To stay in my marriage for money

[nothingcancompare]

I’m aware that that’s an inflammatory thread title bur u guess that is what it boils down to. So to give a bit more detail.

DH and I have two children ; DD is 5 and in reception and our ds is nearly three. I work two and a half days a week, and it’s in a school so off for school holidays.

Before we had children I thought we’d roughly be equal parents. This has not been thr case at all. DH definitely sees anything he does do with the children as a sort of optional extra rather than what has to be done, and everything is left to me. I can count the times he’s had them both together on one hand: that isn’t an exaggeration. Even if he does do something I have to prep everything, so for example he takes DD to school on Friday and collects her as I’m at work, but I have to dress her, give her breakfast, clean teeth, pack bag etc.

As a result the children just gravitate more and more to me. Even if he does do something he just creates more work for me, so if I go out for a couple of hours the house is trashed when I get back, he doesn’t cook for them

Obviously I’ve tried to address it with him, he just goes on the defensive and hones in on a particular occasion (yeah well they started fighting so …) or just whines generally which I hate and is difficult to answer. So now five and a half years down the line I do have to accept this is how things are.

I don’t get a break at all. I get up when the children do, tend to then through the day and night in one case and am responsible for their diet, activities and getting them to said activities and everything. Seven days a week, it’s relentless and I’m already dreading the long school holidays.

So here is where the title is relevant. Truthfully I’ve lost a lot of respect for DH and I’ve come to realise that while he’s basically a kind man he’s also selfish and lazy.

Ending the marriage is one possibility but I’m not sure when I think about it that it would help anything. Yes, I wouldn’t have resentment but the children would be upset and their lives overturned (new schools and nurseries, new home, etc.)

Or if I stay as I am. I have one more year to get through and then when both children are in school I will have a couple of days a week for me. Otherwise, I’d have to be full time and I’m not sure I can take working full time in term time and then switching to full time childcare in holidays.

I know it’s awful and I don’t consider myself a mercenary person but I have to also think about what’s realistic in terms of my mental health and family stability

No you’re not being unreasonable you’re being pragmatic. Like a million women before you.

1. for your mental health if you stay treat him as your job - he is helping pay for your life and in return you are his wife. This is a job as old as marriage itself. He seems like a 19th century husband so play him like a clever 19th century wife. Get an understanding of the finances, work out how to protect yourself should he ever decide to fo. Smile, be nice - make him love you and look after you. I know it sounds bad but our grandmothers did this for hundreds of years, he’s benefitting and Machiavelli had a point.

OR - if you want to stay in a different way…

2. go to couples therapy and cry - get him to feel sympathy and shame (only you know of this might work)

3. play hard, make demands / threats - call him out - be a ‘bitch’ - stand up for yourself. Argue. Refuse to be treated like a fool. Laugh at him and his uselessness (again only you know if this might work)

You have to do what you have to do. He’s the one who has betrayed you with his incompetence - if he can’t be taught or shamed into changing his ways what does he expect?

I think it’s a common theme, women doing a lot and men doing less. It depends how you can handle the resentment. I would try counselling and maybe he will realise. My situation was that exdh just found another women to do the mothering for him and dc. My life is easier in most ways. I think in a marriage it’s always best to try and stay together if you can make it work.

Sorry , you’re so into your misogyny and your ageism that you’re not actually grasping what I’m saying.
I should look for some real wrong to get stewed up about rather than what piece of stupidity you imagine a random old woman to be spouting.
FYI repeated clinical studies show that one’s ‘deep thinking’ DOES imp with age.
So why not go and have a fight with a young person? They’re statistically more likely to be spouting nonsense than me !

OP, I've read all your posts but no indication if he makes enough money to make it worth your while to stay? And is he likely to increase his earnings/pension pot over the next few years?

If you're staying with a useless man, it needs to be worth your while.

Working part-time while the kids are small means you can claim for part of his pension, but if the pension isn't that much, is it worth it?

