Married for 10 years, 3 kids, youngest is 1.
I’m so fed up with my husband’s constant misery and dragging everyone down. I don’t know what to do.
We’ve been here before, about 2-3 years ago. I was so fed up with him being negative and miserable and so...panicky and saying no to everything on a holiday (he’s Mr health and safety with the kids). We came back and I was really depressed and sought out counselling. Eventually I told him that his behaviour was dragging me down and I’d been thinking of leaving him, and he decided to come to counselling with me, which helped a lot (and that’s actually how number 3 came to be conceived!).
But now we are back to square one again. I really felt it when I was in hospital for 4 days after number 3’s c-section. I was so happy and in love with number 3, yet all he did every day was turn up fucking miserable and stressed from the other two kids (even though they’d been in school all day and he was like this even in the mornings without them) and sit there with a face like a slapped arse before going home again. He said he was tired, but there was zero consideration of me being in hospital up all night feeding a newborn with a massive fresh wound, you know?
Anyway yesterday we were all ill with norovirus - both of us were up all night with it and gradually recovered during the day, whilst the two older kids came down with it during the day - he stayed upstairs and I came down and looked after them with the help of my mum.
Today he still had the squits a bit, whereas I and the kids were better. But he’s been dramatic sighing around the house, disappearing back off upstairs to rest, sitting with his head in his hands - honestly if it was anyone else I’d feel sorry for them, but because he is prone to this sort of thing (I am never ill without him claiming to be ill too, by the way, which irks me every time), and because I manage to drag myself out of bed and put a brave face on for the kids every single time, but when he is ill we all have to wallow in his inflicted misery.
I am so fed up with him saying no to the kids all the time - it’s his default state, and while I am strict too, I recognise that some of their demands are valid and need to be heard and discussed. I am so fed up with him sitting on his phone or just sitting staring into space when one of the kids is doing something cute - I’ve given up trying to catch his eye to share these moments with him. He doesn’t even notice most of them.
I’m fed up being the one to jolly everyone along and make up for his combative way of dealing with the kids.
I’m also a SAHM and financially dependent on him. I have no idea what to do. We have to move out of our rented house in October and I’m thinking of setting it as a deadline. We either sort it out or we go into separate houses.
I can’t believe I’m writing this.