Would I be unreasonable to stop supporting DH financially

[needsomeperspective]

I work full time. Have 2 children aged 1 and 2. We have a nanny who also does washing ironing and a lot of cleaning. My DH works part time.

When we got married my DH left his job so he could move to the country I was living in. He has only ever worked sporadically since. This has been going on for over 3 years.

I work in a very demanding job where I am very stressed and stretched.

He is a part time tradesman. He appears in my view to make very little effort to follow up or generate work, shows little drive or ambition has to be prodded to return client phone calls and is just generally very unmotivated and unreliable. He is a clown with the kids who love him but I'm starting to hold in in contempt and feel very resentful that he isn't contributing more, making more effort to find work and basically thinking he is a lazy cock lodging bastard.

I pay his mortgage (which isn't fully covered by the income from his genants) credit card payments, loan repayments from before he met me and am getting fucking sick of it.

He gives me most of his wages when he get them to go towards bills but its a drop in the ocean. He isn't profligate and doesn't go out much so I can't say he is throwing money around but he significantly adds to our cost of living. Things like occasional golf games, dinners out, nothing unreasonable.

I am just getting sick of it. When he was a say at home dad I could cope with it. But now we have a nanny I'm not entirely sure what I am actually getting out of this relationship.

He does clean and do DIY and he drives me to work an back every day as we only have one car but honestly I often think I would be better off f he just fucked off because I wouldn't be having to pay for all his stuff every month. If he was a really hard worker I would be more patient but he lets clients down and let's jobs go because he is just lazy and disorganized.

Would it be unreasonable for me to say "right, from January you will have to be responsible for your own mortgage, credit card and loan payments. So I'd get looking for work if I were you!"

I've already decided I will ask him to go out for the day next year. I didn't tell him that yet though or he will get in a mood.

Oh wow. Then it's all solved. Great.

'I like being married'

OP - but you don't like the experience of your actual marriage. Marriage is about having shared dreams, likes and plans, about enjoying each other's company. You don't seem to share your husband's approach to life nor enjoy having him around (with some justification, I think). It also helps to make a marriage succeed (studies have shown this) if you are on the same page in your attitudes to politics and morals (this includes views on money, what's important in life), your backgrounds (class, upbringing) and sexually. From what you have posted, you and your husband have significant differences in all these areas.

What I'm saying is that you are fighting an uphill battle to make this work. I am not optimistic, from what you've posted, that it's possible and I suspect that you are making yourself a lot more miserable in the process. This for the ideal that you 'like being married'. Do you like it that much, so much that you are sacrificing your own happiness, the kids' happiness and maybe even his to wanting to keep it going?

Really, think seriously about starting a discussion with him about ending the marriage. If nothing else, it would be illuminating to hear his response. He might be shocked and sad. He might be relieved that you too have admitted it can't go on. He might be abusive and blame you entirely, in which case you have your answer about whether it would be the right thing.

Are you in counselling by yourself, on your own account?

You just sound really, really bad for each other.

Either:

• He's an abusive dick who is shitting all over your hard-working life while you tread on eggshells and try to smooth over his mood swings and bad temper

• or you are unwilling or incapable of making allowances for his past and present mental health and are dragging him into a dark place where he feels helpless and disempowered to change for the better

• or a bit of both, more of one or the other

Whatever, you are bad for each other. You are making each other's lives miserable (maybe one more than the other, who really knows with words on a screen). Be kind to yourselves. Don't let this drag on for another year.

He probably snaps out of fear and instinct. Exactly what sort of abuse occurred in his childhood?

Also you need to realised that sometimes even with years of counselling people are never what you and I would call "over it" and able to move on completely.

DP works with women who have been abused who have intractable personality disorder. They will never be the people they might have been had it not been for the abuse.

:/ it won't help.

When the abused abuse it is generally because they want to regain something they felt they lost through being abused or because it is simply how they were raised to behave. Asking him to go out will not help, it won't even help you feel better because you will be making yourself responsible for managing his mood and because I doubt he will have nothing to say about it, it will not help your dc have a nice time because they will grow up aware of his volatility and how they also need to learn how to manage it.

sleepy - has she also sworn and shouted at her P during that time - he is on meds yet he still does it every time she raises an issue - so now she is scared to raise it and is storing all this resentment inside. I stand by what i said that he has trapped her, and she feels she has no way to influence him, i.e. helpless and angry unsurprosingly. She listed all the ways she tried ro deal with it, and smooth things out. Don;t you think there is a fine line where it became convenient for him? he literally just managed to shut her up. He is NOT seriously depressed if he gets exciting about gold, hotels and le cruseut . He also does do jobs well enough to be paid, when pushed, so he is not incapacitated.

