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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

we are at a low point. Bankruptcy, potential infidelity... advice please

9 replies

lioncockatoo · 06/06/2017 21:20

DH and I are experiencing a low point in our marriage.

First of all, Dh’s business has failed and he has had to go bankrupt. Its genesis involved me giving up work 3 years ago and having to be a SAHM (DC are 4, 2.5 and 10mo) to save money on childcare to start the business. I blame DH for this and if I am honest I have not yet forgiven him for how headstrong he was about starting it in the first place, how sure and cocky he was it would succeed and how dismissive he was about my concerns. Although I technically DID agree with him at the beginning (agreed to him starting the business and all the life changes) which is something he always refers back to when we have the same argument about how we got in this mess: that it was a mutual agreement.

DH says I am a textbook martyr. And I (secretely) agree with him. I am a textbook martyr, because I have gone along with things but privately resented him for them and been generally reluctant and pessimistic.

So on top of the sacrifices I feel my martyr self has had to make by being a SAHM so that he could do his business, I now have to make further sacrifices because his venture has failed and we have to cut back. So just at the time I would have expected the breaks to come off a little, they are now applied even harder. I now have to get a much lower paid job after three years away from my industry (which is one that moves very fast) when really I would have liked to have carried on working and continued to earn the amount I was earning rather than having to catch up now or start again. We will also have to borrow some money from my dparents who are ill, which is always something DH promised me we would never have to do.

DH has been depressed since the business failed and very hard to communicate with. He thinks his reputation is in tatters. He has low tolerance for everything, even the DC. The failure of the business has knocked his self esteem, which again has left me to pick up the pieces and he is very needy for validation and “affection” as he calls it, which basically means he wants me to baby him on top of looking after three other babies. Bring him meals and cuddle him and say ‘there there, you are still great’ which I really just don’t have the capacity to do at the moment due to my longterm resentment.

The climax happened the other night when DH went on a stag do. He came back raging drunk ( a total one-off for him –I have never seen him drunk like this before in our 15 years together.) He returned at 7am, vomiting. I looked at his phone while he was in the bathroom and passing out. I saw that he’d taken the numbers of two women, it transpired, in a nightclub he’d been at (incoming calls around 2am and 3am, presumably so their numbers were logged in his phone.)

Naturally I was incensed and told him I didn’t know if we could stay together. When he sobered up he apologized and said that he’d lost all his inhibitions with the booze and the stag group had got chatting with several groups of women and he’d got talking to these two women (separately at different points in the night) and he’d ended up giving them his number. That he was feeling very low and wanted some validation. He wasn’t really sugar coating it to me. He said he was just open and chatty and drunk and then when they were suggestive and leaving the club, it seemed like the natural next thing to do, to take their numbers.

When I looked at his phone, I looked at everything: all email addresses, wats app, texts, apps, internet history, call logs, facebook messaging, instagram. There was nothing else incriminating, which said to me that there was nothing ongoing, infidelity wise. I had it all night while he was passed out.

He showed me several wats app chats the next day with the other stags and people around at the time to prove that he was where he said he was and what he actually said happened. There are chats just before he came home, timestamped, to relevant times “Who is that girl you are talking to?” “Dunno. She just asked for my number, but she's leaving."

So although I can never be 100% sure, I am 80% sure that he is just a minor cunt rather than a major cunt and can't be trusted when drunk (or can't be trusted at all?)

But, even after this semi infidelity, or bad intention, or whatever I want to label it as (I don’t even know at the moment) I have lost so much respect for him, and I find him so weak, that I’m finding it all hard to come back from.

He has promised to stop drinking. He has promised constant access to his phone. He has promised that it will never happen again. Hmm

I feel like I am holding everything up. The loss of identity from unwillingly giving up my job, giving birth, breastfeeding and caring for three tiny DC, supporting a bankrupt DH, my ill parents, the pressure of having to get a job now which pays for childcare AND helps repay our debt, plus the public humiliation of DH picking up women at this stag do (this was a family/close friend’s wedding and all the stags were related and/or married to my close friends!) I am in a place I never wanted to be. And a place I would never have chosen to be.

