Has my husband lost his mind?

[orangesky1]

My husband has decided he wants to go and be a holiday tour leader overseas. With tips, his view is that this would be reasonably well paid.

we have a child in a school. I have a good job. He is deeply unhappy with the day to day life as a parent. We have a really good life but he doesn’t see it that way. This proposal is the only way he can see himself happy.

he wants us to go out there with him. I have said he can do this but he has to go there first by himself and show that it will work. I don’t believe it will, and will not disrupt my child’s life and my career for this whim. The job will involve stints of him being away on tours. I am not averse to moving for a positive financial situation and lifestyle change but to me this is madness. Fine if single, not compatible with being a responsible parent.

I think he is really fundamentally depressed, this depression will not magically disappear once the novelty has worn off

am I being unreasonable?

Sounds like encouraging him to go would be better for you! Then when he crashes and burns and wants to come back, you can tell him the relationship is over as far as you're concerned. Much easier to do that than trying to get rid of sad sack from your home.

@orangesky1 is he well?

I ask in all seriousness because sometimes these grand ideas can be a sign of something else going on. You say he has been depressed which raises some red flags too.

It's impossible for me to be happy with the 9-5 'normal' life as well. However, I've always known that and structured my life to suit my needs. I can't imagine filling my life with everything I didn't want.

It's not easy to swim against the tide but it's much easier than being unhappy and hurting those around you when you finally decide to make the move.

It doesn't sound like he's thought it through. My ex was a tour guide in Portugal - the person who sits at the front of the coach giving a running commentary on everything and basically running around trying to keep everyone happy. It involved long hours, people pleasing on a massive scale, dealing with rude entitled holidaymakers, and the pay wasn't great considering the long hours involved, and the tips were not always great.

This happened to me. My ex-husband chopped and changed jobs constantly in the 10 years we were together, and was on and off antidepressants. Never felt he was cut out for ‘conventional’ life and a 9-5 job. One of the PPs made a great comment that summarises how I really started to feel - that his near-constant unhappiness and discontent was a continued threat to my own stability and sense of contentment in life, and it wore me down. Last year, we finally separated (just 3 months after moving to a bigger house with the mortgage in my name - yet another attempt to make him happy 🙄) and he went off round Europe (drinking and taking drugs, I believe) and is now in Asia. He never wants to return to the UK. But it hasn’t been the utopia he thought it would be, and he remains out of work and doing courses etc. After the initial devastation and heartbreak, I’m happier and much more stable/settled than I’ve ever been, and it’s liberating not having the weight of his unhappiness (or the financial burden) on me. I’ve met someone new whose values and goals align much more with mine, and we’re having a great time. The one caveat is that my ex and I had no children, so that was a relief in so many ways, and it of course made it easier for him to up and leave. He was also 10 years younger than me, so that was a factor I think. (He’s in his mid-30s so still not really a prime candidate for going off on a hedonistic travel thing, but there you go).

I feel your husbands pain. I’m not made for 9-5 but have no choice as I’m a single parent.

Id be so much happier bobbing about the world being free 😊

Your husband is seeing his mental health issues as being down to the mundane parts of work, parenting and life. Moving abroad isn't going to take away the drudgery of life, it will still be there, but in a different form, oh and the sun will be shining! Being a tour guide requires qualifications, experience and knowledge. Does he actually have any of that in the field he wants to work? No it's not a 9-5 job, but it will be very long hours, early mornings, late nights, dealing with clients problems (at all hours of the day!), working weekends and it will be exhausting. No, I wouldn't be upending my life for a pipe dream, that's unlikely to work. He essentially wants out of having responsibilities of a wife and child. Honestly, tell the fool to go, and I can guarantee within 6 months he'll be back with his tail between his legs. In the meantime I'd decide on what you want, you may find you prefer life without him being there. See if in your own mind, if there's a future for you both. I suspect very quickly you'll decide the marriage is over.

I don't like it in Spanish islands in August - the weather is too hot.

I worked for a while on cruise ships for a while you wouldn't believe the complaints. The lifts only go up & down (yes seriously a complaint more than once!), the weather wasn't what they were expecting, they didn't have a balcony or even a window in their inside cabin, didn't like the black sand in Tenerife and many, many more. This is the life of a tour rep, people can be rather thick & you have to be patient with them & try to manage expectations. Does your DH realise this?

