To hate my husband

[Louisa90]

DH and I have been together 15 years, married 7. We have a 6 year old DD and 3 year old DS. Our relationship was great until kids came along, obviously my priorities changed and wasn't into going out much anymore. DH still carried on working late, hobbies, meeting up with friends etc so I just felt completely alone.

I honestly thought that I would love him forever but I really dislike him. He makes me feel so bad all the time and like I am worthless. I really do try my absolute best to do everything. I went out on Saturday with my friends for the first time in ages and I came back and the house was very tidy and he asked me how I never managed to do it :(.

He constantly makes vile comments like, fancy giving me a BJ, quicky etc but I just cant bring myself to do it. As soon as we wake up in the morning he is trying to touch me etc whilst my youngest is there and I find myself getting up earlier just to avoid it. He said he has never known anybody who dislikes sex as much as me and it is becoming a problem.

I am so unhappy and dont really know what to do. Sorry if it seems this post is a bit all over the place but its hard to get everything down.

Oh my goodness @CanSeeClearlyNowTheRainHasGone - really?!?

The op can't stand her husband!! What value is it to her to take the blame for it?

Your post is misogyny at its highest.

are you a man?

Someone called it on a thread yesterday, and I think they're right- mumsnet is getting increasingly infiltrated by incels and men's rights activists.

I wish my parents had done this. I used to dread the d-word. However, I think we could all have been a lot happier if they had actually meant it rather than said it in anger. I mourn the childhood I could have had, if my parents hadn't been fighting so often.

I already knew when I was quite young that I never wanted to get married. Perhaps I would have thought differently if I had grown up in a happier home. As it is, I am just relieved I never ended up in a situation like OP, because I have seen my whole life what marriage could be.

He constantly makes vile comments like, fancy giving me a BJ, quicky etc but I just cant bring myself to do it. As soon as we wake up in the morning he is trying to touch me etc whilst my youngest is there.

I mean, it is all about context with these posts. I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon and say he sounds like a pig. If my DP asked for a quickie or a BJ (we both do regularly!) I wouldn't think it was "vile". Millions of parents do have sex with their kids around (when they are young enough to not know what's going on!) or when their kids are pre-occupied in another room. That's the norm when you've got a family unfortunately!

He said he has never known anybody who dislikes sex as much as me and it is becoming a problem.

Regardless of who is in the wrong, if sex is important to him and he wants to have sex with you but you find him vile, get up early to avoid him touching you and don't want to have sex, it's over. Sexless marriages only work if both are on the same page.

I'd be tempted to think about what it is that you want and what you're missing, for instance:

• Are you missing how he used to make you feel (cherished, loved) etc, or are you missing having that feeling in your life at all?
• Are you hating his apparent freedom and your servitude and lack of free time or respite/enjoyment?
• Are you missing intimacy in general? Do you want that, but just not from him?
• etc

You don't (IIRC) talk about him not helping you when you ask? Is it that you never want his help, or that he's useless, or that he takes over ... or that once upon a time he just instinctively knew what to do to help you and you two never had to learn how to ask/respond?

Or have you become so beaten down with routine, the mundane, and chores that you no longer feel worthy to ask (tell!) him to help. Your comments about putting on weight suggest you value yourself lower than everyone else in the family. I know when I get like that even normal suggestions, made jokily, rile me up horribly and feel like a personal attack. I know that when I get like that I would probably react badly to any suggestion by a marriage counsellor that I was the unreasonable one.

I know so little about your relationship that I can't make suggestions, but I do wonder if your hatred of him is the mourning process for a love you had and have lost, but also the justification for giving up fighting for it.

What is important here though - is knowing what you need. You don't articulate that in the thread above, only what you don't like/want.

Perhaps that's the best point to reopen a conversation with the DH - because then you will both find out if there's a future that meets both your needs.

He sounds repugnant. No one would want sex with him in your shoes so don't feel guilty about that. And he makes you feel shit. What is their to like? Get rid and stop living in misery.

There*

He may have his grievances, but he's being vile to you and that's inexcusable.

He does sound pretty vile tbh. No one should ever wobble someone's double chin and in the next breath as for a bj and expect the other party to be turned on enough to want to suck dick!

I think you need to start to look after you op. Start to get your self esteem up, your dh will have to help on this and will have to make sacrifices himself. You say he 'can't' look after the dc, do drop offs or pick ups. There's no such thing as 'can't'. What would happen if you ended up in hospital or wasn't around.

He's choosing not to. He'll have to give up his football a few times a month to enable you to see friends, go to the gym, have your own hobbies, put his hobbies to one side a few times a months, take holidays to look after the dc, talk to his boss about being more flexible, get a new job. It's not all on you, and if he wants the fun you back, as I'm sure you do, he needs to help facilitate this .

OP, how does this person support you or bring you joy?

You have done the lions share of the work for a very long time and are understandably resentful.

He treats you like a thing. Not a person.

I can’t see any positives to his presence and think you would be much happier single.

Neither of you seems to like the other. If you are done, you are done. Your children will be harmed more by you staying and watching the two of you behaving poorly towards each other. You need to be setting a good example of a healthy relationship. This is not it.

Oh dear.

You don't solve a problem without looking at it properly and understanding the route by which one arrived at this horrible situation. Just agreeing with narrator serves little purpose.

