I'm fed up being the family worrier. I want dh's laid back persona.

[ssd]

I don't want to waste time worrying about every last feckin thing... The boys / work/ money / bills / health / the future / bloody corona virus and if normal life will ever resume.

I want to be dh and have what's happening in my favourite sport as my motivation. Who has signed, transferred, whatever.

And sod the big stuff.

So what’s stopping you? Does worrying about any of these things help you/them?

I know worrying is a waste of time. I know que cera cera. I know I know I know.

BUT someone has to manage the money/remember bin day/get the shopping in/ realise the insurance needs renewed

Why is it always me???

@Merename

So what’s stopping you? Does worrying about any of these things help you/them?

Cos I think the place would go to shit and that'd just annoy me.

Hmmm... my question is, who would be doing it if it wasn’t you?
(Disclaimer: I assume you mean more of sorting out admin and tasks rather than having an anxious nervous breakdown due to your worry every day)
Maybe you write a list and sit down with hubby. Discuss how to split it evenly.

You can manage all that stuff without taking the emotional load. Your partner doesn't take that load, that's why he can be laid back. Good luck

You clearly need to have a discussion with your partner.
It’s not all down to you .
Do you think that maybe you’re wanting to control everything? Are you enabling him?

@Diverseduvet

You can manage all that stuff without taking the emotional load. Your partner doesn't take that load, that's why he can be laid back. Good luck

How can I do that? How to not take the emotional overload? That's exactly what bothers me.

@1Morewineplease

You clearly need to have a discussion with your partner. It’s not all down to you . Do you think that maybe you’re wanting to control everything? Are you enabling him?

Probably. I am much more organised than him. I don't mind being organised. But it's the emotional overload that bothers me. I didn't realise till now.

I could have written your post myself.

My husband constantly tells me how negative I am because I worry and catastrophise.

I sort insurances, energy switches, passport renewals, clothes for kids, I have to remind him to phone the garage to see if we can trade the car in, I work full time, I have home educated my elder dc and looked after younger during lockdown when he was off nursery. It’s exhausting. I created a thread on here the other night about how low and anxious I am so you are not alone OP, far from it.

Not to mention clean. Thankfully DH cooks 😂

You are left carrying the mental load while he gets away with it behind the excuse of been laid back.
That is not laid back it is entitlement.
You're not alone. My DP will get involved a lot though I'm sick to my teeth now with reminding him what needs to be done.

@thebigredbutton, thanks.

Dh is a good man
But I feel I need to be concerned for everyone, worried for everyone cos he doesn't. And I'm fed up. I want him to worry, just slightly, to take it off me for a bit.
I suspect he just doesn't have any need.

him worrying won't stop you doing it. you need to let go of that yourself.

I don’t think you’ll change him @ssd you need to look at yourself and think about how you can change. I need to do it too (although personally I think it’s almost impossible to change your personality 😬

That's depressing but true.

Hah I literally just lost it with my DP as sick of taking on the mental load while he is ‘laid back’, and we don’t even have kids! Is there something in the water at the moment. It’s exhausting. I’ll let you know when I’ve completed my plans for a female only commune- there’ll be a lot of rotas.

If he's not doing his fair share in general then that's a perfectly good reason to get annoyed and tell him to pull his finger out.

But I don't know why you think any of those jobs are stressful in themselves and I can't imagine any reason they would be responsible for emotional overload. And if I'm completely honest if dp told me he wanted me to worry about similar mundane things or that the emotional overload was to much I'd be either pissed off that he wanted me to be needlessly stressing alongside him, or genuinely concerned he had a mh problem if such small things were blown out of all proportion.

I agree with trainspottingwelsh and others who have said that the things you have mentioned aren't really cause for significant worry (except of course managing money if you don't have enough of it but it doesn't sound like that from your op).

When I was single I had to do all of that on my own and tbh I never found it a "worry" or "emotional overload" the you're suggesting- those things were all just more things that needed to be doing in the same way that putting the washing on wasn't really a cause for worry, or cooking dinner.

All these things need to be done and if your dh isn't doing his share then get him to - but they don't all need to be worried about! That's on you....

Have you tried cannabis?

I agree with @TrainspottingWelsh and @newyearnoeu — you seem to be correlating big worries you can’t do anything about like coronavirus and the future with regular household tasks like taking the bins out, grocery shopping and renewing insurance. Your husband should undertake an equal share of chores/household admin, but I don’t see where the ‘worry’ comes in in that context. Are you someone who gets terribly stressed about routine things?

Was wondering the same as OxenoftheSun. Could you work on separating ordinary household tasks from emotional worrying?

How about sitting down writing a list with two columns? "Work that needs to be done" and "Things to worry about". Don't let anything go in the second column unless you can see that it is a genuine cause for concern. So, yes to putting the bins there if there are crocodiles in the passage-way or (less flippantly) if you have a medical condition which means you're never sure you're going to manage it without injury. Bills go in here if you are struggling financially, not otherwise. So you will probably end up with corona and a few other things in the second column, but you will be able to see that they are relatively few.

Now take the first column, the one with routine things that just need to be done. Do you need to do them all? Could we work on a fairer division of labour here? Could you settle for your husband actually doing some of the blooming work, even if he doesn't worry about it?

As for the tasks that end up as your share, could you make some of them more routine, less of a mental effort? Could some bills be paid as direct debit?

That then leaves the actual worries. Could you set aside a time of day when you allow yourself to worry? Or give yourself a time limit: "I have now been worrying about this for 5 minutes, time is up, I will use a distraction technique to make my mind move away from it".

Thank you for all the answers here.
I am someone who worries and stresses over too much, I can't see the wood for the trees.
I don't want dh yo e like me, I'd hate anyone to be like me, it's exhausting and it gets me down.
I'll take all suggestions on board.

Another thing occurred to me, OP, by the way you talk about being the 'family worrier', like it's the same as being the family budgeter, or the family cook -- don't fall into the trap of thinking that every family needs someone to do the worrying, as though it's a crucial chore. It really doesn't. It does nothing to effect outcomes, and it just makes your life much more difficult.

I think my mother is a bit like this, and the thing is that she has literally nothing real to worry about at all -- she and my dad are in good health and living in a nice house with a good set of neighbours and community networks, interesting hobbies and volunteering, they have four happy, functional, solvent adult children, etc etc.

I once asked her what she was worrying about when she made some reference to lying awake at night and worrying, and it turned out she was 'worrying' about my cousin (someone she might see once a year who lives in a different part of the country), who had just moved in with his girlfriend -- apparently what she was worrying about was that he'd moved in to her flat, and what would happen if she threw him out???

The point I'm trying to make is that she's so used to worrying that she actively looks for material to feed it, and it's no way to live.

(And my cousin has long been happily married to his girlfriend and they have three children. So that was a wasted 3 am worry if there was ever one!)

That's the thing with me, I know worrying is utterly pointless. My dad told me a few weeks before he died he wishes he hadn't worried so much. I thought at the time, I'm going to not waste my life worrying. And here I am in my 50s worrying like a mad thing. I have propranolol which helps when I'm really worked up and the Dr gave me sertraline but I haven't started it yet, Im worried about the side effects and getting hooked on it.