so....dh has totally let himself go. which is saying something

[ThatVikRinA22]

am i just being shallow? weve been together forever. (married over 20 years) always loved him though doubt ive ever been in love with him, but thats ok, we are a good team, a great partnership. we have the same outlook and get along brilliantly. we have 2 kids, who are growing up. ive always been the "doer" in our relationship.
last night we went out with a couple we used to be really good mates with, and i realised my dh has totally let himself go. DH has no friends. he has always been fine with his own company. he has never cared a jot about how he looks, and im ok with that, even though we never looked like a couple, no one ever put us together as a couple.he relies on me to arrange his hair cuts ffs and ive stopped doing it. my mates dh looked great, i made an effort, wore a dress, make up, hair done while dh, he looked a bloody mess. i am no supermodel, im getting on,but i go to the gym, i try to make an effort. he makes no effort what so ever, but never has. he keeps saying he will start exercising with me, but never does. im not perfect, i know im not, but he is getting on my tits with things, his snoring which he never does anything about, his lack of motivation with everything, his job, everything, his is a clever clever bloke who is a doormat. and im getting irked. he works crap hours, we never have any time to ourselves, but i find i am in a constantly bad mood around him lately. He does nothing to help himself with anything, he relies on me to do it for him. his passiveness is annoying me. i recently embarked on a career change that really took a lot of effort on my part, and im surrounded by people who "do"...
do i just keep quiet and wait for this period of pissed offness to pass? it usually does, but lately, i dont know...i love him but he is pissing me off. its probably me who is changing....i think i go through this phase every so often with him and it usually passes...do i just sit tight and wait for it to pass again?

tough one, Vic

from what you say, it sounds like you are continuing to grow and develop in your life and he is not

like your paths are diverging

a career change for you can certainly open your eyes to stuff, including the fact that everything about his life and your relationship is solely driven by you

his passivity would drive me crazy too

I sympathise, but I guess if he is unable to change, and wouldn't consider relationship counselling (have you suggested this ?) you have to decide whether you want to stay in a relationship like this or not

But haven't you kind of facilitated that by being a kind of mummy figure to him all this time? Stop doing stuff for him that he can do himself for a start... arranging his haircuts... seriously??!?? Nothing worse than having a big ol baby for a partner instead of a man...

If he's someone who prefers his own company, you can't do much to change that but it doesn't mean you can't do your own stuff either, it's not like you can't have a social life. I'm much more sociable than my hubby and people might think we do too much independently but hey it works for us, you don't have to conform to other peoples' ideals, just make it work for you.

Re snoring, my dh is like that too and when I realised he wasn't really going to do anything to change things, I just organised my own alternative bed and I'd say about half the time, I sleep there, which suits us both cos I'm not gonna waste my energy over something he's doing nothing about. Oh and I recommend snuffles earplugs from Boots, if having a backup bed is a bridge too far for you...

thanks ladies.

if i had a spare room i would use it, but we dont. if his snoring really keeps me awake i often end up on my DDs floor - though if he knows ive to be up early or anything he will sleep on the sofa, or if he is due home in the early hours he will stay on the sofa until im up, our shift patterns mean we dont actually share a bed that often anyway (which im sure isnt a good thing but its a relief on the snoring front)

im not sure ive been a mummy figure, he is really capable in other ways, he has always done his share where the house and kids are concerned, its just anything to do with people he backs away and gets me to do it, but im not very practical where he is, ive always thought we balance each other out, what he is crap at im good at and vice versa. Ive not suggested counselling, though we had it once when we went through a really rocky patch and i wanted to leave, that was about 15 years ago now. i dont feel that way now, but im just finding he is generally irritating me and i dont really know why, its when he asks me what to wear, or says he needs some new clothes or whatever, he wont just go and buy them, he waits for me to do it, He certainly isnt going to change after all this time, i know that.

maybe im just adjusting to my new role, and we have other things going on that i suppose mean im feeling a bit....drained. house is going on market, along with the usual stresses and strains, money is tight despite the new job, not much down time together....that sort of thing. I dont want to do anything rash because for the most part of 20 years we have rolled along together just fine. im looking forward to some time when the kids are more independent etc....i just hope we are ok when there is nothing else to focus on but us.

No relationship stays the same over time. Have you sat down and had a conversation with him about the future? DH and I do this periodically, and last time we did he told be he was fed up being the person who always organised our holidays and he thought it was my turn. And so it was.

Is this is something you could do with your DH? Or just tell him that you want things that are currently taken for granted to change. Or tell him you are worried about how your marriage will survive when the kids leave home and you want to do something about it now, before its not too late.

I know its probably annoying that you will have to start this conversation - I feel that way too sometimes - but I'd rather do that that wait for my DH to do it (and that would never happen!).

Does he have a very large neck? How bad is his snoring? If there is any possibility that he might have sleep apnoea you need to find a way to get him to see a GP as it is life threatening if severe. I recognise the lack of care for appearance, passiveness etc from when I had sleep apnoea. I thought it was depression but it was severe sleep apnoea.

