food either.

I’d there any family you could move in with to send a clear message that he needs to change. Let him deal with sourcing his own food and cleaning for a few weeks. Then maybe give it another go to see if he can change? You can’t go on living like that. It sounds miserable

He sounds vile even without the food thing. I cannot believe you put up with him doing nothing to help his family.

This isn't just greed, it can't be, it sounds so disordered. So calling him a "greedy fat pig" wouldnt help. But it's only part of the problem. The not helping. The not clearing up. Relationships can't really survive this, we can all. We can all be a bit selfish and a bit thoughtless but overall a good relationship is built on tbe ability to communicate and the ability to compromise. So sorry OP I don't see a future for your relationship unless your DH can speak to you about what's going on. Because if this carries on it will affect your boys as they grow up and they will think this is normal behaviour.

Go and wake him up and give him the kids. Go for a (very long) walk to calm down. When you come back tell him that things need to change or after lockdown you want a divorce. Make him sit up and actually take notice.

It all seems to centre around his selfishness.

His not helping with the children, locking himself away in the bedroom all day, eating all the food, leaving all the mess, not listening to you....it's all, essentially, selfish behaviour. Leaving out the health risks of the AMOUNT he's eating...

Does he think of himself as the Head of the House?

I really couldn't be doing with it all, the creeping down to the kitchen to stuff himself on what seems like ridiculous amounts of food. I guess the only thing you could try is to point out that he'll be dead by fifty if he does get Type 2 diabetes and keeps eating like this. But, if he's essentially selfish, he won't listen.

I've got a horrible feeling that separation may be the only way forward.

You have got two separate problems: an inconsiderate, lazy selfish DH who is leaving all the parenting to you, and a DH with an eating disorder. Don't get me wrong - he is being an utter twunt about a lot of things - but I doubt he is able to control the eating.

If it was just the eating that was the issue then I'd be all for the op being supportive and helping him. An eating disorder doesn't account for everything else though. There is no way I could live like this.

Your life would be easier as a single mum, and I really don't say that lightly. Is there even extra money from all this supposed extra work?

Just thinking about this.

My dp is 6ft 4. No idea what he weighs, but its a lot. Though he isnt fat. Broad shoulders, lots of muscle as he has a manual job. He eats quote a bit of food

My kids, are mine not his. There is not a chance he would eat so much when we are in bed and he wouldn't dream of eating all of somegthing I bought for the kids. They aren't his kids, but he still wouldn't do it.

Because decent people don't.

Dp bought some pastries that are his adults sons favourites. Again, I wouldn't dream if eating them all before he came round. Is shitty behaviour and shows he doesn't give a shit.

Did he want a second child BTW? Since he was so useless and didn't help with the first?

This is bizarre behaviour. DP is a greedy fucker, but he knows to ask before scoffing something whether or not it's planned for a meal. Plus we share cooking, shopping and meal planning. (Actually, if DP was doing this, it'd be easy to sort because there are quite a few foods he doesn't like, so I'd just buy those lol).

He's either having some kind of breakdown and eating to ease anxiety or he's a selfish fuckwit and you need to ltb.

Your bigger problem is that he is a selfish, lazy cunt who is happy to let you run yourself into the ground looking after two children AND him, as though he is some great big man baby. What is he actually for? He's using work as an excuse to keep you as the sole carer of two children so he doesn't have to, and he makes massive amounts of extra work. Why didn't he clear up the kitchen after dinner? When do you get to sit down and breathe? Never, i bet. All the while he's sitting up in his castle "working" probably congratulating himself on how hard he is working. And probably feeling quite smug about how he's not having to do anything with the kids or the house because you're doing absolutely everything.

I'm sorry but if it was me, he wouldn't be getting a third chance. He's blown two already. The fact that his efforts to try harder only lasts one bloody day must feel like poke in the eye. You must be at breaking point. I couldn't respect a man who made me do all the care 24/7 for a baby that's half his. I really think you should start making a plan to break free from him. The only reason i wouldn't go mad at him this morning is because the children night hear it. He certainly deserves it. The reason why he is a greedy oaf isn't yours to get to the bottom of, by the way. He's got no interest in solving his own problem, don't add to your mountain of tasks in trying to figure this out for him.

