How to deal with difficult relationship?

[Craftycamper]

My partner and I have been together for 27 years.
We have 3 boys, 17 and twins of 7.
For the most part we have been very happy although I feel that that our relationship has been quite stereotypical in terms of home/work divide. I have always felt that my role is that of supporter rather than of instigator.
For the most part I have not been too unhappy with that divide, although periodically I have felt unappreciated and under valued and at some points useless. I have always come second I feel.

In our early relationship we moved around the country for my partner's career and for him to study. I, as a teacher found work wherever we moved to.
There has always been an obsessive nature to my partner and it has always caused difficulties as we view this obsessiveness through different eyes.
I see the things that are missed through his addiction to work...relationships, birthdays, holidays, the general joy of life and opportunities that are passed by. These are lost forever.

We have had a pretty rough time over the last 10 years, with many challenges.

We conceived our first son easily. When trying for our second child we had difficulties and began IVF. Shortly after this my partner discovered he had testicular cancer.
This was successfully treated and we continued with IVF.
We were successful,on the fifth attempt, with twins.

When our first son was born I found life very difficult as my partner worked away during the week. I had severe post natal depression, I felt that extreme exhaustion was a significant contributory factor. Our son was difficult to settle and did not sleep through the night until he was 5 months old. my partner had a very tiring and stressful job and so I did not ask for help even when desperate, partly because I thought I should do it all whilst on maternity leave and partly because I was scared to ask. There were few offers of help... never one night off.
I am horrified looking back on how I managed like this for so long.

I worked part time when our son was a year old and so felt under extra pressure to keep everything as it should be. I always felt that my partner had very high expectations about how the home should be run, and I always felt as if I was not doing enough.

With hindsight I see that my partner works on "projects" in an obsessive and addictive way and this gives justification for opting out of family life and the boring minutiae of day to day living.

Whilst undergoing the latter IVF procedures my partner set up his own property development company, always his dream, and after many unhappy years of him working for others I believed that this would bring him the happiness that he wanted from life.

He was very successful as I knew he would be ( I had encouraged him for a long time to follow this route as he had a natural talent for it).
Of course he was obsessive about it, but also it was exciting for him and he was able to use his skills in such a way as to build his own successful company.

Obviously he worked to the point of addiction and family life, as ever, was non existent.
I always, as I still believed until recently, thought along the lines of "if he just does this next bit then he will happy and stop and spend time with us and enjoy life".

Things went catastrophically wrong in Oct 2008, just before our boys were 2.
The collapse in the banking system was a disaster for us as the bank supporting our nearly complete multi million pound project went into receivership....leaving us penniless and without a business....millions of pound of investment and profit lost.

My partner fought back and did everything possible to save the project but sadly the properties were sold to another developer.
At his time my partner discovered that we had in fact been victims of a massive insolvency fraud.
The details are exceptionally complicated but he set about proving that we were fraudulently dispossessed of our business and our future.

He has spent years proving that this fraud was carried out, and we have spent years in the High Court fighting it.
He has left no stone unturned and has concrete proof of how we were defrauded.
The problem is not being able to get anyone to acknowledge what has happened and not getting vindication and/or financial compensation to carry on with our lives.

We have also both been made personally bankrupt and have charges on our home.
He has fought and fought and fought and that has always been the right thing to do.
However it has come with great sacrifices, which have been bearable for many years but which now I am struggling with.

The fight continues as it must and I have no issue with that.
I am struggling with the current consequences of this continued fight.
Last year we came very close to losing our home as we could not pay the mortgage and for months I had been asking my partner to find a job to help us with the finances.
I had applied for tax credits, free school meals and worked part time, but this was not enough to keep us going.

By some fluke my partner was offered a contract job through an old colleague, just in time.
We had gone looking at flats to rent and were about to rent our own larger house to survive.

I felt that going out to work would help my partner massively both in terms of self confidence and self belief but also as a way to switch off a little from the fraud case and look at it from alternative perspectives.

I have never, and never will suggest that he gives up this fight. But I am looking for a little bit of life for me and my family alongside the fight. I cannot deal,with the day to day fear of falling into homelessness and extreme poverty...particularly as it is avoidable. It is possible to work for financial reward and to work at fighting back against the fraud, they do not have to be mutually exclusive....that is a choice that my partner has made and that is the real problem for me.