If he has always been like it then it might just be him (IYSWIM) but its also possible that it might be sleep apnoea and my life was revolutionised by having it treated.

The clothes buying thing is down to confidence, he has no confidence in his own taste. My DH is very much the same but I am happy to choose his clothes for him, because he does end up looking decent. It used to annoy me too, and now he does ask our grown up sons whether he looks okay before he goes out.
No-body is perfect and if he is happy to be guided by you in this way , try not to let it annoy you, I'm sure in many respects he is a good husband and father.

I don't know if you do this but every so often DH and I have a conversation about what we do that irritates the other, it is often productive as we both end up being more considerate of each other.

yeah, i know i should talk to him, but im worried it will just end up being one long negative stream of stuff thats been kept a lid on for a lot of years....and i know im not perfect, he puts up with a lot really from me, and never moans. im finding with my shift pattern that just as im starting to feel human again im back at work which doesnt help.

Blimey, I read your post and thought I had typed it out myself but I am not so far down the line.

I feel like this quite often with my DH. He hasn't changed but we got together when I was 18 and he was 25. Now I am 29 and I think that what I am looking for in a man is not what DH is. I don't want to split at all and we have 2 lovely children and I know that he really is a great father and a good husband, but I just wish he would make more of an effort. I often feel like we don't look right together.

doubt ive ever been in love with him, but thats ok

Ok for whom? You?

What about your husband? Is he aware you were never in love with him? If not I would call what you have done to him emotional fraud on a massive scale.

You 'made do' with him while he was useful to you, but now you are bored with his shortcomings and the deal is no longer serving you, so you're looking for justification to chuck him aside. He's probably always been passive, a doormat, lacking ambition etc but that's what you signed up for.

You wan't out now, well fine, just admit that he's outworn his usefulness and you have grown bored and you were never in love with him. Take responsibility for your the results of your own actions and stop blaming him.

You make out you did him a big favour by being with him in the first place, you didn't. You did it because it served you.

bloody hell dumpling, how on earth did you read all that into my post? i sense some massive projection going on there.,
because you are very, very wrong. ive never 'made do', and actually thats bloody insulting, nor do i think ive done him any favours by being with him, what we have is a very deep and loving connection which was a slow burner - we were best friends before we ever became involved romantically, and i would say we still are best friends, he is probably the only person i can be myself with, and i dont want to leave him, i said that in an earlier post. but what i am fed up with his is absolute lack of motivation, if there is a bill to pay, i pay it, if there is a phone call to make, i make it, if there is an appointment to keep, its me that does it - we have a child with autism, its been me that arranged all his appointments, me that took time off work, me that kept all the meetings with teachers, me that fought tooth and nail to get him any help, and i do get sick and tired of doing everything because when i ask him to back me or help me i just get "you know im no good at those sort of things" - he looks to me to do everything that involves people, and i have got tired of doing that. but i got tired of doing that a long time ago, and i told him, and he did nothing about it, so i put up with it because its just the way he is. i have had many many opportunities to leave if i so wished. i dont want that.

and i do get fed up of sleeping on the floor because he wont go back to the gp about his snoring

and to illustrate a point - he had a vasectomy in February, he still wants sex yet he has never gone back for any of the follow up tests, am i meant to do that for him aswell? for all i love him, for all i want to be here, he is lazy when it comes to certain things, so i am having an anon moan about it. He is lazy when it comes to getting off his arse and sorting anything out, he wants me to do most things for him and that i think is only going one way, and due to my change in circs i can no longer do it. and why should i really? because i used to? because he expects it?
we have been married 20 years. im not throwing it away because he has outlived his usefullness - thats fucking laughable actually. i have been of wayyyy more use to him than he has to me.

I'd feel depressed and short changed if my husband had never been in love with me. You don't sound as if you like him very much, so I think you're flogging a dead horse really. But if you want to stay I think you have to accept him for what he is, surely he has good qualities you can concentrate on, because after 20 years I doubt if he'll change much.

oh, and me that stayed for 7 weeks in hospital with DS, with 2 nights off in the whole of that time.

he stayed for those 2 nights and left the rest to me because he couldnt tell his boss to bog off despite the fact his son had bacterial meningitis and lay in a hospital bed in a coma.

he is completely unable to confront people. trust me, if i didnt actually love him id be long gone. i question how many women would put up with that for 20 + years. he has lots of other qualities that keep me here.

id forgotten about the bloody vasectomy. just checked. it was actually in november last year. he should have had follow ups in january.

when i say he has let himself go i obviously mean that his lack of....motivation?? is temporarily getting on my tits, clearly it just hit me (again) when we went out the other night, and i noticed his hair, which i ended up arranging to be cut this evening....

im the in this set up i think.

i love him. i really do love him very much. if i didnt id be long gone. i just have bouts of seething resentment from time to time. im sure i will get over it. i usually do.

vic, you don't have to justify yourself, love

Does he have low self esteem, or can he simply not be bothered?

