How did I end up in this dynamic

[Truthbomb]

I need to get this out of my head. I want to go to counselling however our current budget just doesn’t allow for this and GP wait times are insane.

I am a woman with two children and my partner (their dad) is driving me to insanity. I feel fucked from having to constantly live in my masculine energy to make up for what he lacks. I make every decision in this house hold and I don’t want to. I beg for his input sometimes and he says ‘I’ll support whatever you want to do’. That’s so fucking unhelpful. Pretty much like Julia’s husband from motherland! I am at a point where I’m starting to loathe him and find him rather pathetic. I meal plan, shop, budget, organise the bills, make every decision regarding our kids, tell him what he needs to do regarding household maintenance etc. He asked me where his work shirts were this morning and I wanted to combust. How privileged is that question? Just living in the knowledge that someone else has organised your life for you. He will ask me if we have butter in the fridge before even LOOKING IN THE FUCKING FRIDGE.

To sum it up, he does nothing except work and when he comes home he makes very basic conversation and childish jokes and I really am beginning to loathe him. He always says to me ‘am I doing enough, how can I help to support you more?’, but I am trying to explain that I can’t teach him to use his eyeballs and see that the washing needs bringing in, or the stairs need hoovering, why an earth do I have to remind him? The problem with ‘asking for help’ means that when I don’t think for him, it inevitably doesn’t get done and then that is still my fault for not telling him what to do.

He always says how grateful he is to me and how I teach him to communicate and be open about his emotions and help him budget better since he is terrible with finances but I can’t think of one thing that he brings to the table to enrich my quality of life other than a second salary.

I am independent but I also would like a balanced relationship where I feel taken care of occasionally but I feel I can never relax, never have my guard down because it’s always at the cost of something slipping. Every evening after dinner he says ‘I’ll do the dishes just leave them for a minute’ but that essentially means he will leave them out including food on the plates until the following morning and I find it so frustrating. We have an open plan house and I don’t want to smell or have dirty dishes in my eyeline when I’m trying to relax. Inevitably I end up doing it because I find it so irritating.

He just seems to have no urgency, no direction, no motivation, no interests. After work he just moans about his team and lives in a victimhood that is soul destroying to listen to.

He is already telling me this year is going to be a difficult year as his suffers from SADs and he can feel it starting already. I know he will expect me to understand and counsel him through this and I just can’t do it anymore. I feel like I may have a breakdown from carrying everyone in our household whilst all my needs are completely unmet.

I cannot go on like this, I fear living with this level of resentment and stress will make me unwell.

I am sorry for rambling, I just need to get these thoughts out of my brain. They are all consuming and so tiring.

I realise these techniques might be helpful…
but how the hell did we ever get to this??!

we need to devise playing cards to make a bloody grown adult do their own chores! It’s madness!!

well said! They are never like this to start with.

It’s as goody as asking a victim of domestic violence why they stay with them!

As OP and many others point out, it’s incredibly unsexy. If they’d been like this at the start, the relationship would never have got off the ground!

I know @Catastrophejane ! I think part of it probably comes from what DH’s parents were like with housework when growing up. I know for my DH, his dad literally never did any housework, never even cooked a meal, his dad brags about this to this day! His mum did all of the housework as well as the cooking and dealing with the children. But his mum also didn’t have a job from her eldest being born to her youngest being 21! So the housework and the cooking and the kids was “her job”, while his dad was out at work.

When his mum pops round and see’s DH hoovering or washing dishes she always comments how HER husband never had to do any of that. And every single time I politely remind her that both of us work full time, I don’t have any more free time than he does to do the house!

Hence I wasn’t massively surprised when DH didn’t pull his weight with housework initially, it was almost an unknown concept to him. Now he skips round with the mop like Oliver Twist 🤣

When I was married to a man like this, I got hired help. I didn't talk to him about it, just found someone and told him after - also that it was coming out of the joint budget, as he seemed to think it was "for myself" 😠

It made my life my own again, but he carried on being an irresponsible twat. I was still doing the admin, planning & booking holidays and our social life, etc. He was still swanning off for nights out and weekends with "the boys" as the mood took him. I was still his mother, anchor and domestic appliance, only now with staff. And we split anyway.

I think you may as well rip the band-aid off, rather than sticking another (expensive) one over it. I suppose there's a possibility yours may shape up if you go full nuclear on him ... but he's very likely to backslide every chance he gets.

When I was married to a man like this, I got hired help. I didn't talk to him about it, just found someone and told him after - also that it was coming out of the joint budget, as he seemed to think it was "for myself

I don't blame you in the least for doing this but I'm not surprised that it didn't save your marriage. It mitigated the effects on you by lightening your workload, which obviously is good. But it doesn't fix the deeper problem of him having no respect for you and you then feeling resentful and contemptuous. Alleviates the symptom (and why not, the symptom is horrible to suffer) but doesn't address the cause.

This man is a useless man child. Leave him and a weight will be lifted

When you start washing up and he says oh I was just about to do that, why do you not then say, knock yourself out and step away from the sink? And then in their eye line sit down on your phone with a cup of tea and watch them do it to completely reverse the roles.

