My husband is a workaholic

[Cocacola12]

Sorry long post!
My husband is self employed and runs a successful business. I stay at home with the kids and realise how lucky I am that his job affords is this luxury. However I’m really getting more and more concerned about the extreme amount of work my husband does. He normally leaves the house around 8-9 ish, which is totally fine, but normally isn’t home until between 8-11pm. The kids are already in bed 9 times out of 10. Once home he will then grab some dinner, complain about how hard his day has been and then work until 2-2.30am in the morning. This is 6 days a week, he normally has Sunday off but still works after the kids are in bed - so 9-2 in the morning.
I feel terrible for complaining (I don’t to him) but writing it down has made me realise how abnormal this is. Trouble is I don’t know what to do, how can I help? I do everything at home so he doesn’t have to think about anything to do with kids/house etc. But the mental load for me is huge as I have no one to offload to. I’m feeling really quite down about the whole situation. Has anyone ever experienced living with an extreme workaholic?

You are living separate lives and not sharing enough. Plus his work is unhealthy and unsustainable.

He is unlikely to hear you though. You need to couple counselling as he sounds like he has passed the point of caring about your views or worries and needs to have a third party explain it.

Is he not exhausted? This is way too much - how come you have not discussed it?

He will be like a stranger to his kids and miss out on them growing up which is really sad. However, he won’t realise this until they are adults and then regret it.

Why does he work so much? Crazy hours.

Why doors he work such long hours?? Must be very hard to deal with.

A 'successful business' - how successful is it if you take into account how many hours he's working?

How much does he make?

Maybe you should consider/offer to go back to work, to see if he would be willing to rebalance life/work. He can only work those hours because you facilitate family life, but maybe he feels he has to because he's the sole breadwinner.

What happens if he works himself into a heart attack?

Yeah that's not normal. 12 hours every day 6 days a week is one thing but to work until the 11pm AND THEN 2am isn't right.

Either your husband is a workaholic and he lives to work rather than works to live, or the following -

He desperately needs help with it because -

• He needs to employ staff, or more of them, or maybe manager that deals with the staff. This will be especially important if the business is growing fast.
• If he has staff, needs to delegate more, let go, and accept that when you delegate, it might not necessarily be done to his exact standards.
• He needs to sack some staff because they're not efficient or good at their jobs
• He needs to manage his time better. Is he really working all day, or is he easily distracted and then goes into a panic?

My neighbors wife says pretty much the same to me about her husband. He's gone 7:30 until about 8 then leaves works and heads for the gym and is t home until 9:30 at night. He does it six days a week and Sunday afternoons he's off to work until late. He's self employed and she is at home. Maybe it's the pressure or as another neighbor put it, maybe he's running away from home 😆

He employs a couple of people, he works as a tradesman and so most of the work in the evening is the admin side of things - I can help to a point but our youngest is a baby so I don’t have a lot of time to.
If i suggest he tries to work less he says he can’t, he’s already miles behind on paperwork as it is but it seems to get worse and worse from month to month (later and later into the night)
When our baby was born earlier in the year he was working a few days afterwards and I really struggled as well as having older 2 to look after.
I’m worried about his health. We are in our 30’s. He’s constantly stressed, it’s not good for our family life as he has no patience with the kids (when he sees them) either
It’s just all such a mess and I don’t know how to help without sounding like I’m complaining to him.
I did go back to work for a while, but what I earned in a day working close to min wage is less than what he earns an hour. Also factor in childcare it wasn’t worth it for us. I’m planning to retrain when my youngest starts school so I can actually have a career, but it’s a few years a way and I can’t see how we can continue on like this.
If I suggest help by way of counselling I can’t see how he’d even make time for that.
Sorry for the moaning I’m just desperately unhappy

Sounds like he needs an accountant or part-time admin person, depending on what sort of paperwork it is.

It may be that you need to have a "come to Jesus" discussion as he's living to work, and what's the point of having a family if you don't spend time with them and enjoy them?

It does sound like a really easy fix - he employs someone to do his admin.

Then suddenly he'll have all of his evenings and Sunday afternoon back, and you'll have a better life balance.

Yup - he employs an admin person. If he doesn't want to get into 'being an employer' then he can either advertise for a freelance book keeper / assistant or use an umbrella company.

This is no life for him or you or the DC.

Alternatively he "employs" you to do it, you put dc in childcare a couple of days a week or however much is necessary and you do it in a focused way in the time. I wouldn't recommend this option unless he genuinely can't afford to employ someone properly.