I see you don't want to retrain or go for promotion - you have this luxury if he's a high earner, and will subsidise a comfortable retirement. I'm a single parent, and worked part-time while my DS was in primary, and took unpaid parental leave too. This has impacted on my potential pension, so I've gone after promotions, to ensure that I have a decent pension.

So leaving impact on kids, potential of him leaving as he doesn't see you as a partner etc etc, does it actually make sense financially to stay?

You sound very defeated by life and utterly exhausted
It wouldn't hurt to speak to a GP and gets some bloods taken to see if there's anything physical making this hard time unbearably hard. My iron and thyroid currently are both borderline low and boy is that making life a challenge.

I was listening to a podcast recently about relationships and about how relationships where you bicker a lot are usually the ones that last longer. The theory is that you call one another out on behaviour before it gets chance to set in a fester. Our second is 9 months and my partner and I have a few disagreements, the common theme is me struggling to do something whilst holding the baby and him standing next to me. The response i got was "I'm not a mind reader, I didn't know that you needed me to hold the baby"

It sounds very much like you and your husband are so far of the same page as one another you are reading different books.

You are living a duel life one where you are the working parent and one where you are the stay at home parent except you are trying to condense that 7 day 24h role into 4 and and a half days. Your husband is living the postcard family life where he lives his usual life and turns up for Christmas, birthdays and a family holiday.

I would start asking him to do things. I would start really really small. I think as much as you have an inconsiderate husband who is leaving you to do everything, I think you have lost complete faith in his ability to do anything that isn't self serving to him.

I would start by finding something every day that takes about 2-3 minutes. Can you dish up dinner, I just need the toilet? Or get daughter ready in the morning except brushing her teeth and ask him to do that. As much as he needs to learn to self initiate doing these things, I think you need to learn that he is able to do so.

One question I ask friends that are struggling with dynamics in relationships to see whether things they are experiencing post kids is new or always simmering below is this..... When you were ever ill before children, how did he look after you? Followed up by, did you ever let him look after you?

We often take on more than we can manage after being let down when someone failed to help when we were in need

I would tell him clearly how you're feeling and that if things continue as they are it's seriously risking your marriage. And that you need to sit down tonight and agree a way forward. Maybe nothing will change, but at least he can't say he wasn't warned.

My DH works and I look after the house and children during working hours. Outside of working hours the split is quite equal. He doesn't do things necessarily how I'd do them, but it's important I think to let each other find what works ourselves.

At the end of the day though, plenty of people throughout history have stayed in marriages for financial reasons. I don't think it's unreasonable.

What would happen if you said to him 'I have arranged to meet xx and we're going to be out all afternoon so you'll need to look after the kids'?

And then go out. And when you get home (after dinner and bed time) ignore all of the mess etc. What would happen?

I get why yiu think it’s best to stay and I’d probably do the same tbh. It’s another couple of years and hopefully it’ll get easier and you’ll be able to to take stock, now isn’t really the time while you’re in the thick of it and yes it would only be worse as a single parent. I know you say a cleaner isn’t the answer, of course it isn’t but it might take a little pressure off and why not have someone to do chores you really don’t like? . I would be sooooo resentful at weekends if he wasn’t getting up and doing his share. It’s hard to say about week days if he has a long commute ? As in how long ? Two or three hours a day is exhausting ime. No excuses for working from home days though. Are there any grandparents to help a little maybe?

The complete lack of self awareness in this post is outdone only by the self-centredness and sheer made up bullshit. There's no way that 60+ years of life experience, intelligently analysed without sexism, have led you to believe that when a man treats his wife like a slave, the solution is for her to do more and change herself to take on yet more of his shit. That you can say this and then start accusing others of misogyny and any kind of ism is beyond laughable. It's too absurd to give it any further headspace. You might as well be babbling into a tinfoil hat.

OP, something occurs to me. I get why you want to stay, but he's got his reasons for wanting to stay too. If he thinks his life will be easier with you around but him pulling his weight more, than with you not around at all, then you may have a chance if you give him the ultimatum of leaving. He might do it himself later when he has a woman lined up, but at present, you actually have the power in that regard. People do say that sometimes you have to be prepared to leave your marriage to save it; right now, I think he actually has more to lose than you, and faced with an actual separation, he may be prepared to lift at least a finger here and there if the continuing total laziness leaves him with no wifebot at all.