Did he enjoy himself the other night when you were out with mates? Do you think he has any sense of not making an effort?

Fwiw, some of my most dynamic female friends have passive husbands. At times, it drives them crazy but at other times they like the freedom they have, and the fact that they are able to do what they like a great deal of the time.

A more assertive man would probably require compromise of a different sort...

thanks AF....im sitting here feeling like the worlds biggest bitch.

i have always told myself that lust and love get confused, and what i have is love, and i do believe thats true, but i cannot honestly say that my heart has ever skipped a beat when ive looked at DH, or that i ve ever had butterflies or felt head over heels in love, because i just havent. but i love him and i dont want to leave him, i dont want to be without him in my life and he is the most important person in my life bar the kids.
im betting dh feels the same about me tbh. i was 15 when i met him and i was his first ever girlfriend. 20 years down the line i see why! (joke!)

im under no illusions that im any better.

early bird thats also very true. it would never occur to me to ask permission of my DH for anything, and i have the freedom i would have if i was single. he would never stop me from going out or anything.

he seemed to enjoy himsel the other night. he is actually more outgoing now than he used to be, he isnt antisocial, but he relies on me, when he is "propped up" he does very well, he can be very funny and very witty. it just depressed me slightly when i noticed his hair etc....it just typifies the fact that he wont do anything for himself.

He would irritate the piss out of me too. I think your periodic bouts of pissed off-ness are a sign that this is never going to go away. You clearly love him, he's clearly not going to change, so unfortunately if you can't face leaving your only option is to stay. That said, I do think you two would be prime subjects for relationship counselling. Sounds like there is lots of positive stuff and love to build on, but some glaring problems. For me, personally, I couldn't make a life with someone who didn't at least give me butterflies in the beginning. because I think it's that occasional stomach-flipping-over feeling that sustains you over times like these, even 20 years down the line. I realise it's a bit late to point that out now.
Did you manage to catch this when it was on telly not long ago? I found it very helpful and interesting. To be honest, I think counselling could only help you, whether you went alone or with him.

vic, not everyone ever feels that "massive jolt of love, hearts and flowers" of romantic bollocks fiction

I don't, never have

I love my husband quietly and solidly but I could live without him

he knows that, and I guess it's mutual

I am a self-sufficient, independent person and DH likes that about me

what I am saying is that quiet love and affection, and a shared history is often more enduring and important than the dramatic romantic idealism that so many women can fall victim to (when that knight in shiny armour turns out to be an abuser/liar/philanderer/thief/not the man he said he was etc)

I do get from your post that you love him, but find parts of his make-up difficult to reconcile with the way you have grown as a person while you have been together

there is absolutely no shame in that

why don't you try talking to him again ?

...and suggest counselling, yes

Do you think maybe he has some kind of phobia with regards talking to people, could he maybe get help for this? Some CBT?

vicar did you see my question about sleep apnoea?

thanks for that link SingOut....i didnt see it, i will watch it in a mo...

part of the problem is that i think i would find it quite difficult to tell him any of this because i dont want to hurt him. i suppose none of it would come as a shock (i have said most of it at one time or another) but i suppose he would wonder where it had all suddenly come from if i mentioned it, and the truth is that every now and again he pisses me off to the point i snap at him, and lately ive been horrible and snappy and irritated, but i end up feeling its pointless to keep going over old ground when nothing changes. so i get over it and i accept it, and i mostly count my blessings, because he is good bloke, he is funny, he is tolerant and placid and dependable, we get on most of the time, we laugh at the same things, we like the same stuff, i dont think we have ever really grown apart despite the years, we normally get on really well.

then i saw his hair. and it pissed me off and i dont think i had even noticed it before saturday night...anyway, its chopped off now. ill see how i feel by the time its grown back

gawd x posts!

thanks AF....that does make sense. i should talk to him. i find it very difficult to open up but i think id find it easier in counselling....i dont know why - i did last time

Kewcumber - he has been to the gp, i suppose sleep apnoea would be something they would look into but he didnt go back when the spray they gave him didnt work....it would be worth looking into. he has a thick neck. he works with something he is also allergic to, which doesnt help.

fabby - i dont think he is exactly phobic, just awkward. im his crutch. with me there he is fine, he relaxes, he just hasnt a clue about small talk or making conversation. he shies away from picking up a phone and arranging anything. he once went 4 months with no gas because he didnt complain to his landlady or phone the gas board - this was when he was 21, but i honestly dont think he has got any better!

Sounds like he's pathologically non-confrontational and I can totally understand your frustration. I'd be in a rage if my dh couldn't put his own child's health before everything else just thru fear of asking his boss, that's just wrong. I think HE needs the counselling not you. He needs to get something done about his social phobia because it's obvious he's only got as far as he has with you as a crutch. Don't know what to say to you really, you could end up hating him as time goes on, that's the problem...
Maybe suggest assertiveness courses or something?