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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

I don't want a huge blow up with H over this, so need opinions please

357 replies

Loutwenty · 26/06/2013 11:28

I don't know where to start really. This is long, sorry, I am just so confused at the moment.

Been with dh for 2 1/2 years, married for just over 1. We got together quite fast as I was having a terrible relationship breakdown with exh, so we moved in together after only 6 months. I had been married 12 years but living separate lives for 10 of them. I have a 10 year old child from that marriage.

I don't work, but I study full time. DH works, but in a job he hates, he did a stupid uni course as a mature student at 25, graduated shortly after we moved in together and couldn't find the mystical job that he hankered after (the route he took isn't a route into them anyway iyswim). So now he has a boring, normal job and is not a rock star like he spent his early 20s thinking he'd be, this is apparently, my fault as now he has responsibilities

I was a sahm during my first marriage, my ex worked abroad during the week and we lived in rural scotland, so I kind of had to be! I married young too, so never had much work experience, aside from a bit of freelance stuff pre 20, so when I left, I was floundering.

Last sept I started college and I have totally found myself. I have studied a subject I love, so much so that I have excelled and done a couple of further courses myself and at my own expense to further my knowledge.

However, I am at a crossroads at the moment where in order to continue I can do a degree. My father and ex always told me I was thick. My father said I was so stupid that there was no point in staying at school post 16, and my ex was very successful and talked down to me always. Since studying, I know that's not true. I have passed with all distinctions, my tutors have been behind me all the way and are pushing me to skip a level and go to a degree.

Ok so two issues!

  1. I study hard. Really, really hard, not only with the course I have been doing, but with the additional courses I have taken on. I have a criminal law level 3 qualification to complete over the summer, it is not easy. But yet, because I am in the house more, doing 'nothing' (!) as he says, all house work falls to me. He does not lift a finger. He will 'help' wash up a couple of times a week, but he lets me firmly know he is 'helping' me and expects full on, falling to my knees gratitude.

I make him breakfast in bed every morning, regardless of if I am leaving half an hour earlier than him to get to college, I run his bath, wash his hair. All this for an easy life or he sulks. I am not well today and stressed. So I didn't get out of bed before him as usual. He usually has to start getting dressed at 7.50, by 7.30 he was already huffing as I hadn't got up to get his breakfast and coffee. 7.40 ds comes in with his cereal - a 10 year old puts him to shame lol - so I get up, feed the cats and stupidly make his breakfast as I couldn't face a strop. He could tell I was upset, so asks why (but not in a concerned way, he gets pissed off at me when I am upset) so I tell him, just for once, I am fed up of the morning waitress service. So then he says, well, I wan't hungry anyway and throws a strop that he won't be able to drink his coffee, it will be too hot.

He has his dinner cooked and ready for when he walks through the door as well, regardless of if I am eating or not. My first husband was a shit, but he never, ever expected anyone to cook and clean up after him, so I have never experienced this before. Is this normal? I feel like a housekeeper, I hate it. I know he works, but really, to do nothing in your own home? when I talk to him, he says to tell him what needs doing and he will. But a) He is not a teenager and I am not his mother b) this is his home too, I am not the boss of cleaning and c) he gets in such a mood if I do ask him to do anything. He'll do it, but it's not worth the sulking afterwards.

When I talk to him about it, he gets angry and tells me to stop acting like I have a hard life.

  1. With regard to study, I have been offered an amazing chance to do a degree I will love. But I will have to commit to three years, hard wok with pretty full on work placements. We want another child. I have had several MC, so I can't wait any longer, certainly not 3 or 4 years, I am 34. So I am looking into OU degrees as they will be more compatible.

DH isnt happy about any of this. He says he will support me, but this week keeps throwing hissy fits, about how much he hates his job, how it's not fair and I can't complain as at least I am doing something I want to do. It's not my fault that, by his own admission, he did a degree which would basically buy him 3 more years 'free' drinking time' in his mid 20's. It is also not my fault that I have turned out to be more intelligent than people thought I was.

And I know that if I do OU, I will get the 'I got to work!' card thrown at me and I will be doing all the house, studying and looking after a baby on my own.

I am confused and I don't know what to do for the best, or, if I want to stay with him at all at the moment.

OP posts:
AnyFucker · 26/06/2013 16:06

So what if he sulks

Simply ignore him

With a bit of luck he will decide you are a shit wife for not washing his hair and fuck right off

Hullygully · 26/06/2013 16:07

You haven't really got anything to think about.

You don't need to have a baby, you already live with a great big one that needs its hair washed.

Tell him to fuck off, do your degree and have a great life.

Loutwenty · 26/06/2013 16:07

Hully - yes, he does. He also moans like a toddler does if the water from the shower attachment is too hot or too cold.

Maybe I should feel contempt towards him.

He's learned it from his dad. He once told me his dad kept a stick by the bed, so when he woke up after a long lay in on the weekends, he bang it on the bedroom floor so that mil knew to bring him up his breakfast.

OP posts:
Ragwort · 26/06/2013 16:07

This cannot be for real surely, I've read it all on Mumsnet now, you wash a grown man's hair Shock

Please, please leave him now, it is not right to bring your child up seeing this sort of behaviour as 'normal'.

If your own grown up child was in a relationship like this, what advice would you give them?