This post nails it.
Pure sense ( not at all common!)

Is there anyway you can have another day off work? So your son goes to nursery and you get free time? The weekends would drive me completely mad ‘ what are you up to this weekend ‘ indeed. If you tell him he needs to take one of them to a party / activity does he just say no?

Listen carefully @ThatCyanCat :

📣 I’’M NOT SAYING WHAT YOU THINK I’M SAYING!

You’ve written a jumble of muddled and meaningless insults. Something is bothering you but I really don’t think it’s me and my common sense.

Your posts saying exactly that are right there, however much you now try to deny and bury them. Anyone with common sense would realise that.

At any rate, it's not about you, and now it's just boring, which is the worst of all. I can't continue to engage with boring. Switching off.

He knows exactly what he’s doing and he knows he can get away with it.

I’m guessing he’s older than you and probably gets very tired working FT and travelling. But that’s not taking away anything from how exhausting you doing everything is for you.

Did he actually want children or was it you pushing for them?

Things do get easier as they get older, so hang on for that, next year will soon come round.

It’s a shame though, one day you will look back and be sad you wished it away.

Personally, I think you’re too nice. If it was me I would have put a rocket up my DH’s arse, but that causes a huge amount of resentment in a marriage.

You will be miserable. You can't live with and be intimate with someone that you resent and don't respect, and be happy. I couldn't do it - I'm just not that good at pretending to be into someone, if I'm not.

Have you got a very attractive friend you can introduce him to? Then you can free yourself up guilt free, the alternative sounds sad.

No OP YANBU in the slightest. Take the breaks you can and if he then insists you work full time for the family, you make your plans to leave. The longer term plan should be to leave though - but right now, just get through however you can.

OP I completely understand. None of this is your fault. He’s exploiting you so exploit him as much as you can back because I agree that if you leave right now your life will only be harder. Perhaps when both are at school? Make a plan. He’s utterly useless as a father.

But I could not have sex with this man so I’d end that part of the relationship. As long as you continue sleeping with a man they think everything is okay!

It has been a gradual shift and I probably could have done things differently in allowing things to get this far but this is where they are now.

So you are admitting that perhaps how you responded to his learned helplessness may have contributed to his current inability to care for your children on his own. Therefore, do you not perhaps think that how you are doing things now might be cementing this in for the future? And, conversely, that if you were to perhaps do a few things differently that you might be able to change course at least a little bit in terms of his participation?

I know you keep saying that you've tried and he's refused or said something snarky or made things worse, but your response to that has been to pick up that slack and do whatever it is you asked him to do. He's therefore learned, much like a child does, that he doesn't have to really do it: in his eyes, you're more than capable.

If you and your partner agreed together to get a dog, and he then wouldn’t walk the dog, you probably wouldn’t refuse to exercise the dog you are responsible for and do care about, yes?

So it is with children. I’m not willing to make them suffer to assert my point here. Nor am I willing to make my life harder; I’ve got enough to do.

Ugh. If he actually WOULD say that, then you seriously need to look at leaving.

Here’s what you do love. You go upstairs and get changed and you come down and you go right, I’m going out for a run, you’ve got this covered yes? And then you just go out and don’t give him chance to excuse and leave him to it, exposure therapy. And you let him crack on and be a parent. He does know how. 5 and 3 aren’t that little they’ll be happy watching cartoons for a bit and that’s fine. And you enjoy a run or a walk or a coffee or whatever you need at that time. And do that a couple of times a week so he gets used to it

I can clearly see how sad you feel, he's a fucker! As much as being awful to you he's missing out so much with his DC and they're going to hate him later in life.
I'm with you 100%. He's using you so you can do the same, for now. Meantime, put as much money as you can into your Teachers' pension and any savings you may have. Fuck him! Don't make his life easier in any shape or form. You'll soon have more time to yourself and hopefully you'll feel happier.