AIBU to leave my husband over his job?

[Poptart22]

Am I being unreasonable to end my marriage because my husband won’t change his job?

DH works away constantly, sometimes 3/4 nights per week. We have a 3 year old toddler, 3 large rescue dogs and 2 cats. I work a very demanding job that includes 2 evenings per week. The impact him being away has on me is huge. I have to manage every early wake-up and refusal to sleep from our 3 year old alone, feed everyone, walk the dogs, manage all the daily household jobs and still be present at work. I am constantly overwhelmed, overstimulated and in survival mode and it massively impacts my mental health. I barely sleep when he’s away. Lately due to my working late done nights, my elderly parents have been forced to come over and help out at my husbands request, which puts a massive strain on them. My father has hip problems and struggles to walk but has had to walk our dogs and my mother has had to help bath my son. My mother still works herself and is exhausted. We do have a dog walker 3 mornings a week but this is expensive and we can’t afford it on the evenings too.

I have repeatedly asked him to consider changing jobs as his current role is putting me under so much pressure. He refuses and is adamant he won’t quit.

When he does return I’m so full of resentment I don’t want to be near him, then he gets upset.

We have had 3 sessions of couples therapy but it’s done nothing to address the resentment.

I feel so over it and like I don’t matter.

Him being 51 adds something else to the issue. How old are you? Is there a big gap? Because that will impact your relationship as time goes on. I'm 56 with a child early 20's. I cannot imagine coping with a young child now. Did he take the job to escape the baby/toddler stage? You are resentful for good reason but if you want to continue your relationship you will have to focus discussions on solutions that meet both your needs. Can you take a few days off to recharge and then try discussing it again? Write down what you need and what he needs?? Work from there?

Oh ffs don’t be ridiculous! Not ONE person is hating dogs! Stop with the melodrama!

The OP is struggling…massively! But she needs to make a decision here…quite clearly one such decision could be to rehome her 3 dogs! This does not equate to ‘hating dogs’! It’s about choosing a road back to good family/work life balance. There is no perfect choice here…but there may be a ‘best choice for our family right now’. It’s up to the OP which one she makes for her family.

But tbf the OP made the dogs sound like a burden she resented, in which case rehoming would make perfect sense.

Feiw I don't think dogs are equivalent to people, and I think the 'oh it's always wrong to destroy a dog even though it snarls at everyone in sight' (not what's being suggested here, for clarity) brigade are ludicrously sentimental (to the detriment of both humans and dogs)

I don't hate dogs at all. But it's unrealistic to take 3 large rescue dogs from abroad who have presumably been abused and expect to have the time to devote to them. Circumstances change, we know next to nothing about the husband's job and whether he could return to home working or how the OP would be housed if they separated. I understand the OP might want a bit of a rant, but she needs to think hard about her current life and how she would manage if she did separate.

Can you get an au pair? Or cleaner / babysitter who can also walk the dogs? Perhaps even a local 16 year old who can babysit and dog walk. I’d try and find a few local teenagers who can get to know the dogs and your child.

Clearly current set up doesn’t work. I think better to say that if he is working away needs to pay for help rather than push him to find another job.

I think it's the husband who's given up on the family, not the OP.

Probably best asking this on a dog forum you'll get the answers that you want

Hes 51 and doesn’t want any more children so im not worried about that

He was 48 when he got you pregnant by mistake. I wonder if his ex was surprised.
How old is the other kid? Maybe he can walk the dogs or do some babysitting.

Op and DH can then afford to pay for a cleaner- in fact not just a cleaner but a home help. Mine changed bedding, ironed, sorted chaos. She was a godsend.

If your DH is adamant he can’t change - and you want to stay with him then tell him you need a daily dog walk with a walker organised, a cleaner, to send out laundry once a week, and childcare/PT nanny to help with your child.
Get some of this off YOUR plate.

@Poptart22 i sympathise massively with your situation.

I am married to a man who I thought I’d parent more or less 50/50 with. Somehow, insidiously when my ds left nursery last summer to start reception I could probably have counted the number of times DH had taken him and picked him up on one hand. Never any suggestion of I could do with getting to work early, could you take the children? It was always pulled faces and excuses and whining. In the end you stop asking.

And so I am part time because I’ve had to be. I just physically couldn’t manage full time and the children and sometimes even part time is a struggle. For example we both work Mondays but somehow it’s still my job to give the children breakfast and get them dressed and so on.

He is regularly away as well. Fortunately I don’t have to do this in my job.

There are some horrible replies here and I don’t know what people are thinking. The point is you have a child or a pet as a joint thing. You expect to be equally committed. And when push comes to shove, the dog has to be walked or the child has to be fed and you love the dog / child and won’t see them suffer but just the same it’s not what you signed up for and I am keenly aware of this myself.

For my part I only have one more year until my youngest starts school and am staying part time as quite honestly after what I’ve been put through these past six years I think I’ve earned a couple of days to myself every week. But that feeling of resentment is most certainly there and I’m aware it permeates our marriage.

People are responding about the dogs because having three large rescue dogs is a massive commitment especially with a young family and other work commitments, and you need to really think whether you can give the dogs and your family the best life without running yourself into the ground.

