Dear Wise Women
I have been married for two and a half decades. I am at a point where I am asking myself why I have put up with this marriage for so long. Eternal optimist? Total doormat? You tell me.....
For over ten years, my DH has been, erm, working from home, but with no real income. This working from home schtick has meant he has been encamped at the dining room table, mostly with his back to the world, developing computer software. On top of the "working from home, but zero income" bit, he was always a bit crap at doing an equal share of housework, and the brutal, sticky end of child rearing has been mostly on my shoulders. Ironically, he will always claim that he is a "modern man" who does his share of the housework (guffaw). Imho, he cherry-picks the jobs he is prepared to do, whilst leaving the rest to..... yep, guess that would be me then. But enough about the kitchen sink.
What has been getting to me for a long time now is that he has completely, utterly abdicated financial responsibility for many years. He is a very well educated person, and had a good job for nearly 20 years, which he quit when a major company re-development changed his role drastically. Prior to that, he was already unhappy in his job; consequently I supported his decision to quit his job. After all, if he was grumpy at and because of work, it was only going to translate into a grumpy DH at home. When I supported him to go for voluntary redundancy, I did not foresee that I would be taking on years and years of being the sole breadwinner, as well as doing more than a fair share of household duties.
Naturally, I have raised the matter that housework should be distributed more equally.... with no tangible, lasting success. Rest assured that I have also spelled out how deeply unhappy I am about his hands-off approach to earning a contributory income. He will get quite defensive, arguing that he is working very hard on his software, and whilst I appreciate that money is not everything (as he is fond of telling me during our arguments), I am exasperated that he thinks he can continue to fob me off with "jam tomorrow" concepts.
I am now at the point that I want us to split. As this situation has not arisen overnight, I have previously asked him to go to mediation, but he has always declined. I am now beyond the point of wishing to seek mediation, I feel that I have lost all respect for him and just want our marriage to end. But how? He is not in a financial position to move out. If I move out, I still have to pay for the mortgage, which seems ludicrous.
Speaking of money: in order to keep going, I had to do two part-time jobs, which amounted to more stress than 1 full-time job, and which nearly drove me crackers. I appealed to him repeatedly to step up and help, but got more "jam tomorrow" assurances. I felt like the proverbial frog in the pan of water, not jumping out but getting slowly boiled to death. The pressure of work, household and financial worries really got to me. When voluntary redundancies came up, I saw that as an opportunity to break the spell. I have now had some time to decompress from work; I have read a couple of good self-help books about staying or leaving, reflected on the state of our marriage and decided that I want out. So, where are we now? Short answer: in some kind of weird stale-mate. I have suggested that I want to sell the house and split the money between us. He rejects this, telling me that I don't really mean this. Believe me, I do.
What can I do? I have tried getting in touch with Relate, but it seems difficult to get to speak to anyone there. DH will not go, but I am hoping for a 1-stop-shop for advice. Meanwhile, solicitors are scarily expensive, likely to consume savings from the redundancy pay-out.
Many thanks for the time you are taking to read this - apologies it's been a bit of a ramble, but I wanted to put a bit of context around the situation. Has anyone been in a similar situation? I would love to hear from you.