FGS like, depressed people are allowed to want things.

Yeah I keep thinking this too likeatonne:

He is NOT seriously depressed if he gets exciting about gold, hotels and le cruseut . He also does do jobs well enough to be paid, when pushed, so he is not incapacitated.

You have to stop firefighting and deal with the actual problem. Even if I am wrong about him being abusive (dont think i am) this relationship is not working and is not healthy for you or your dc. You can choose to tolerate his moods and his explosions and his unwillingness to participate in life but your dc need you to step up and insist that you will not have it in their lives. I grew up with an exceptionally anxious and volatile father and a mother desperate to stay married and it really messed up my life.

excited, not exciting.

Look, it makes fuck all difference if it's all his fault or all her fault or a bit of both.

This is a desperately unhappy person in a desperately unhappy relationship. She holds most of the financial cards so would in every possible way be better off alone. He may also be better off alone.

It's a no brainer surely? Apportioning blame, reading between the lines, trying to assess the reality of his mental health problems, teasing out the likelihood of his childhood abuse being a contributing factor or not are neither here nor there.

There are children in this family who are hardly likely to be immune to the bad atmosphere in the house. Make a NY resolution - find happiness in 2013. He is not going to change.

I am sure he is depressed and anxious btw. It is irrelevant.

People who are depressed can do things, can want things, it affects different people differently, it isn't common to be catatonic.

What I'm saying is this stuff about his issues being a reason for him to abide you or for you to tolerate him abusing you is crap. Total crap. Even if his MH probs were making him abusive (which I doubt unless you count being an abuser as a MH prob) then he doesn't have to be to blame for you finding it an intolerable way to live, it just being intolerable, even if it is no-one's fault is enough to end it... Surely?

Right.

A few questions. What country are you in? Does he like it there? Has he made his own friends (not through you or the children)? What is his trade? Is there something that he needs to do specific to his business that makes it more manageable? ie. is he or could he be making enough money to pay an administrator?

Then some deeper questions. If he were to make more of a success of his business, would that be enough? If you offered to go home to the UK, would he jump at the chance? Do you think your relationship is damaging to your children?

I'm abroad too, in very different circumstances (I work, DH is a SAHD but loves it and does it really well). I know though that he would struggle without his own set of friends and without knowing that he was doing his best.

*abuse!

Look, they aer allowed to want things but not when their partner is busting her gut to feed the family, while he does the minimum and just 'wants' - plus verbally abuses her. 'Find another cunt!'??

he wasn't diagnosed with depression, he has OCD and takes meds, but he also did work and is still working when he feels like it, so it's not debilitating depression, and if he wants to buy something he can go and return a client's call for once without prompting! how can anyone not be sorry for Op who is like a bloody hampster in a wheel? Yes maybe she is not qualified to deal with MH issues well - she doesn't have to, she didn';t know that he will be like that when she married, so she has every right to leave!

What I'm saying is this stuff about his issues being a reason for him to abide you or for you to tolerate him abusing you is crap. Total crap. Even if his MH probs were making him abusive (which I doubt unless you count being an abuser as a MH prob) then he doesn't have to be to blame for you finding it an intolerable way to live, it just being intolerable, even if it is no-one's fault is enough to end it... Surely?.

Exactly this.

I do feel sorry for the op putting up with so much btw, also feel sorry for her husband having been through such a crap childhood BUT they are adults and they have children and the children have a dad who is unwilling to sort out his problems and takes this out on the dc/his wife/himself and a mum who is unwilling to leave a relationship where she is being abused and they are being affected because she "likes marriage".... They don't have any choice about what they are exposed to by their parents... Someone has to break this cycle.