The Fair Play is a good idea because it shows people what is involved in a task, so if it says laundry that means collecting the dirty laundry, putting it on to wash, drying the laundry, folding/ironing and putting it away. A bit like food shopping plan the meals, check the fridge/cupboards to see what needs buying, make a list, go to the supermarket, unpack it on the conveyor, back into bags, unpack it at home, put things away and the cook the fucking dinner. It is exhausting.

Dh is very hands on, cooks, chooses Christmas presents, attended every sports day, knows best friends names, teachers etc, he is fully dialled in. He was raised by a sahm who taught him how to bake, cook and clean because FIL went to work. That's it, went to work. MIL wasn't going to raise children who can't be independent. Lucky for me too as I am disabled so I don't work and he just steps up.

These incompetent men at home always seem to be managers at work or handle complex work loads without a manager micromanaging everything they do. Interesting that isn't it?

Well that’s just a silly and unkind thing to say, isn’t it?

Obviously they don’t ‘let them into their lives’. It doesn’t start off that way. It evolves, so slowly that you don’t notice, until it becomes unbearable.

It might be worth remembering that it is the DH who is at fault here, not the OP.

I don't think counselling is going to help you with this, OP. You are living with a man you just absolutely detest. You hate his lack of contribution, you hate his conversation and his jokes, you hate having to support him through his depression and you are physically repulsed by the thought of having sex with him.

There is only one answer to your problem, and it's divorce. Pure and simple. You are not suddenly going to fall in love with a man you literally loathe. Things have gone way too far. You need to separate.

"But it doesn't fix the deeper problem of him having no respect for you and you then feeling resentful and contemptuous."

I agree with the above. Although I don't think the same applies to OP I think you need the full package (both head/practical side of things and heart).
I was married to someone who on paper was very competent and hands on.
When we had kids he literally left everything to me in terms of caring for the children and (incrementally) in terms of housework etc.
However he was very good at "taking care" of things like ironing his own work shirts, he was always quite a good cook and very good at things like diy and gardening.
However unbeknown to me whilst i was running around like a blue arsed fly working full time, caring for young kids and housework, he was having an affair with a work colleague.
So don't assume that you doing everything at home is some kind of thing he will automatically miss when you initiate divorce. Just dont be surprised if suddenly and strangely he recalls and reimplements all the skills you say he had before you had kids once he is living on his own.
You doing all-the-things is not in any way going to make you feel irreplaceable in his eyes and please understand I say this with utmost respect for you and what you do (because I did it myself). I think you need to be free now.

OP it sounds like you're doing the household work, you're project managing the household work, you're now expected to fix your H because the current system isn't working and on top of all that, you're blaming yourself and taking responsibility for this situation coming about.

I don't know if it is worth a last ditch attempt to fix it. It sounds like you've already tried. Maybe the next project to manage is just ending the relationship. If you're recoiling when he touches you, it doesn't sound fixable.

I've watched my mother become more and more ground down over decades. Of course in some ways her situation will be different. She and my father were born during WW2 so my dad was trained to be a lazy, entitled twat in the house and he's fully embraced that role. But my mother is now exhausted. It's as if my dad is a parasitic life form with her as the host and it's exhausting her. I have no intention of turning into this. I don't in the least blame you for your situation coming about - and I wouldn't blame you if you ended it, either.

Yes - that is the problem. The kids suffer. The best way is to lay the law down on things that don’t impact you or them and stick to it. Anything he leaves lying around - open his wardrobe door and chuck it in. Laundry? Leave him to do his. I accept it’s not a huge amount in the scheme of things but it would avoid the issues above.

With his pathetic attempts to rekindle intimacy you’re going to have to spell it out. No way am I having sex with someone who can’t be arsed to (insert list).

Women hear me. He won't change into what you want no matter how much you think he will. Don't marry these guys thinking you'll bring them up to scratch. Really. Let them find another mum.

@Truthbomb

I need to tell him I’m on the verge of leaving as a last ditch attempt to change things so that I know in my own mind I have tried everything. If that doesn’t change him I will have no choice but to go.

Before you tell him this, do your maths/get your ducks in a row.

• Research how much your house would sell for and the resulting equity after legal costs.
• check what your combined finances are, including both your pensions,
• see if, were you to divorce, if you'd be eligible for universal credit and also how much he'd need to pay in child benefits (CMS)
• ensure you claim the child benefits not just for your child(ren's) benefit but for your NI/State pension
• get a recommendation from trusted friends, or The Law Society website (check "Find a solicitor" for a good family law solicitor.
• start "quiet quitting" on all the chores at home which will not affect you or your child(ren) so he can start doing his own washing, ironing, food if you don't feel like cooking, arranging medical or other appointments for him, etc.

All this is information gathering and none of which you need to act on if you don't want to. But, knowledge is power and will help your focus on how you could cope financially without him. 🌹

Your mistake is assuming that he doesn't understand the situation or that you are carrying the mental load.

He absolutely does. He just doesn't care.

I say this having come to this realisation myself in my last relationship. I'm now with a man who pulls his own weight and my god it's been a revelation.