My God, I thought DH ate a lot.

This is very similar to binge eating. He needs to see a doctor after lockdown.

I had an eating disorder when I was younger - mine was anorexia and bulimia so I ate and vomited. I thought I was binging but I was just eating a regular amount. I’m not sure this is an eating disorder tbh. It doesn’t sound like he has shame or control issues around his eating. I think it sounds at best like a blood sugar issue and at worst plain greed.

Yesterday I had a ‘bad’ day in regards to carbs as I am getting my tsunami period, so my body is crying out for it and my recovery is part of listening to your body. I ate a slice of peanut butter on toast, a small slice of meat and potato pie, spaghetti bolognaise and half a slice of carrot cake that I shared with DP. I count this as a bad day diet wise as usually I go for much more veg and salad (don’t eat fruit) but my body dictated. There is no way that your DP should think what he ate yesterday is a normal amount. A massive, three portion meal with rice and then all that stuff on top is outright disgusting. You are allowed to think and feel that, we all agree with you. And you are allowed to say you don’t like it, won’t facilitate it and will walk away with it. It’s your life, you don’t have to be around that if it’s making you feel bad.

I agree with PP who said don't make massive portions. Gradually reduce the portion sizes.
I'm sure your son will manage without ham. Just don't buy any. My DS is obsessed with salami. I only buy it occasionally. We had a few days of moaning but he's got the hang of it.
You do have a major problem with your DH. His behaviour is selfish and rude. I wouldn't wait to wake him. And no you're not neurotic.

I do think this could be blood sugar related. My DF has type 2 diabetes. I remember him eating lots shortly before being diagnosed.

Sleep deprivation is torture on the best of circumstances, I feel for you OP

You're DC are lucky to have you caring for them properly despite having no support.

He may have an eating disorder that's true but as an adult it's on him to sort it. You're not his Mum.

Far far worse is his total disregard for you on every level.

If I were you I'd think more about whether you want your DC to grow up with a man so lacking in empathy as a role model.

The eating issue seems to me a symptom of that problem, among others no doubt.

Personally, in the short term i.e. lockdown, I'd refuse to tidy up after him, tell him he's doing the food shopping as of now, and find a way to lock up the kids' food as has been suggested.
Then think about what relationship you want for yourself and to show your children.
I hope you get some rest today.

I think he needs professional help with the eating, it's so extreme. If he has always been like this though its going to be impossible for him to change without really wanting to and a lot of hard work with he help of a trained third party.

Eating aside though, why the fuck does he think it's ok to do absolutely nothing about housework / child rearing / shopping and cooking, and for you to pick up all his share while exhausted from two very young children? This is completely unacceptable. What is his excuse? Fundamentally only a really selfish person will be happy with their partner who they are supposed to love, doing two peoples share of the work while they do whatever they like. You could try counselling but do you really think someone that selfish who only cares about himself, is going to leave?

I think I'd chuck him out to be honest as I've got the feeling you'll give him an ultimatum, he will promise to change and he will do a tiny bit more and then slip into bad habits again as he is fundamentally lazy and does not care. Then you'll end up leaving in a few years anyway by which point you'll hate him and the kids will be old enough to register that he has left

He sounds like he could be bulimic. That's not just being greedy, that is compulsive binge eating and he would be a lot more than 16 stone if he wasn't throwing it back up. He needs to seek psychological help.

Yes of course. During lockdown op should avoid anything her kids like because her greedy husband can't share.

Should she avoid buying coral because he ate 3 bowls worth? Or bread? Or wraps.

Let's make sure the kids don't get the food they like because their dad is a selfish cunt.

Do you have space to stay with family? I would be getting them to come and help you pack up your kids and your food and staying with them. Or telling him to go and stay with his parents.

Don’t go ape shit. Tell him calmly you’ve reached the end and need some time apart. You have a corporate job. You can do this alone if needs be. If you do leave and then take him back, don’t expect him to change unless he takes very specific steps and gets therapy.

Otherwise your life is going to be like this longer term. Do you really want to get a fridge and lock boxes to store in your bedroom? This is the only other solution.