I feel scared most days and more so each day as the time moves on.
My partner's contract ended in Feb and he has worked on the fraud ever since....he did say two weeks would be needed to complete the work outstanding and then he would look for new job.
I know all the reasons why this has now extended (obsessive collation of evidence) but it has just taken me to to the limit of what I can reasonably cope with....perhaps four months worth of money left to live on.
It is not just four more months of money and then that's ok because we will have more money by then...it is now we have four months of money left and we are finished. Every day is a step closer to having to face the fact that we may lose everything.
I don't understand how my partner can sit by and not see the financial pressure we are under and the extreme risks being taken with all of our futures, and not act.

He has reluctantly applied for Job Seeker's Allowance and we are waiting for that money to come through. We are currently surviving on money from my mum which i feel sick to my stomach about doing. He tells me not to worry about the money from my mum and lately when I bring it up and ask about finding a job he says that I am pushing him to kill himself.

He is very depressed and sleeps every afternoon; however he does have energy to research his case and to think about writing a book.

I feel like I do everything to take all other pressures off him...house, financial, children, everything falls to me and I have done that because I support what he does but I would like to see some recognition of that and not just the expectation that I will (and should ) do it all.

I am scared to ask for help because it is greeted with huffs and puffs and I am generally made to feel that I am am being unreasonable ( I only ask for help when absolutely desperate). I rarely ask and have only recently started to ask because I am tired of being scared to ask.

I feel that I have done everything that I can to support him ( I know he thinks differently), and I will continue to so, but the time has come for things to change.
There has to be more balance in our lives, there has to be recognition that our relationship is not working. I cannot live with the obsessiveness that is in our lives everyday.
I cannot wait as I have naively done over the years thinking my partner will change and see how much of life he is missing.

Our life has become small and sad. I think that there has to be change.
I would also like to think that my partner acknowledges that I have been supportive, helpful and on his side and not tell me that I don't support him when I reach the end of what I can cope with and ask for some help.
I am asking for recognition that what we are doing now is not working and is destructive.

I don't know what to do...

Sent from my iPad

What are your options?

That's quite a long story. To condense it, the common thread appears to be that, throughout the relationship, there's been 'the family' (you and the DCs) and he's been living alongside it rather than being part of it while he has pursued his various businesses and goals in the obsessional way you describe.

It sounds as though he thinks providing for a family financially is all that matters - and losing everything in that situation would genuinely be the end of the world. You sound as though you'd have been happy with a much more modest lifestyle if it meant being together as a family. What started as an incompatibility has created a big emotional divide over time.

Whilst it was probably tolerable when things were going well and there was enough money to act as a cushion/diversion, now that things are really bad and the money has run out, you've realised the usual connections that make a couple a couple haven't been made. I don't think you've ever had a common vision of the future and - worse - you probably don't even share the same memories of the past if he's been so absent.

That's my cod analysis. What you do about it from here I'm not all together sure. I think the depression has to be treated as a priority and you need to get a GP to see him a.s.a.p. But turning a 27 year ingrained dynamic around and making a money-driven man revise their ambitions and become family-oriented - even with a health crisis as motivation - is a mammoth task

I think you are quite right in what you are saying. You have clearly sacrificed alot for your dh but the time has come where he must start returning the favour. Your 'baby' is your family, his 'baby' is his work.

Tbh if I was you I think I would be issuing a serious ultimatum. If you carry in like this you will push yourself to the brink. He needs to agree to focus on a paid job. He can't make the fraud case hurry up, there's a system for things like that and as you know they can take a very long time to solve.

I think you've been wonderfully supportive btw. Not sure I would have been for as long as you have been.

Put your foot down. Quite literally if nothing changes, then nothing will change.

Good luck and I really do hope you win your case.

Hi all and thank you for such insightful responses. Yes it was very long and I think Cogito condensed it quite accurately in some respects. Thank you.

There is a huge emotional divide. We are both hurting but cannot help each other.

He is receiving treatment for depression (for the last six years that we have been in this situation). I have asked him to consider returning but he says that the only cure is to get vindication for his case.
He has lost a lot...his business, his reputation, money and has lost friends and family over the case.
The case was lost in the Civil Courts and he is now determined to bring a private criminal prosecution (the police have refused to act).

We have been in this situation for six years and I feel that as painful as it might be he needs to come to terms with the fraud rather than keep going after the people involved (very high profile, very protected).