You are expecting your husband to put his professional life on hold but what about yours? You work two evenings a week with a husband away 3 days a week and a young family (the working away a few days a week is quite common in some industries and you cannot expect your husband to step down from that and risk his professional future and being able to provide for your family)- if you aren’t coping as a result then maybe you need to rethink your work? It’s harsh to put it all on him when he’s providing for your family. So many roles involve more working away as you progress and you’re holding that against him when actually you are capable of rebalancing things too.

Wow OP is getting such a hard time

So he barely sees any of his children?

What a dickhead. What are you going to do then, OP?

It isn't awful to suggest rehoming them is the best outcome here. You are stretched too thin.

You are not getting adequate uninterrupted sleep, you will be cognitively impaired because of this, your human child deserves every ounce of you that you can possibly muster, I presume when you do the evening walk that its you, your child, and your 3 dogs. What if an altercation happens? I have kept big dogs all my life and I know for a fact that all it can take is an illness that you haven't picked up on (because dogs are predatory animals so hide their discomfort very well) for them to have a change of character and behaviour and start a fight.

Your own parents are now inconvenienced by having to put aside their own pain, discomfort and energy levels to walk your dogs. They are suffering because of a choice you refuse to make. You could make a choice that results in your dad not hurting his hips or risking a hospitalisation. In elderly people especially hip injuries, especially repeated ones are often a precursor to death because there are a lot of blood vessels there should internal bleeding occur, plus it is a hard site to treat if there are any deep tissue infections.

Chronic lack of sleep and over exertion can lead to autoimmune conditions and possibly even ME/CFS. I can tell you what that's like if you'd like. There are some days where I can't even stand up long enough to boil the kettle due to the pain and autonomic dysregulation and fatigue, never mind play with my son or walk a dog. If you neglect yourself now, you could end up neglecting everybody later on even if you don't mean to.

The answer here isn't for your husband to leave his job, have you not seen the job market? Yes in an ideal world all parents would get jobs that fit neatly round family life but there aren't any.

Rehoming the dogs is not giving up on them, it is giving them the best chance at a good and fulfilling life because their world has categorically changed by your husband taking a job (which you all need in order to survive) and you both having a child.

You need to live in the real world here. You not giving up on the dogs means you're continuously willing to put other people at risk for the choices you make.

Its very simplistic to say he could just change his job. How easy would that be?

And anyone who thinks cleaners are a magic solution is wrong, very bluntly. We had one once and it massively added to my stress rather than alleviating it. The frantic dash to tidy the house before she came every week and then it’s not like you can get away with doing no cleaning from one Friday to another with young children in the house.

Maybe if the cleaner came every other day it would help. Otherwise it just doesn’t.

lol @ “rehome” your husband.

i think you’d be cutting off your nose to spite your face, but actually having read your posts, you don’t seem to like him much, in which case yes, rehome him to someone who will love him.

How often is DH working away? From the first post, it sounds like the OP works away just as much as he does?

Working very hard is a form of contributing to the family. I have a disability now so I can't do the housework but I earn the majority of the household income., I am most definitely contributing to the family!

But yeah, if he really did deceive you about the job change then he needs to take active steps to ease the load beyond 'the inlaws will do it '

And if he won't, he's not much of a husband.

Probably the prioritirs are sorting out toddler's sleep, and your dh doing everything he can to change his role to be there at least a bit more

Couple of questions:

What is he like when he is at home? Hands on Dad?
Could you change your job to something less full on?
How easy would it be for him to change his job? What is the job market like?

I would think very hard before you do anything op, breaking up your child's home is a massive thing to do.

You make your dad with health problems walk the dog though. Can you not see that's wrong? Can't you do evening work on the days your DH is home? I don't think it's fair that you are making your exhausted parents help because you and your DH can't run your household.
You may well love your pets but they don't fit your lifestyle at the moment.
As for your DHs job, can he change it? Is he likely to get a job that pays similar elsewhere? The job market isn't brilliant at the moment
You can leave him but that's not going to solve the issue of looking after your pets or your child. You won't do anything to help yourself (like re-home the pets or change your hours) so I'm not sure what advice anyone can give you.

I agree don’t get rid of the pets, they are family and those who say get rid don’t consider a dog or cat who stands alone and afraid in a shelter cage wondering why they are not at home with their family and waiting for you to come get them. The trauma of abandonment is real and very cruel. You take on a dog or cat for life, not just until it gets hard. So many dump them without mercy. We have 2 very big dogs (one a rescue GHD who was traumatised and bone thin from being starved when we took her) and 4 cats - our latest we got just 5 weeks ago when hubbys mate at work couldn’t cope with 1 cat‼️ and said he was getting rid when he’d had her from being aged 8 weeks and just a year old. He was all she knew. Poor baby was so upset initially but after 5 weeks she has a family, she’s well fed, she’s brushed, she’s played with and more importantly she’s loved. She fell on her paws coming here but others aren’t so lucky. In my opinion you should never dump your pets xx

No it isn’t that awful. Having 3 dogs in the first instance was bloody stupid anyway.