Being the partner of an unemployed DH

[hoopyloopy2]

It’s just sh*t isn’t it? 8 months since DH lost his job. It’s horrible for him at age 46, and the 3rd time he’s been made redundant in his career. I have been the rock he says and so does everyone else, done what I can to hold it all together, working longer hours myself...treading on eggshells when he’s inevitably moody & angry...boosting his confidence, given him my support for retraining....I could write the book - 3 times over.

But I don’t want to be the rock, I’m fed up with it. I can feel my reserves of compassion & patience getting very low, resentment & unhappiness are setting in - not just in and around his job situation but in everyday stuff. There is very little joy in our lives these days. But of course I can’t talk about that with DH as I have to be understanding of his feelings & remain the strong one, can’t add to his burden.

He is doing lots around the house & looking for jobs. Researching a retraining option too, but doesn’t think it will pay well enough. Poor guy is doing what he can. I know I just need to pull up my big girl pants & try to dig deeper to get on with holding our lives together until things get better. Can’t really talk to anyone in rl as I just burst into tears if I try. No answers I don’t think. I guess I’m just looking for people going through it to say they understand.

I'm with you, OP. My DP has just lost his job again, through mental health issues. He's been made redundant many times before & his latest episode of depression has lasted nearly 3 years.

I'm totally fed up. Had some counselling on my own & I have co-dependant traits. I'm getting nothing out of the relationship & am trying to psych myself up to see a solicitor.

We're both 47 & I cannot face another decade of this.

@changefordoha
I know that the norm is for the woman to be the trailing spouse so understand your need for clarification. I understand the vampiric employer well. Good luck, it is not easy.
I wish you luck.

God what is it with all these men? I really thought I was alone in all this and my own DH was the only one incapable of holding down a job. He's got qualifications galore, MBA, re -training, you name it..... I mostly want to strangle him and tell him just to get any job. Something to bring in some money and get him out of the house. I tell him about what I think are suitable jobs for him, email him the details but he either never applies or just makes a song and dance about it. Thought about getting his CV and just applying on his behalf to stuff he wouldn't consider. But that is the control freak in my talking. I can't bear the sitting around and appearing to be doing v little. Sorry I needed to rant. Been a bad week/ month/ year!

I do think gender conditioning is a part of this, maybe men just find it harder to cope and adapt when they are faced with a career hurdle. What you do for a living & the sense of being a provider are so tightly bound up with the male identity and ego.

I watched a movie about A.A. Milne yesterday.
Before he wrote the Winnie the Poo books he had a sort of writer's block and his wife took off until he started writing again.
Not sure how accurate that was and she was portrayed as cold and somewhat uncaring, but I think women should be a bit more like her sometimes.

@Tiggy321 ... When you've calmed down maybe read what you've just written and think about how your husband or anyone's partner might feel had it been written about them. If he's so bad either be the main breadwinner yourself or do him the favour of leaving him. Ffs

Conditioning is definitely part of it, but my sympathy has run out. I also think that women are conditioned to be supportive (as per lweji’s post) but I’ve had my fill of it.
On the one hand I do feel so sorry that my talented, intelligent husband can’t find a decent job in the creative sector but I never signed up for this!
I’m sorry that so many of us are in the same boat but I’m glad I’m not alone. It’s so hard to talk about this in real life without feeling disloyal.

Agree that men feel a massive loss if they are unemployed, because society doesn't give them any other identity than provider/worker. Horrible. Women are not so denigrated if they drop status points at work.

DH became self employed after we'd been together about 7 years, then stopped three years afterwards and never worked again. It was the mental health problems that stopped him working, and they also killed him eventually, but the loss of his professional identity was an extra burden. It's a terrible downward spiral.

It was hard, hard, hard on me at times and I don't apologise for saying that. People tell me that bereavement is exhausting but I can't feel it compared with being the breadwinner, the main parent and doing the house as well. I'm still recovering tbh. I hate the pressure on men to be a certain way, earn a certain amount, but I also hate that men don't support each other through it. DH thought his boss was an actual friend, but they never met again once he left work. He only ever had one friend who genuinely stayed his friend through all his troubles. I loved seeing all his friends at the funeral and they all talked about him with such affection, but tbh several of them I'd never met before, and we'd been married 14 years. Without my female friends (and a couple of male ones too) I would be destroyed. Being 90% of dh's support network was very tough on me.

So sorry Annandale to hear your story. But I think you have hit the nail on the head- men don't tend to support each other really. The shame of being honest is too much. I wish you well for the future. You sound amazingly strong and resilient.

Yes Annandale, how awful. I’m so sorry & hope your recovery continues.

sorry for your loss Annandale.
My dh also was made redundant some years ago, well twice actually, and it was really really hard.
agree about finding him work, looking online constantly for work, any sort of work
otoh would men do the same for their wives.?
perhaps if we took a step back they would find their mojo, but I am such a control freak in this regard.

I believe that they have to find it themselves. Throwing out ideas, discussing is fine, but they have to commit to doing it. That's true for men and women I believe.

I get what you're all saying. We moved so I could get a career bump and thought my DP would easily be able to find another job in the new place. Turned out the job market here is terrible for anyone (so not just his fault), and he went 8 months with nothing which made us both very anxious and unhappy, because I'd taken a pay cut to come here as well. He was getting really depressed because we couldn't afford to socialise or go out, so he never saw another adult all day. In the end he got a minimum wage job in retail, which is not exactly fun or stimulating, but made a world of difference. It got him out the house and even though it isn't a big wage, it's taken us from drowning to treading water.