This is something which is raw for me personally right now as the child of parents like that so be aware that may be colouring my perception of the situation. I don't think it is though.

no quite - I didn't at all mean it in a make your bed/lie in it way - more that, as a couple of other people have said, this seems to me to be a thread about the wrong problem, which makes me suspect that the OP is deflecting her attention away from deeper issues. And that looking at them might explain both why she ended up here and why she hasn't yet left what seems to be a mutually very unhappy relationship. (and the fact that you don't seem to want to engage with this question OP makes me suspect that I'm right, though apologies if not).

also OP - it's not really true that humans always have a choice - everyone has behaviours they can't change, and people with difficult backgrounds often have destructive behaviours they can't change. I think you're being harsh on your dh there, but that also makes me wonder if you are being harsh on yourself - you seem to feel that you have to be responsible for everything, and that is a horrible place to be. could you find time to see a therapist?

I rarely say this, but definitely think you should leave him, as clearly you dislike him. Maybe with reason, maybe not, doesn't matter. I divorced my first husband partly because he contributed so little financially yet spent so much. He was an abuse survivor too with mh issues, so many people thought I was being a cock to him by ending the marriage. But the thing is, I hated him, if I hadn't I would have found out a way to accept the financial stuff, or at least work on it. When the love has gone, why prolong the agony?

OP - if you put the anger on hold for a sec, are you scared? Underneath? Are you thinking Help, what's going to happen to me if I go on doing everything? I signed up to marriage as a partnership & now I'm the only one pulling the cart...help

Because I would get the fear, to be honest. I can see other people are having a go at you, but a lot of what you're upset about is disappointed expectations. A lot of your problem is to do with gender roles, too - mind you, you married an ex-soldier so I can hardly blame you for expecting a strong traditional man & provider. But you haven't got one.

You do sound bossy. But I reckon it's exasperation fuelling it, not innate abusive one-upmanship.

Like you, I just don't know if I could stay married with small children to a man who didn't look after us at all in cash or care. Some people (usually women) don't mind being the sole provider of both, and I would love to think I was that woman, but the reality is most people would mind and it would worry them. They would really, really mind if they thought the man didn't love them much either.

And I think maybe it might be a good idea for you to talk about some of the things he has done to hurt you too. Whether that is on here or in some kind of women's aid/other counselling. I think you are getting a bad deal on here from people who don't know the full story but maybe that is easier than accepting he is abusive and you can't fix him?

Some questions to think about (dont answer if you don't want); What was your childhood like? Where did you learn to pick an abuser and to minimise the abuse?

I do love him. Once I've had a good vent things don't seem so bad. They just build up because I can't talk to him about problems because he gets angry moody and generally really mean. After we go through that phase he usually makes a big effort to change his behavior which is usually quite well sustained. I just loathe going through the initial abuse before he acknowledges he might need to do things a bit differently

He absolutely doesn't want to go home. Doesn't miss his job at all. Has lots of friends here and a better lifestyle than he has ever had or expected. Year round sun, no tax, beach an pool round the corner, good social environment etc. neither of us want to return to the uk.

At times he can be abusive. At times lovely. Who is an asshole all the time?

I just question whether I would actually be happier without him. I don't think so actually.

I don't think he is unhappy in the marriage because I very rarely express anything negative towards him. Sometimes I distance myself if I'm feeling specially pissed off but I never tell him off, complain or have a go at him. It just makes him angry and so I choose my battles quite carefully. He knows from my silences when I am unhappy, disapproving, critical but I'd never say it out loud. I wouldn't want the fight. Or the atmosphere.

Hence coming on here to vent. Which helps.

Obviously I he isn't have good points I wouldn't still be with him. Other people bitch about their husbands with friends over a bottle of wine. I come on here. It feels less disloyal somehow. And anyway I wouldn't want my friends or family to think badly of my husband. It would make life awkward.

Hopefully the job situation will improve when the company he is dealing with finalize everything. It's just taking ages. And he won't push them.

I will cross my fingers for a good bonus which will hopefully take the pressure off and make me less resentful on the financial front.

He isn't always a moody git either. And I have managed to nip extreme moodiness in the bud before by standing my ground and weathering the inevitable storm. Maybe I just need to toughen up and brace for the anger and get through it so we can deal with issues without me suppressing them.

I've been one of your harsher responders OP. But Offred and Corygal are talking a lot of sense - listen to them.

I seem to recall that you're in the middle east, which IIRC may also make it harder for you to access help/resources that those of us in the UK take for granted.