DH gravely ill - I have no sympathy

[DeBuugs]

This is half light hearted and half a vent.

We have two young children who still wake up a lot at night. DH never does any of the nights - he got himself into a nice little position where the kids only want me. I really feel the lack of sleep creeping on me and has been for a while.

DH has been sick with cold for quite a while now. He walks around all huffing, looking like he is about to faint and when he talks to me talks supper quiet and his speech breaks up - you know where I’m going with this. Like someone acting for their boss when calling in sick 🤣.

I gave him no sympathy since he announced he had a cold (I was sick then myself) and I think we have a stand off here and he will be sulking acting like he is about to die until I acknowledge his extremely bad cold. I have no intention to do so.

If any men comment on here please say that you are a man if you don’t mind. Interested to hear male comments 😊

Solidarity here. Mr April has been "fighting" something since I was nearly hospitalised with tonsillitis 2 weeks ago. The dressing gown appeared this morning and was completely ignored by me.

🤣 dressing gown of doom.
I got the upgraded model that is more like monika - refusing to accept he is ill but defo in 'the pribe of libe'. The issue with this is dodging the kisses trying not to catch it!

My ex was the biggest hypochondriac ever. There was always something wrong, and god forbid I had some ailment, he had it worse.

At first I had a bit of sympathy but after a while it all ran out. Just before we divorced, he actually said, you just don't care about me anymore, I could be dying and you wouldn't care. I mean he wasn't far off tbh.

We divorced and during lockdown when other parental visits were allowed, he came over to see the DC and the first thing he did, was walk in, all hobbling. I just looked at him and he said oooh I've hurt my back.

I just said, you are right, I don't care ..

It was strangely liberating.

He didn't have a gown, but loved a pair of slippers for when he was ill.🙈. I could tell when he was ill (being pathetic) as he would drag his feet, you know because too ill to lift them.

Any time ex-DH was sick, I’d find him lying on the floor of the bathroom, moaning like a tortured ghoul.

I honestly thought he was dying the first time.
God knows how he’d have coped with morning sickness!

It’s the volume (as in sound, not quantity, which I thankfully know sweet FA about) when he’s puking that gets me. Every retch sounds like a jet taking off, and the whole process is interspersed with regular, loud as a gas main explosion, groans.

I suspect his mother used to go running at these sounds of incipient death, but you’d think he’d have learned by now that I’d let him die before I soothed his vomity little brow.

It's just so unattractive when DH was unwell particularly when the 4 DC were little although he took to bed he still surfaced at key times such as bath and bed and mealtimes to help out including when he unknowingly has pneumonia.

He's never milked it.

@gannett Same!! Me and DH are also always very sympathetic to each other when one has a hangover (it doesn’t happen often, and is usually when we have been drinking at a work thing so it will always be the case that one will be sober when the other has been drinking).

it is really nice to be looked after when ill. Even when the “ill” is a hangover (we call hangovers a mystery illness)!!

but I do understand that there would be little sympathy if it is only ever one-way care taking.

Brilliantly put. I’ll shamelessly steal and reuse that funny line

Cautionary tale. Many years ago my husband had a virus that seemed to go on forever. He was able to go to work but he seemed to get worse around our toddler’s bedtime. I suspected man flu. We went away for the weekend and he felt bad on the train home and couldn’t sleep that night. Following day he went to the doctor and had pneumonia and a collapsed lung.

Is he wearing the Dressing Gown of Doom?

I get that people's voices change when they have a cold but the 'ill voice' is different and drives me nuts!

My STB Ex does the shuffle of sorrow, the performance cough and the special ill voice.

An ex colleague who used to put them on for selected people. Only those who would respond with oodles of sympathy and incitement to go home and curl up under a duvet were treated to it. The moment they left the room, normal service was resumed.

Mine will never admit he is ill, or go to the doctor, though once he complained for a few weeks about a "pulled muscle" in his chest. The day he said that the pain was now in left arm I forced him to go to the doctor. He was on the operating table within a week having a heart bypass. Hasn't changed.

Total opposite in our house, DH minimizes everything and never accepts that he is ill when he clearly is. I do genuinely get sick more, but am a bit horrified to recognize the shuffle of sorrow, huffing and leaning over hands on forehead. I hope he doesn’t think I’m a hammy fool, it’s a genuine expression of how I feel but if I’m honest perhaps it is a way of deliberately communicating ‘I don’t feel well and won’t be pulling my weight’ 😂🙈

I really needed this. I've just got home from a knee replacement and although my hubby is wonderful he hasn't stopped telling me about every ache and pain he has. He also thinks we might need a cleaner as he can't cope with the housework 😂.

Oh that's so funny! 99.3F sounds way worse than 37C 😅😅😅

Do you have kids? I think kids make their symptoms much worse 🤣😂

I blame cry wolf for this.

As when they are really ill, we don't believe them.

Mine had the dressing gown of doom OVER the hoodie of despair the other day, just so no one had any doubt he was nearly at death’s door.

@isthismylifenow thanks for that, I literally laughed out loud 🤣
My ex was the same. Before I married him, he had a cold and literally lay on the floor for a day. I was wondering whether to call an ambulance before I realised all his family treated that as normal. Silly me. I ignored that huge red flag! 🚩

A lot of men are ridiculous when they are ill. I have found the opposite in my own personal experience however.

on the rare occasion I am sick I tend to just get on with it and receive zero sympathy. That’s fine, I don’t actually want it. I have never understood the need people seem to have for sympathy. It feels very indulgent and pointless to me. My leg would have to be falling off for me to receive sympathy, and this is an acknowledged fact in our house.

if my wife it’s sick however in any way it is a very different story.

Just a reality of life, doesn’t really bother me.

I’m worse than DH for this

@roadnoise you beat me to it 🤣I’ve lost count of the times I’ve forwarded this on to friends and colleagues. Superb documentary 😉

I eventually went to the GP last winter with a really horrible bug I couldn’t shake off after at least 10 days.
He did check me over, but it was ‘just a virus’, nothing to be done.
That same evening I was hit like an express train with painful, very shallow breathing.
Blue-lighted to hospital, where I stayed for 3 weeks - pneumonia followed by pleurisy - 5 weeks of antibiotics!

Me too 😂in fact this entire thread has me in stitches. Thank you everyone for cheering up a slightly boring Saturday afternoon.

I'm so grateful for DH reading this. He drove from the north of Scotland to the south of France with flu. I then caught it from him and literally couldn't move and was in pain from head to toe so that was serious stoicism.