Dh want let me reduce work hours even though its making me ill

[Sunshine78]

My dh is supportive when he wants to be. As he is self employed and during the credit crunch has not always been paid I increased my hours at work. I do the extra hours from home in an evening (often having been at work in the day) I have done this for 18 months. I have been ill with infection after infection all winter. I am now off with depression caused I'm sure by exhaustion. Due to long working hours and looking after 2 dc 6 and 3 (I do bulk of child care Dh leaves before 8 and not home till 6.30/7ish/ all cooking and laundry) Dh cleans the house once a week and tidys at night (I am past the point of seeing stray toys!)

Any way I just want to halve the hours I do at home which would mean losing £90 a month which could be saved if we stopped putting money into an ISA. Problem is Dh was brought up to save no matter what (and recently have had to use savings just to get by) I however feel at the moment and at furhter risk to my health savings are a luxary.

When tried to talk to Dh about this he jsut says no to reduced hours as we cant afford it!

Feel like I am not supporting him and am letting him down by not contributing as much as I can.

She was signed off for exhaustion. If that's not enough of a clue I don't know what is.

She said she does the cooking and laundry.

So he cleans once a week and tidies at night?

They both work.

That's not doing her a favour, that's his fair share at the least.

i took it to mean he does the cooking & laundry, probably wrong though
As for cleaning once a week, that'd be twice as often as ours gets done at all

Not suggesting she should carry on as she is at all, something has to give, just think it's unfair to imply he's lazy and that he just wants money for money's sake iyswim

not making a judgement on the detail, just pointing out from the OP it seems he is far from lazy and greedy!

He could do more about the house - most blokes could. But he's clearly not one of those shitty DHs who spend all day at work and expect the wife to have done everything.

But if I were signed off work with exhaustion, I think my DH might genuinely think I just need a break. He may not twig that it is long term - I have a friend who was signed off with exhaustion and depression after a long run of illness in the winter at the same time as fairly long hours, and she was able to go back to her previous routine after that time out.

We also don't know how many hours OP is working - she says she works from home "often having been at work during the day" - maybe she isn't working 5 x 10 hour days unlike her DH.

I'm not trying to say she should keep the hours as is and just deal with it - far from it. Her health is more important than an ISA. But I don't think the best approach for what sounds like only a second discussion on a subject as complex as health, working hours, finances, depression etc. with someone who sounds like he may be a reasonable DH is to go in with all guns blazing telling him he's a shit DH, which seems to be the attitude of most posters on here and that she is giving up the hours whether he likes it or not! Give the poor bloke a second chance!

I think you need to sit down and have a chat. Lay it all out for your DH, that you simply cannot cope with the work load.
Let him explain why he feels you need to pay money into the ISA ( for uni fees? instead of a pension?).
Surely a compromise can be reached.

I don't see that the OP is getting any time off at all though.

She is working days, working some evenings on top, and doing the bulk of teh childcare and keeping the house running.

H is out of the house 7.30-6.30 which is not unusual for a full time job. I don;t know what his commute is, but even if he is actually working for 10 of those hours he is still out of the home for a normal period of time ie an amount of time that normal people work and still have to get their kids up and out, back and fed, housework etc.

Yet it is the OP doing all of this, so she is working all teh time he is at work, plus a whole load extra on top.

Agree if £90 a month extra is that important to him he should be the one working evenings and earn it himself.

Well ISNT we don't know how much she works. She says "often having been at work in the day" - which implies not FT.
Again - I do have sympathy. Obviously this can't sontinue. But it sounds like it might be hard for both.

She also says "Due to long working hours" that she is unwell.

That to me does not indicate that she is sitting on her arse at home painting her toenails.

She is signed off work with depression/exhaustion.

She has asked DH if she can halve the amount of overtime she is doing ie not give up work but stop doing all the overtime. He has said no as he wants the money to put into an ISA.

Out of interest OP whose name is the ISA in?

My DH often does overtime, if he came to me and said I'm knackered, I don;t want to do the overtime any more, and we could afford for him not to do it, I would say fine, good. I would not say "yes I can see you are running yourself into the ground but no you are not allowed to cut your hours".

'he does seem to be helping out (on top of his 50 hour week)'

He's not 'helping out', he's doing his fair share and probably not even that.

I used to work 50 hour weeks and DH was a SAHP.

That's no excuse not to do my fair share of the work that goes with having kids.

He has not said she can't because the money is needed in an ISA!!!! She just said that he has been brought up to save, and the money they would lose is equivalent to what goes in the ISA. Nowhere has the OP said that he said "no bloody way are we stopping putting money in the ISA so keep doing your overtime"!!!!