Bottom line is in terms of choices is that I think that I want out of the relationship because I cannot bear to keep living like this....wondering if we can pay the mortgage, can I afford shoes for the boys etc. We have no relationship, either physically or emotionally. Finances are a constant worry for me and I am not coping well with lack of security.
The problem is we would both have to stay in the house because of the bankruptcy at least until Christmas I think. Then I would like him to move out.

The alternative is to ask him, again, to put the legal work to one side and get a job. I cannot emphasise the obsessional nature of his work...he knows the minutest details of all those involved in the fraud and documents it all....1000's of pages.

He is completely absent from our lives and it makes me very sad that I cannot convince him that moving forward and enjoying what we have can be better than the self destructive course he appears to be on.
I suspect that he views this rather differently though and sees vindication as the only way through.

It's revealing that he's lost friends and family already. In a way it's commendable that he is sticking to his guns in the face of very bad odds - and presumably that's reason why he's been successful in the past - but there is a point at which it goes beyond tenacity or even obsession and becomes irrational delusion. Is he at all aware how close he is to losing you? Even if he does win, if he ends up all alone with his life in tatters it would be a Pyrrhic Victory.

Ask him what his plan B is? Force him to look at the possible outcomes and write it all down. Then work out your plan A and Plan B based on that.

Thank you Cogito, you are giving me a really helpful insight. I struggle with the "it is a worthy and amazing thing to do" and the reality that he is unlikely to succeed and if he does (many more years down the line, and we are both 50 next year!), we will have no home and no relationship.

I do think that there is some delusion on his part going on but I don't know how to get him to see that, because then he sees that as being "unsupportive".

A friend believes that I am enabling him to continue with his obsessiveness my continuing to do everything at home (including taking on 3 part time jobs), I.e. I am making things "work" superficially and as long as I do then he has no reason to change.

I really just want to live the rest of our lives with happiness and security (i.e. have enough income to cover what are very modest outgoings), and I am not sure if I can do that if he does not see things in the same way.

He is very isolated as friends and family have faded by the wayside in response to the way in which this has taken over our lives. There are no other topics of conversation and it becomes exhausting to keep being supportive. He himself has cut off family because they have not been willing to give him money to get legal opinion on our case.

What a mess.

Hi CommonBurdock,
I really like the sound of your suggestion....it is less confrontational than I would be! He may well respond to this! Thank you!

Why does the bankruptcy mean you both have to stay in the house until Christmas?

I agree with your friend. You are letting him bury his head in the sand, avoiding the consequences of his choices.

When one spouse does not work and one works 3 jobs, the non-worker should be doing lots of housework and childcare.

When he was breadwinner he didn't have to do the household stuff. Now you are the breadwinner and he chooses not to work, he must pick up household management.

Perhaps suggest you help him break into it gently: he takes over laundry this week, then adds on cooking the week after, then meal planning, then toilet cleaning.

If he refuses to do what you've done for years then you know you've been taken for a chump. And you could feel justified in stopping supporting him (stop cooking for him, doing his laundry, listening to him whine, etc).

I think you can either take the DCs and leave him, or sink with him. He is not going to stop because the only thing that matters to him is him - being successful, being vindicated, being right. I think it's always been the case that the person who matters most to him is him, and that you and DC are simply accessories he can use to display himself as Successful Family Man.

Hi CookieMonster,
Re the house and bankruptcy there is a "use it or lose it" rule which means that the house can be seized up to 3 years after bankruptcy order and sold to pay debts. Debts which arose from both of us having to sign Personal Guarantees in connection with the business that we were defrauded from!

Basically we need to wait and hopefully then the house reverts back fully to us.

I do worry that he will never stop (he has said that), and so my efforts to reach a compromise and suggest he do both (get a job and fight the fraud) never seem reap rewards. He says that getting a job will "kill" him as he is not well enough. But I see that he is well enough to work on the case.

He has looked for a few jobs but they must meet very strict criteria....2-3 days per week, high daily rate and short contract only.

As you say SolidGoldBrass I am afraid of sinking with him. I have worked out that I could rent out a couple of rooms in our home and almost cover the mortgage and then with my part time work cover food and bills.
This is the plan I keep going over but I just feel that it would be bad to abandon him as he would have no one and no money.

Seems like he's already abandoned you.

CC: there are times when someone is abandoned because that person deserves it. He will not stop, he will not consider you or the DC, he has no interest in anything but Being Right. So you need to take action to look after you and DC, without consulting him or waiting for his permission or his co-operation. He's lost any entitlement to consideration, because he is not considering you.