Hullygully · 26/06/2013 16:09

"maybe" ???????????????????????

prettywhiteguitar · 26/06/2013 16:09

Run ! Before you get trapped by a pregnancy from this man

Run. It will not get better and if you want a career you need a supportive partner and he is not it

Loutwenty · 26/06/2013 16:10

If I had a daughter like me it would break my heart and I would do all I could to help her leave.

OP posts:
BeCool · 26/06/2013 16:11

"So what if he sulks
Simply ignore him
With a bit of luck he will decide you are a shit wife for not washing his hair and fuck right off"

I think THIS ^^ is what I've been trying to say!

But just in case he doesn't decide to fuck right off, you can choose to leave the relationship yourself - no need to wait for him.

"I'm so hungry, my lunch wasn't in my bag" along with a big sad face.
OMG he really take no responsibility for anything in his life does he???

& Lou you gotta STOP making his lunch! And he can put it in his bag himself.

Do you see how you are enabling him to be this pathetic person by all this pandering you do?

Loutwenty · 26/06/2013 16:12

On another note what do I do if both are names are on the tenancy agreement? We just signed for another year. I don't want to move as its ds is right in catchment for the best secondary school.

OP posts:
5madthings · 26/06/2013 16:13

Get the fuck out of this relationship. Run for the hills, go to uni and start a good life for you and your son.

Just get out!

Hullygully · 26/06/2013 16:14

Tell him to move.

Stop doing anything for him, he'll soon get fed up and move back to Mummy's.

SunRaysthruClouds · 26/06/2013 16:16

Hmmm I think I am changing my mind and am jumping on the LTB bandwagon too.

Unless of course you feel you can completely re-educate him because he surely needs it. I think there must be an element of enabling by you here though OP....

Loutwenty · 26/06/2013 16:18

Hully - she would have him back like a shot.

She still gives him £200 a month spending money. When I first met him he was going back home in the uni holidays (rent free) and would sit on his arse playing Xbox weeks on end while they treated him like a child. He was 26.

I'd laugh in my ds face if he tried to do that in his 20s.

OP posts:
Hullygully · 26/06/2013 16:19

There you go - sorted!

LittleMissGerardButlerfan · 26/06/2013 16:22

I think you know this already but he is never going to change!

Only you can decide whether to leave or if you are willing to be unhappy?

I know it's not that simple bitter voice of experience

Loutwenty · 26/06/2013 16:23

I am torn between thinking sod it and trying to hash it out with him. To be honest, if I feel like I want to leave anyway, what have I got to lose?

He was actually worse when we first lived together. He would play on his Xbox all day, expect to come off when his dinner was ready and then go back on it again. He said he needed alone time for at least 6 hours a day.

That was over very quickly, I promise you. He grew up when I gave him a few home truths over that and he doesn't play it at all now.

OP posts:
Thisisaeuphemism · 26/06/2013 16:24

You do sound contemptious of him understandably, and you are, to a certain extent enabling him. You don't have children with him. What has kept you there?

EhricLovesTeamQhuay · 26/06/2013 16:26

I am going to do a degree which will give me a career in health and social care. Am deciding between social work and social science. It will lead to a job. My thoughts were I could have a child while I studied and then when I had a full time job it would be of nursery age.

Please listen to me. Doing a degree in social work is hard. I don't know the stats but a lot of couples split up while one is studying social work because the course forces you to be reflective and also teaches a lot about dysfunctional dynamics. I myself ended my bad marriage 3 months before starting mine because I knew it was coming and I felt like I couldn't cope with trying to manage all the crap at home with a social work degree. I was right. It's extremely intense and hard work and not to be attempted with a small baby and shit marriage. Trust me on this.

Plus, it would be a very selfish act to have a baby with an abusive man just because you want one. And very foolish. You would be tied to him forever.

Loutwenty · 26/06/2013 16:27

Stability for ds. We moved 500 miles when I finally split with his dad (we are now actually closer to where his father works away during the week).

It's the thought of turning ds life upside down really. And I do love dh.

OP posts:
EhricLovesTeamQhuay · 26/06/2013 16:27

And also, what do you plan to do with the baby while you are studying? Social work degrees are literally full time and the rest.

ThePlEWhoLovedMe · 26/06/2013 16:32

I would like to write more but unfortunately I fear it will lay on deaf ears. You have gone from one abusive relationship to another. What you describe is FAR from normal. Your son is seeing all this.

NotGoodNotBad · 26/06/2013 16:33

And I do love dh.

But really, why? What is there to love? He needs several hours a day to relax Hmm, sulks if you don't wash his hair or make him breakfast in bed or remember his packed lunch Shock, moans about the water temperature of his shower. Crikey, even toddlers are not such hard work!

I really would have contempt for an adult like this, not love.

EhricLovesTeamQhuay · 26/06/2013 16:36

Normal people, if they or their house slave forgets their lunch, pop to the shop/canteen and buy something. They don't whine passive aggressively and sulk about it. He's just a fucking manchild.

HardlyMotherTheresa · 26/06/2013 16:37

:-( Get out now at any cost. However hard it is now, it will be easier to separate now than in 10 years time and it won't get better.

Since reading MN I have discovered how others do it btw: Count up hours of free time each has a day and make sure it is equal. If you are studying/ housekeeping then that is just as valid as his work.

Please please please don't have a baby with this man-child.

I never say LTB but I do say it here. Sorry.

Lancelottie · 26/06/2013 16:38

Bizarrely, this thread has given me the urge to go and wash DH's hair while he still has any. Mmm, hot soapy nekkid man...

Trouble is, he's at work. There might be raised eyebrows.