The only parent I’ve met who seemed happy doing this was doing swimming tours having had a high earning career and their DC were grown up. That sounded reasonable.

Your H is being ridiculous.

Also my take on it.

Tell him to start in this country - the NT or similar. Locally a couple set up ghost tours for tourists and they take visitors to see where their ancestors lived or are buried .

You don’t need reasons not to go- you don’t want to that’s sufficient. He may not want the drudge but it’s a bit late for that. If he wanted a free single child free life he should have made that decision. He’s got a family now he needs to be there for them

In your shoes, I think I'd want him to make a choice one way or the other. It sounds as though he hasn't thought this through at all and is just engaging in an escapist fantasy and I can see him moping back if (when) it all goes tits up. But would you want him back on that basis? Not knowing what he's been doing and who he's been doing it with, and knowing that you're just his safety net? And yet I can also see it might be hard to say no if your DC are pleased to see him back and if the grovelling is done proficiently enough. I think I would want to future-proof myself against all of that by telling him that if he goes, you're done.

Tour guides earn peanuts and have to deal with a lot of crap. I give him a month, max!

This screams midlife crisis and absolute selfishness.

He’s unhappy with day to day life as a parent but wants you guys to go with him? Msg. He can go it alone.

When working in Jobcentres I worked with many people who would spend the holiday season managing a camp site or similar & who were only claiming benefits on a short-term basis until they went to spend the winter working or travelling abroad.

I also dealt with people who worked abroad with a TEFL qualification in places like Vietnam & Cambodia & had to spend some time in the UK before their visas were renewed. Usually they stopped their claims quickly as they were 'workers' & found temp work in hospitality or fast food outlets until their visas came through.

If DH is serious about working abroad he might think about getting a TEFL qualification, but these days most countries insist that you are also a Graduate with at least a Batchelors degree before they allow you to teach English.

What a twat. Presumably he's saying he wants you and the kids to go too because he thinks that way, when you say no, he'll be able to tell himself and other people that it's your fault he doesn't live in the same country as his children.

And he couldn't figure out he was made for a life of adventure instead of parenting BEFORE he choose to have a child? Prick.

There are tour guides and tour guides. SO I wonder what exactly he has in mind.
Does he mean a 'holiday rep', or actually a tour guide, accompanying tourists around the country/region?
I have been the tourist in this situation, and there have been a few times when things have gone 'wrong', and it is the tour guide who has the job of sorting it out, and frankly, not one I would want.
if in another country, then the guide would be expected to usually know the language (if different to your own), and know the region very well.
So the following are some of the things that have happened to me on the various tours I have been on, in various holidays;
The coach driver collapsing at the wheel, foaming at the mouth;
Coach breaking down on a mountain road, making it impassable for following traffic;
the tourist attraction suddenly being unavailable, due to an important VIP visiting, (the tour guide had to reschedule, and arrange something else, for that afternoon);
A fellow tourist complaining to the guide continually, reducing her to tears (this last was absolutely awful, and resulted in me giving our guide an extra tip, as it was not her fault. In fact there was no 'it' anyway. It was the tourists who were a real pain.).
I think, like the others have suggested, he wants out of family life.

You don't really know who your guide will be when you book though. On a tour in Iceland the guide was British and also spent half of the tour shilling his comedy show that was happening that night. He didn't get a tip from me

Have you posted about this before, it sounds vaguely familiar. In Thailand or somewhere like that?

I think it sounds like an amazing job and life style choice but suits someone who is single rather than a family. Also the dream isn't always the reality but much more fun than a 9-5. You'd be a better person than me to let him go with your blessing. But the alternative is he's unhappy and puts some of the blame on you for stopping his dream. Meanwhile you feel bitter that he'd be so selfish in the first place. I'm not sure you can win here.

A gloomy way of interpreting this, is that he regrets settling down and having a family. If it's not that, surely there is a more satisfying type of work he could do closer to come which would use his sense of adventure; has he looked into that?

Mid life crisis or has fallen for someone else.

that’s my bet anyway!!

Have a read of Marian Keyes book ‘the Break Up’

Good luck x