What the OP said about being afraid of the pressure cooker of emotions: I totally get what you mean. But bear in mind that, if you don't tell him how you actually feel, he may be imagining something far worse. If you are open about your frustration you might be reassuring him. Chances are he can tell you are fed up, no matter how well you try to hide it, because he knows you better than anyone. But he might be thinking you resent or hate him far more than you really do, and that's what you're trying to hide. When it sounds like actually you just hate the situation, not him. He might need to hear that.

Oh God, the resentment. DH has been chronically under-employed for a decade. I'm another one who supported for years and then gave an ultimatum of shaping up or I'd take the DC and leave. He did, a bit, to the extent that he's now bringing in an income, but it's only about 25% of mine. It's utterly changed our marriage. I still have deep affection for him and am glad he's here, but lack of respect or expectation is corrosive. We haven't had sex in 18 months and probably won't again.

I blame conditioning and role models. He grew up with the strong silent type being acclaimed in all media, plus saw his own DF earning enough to be the single supporter of ca comfortable family with little apparent effort, duri g the expense account and jobs for life era. Didn't prepare him to ask for or accept help or learn to hustle.

Mind you, I grew up in the same era with the same influences and I can fucking hustle for both of us

I don't think that it's an unreasonable expectation that a partner pulls their weight, irrespective of gender. Plenty of SAHP do their bit, without economic contributions.

But "partners" who don't work or contribute in any other way; that's a killer.Lack of support & contribution to family life lead to resentment. Once that sets in...,

Annandale I'm so very sorry for your loss, and for what you endured prior to that. I have been quite hard on myself, thinking that I should be coping better with all this but you have all made me feel that I'm not unreasonable for finding it so tough.
Some of you are dealing with this while abroad and that definitely makes it harder.
My dh is doing an MA at the moment & at least he is getting out of the house and getting some stimulation.
He is also minding the dcs after school which is something, after years of paying for more childcare than we needed.
I'm worried about what happens next year as he is also making noises about some of the jobs people get from this course being too technical & boring. I'd love him to get something suited to his skill set but if he starts being picky I won't be responsible for my actions.

I am finding this thread so so helpful. I can identify with pretty much everything you are all saying. The resentment is definitely a killer. My DH does do things domestically, takes kids to their activities etc so it's not all bad but yes I resent having to work crazy hours.

There's the old adage about "walking in someone else's shoes..."

How do you think someone who has supported their partner through early childhood years feels when they decide that they don't want to pick up their professional career again once the children are back to school?

Maybe they have decided that they'd quite like to "follow their dreams" and become say... an interior designer or start something else unlikely to be profitable (or simply pretend that staying at home contributes just as much but we still need the cleaner and Ocado!!!) when in fact they could bite the bullet and get back onto the treadmill. I've seen so many couples where this is happening.

Meet at work in a professional environment, get together, have a family ... oh, I've decided I don't want to go back to work any more but you're an idle useless git if you can't keep us in the manner to which we've become accustomed... lean in everyone! So many double standards.

No idea what point you are trying to make. I don’t think any of the husbands described on here did the hard slog of full time childcare when the kids were tiny.
The decision for one parent to stay at home must always be agreed by both parties.
My dh doesn’t do a fraction of the domestic work that most SAHMs do.

I suppose what I was trying to say was, it boils down to equal division of responsibility towards supporting the family.

I've seen a lot of people in the stay at home role decide that once the children are of school age that they are quite happy for the main wage earner to keep flogging themselves to death while they take a much easier route.

I think if both parents decide that 1 is going to be a SAHP when DC are small, then it's a pretty unrealistic expectation to be able to walk in to a decent career after 5+ years out.

In my profession, you are obsolete after 3 years & need to do a year at university to re/train.

Personally, I think it's madness to give up a professional career.

However, my DP both agreed we would work. What has become apparent is that he hasn't steeped up to share the domestic duties, even when not working. That's shit.

Changed i think it is very hard to know what's really going on in anyone else's life and relationship. When you are tied to someone else's job timetable and location things get a lot, lot tougher. Every woman i have known who took time out to care for children has had a period of rock bottom confidence, i have been told by almost all 'i'm unemployable' - yes in every case that was nonsense but it was a real feeling. Who knows what is really happening when they say brightly 'oh i love being at home and i deserve to go to the gym every day' - maybe they are entitled and lazy, maybe they are hiding something more complicated.

@Annandale - thanks, I'm not really trying to be provocative (I may well of course be projecting some of my own feelings here...) it's very interesting reading all of the responses and it's hard. 

I'm stuck out here in the middle of nowhere for the next month, no friends, no support network and I'm getting overly invested in this thread as it's allowing me to vent a little and perhaps say things that I might not to my partner. Whatever happens we can't go on like this without something giving way, unfortunately I suspect it'll be my mental health that collapses first. I'm pretty much done in to be honest. Anyway, must get back out there, no rest for the wicked.

No fair enough. Being in something that is supposed to be a partnership but isn't is incredibly draining. I hope things improve for you.

I hear you loopy, the stress from this very situation ended up making me ill. It was the second bout of over 12 months unemployed that tipped me over the edge. Before that, we'd just about get straight financially then it would all happen over again. I hope he finds something soon  it's utterly utterly shit for everyone