The OP is upset because she can't stand her husband and really wants to have the love they used to have. I ascribe no blame and she seemed to appreciate the input I gave.

I would argue that I have shown zero misogyny. My reaction would be the same if DH had posted the original.

You on the other hand, are exhibiting the behaviour that I was questioning. Apparently immediately accepting that the OP's reaction are entirely rational because, presumably, DH is an awful person (not just apparently exhibiting awful behaviour around the OP).

None of us are entirely rational, and we are all unreliable narrators. Often I have been happiest when I have realised that I was, at least in part, responsible.

If I'm responsible, then I have agency and can effect change.
If I'm just supported in my misery, then I get to live in misery.

Bull. The things he’s said to her, putting her down, pestering for sex, trying to make her feel bad are not excusable at all. Poor daddy getting rejected does give him the right to treat her like that. 🙄

Even IF the op did check out, or have PND or focus on the children and that made him unhappy then he should have left rather than hang around and make her miserable trying to use put downs to get his own way.

All I want is to feel appreciated. I want him to help me out with the kids, not just go to work and leave everything to me when I am working too. I would only ever ring him in an emergency and even then he will not answer and I never know when he is coming home which just adds to my stress. He can just go and get a haircut/shave whenever he likes but I have to take the kids with me. I have arranged to go out for tea with my friends and he is ALWAYS late and I have to cancel, he said I need to arrange things for after 8pm which is just too late for me so I just do not bother. I want him to stop farting and being so greedy, he hangs around the kids teas waiting for them to leave something. He as sleep apnoea so is a flipping nightmare to sleep with.

Oh FFS. Nothing in that excuses him. I also mentioned "Equally I've seen mums with PND and immature dads that can't handle the grown-up life" which highlights that some men are useless at times and can only get their esteem at the expense of their partner.

I think it says something about you that your instant reaction is I'm trying to excuse the man. I'm am not. I know nothing about him - just like you don't. I just know how P has descrbed him which, almost by definition, will focus on his flaws not his virtues.

I see a lot of these threads that say "you should leave him". At least you're consistent in saying "he should have left her".

But I like to think that they could rekindle love, or at least try - rather than leave each other - and OP deserves to be happy and is patently not.

Also, somewhere in here are two kids that ideally should have two loving parents - wouldn't it be great to try facilitating that?

It sounds like you're exhausted and you feel unloved by him. He definitely could do more and he doesn't. Resentment has set in.
You need to have a conversation about how you feel, how the way he treats you makes you feel and what he could do to make things better.

We grew up knowing they didn’t really like each other, never went on any family holidays unless it was with our grandparents who took us away one at a time as they couldn’t cope with 3 kids. We didn’t have weekends as a family, anything we did do was with mum only as he’d kick off beforehand about how busy he was, how he had ‘stuff to do’, how he couldn’t face a weekend with ‘her’ as she’d only moan & ruin it. I don’t remember anything that we all did together, he just lived with us but we weren’t a ‘proper family’. I don’t know if they ever actually loved each other. They did get back together a few years after divorce & got married again. The wedding pics are hilarious as all 3 of us kids look miserable as sin as we didn’t want them to get back together, they were divorced again within a couple of years .

I was the same as you, totally put off marriage because what was the point in paying all that money to just have to pay all over again when you divorced. Thankfully I had an amazing relationship with my husband although it took a good ten years for me to decide I would actually get married after all!

Have you told him all of this OP? I can’t remember which book it is (maybe Come as You Are?) where it describes the brain as the most important female sexual organ. Women have an accelerator pedal and a brake pedal in their brains. Your DH is pressing your brake pedal when he belittles your mum, points out your double chin, disappears, leaves the chores to you, farts, puts his smelly hand in your face, tells you to suck his dick, etc. You could try explaining to him that you will only be in a position to be intimate if he presses your accelerator pedal—helping out, being kind, being on time when he says he will when you have friendship plans, answering his phone, hanging laundry, walking the dog, etc.

I literally cannot stay up past 8pm or it is probably the fact that I do not want to, he just sits downstairs playing video games whilst the dishes from dinner are still out.

I have tried my absolute hardest for 6 years and now I have nothing left,

By trying hard do you mean you have been trying hard to accommodate him and his needs. Or have you actually communicated to him what you need. When he gets back from work at 8pm you should go out to have a late dinner with friends or the gym, yoga class or cinema, anything you like. He goes out two evenings a week so you need that too.

He can just go and get a haircut/shave whenever he likes but I have to take the kids with me.

Why can't he have them? You need to book to gt your hair done and then let him know when it is.

It's possible SHE checked out of the relationship once having the kids. I've seen so many women virtually cast aside their husbands and become kid obsessed. Just need to read a few threads on here

You know, I'm a straight 45 yo woman, married for 20 years, no kids.
I'm definitely not that into men anymore, and that puts it very mildly.
Without the burden of kids and even a 9-5 job.
😁

A male mate, methinks 😜

My first marriage was the same. He carried on completely with his way of life, football, mates, pub, work. I entered the world of motherhood and only left it for an evening waitress job 3 nights a week. Even then everything was done and dusted by the time he came home- he actually did nothing child oriented or touched a thing in the home. It never changed and he eventually found himself a girlfriend on one of his many nights out. We deserved better and so do you and your children.