In an unusual situation. Not particularly happy in marriage, but wondering if ending it is going to help.
The unusual bit is a friend from work has just filed for divorce from her husband and has told me the reasons why. They sound pretty similar to the reasons I’m considering the same, but also trivial (obviously they’re not trivial to her).
But by the same token, my aunt and uncle got divorced over lots of niggly, trivial things 25 years ago. She’s regretted it ever since, never remarried, he’s since remarried then been widowed, long story short, they’re now back together and engaged but also sad they “wasted” half their adult lives together because of little things.
So, I’m wondering whether I need a clean break or to accept my lot isn’t so bad.
I fully understand that many people get divorced over irreconcilable things like affairs, abuse etc, I have none of that, but does that mean I shouldn’t do it?
For context, we’ve been together 20years, married 15, both early 40s, 2 DC, one primary age, one preschool. He works full time shifts, I work part time, toddler is at home when I am, nursery when I’m at work.
In a nutshell, my main issues are:
He’s properly lazy when not at work -but works shifts so permanently tired. Does nothing round the house at all, even on days off, unless it gets to the stage where I am screaming at him to at least take his coffee cup out to the dishwasher. He has days off in the week which coincide with kids being at school etc, but does literally nothing with it except watch telly.
I wouldn’t mind so much if I was competing with a hobby, say, but he does nothing. DIY, cleaning, general day to day adulting is all down to me.
Last week we went to an out of town shopping centre. He wanted to drive from one shop to the one at the other end to “save walking”. He’s that lazy. Told him to fuck off, he then complained about the distance like a toddler. Incidentally, my toddler didn’t complain at all. We were only visiting those two shops, it wasn’t a random wander round all the shops kind of trip. It was 3 minutes, tops.
He doesn’t really do much with the kids, again it’s under protest if he does.
If he has a rare day with them, say they have an inset day or something, they all sit on screens or they play while he “potters about” doing nothing significant.
I take them to after school clubs, swimming, birthday parties, appointments etc, it works with my hours, but I know if he has to do it it’s like asking him to climb a mountain so not worth the effort.
He’s never once taken them both out together, or even separately, unless to his mum’s, where they watch telly while he does jobs for her like cuts her grass or changes lightbulbs. He mostly goes there on his own because the kids get bored. But he takes them nowhere “fun”.
His mum lives five minutes from a farm place we have membership to, if I go to her, we generally pop in on the way there or back to feed the animals or go in the playground. He drives straight past every time.
He makes such a fuss about putting them to bed “because he’s been at work all day” that the preschooler now kicks off if he says he will do it “to help me out” so I do it for peace and quiet.
He can be persuaded to read the odd bedtime story but makes it his mission to be done as quick as possible. He once spread the Gruffalo over two nights FFS.
He’s unhealthy, smokes (not in the house but in front of the kids), refuses to give up because it’s “his choice”, he eats shit all day, wouldn’t know exercise if it smashed him in the face, is massively overweight and snores like his life depends on it. His dad died quite young with a similar lifestyle (although he was much fitter and ate much better), but he doesn’t see why that’s relevant.
His snoring keeps me awake, which is why I’m writing this at a ungodly hour. The only time I get a full night’s sleep is when he’s on nights.
He refuses to see the doctor because “he nags him about losing weight” and doesn’t just wave a magic wand to make everything bad go away.
He’s selfish in that, for example, last week, I had a really heavy cold and asked if we had any cold and flu stuff.
He said no, he had taken it to work, just in case. I asked would he mind going to get me some more at some point, walking to the shop at the end of our road, he said no, it was raining. If I wanted to I could go and he would “watch the kids”. He went eventually but only after I pointed out he was being an utter wanker.
In a restaurant recently, they asked if everything was OK, he said “fine”.it was me who had to say “DDs dinner hasn’t arrived.” He said “Well, I was fine, why would I say otherwise?”
But the thing that’s made me think seriously about it all is the fact that our sex life is non existent, he’s no longer attractive and I can’t be arsed frankly. For Christmas, he “bought” me a promise to take me to a spa. But it’s some naturist spa place that he mentioned months ago and I said didn’t appeal to me. I told him not to bother, I won’t be going.
He hasn’t booked it, he didn’t even do that thing where you make up a voucher online, he just casually mentioned it on Christmas morning.
See, written down, he sounds like an utter arse, but it doesn’t seem reasonable to put the kids through a divorce plus the financial insecurity etc it will bring just because he’s really irritating.
We have repeatedly discussed all these faults, BTW, he might take them on board for a day or two but nothing really changes.
Really not sure whether to go ahead, or risk it not being the answer to all my problems, and then I can add feeling guilty to all my other issues.
WWYD?