"Be a good wife"... be a good DH and F off!

[Just1945]

Sorry, fuming.

As a back story, married 15 years and 2 DC, early 40s and both professional and difficult careers. DH works standard 40 hours but often chooses to work late for various bullshit reasons and has an hour drive home so gets home lateish. I work a shorter 30 hours because I have no choice - have to do breakfasting, school drop off and pick ups. This means realistically that he is always the higher earner.

Because he is said higher earner, it is therefore my duty to "be a good wife", which I am reminded of constantly with that very phrase. I am expected to pick up after him, cook his dinner every day and wash his clothes and care for his children, as when he gets home they are basically almost in bed. Likewise he is too late home from work for after school activities and plays golf on the weekend so all that is my responsibility. Every football game, every netball game, every training session (3 days every week) and weekend matches are all down to me. When I ask when this is going to even out he tells me to "be a good wife" and dutifully complete his mundane tasks for him like I am his secretary and to shut up and get on. Apparently my time is worth less because I earn less. Well, not much choice because God forbid he take his share of caring for the children. I am of course reminded that should he be home early he could risk losing his job and various similar shit excuses (all non-legitimate, he is quite senior in his role and can find time for golf during the working day!)

He doesn't make me feel attractive and sleeping with him is a task. I just want to be left alone to sleep because I am exhausted. I am literally his second mother.

Anybody else have to put up with fucking man child please feel free to join in the rant! I find it so demeaning and that phrase just sets me off.

Or, for all we know, Susan has an even worse husband who throws a major strop if the stairs are not spotless every day.

I prefer my version as it gives Susan hope that one day the stair hoovering nightmare will end. But yes - for all we know, Susan's DH gives her shit about not going out to work like OP and makes her feel like crap for not contributing financially.

Well, ime I married a posh git (council estate girl here) and it took a long time to realise he'd married me because he thought I was malleable. Pygmalion territory. But he fancied me (that relationship should just have been a shag, end of) and I had the requisite low self-esteem. He thought I'd be so grateful, so in awe of his lordship, I'd think I was lucky to have landed my prince. It - or, rather, he - was successful for a while. Until I lost my marbles and finally LTB. Joy to the world!! It was absolute absolute bliss.

Do the Freedom Programme [with all that spare time you have...]. Honestly, I think he is abusive. He's not just neanderthal; he loathes women, sees them as accessories/slaves/second mothers.

Surely you'll be better off financially? If he earns £80k and you earn £12k, then he will have to pay you a proper proportion of his earnings to maintain the dcs. Then you make your own decisions about how to organise your own household.

Life is to damn short to be putting up with this shit.

I know he's a cockwomble. And that some Betty Crocker somewhere will love him

No. They won't, love. No woman is going to 'love' this kind of treatment, it's incompatible with any kind of self esteem or expectation of being treated with basic respect. He is in for a very rude shock that normal men who want relationships don't get to behave like this, (and I'll bet if when you've dumped him he dates again he will come up with good behaviour you never thought he was capable of). Or he'll go straight home to mum. Unfortunately it doesn't sound like she'll tell him his fortune and make him pick up his own mess of his marriage.

You've put up with far far too much for far too long and let him get away with it. Boundaries. Big, strong, prickly fuck off ones.

Dude, I'd like you to be kind to yourself. Treat yourself like your own daughter. It sounds as though you are having a terrible time. Out of interest, when you met the solicitor, did they give you a list of info you'll need to divorce? Start a file with that info.

Hello just1945,
I don't know wether to cry or scream.
He may not hit you but he has been bruising your moral for years.
Please gather your courage and plan your seperation and liberation.

Btw I have it on good authority that Susan is a bitch.

How on earth does he know that Susan vacuums the stairs every day ?

I think Susan deserves her own thread in retrospect perhaps I should have changed her name as this could be quite revealing Ho hum!

I think she is very OCD rather than domestically forced to do it, her DH is quite laid back and good humoured as well as a perve

To those Susans out there who have many stressful little ones how do you even do it?

Thank you all for your very kind advice and support, I'm still trying to read everything! DD is very trying today as its hot (she is not amused with this), she's tired after netball and yet refuses to nap / drink / eat. What a cherub she is

He knows because she has told me her household routine while DH and the children and I have been over for a visit, we live quite close. DH obviously absorbed all this info while I was there like I mean cleaning the oven twice a week

Susan sounds like my mother. She had a job, the house was always IMMACULATE, she hand cooked everything (even made her own pastry etc), blah blah blah and we NEVER SAW HER. I never remember her playing with us, ever. Reading us bed time stories yes, but she was always so busy cleaning we literally never saw her. I would've preferred a messy house and a mum who spent more time with us than cleaning.