I want to feel we can come back from this. Can we? How?

OP posts:
Offred · 06/06/2017 21:34

I don't know there is rather a lot going on....

Re the business I think it is not really fair of him a. To have steam rollered you into the situation which disadvantaged you, b. To not now be grateful for your sacrifice and sheepish and ashamed that he has fucked up now. 'You agreed to it!' Is not what you want to be hearing because what you desperately need to know is that he understands how he has landed you all in the shit and that he will not do it again.

Re the babying him - he needs to grow the fuck up and fast, take responsibility and work to fix things not make you into his mummy to take care of his ego, which was really what got you all into this mess in the first place.

Re the numbers, I honestly don't know what I think about that except to say I can well understand why it would absolutely be the icing on the cake.

Does he ever behave like a grown up? Anything good about him?

Offred · 06/06/2017 21:36

I mean it is a massive 'fuck you, you aren't giving me enough attention' isn't it? Taking those numbers... when what you have done is taken a massive risk and made massive personal sacrifices for his failure of a vanity project....

Offred · 06/06/2017 21:37

And his answer re the texts is giving him more attention by monitoring his phone like a parent and a teenage child

lioncockatoo · 06/06/2017 21:42

offred I think you've hit the nail on the head. I just find it all so pathetic.

I'm sure I could stop the need for validation, by babying him in the way that he wants, by stroking his ego. But these are just endless and unexpected demands on my energy, and I am going to run out of energy at some point... Sad

OP posts:
happypoobum · 06/06/2017 21:44

Is he at least going to look after the DC when you go back to work?

I bet he bloody isn't! Do you have to borrow from your parents? I think this will make you feel worse.

I can totally understand how you feel. Do you still love him?

I would be swapping him for tax credits but my tolerance levels for this kind of shite are very low. I have seen two close friends go under whilst their DHs played at pretending their hobby was a business.

He just sounds like a liability rather than a support. What's the point in him?

Offred · 06/06/2017 21:51

Take this from someone who recently spent 4 years with a man who 'needed' constant validation despite constantly fucking up and blaming everyone else with some self pitying moments that appeared to be clarity (they weren't they were just attention seeking self pity). He doesn't need validation, it is much more likely that he feels entitled to it because he believes men generally are entitled to it from women generally.

No amount of validation or ego stroking would ever be enough. If you try he will use you up until there is no more of you and he will still want more. Most likely if you try to stand up to him he will become horrible.

The best thing to do, though I know it is not easy at all, is to simply and quietly leave him without any fanfare.

Offred · 06/06/2017 21:55

I certainly learned this the hard way.

I tried everything, ego stroking, quiet compliance, desperate pleasing, gentle criticism, sorting out his problems... nothing made a blind bit of difference. Then I started detaching and standing up to him and he got very nasty indeed and is currently on bail for v. Serious offences against me.

ThreeFish · 06/06/2017 21:59

You are really putting up with a man child!

Tell him to take his share of responsibility. Where's the mention of him getting a full time job to repay his debts? He's pushing everything on to you. I'm not dismissing depression, but sitting at home "depressed" while you mother him is not on.

yetmorecrap · 06/06/2017 22:04

I do think it's maybe a bit judgmental of anyone to call it a hobby business or vanity project. Op hasn't said what it is, so we don't know that, someone could easily say that about our business, which is quite successful in its genre, but any business can fail for all kinds of reasons, they are always 'a risk' I work full time in ours and did so even when my son was a baby, and not necessarily by choice . OP , my husband did some very stupid stuff when our business had problems 11 years ago , stuff that was totally out of character. It's a massive blow to ego and demoralising after the effort involved. He was drunk and down and whilst it's a totally twatty thing to do, that aspect I would give him hell on and maybe move on if it's a one off. The other aspects, I do know where you are coming from and he needs to own the fact you felt railroaded in his decision, do his absolute utmost to help get things on an even keel and support you if back at work and get himself looking and sorted too, even if it's something short term that isn't his thing. Give yourself a timeframe to see how you feel and how things pan out, maybe 9 months.

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