It really depends on what you do, too...I only work 20 hrs a week, but am having an awful time with it. I work with a behaviorally challenged student who screams and tantrums while I'm at work, and then I go home to a behaviorally challenged lovely toddler who screams and tantrums at home.

YANBU to be exhausted. I hope you find a solution soon!

"Any way I just want to halve the hours I do at home which would mean losing £90 a month which could be saved if we stopped putting money into an ISA. "

"When tried to talk to Dh about this he jsut says no to reduced hours as we cant afford it!"

I think it's fairly clear cut, really.

He may just not have been thinking when he said they can't afford it - if I said to my DH I wanted to cut my hours, his initial response would be "we can't afford it" in the same way mine would be if he asked the same. But if we sat down together, and I had a plan about how we could still survive on the lower income, then he would probably come round. OP's DH might be exactly the same.

OP you need to present him with a budget or a few options on the money to show how you can afford it. He may not want to give up the ISA money, but maybe he'd give up say his gym membership and a few takeaways, or you could do without the Sky sports package or something. There are ways and means to save £90 that may not require touching the ISA if that is particularly important to him - it's just that the ISA is the same amount as what they'd lose so it is the immediately obvious thing to go.

His hours are not that long to be honest.

I do about 45-48 hours per week with a an hour commute on either end of the day. Still go home and carry on.

If my otehr half was depressed and anxious and had been signed off for depression, I would not be cracking the whip and asking for more work to be done.

That's what I've been trying to say getorf, I don't think his hours are unusual. It's normal full time hours, when I was out the house for those hours I still managed to cook and clean and so on. I don;t understand why everyone is saying how the DH is doing stacks and they can't understand why the OP is exhausted.

It's £20 a week. It wouldn't take much at all to budget down to save 20 quid a week. The ISA could still keep going as a just in case and OP could get her health sorted. Simple!

that's not what i'm saying ISNT
just that he is not selfish or lazy (as he's been accused of) and it's reasonable to worry about savings if you've had to live on savings in the past.

this is one of those situations where something has to give - the OP is exhsausted & needs to cut hours. he just needs to understand that

Ask him if the money he wants to save up will be enough to pay for a funeral when you drop dead of exhaustion

You said he is 'SE' but we dont know what excactly he is doing. Well if he is not making much money and £90 pcm is so important to him then perhaps he should change path and seek employment?

I do admire SE people who dont give up easy in hard times and i would support a partner who had a good idea/skill but tbh i know few people who use this as an excuse to stay home when the other half is slaving. I am not saying this is the case with your dh. But you should prioritirize your health.

ISNT - I don't think anyone has said they don't understand why the OP is exhausted! I think some of us have just said that based on what the OP has said there is perhaps not a reason to be giving her DH quite as tough a time as the majority of earlier posters did. They read into it things that the OP didn't say (she never said that he had insisted they keep the ISA going so she had to keep working - people just assumed that) and then basically started saying she should ignore what her DH thought and drop the hours when we don't even really know how detailed the conversation was or how vehement his opposition was to her suggesting she drop the hours.

They both should be putting her health ahead of £90 per month. But there is nothing to suggest that her DH is saying "tough titties, work your arse off" - he has just said once that he doesn't think they can afford it which would probably be most people's default position if their other half suggested they drop some hours and hence income.

OP - I hope you are able to have another conversation (it may take a couple of chats to get to a conclusion, so don't give up if you don't get an answer straight away). Maybe go in to the conversation with a few suggestions on ways to save the £90 (the ISA being one but maybe not the only way, as that is clearly particularly important to your DH). I hope when he realises that time off isn't the answer but dropping the hours permanently is that he readily agrees to let you drop your hours as it sounds like that is what is needed.

?

someone upthread said "I have no idea why she is so exhausted"

I don't understand all this business about her having to persuade him to "let" her drop her hours. That does not sound like an equal relationship to me. If I was working myself sick I would hope that DH would be interested in talking about it, rather than just saying "no" when I "asked" him about reducing hours, and thus have to find evidence to convince him to do what any normal caring spouse would say OK to without much thought, or at least be prepared to discuss.

My reading of the OP is also that she has asked him more than once and he keeps just saying no.

It would take working all day and all night before someone was allowed to be exhausted? You have very high standards.

I just feel sorry for her. She is signed off work with depression/exhaustion, she goes to her DH and asks him if she can cut down the extra hours she is working in the evening - not stop working, simply reduce the amount of overtime - and is greeted with a flat no. It just sounds horrible. I would hope that if I was in that kind of state DH would at least be prepared to discuss it.