Seriously though, imagine for a moment this is your daughter coming to you. She's angry and upset and she asks "mum, my boyfriend/husband tells me to be a good wife, he treats me like I'm a slave, like I'm his mother, he expects me to be wonderful and perfect and to pick up after him but it's destroying me, what do you think I should do?". Now. What advice would you give? And why aren't you worthy of applying that advice to yourself? We only live one life, technically, you only have so many years left on this earth. At the end of your days, are you ok looking back and thinking "I'm glad I stayed with this guy who treated me like I'm nothing", or can you imagine yourself looking back at a life you've carved for yourself? Believe me when I say children aren't stupid. They see and sense unhappiness in a parent. Staying with a partner "for the sake of the children" isn't healthy, in my own opinion, and I was glad my own parents split when I was 8. They were better apart than together.

If he didn't have you how do you think he could earn and keep all this money? Exactly, he couldn't. You've earned it as much as he has.

Cleaning the oven twice a week?!!

Blimey, I'd fail in the good wife stakes

OP, I used to be in a very abusive relationship. Just 2 examples. I had gastric flu and a newborn, but yet he still stormed into the bedroom at 6am to demand why I hadn't ironed him a shirt. I got up and did it too. When I was getting to the end of my rope, I went out on my own, on a weekend, needing to escape..he tried to stop me, but I was determined. He yelled out after me 'who's going to clean the fucking house then!'

I have a million examples, as it went on for years. Some worse, some not so. Either way, they are all bad and NOT EVER the sign of a loving husband/father.

I was single for a while, while I got myself stronger, and my DH now is the complete opposite. All earnings are joint, all housework is 50/50 and so is all childcare. It is fab.

Please don't waste your life with someone who doesn't appreciate you. You will be teaching your children a great lesson if you do leave - 'don't allow yourself to be treated this way kids'.

Financially you will be better off. Tax credits, your income, child benefit and the maintenance your DH will pay. But more importantly, you'll be free.

Life's too short OP, good luck x

meh, it can wait another year month or so

Susan actually sounds very unhappy if we pick out the few small facts of her life that we know.

She has loads of kids but chooses to spend her time obsessionally cleaning the house including the oven more than once a week.

Her husband is laid back and (not but) a perve - if you have noticed he is a perve, so has she and he probably isn't very nice to live with and she lives in fear he's going to leave for someone else he's perving at. If he hasn't already had an affair.

But your DH picks up on her wonderful housekeeping as a stick to beat you with and has made your self esteem so low that you think her DH being laid back is a good point and you are ignoring the all important perve bit. Poor old Susan is probably just as trapped as you are - you never know what goes on behind closed doors.

I think your life will improve immeasurably when you LTB.

Forget Susan - she will possibly throw herself off a cliff at some point.

This is about you and how you would like to live your life.

Well given the disparity in your income, you will probably find that you are better off financially apart.
He will have to pay maintenance and you should get tax credits.

How didn't I notice what a dickhead he is
because he kept that aspect of himself under wraps until he could get you in a position where he had more power

he had a long term strategy

time to up your 'game'

Indeed. It is all about a power imbalance which he has chosen to exploit.

Not nice.

all this "be a good wife" stuff
he's laughing to himself, he thinks he owns you, you're his captured servant and there's nothing you can do

I spent over twenty years in a marriage like yours, it ended when I found out DH had been in a relationship with a work colleague for over a year. Even knowing how he broke my trust and the heartache I felt initially it was the best thing to happen.

He made me feel like everything was my failure, my weight, my selfishness at not earning more. To the point I wasn't allowed to drive the new car, just the small older one as a compromise for failing to earn more and have ambitions. I put up with it because I thought the most important
thing was keeping my family together. It wasn't!

I'm so happy now. I have two children to deal with now, now three. I do half the washing and cleaning I did when he was here but the house is tidier. I get time to myself every other weekend (this was and is hard to manage - guilt versus the enjoyment of time away from the kids). I am healthier, happier, more content . I've proven my own strength time and time again.

My Ex is difficult, bitter and mean. Even having to deal with him on a daily basis (he thought I would crumble and he has also realised I'm now in a better position financially without him) my new family is amazing.

I won't lie it was and still is sometimes hard on children, but even my 9 year old DD has admitted to me she is happier now he isn't living here. The time they spends with him is focused. He isn't pretending he is a work. I even tolerate his partner as she seems to be the responsible adult when the children are with him.

The biggest lesson I have learnt is to let go of the expectations of what I thought my life would be like. Be happy now, no possible future, or the what ifs are worth being unhappy now

Wow, I don't know whether I want to shake or hug you or take you for a drunken night on the town and give you the courage to leave. Never have I read a post where I want so much to hear you have left him. For your sanity and for your kids xx

As I say Tess, we had a good relationship for so many years. If all this was the status quo prior to children, I wouldn't have married him