To find H's tiredness unattractive

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Im 41 my husband is 47. We both work full time

He goes to bed at 9pm. He groans all the time. Muttering to himself "God im tired". Farting at night. He complains all the time. Doesn't want to go anywhere. The noises he makes. Hiccuping, muttering, he makes the loudest sounds getting up. He makes the kids get him stuff while h lies on the sofa. I have asked him to see the GP. But I think its psychological. He can stay up till 2am gaming if he wants. He says he just wants the quiet life and "im old just leave me alone". He says i make him feel judged.

I find it all so unattractive. Am I being horrible or unfair? He makes me feel depressed.

He's a cunt OP that was deliberate so you didn't lie in and he wouldn't have to look after the kids. An iPad is not one of life's essentials. If he couldn't find it he could have lived without it for an hour but sounds like he either didn't look or more likely knew exactly where it was and just wanted an excuse to wake you. Should have ripped into him and told him to fuck off.

No, there is no way I would tolerate this, who does he think he is. As I said up thread my DH is always tired, I feel mean having compared him to your husband as he is hands on, doesn’t stop helping on the weekend (day time) bed by 7.40.
You deserve much better, it is a partnership not an agreement to raise a man-child alongside the children.
This is much deeper than mismatched energy levels.
I would kick his arse.

My dh has a “hard graft” job and regularly works 70+ hours a week. He may verbalise being tired but it doest stop him being a present father to our children, helping me with whatever I need him to, doing diy around the house or just being a generally pleasant person to be around. Some people are just bone idle. It happens. And it’s thoroughly unattractive.

Tell kids to say no they absolutely aren’t his servants. Moaning and farting are both bad mannered ask him to go to the bathroom to do that. It’s very unattractive. Overall he needs a health checkup more exercise and healthy eating. Doctors will tell him that. Start going places without him go for walks visit friends. Take kids to cinema regularly.

That's completely unreasonable of him. Now I agree that he's just being useless and maybe you should decide what to do next. Because life is both very short and very long.

I did say a bit of slack 😀 You're right though

@ithinkilikethislittlelife interesting you say that - my H has a friend ( old school friend) 62- who isa perfectly ok guy and a decent dad but ever since he’s been in his mid 40s couldn’t wait to retire or be a house husband - his job was reasonably physical in bits and mixed with a lot of office stuff too - his basic problem - he was far too greedy, maybe 4 to 6 stone overweight and it had turned him into being somewhat lazy as everything felt an effort . Meals were always about quantity never quality .

my ex husband was bone idle and he would happily watch me “graft”. My now husband would never watch me doing something without offering to help. In fact he would rather do the task to save me doing it. He’s come home today after another hard days work and immediately got himself showered and chivvied us all out of the house to spend the afternoon throwing stones into the sea at the beach. Some men are just built differently. Just like some women I suppose. Lazy women are just as unattractive in my opinion.

I think he is checking out, but wants you to become so fed up and frustrated with him that YOU decide to divorce. Then he can blame you, tell the kids how mean you are, and he STILL gets what he wants, OUT.

As for advising or encouraging this or that to help him improve his life and yours, I would say it once. You have your answer if that's totally ignored.

@oscilla I don't think that is true. I suggested splitting a year ago and he begged not to, booked therapy and so on. He is really comfortable with beinh "old". Always finding how to do least amount of work at work. I find that v unattractive. Him boasting that he managed to wriggle out of this or that. As I've got older I've become more and more ambitious and he has gone the other way

Yep - I think a big issue is men like this often ‘become’ like this rather than it being obvious from the offset - so you can start off with an active engaged bloke and 18 years down the line, you’ve got a 48 year old going on 70!! It’s the same with sleazy stuff, start off with the ‘oh not not me, not in to it’ 15 years later you find out quite the opposite but by then lives are kind of tied

Sounds like it could be time to go your separate ways OP. I know this can be hard, but if he's not prepared to make the effort to actually enjoy life with you, and you still feel young enough to want to go different places and do different things, then don't WASTE your life, we only get one, and owe it to ourselves to get as much out of it as we can.

I think this is why you see many couples divorce in their 60's and even 70's, as the women suddenly realise how old and boring their partners in life have become, and realise that time is running out, so it's now or never. Please don't leave it this late, you'll be surprised how quickly those years fly past!

@Crikeyalmighty
you’re absolutely right. It’s not about age. It’s about them choosing the “idle” path. They never show themselves at first, then they reveal themselves to be idle, layabout, shitty partners. If they showed themselves from the off no one would fall for them 🫣

@ithinkilikethislittlelife yep , how many family men do you read about on here who are regularly out to the gym 3 or 4 evenings a week, conveniently at hectic times with kids ? How many women do you read about doing this just leaving it all up to the bloke - might be the odd few but certainly nothing like the amount of men that do this - I worked in the city many moons ago and the number of blokes that used to be in Balls brothers 2 or 3 nights a week was not small - conveniently leaving around 7pm to go home - pretty sure plenty of them ‘had to work late’ - I do conclude there’s an awful lot of men who like the idea of family , but in reality hate domesticity that they have to do anything towards.

@Crikeyalmighty it’s men and women. There’s a sub set who promise everything but in the end deliver only for themselves. The trick is to extricate before it ruins your life 🤷🏻‍♀️

thats awful

if he’s got a clean bill of health, he’s choosing to be in this ‘managed decline’
my best friend recently separated from a man like this after 20 years. It was tough but now she lives in an apartment in the middle of our city, loves going to the gym every morning before work and has a great social life again. (Late teens) kids went with her as husband moved in with his mum and they’re very happy.

Yep - I should have added it’s not just men - a woman I know is similar too

Of course he doesn't want to split. It would involve him having to -

1. Get off his own arse to fetch his snacks
2. Have to parent DC alone during his contact time (except he wouldn't, they'd just be either neglected or he'd find some other woman to parent them for him)
3. have to do his own housework
4. have to do his own DIY and organise home maintenance
5. Have to do his own life admin
6. Have to either pay for it or put some effort in to get ONS's/new GF, if he wants sex
7. Have to go to the effort of moving home
8. Have to live somewhere smaller and possibly surrounded by more neighbours, or in a worse area, with the accompanying problems that causes
9. Have to sort his own garden out

10. Have to walk his own dog if there is one

11. Have to put some effort in if he wants company because he wouldn't have ready-made company waiting at home for him each evening and weekend (although he actually sounds like he avoids you all a lot physically)

12. Have a smaller pension maybe if he has to split it with you in the divorce

13. Have to go through the effort of a divorce, the paperwork, the meetings, the cost

14. Have less savings if he has to split it with you in the divorce

There's probably more but that's what I can think of off the top of my head. Of course he wants to stay married, whilst effectively checking out of the relationship. That's the far better option for him. Stay put and cherry pick the bits he wants whilst avoiding the rest.

I'm willing to bet that if he became single any gym-going would be purely for the purposes of looking good to get another girlfriend, then would largely stop and he'd become even more of a lazy slob, except weekends when he'd be back to avoiding the DC/family life again.

The more I think about this the more I think you've been slowly conditioned to accept it all. That situation with the iPad at the weekend...why were you even basically pleading to "be allowed" an hour's lie in?

You should have been poking him in the ribs, telling him you'd been up half the night with the DC so it's his turn now, pulling the covers over your head and sleeping until noon. And he should have got up without complaining and left you there undisturbed!

What would you have done if you'd slept through and he'd been up 3 times from 2am until 5am (so basically no real sleep in between wake-ups)?

Would you have "reluctantly" gone down with the DC, then shaken him properly awake 20mins later - just to insist he gets up to find you a fucking iPad?!

I'm betting not, that you'd never have dreamed of it and would have thought it entirely reasonable for him to sleep in until noon - purely on the justification of "because he's tired". I'll bet he regularly gets to sleep in "because he's tired" even if he hasn't been up with the DC in the night.

So why were you begging for this basic human necessity of sleep for yourself? And accepted not being allowed it by him?

He just gets so grumpy and tired. Like today he was looking for a water bottle and I forgot I'd tidied it away. And then said "oh yeah it's in the drawer" and he said "so, I'll ask you again shall I? Did you see my water bottle" so sarcastic with lots of groans. Everything is excused by being tired. He also says "i think I have illness coming" etc. Its just draining. Its not all terrible but I feel so different to him.

That's so incredibly rude of him to think it's ok to speak to you like that. He's a misogynist. Tidying away is women's work. So knowing where things are is women's work. So it's ok to speak to you like you're a POS for forgetting you tidied something away. You make it sound like that's normal conversation in your house. WTH.

As for "it's not all bad", it never is. It would be easy if they were 💯 shit.

Have you ever got angry with him OP?

I've got a misogynist relative. The most common thing I say to him is
"don't speak to me like that"
snapped sharply the second he starts and I'll have a row about whatever it is if necessary too, sticking up for myself all the way. It does keep him in check quite a bit. It won't change his thoughts, but it does stop me getting spoken to like I'm a POS as default, any time something has gone wrong. He knows I won't take it.

No bloody way would I marry him though! Would send me crazy.

What an absolute c*nt.

Things are getting worse! He's been calling me from work saying he cant cope with work and its "too much" and he's "really overwhelmed". When I ask what's going on he just says things like v normal stuff like needing to go to meetings or someone chased an email. I don't think hes turning uo to stuff properly at work and hes on probation. I just find it so hard to be sympathetic. He's doing these deep sighs on the phone sayinh "it really is too much" over and over. I work longer hours than him and I do everything for kids. Like today I had to take my youngest to hospital appointment, rush baxk for meetings, pick them up, bath, laundry etc and then do emails in the evening. And yet he's been on sofa all evening heavy breathing and saying how its all too much for him. I mean he is an anxious and tired person and seems to find daily stuff difficult. But its so hard to be supportive all the time!

And just now he asked me for sex and told me it would be good for his stress and anxiety. I said I wasnt in mood and he said "it's because you don't care about my stress levels" and said "whatever" so grumpy and now is pretending to sleeo next to me!