Lovely husband versus different life with friend – what to do?

[KormasABitch]

Apologies for the long post, I will try not to dripfeed.

I have a lovely husband, let’s call him Pete. We’ve been together almost a decade. He’s devoted to me, endlessly kind; nothing is too much trouble. A few years ago, we moved to a country where, unfortunately, he can’t get work (I’m OK as I work online). We’re planning to move elsewhere. In the meantime, he does all the shopping and cooking, chops wood for the fire, etc. We get on brilliantly and have none of the irritations I associate even with close friendships. We have the same tastes in music, films etc and often enjoy lovely weekends away doing things together like hiking or cycling. We never get bored with each other’s company.

Pete’s quite a bit younger than me, which hasn’t worried us over the years because as far as we’re concerned, being incredibly compatible is so lucky that it outweighs everything. However, one snag is our difference in life experience. He’s used to renting a place, and I’m not sure he’ll ever be what I’d call a responsible home owner. General maintenance etc doesn’t seem to occur to him, and I don’t want to be a nag, but find the overall neglect depressing when I’m so busy. He covers the basics, but anything else is a bit like pushing water uphill.

None of this might have mattered had it not been for life throwing me a curve ball.

My oldest friend, “John” (we’ve known each other 20-odd years), got divorced a couple of years ago. I helped him through the emotional process. We’ve always been close (despite him living in another country), but I suppose that brought us a bit closer for a while. I never thought much of it when he left his wife, but over the past couple of years we have exchanged friendly (not flirtatious!) messages and sometimes I find myself pining for the kind of life I could have with him. Over the years, we’ve had some great adventures together (when married to other people, so we never acknowledged or acted on the chemistry that was there), we have a good laugh, we understand each other well, and we have the same values. Pete, for example, can’t be bothered with family and I wish he made more effort to know my parents, who won’t be around for much longer; whereas I know John would connect well.

I am approaching retirement age and financial security has become more important to me than it once was. I hate to admit it, but combining forces with someone who has worked as hard as me is also appealing.

This is all churning round and round in my head, and I feel ridiculous. I don’t want to discuss it with anyone IRL, but would appreciate any input here. I hate feeling even a smidgen of disloyalty to Pete, because I adore him. It feels as though my priorities in life might be shifting somewhat, but maybe I’m just doing that “grass greener” thing and should just STFU.

Oh well at least he's not motivated by getting a UK visa (?)

Presuming he's happy with just the EU one.

If he has full rights to work in the Eu, why doesn't he?

Was language barrier mentioned? How long has he been in Portugal without learning basic Portuguese?
Can he not get any English speaking work (or v basic Portuguese). My uncle moved to Spain with his second wife who had a holiday home there- neither speak much Spanish but still managed to get work dealing mostly with ex pats or not requiring fluent spanish/mallorque.

Visa issue aside, you still have a considerable lack of balance in financial contribution, while the starting point for division of assets may well well 50%.

*may well be 50%

@KormasABitch

Just to explain how a Russian can have a Lithuanian passport.

The Russian community in Lithuania is a very distinct ethnic group. His mum, for example, doesn't even speak Lithuanian despite having lived there all her life (his family fled Russia in the 17th/18th centuries). Russians aren't welcome there (or weren't; I don't know if things have mellowed) and there was violent conflict in the streets when the Soviet Empire collapsed.

He'd no more describe himself as Lithuanian than I would call myself Portuguese.

Thats very interesting.

I suppose that probably occurs across most former ussr countries.

He wouldn't want to live in the UK again and neither would I.

Re work, he could do badly paid manual labour but I'd rather he cooked my dinner!

He won't run off with all my dosh.

If you can spare the rest of your life reading through my posts, it's all explained.

I continue to be ENTHRALLED by this thread. Such a nice diversion from the Covid threads.

Yes but you've been in Portugal for a few years now so his passport is irrelevant as you will have applied for "settled status" I'm guessing

Russian! I had my money on Hungarian.

Purely because I used to know a very hot Hungarian builder 😂 He could chop my wood any day rubs thighs

I do wonder about Pete and the way he sees himself. How can he have any self respect when you are keeping him and he's spending his days gaming (interspersed with cooking the dinner and cleaning)? Where does he derive any self worth living like that? There are many men who support their wives on this basis I suppose, but most women would not feel happy gaming for hours , having no friends and living in a foreign country where they cannot speak the language and have no means of supporting themselves. Your respect for Pete depends on his worship of you it seems. The worship of you i suspect contains a lot of gratitude that you are paying the bills and enabling him to be a bit of a slob. Compared to his former life, I can see the appeal. I don't think this situation can continue, and clearly nor do you.

Also it's going to be a big step up for him when the roles are reversed isn't it? He's going to have a lot of responsibility for supporting you both whilst you get older and more infirm. Is that really something you believe he will take on?

@SorryWoman yes, we do have residency here so it's not an issue. I just enjoyed turning the question on its head. We like to joke that it's the first time a British woman has enjoyed the protection of an Eastern European passport 😀 And not everyone is desperate to get into the good old UK!

@CatherineAragon
How can he have any self respect when...
His self-respect is founded on other things, like knowing he's a good man, and I don't just mean the type of "good man" who lets your car out at a busy junction. He deals properly with anything from the Russian mafia to sharing his last scrap of food. My oldest brother (the Jaguar-driving career man) describes him as "A good man with a big heart" and that's him.

Your respect for Pete depends on his worship of you it seems. The worship of you i suspect contains a lot of gratitude that you are paying the bills and enabling him to be a bit of a slob.
Well, yes, he is undeniably grateful! He's having the time of his life on WoW, although it's a new extension apparently and he will get bored of it soon. But he's also out in the garden every morning, doing stuff out there until it gets too hot.
Also I don't think he worships me. He just thinks I'm the most amazing woman in the world. And why wouldn't he? 🤣🤣🤣

I don't think this situation can continue, and clearly nor do you.
That's why we are selling up and moving.

Also it's going to be a big step up for him when the roles are reversed isn't it? He's going to have a lot of responsibility for supporting you both whilst you get older and more infirm. Is that really something you believe he will take on?
Yes. Of course we have discussed this in depth, it's something we knew from the start. Did I tell you he's the most honest person I've ever met? At least he's had the incontinence practice!

It occurred to me this morning that my talk of not wanting to push him into slavery (crappy badly paid labour) here is probably connected to our isolation generally. We avoid a social life because that seems like a kind of slavery too, getting hoisted into an endless cycle of dinner parties etc when we'd rather be at home with each other. So it's kind of even worse to deliberately seek involvement with complete strangers who tell you what to do all day, deprive me of my chef, and give him just a few quid for his trouble.

I think the notion of "adequate compensation" is a bit skewed, too, by the fact that I'm a high earner. I do realise how incredible lucky I am, and how privileged, in these times when so many people are struggling financially, to be in a position where I can actually afford to support a hot Russian gamer and take the gamble (if it is a gamble) that it's his turn next.

But this is another consequence of our age gap. I've had years to find my profitable little niche and if you'd put the clock back to before I met him, I was scratching around for pennies and could only have contemplated a situation like this if compensated by, say, non-stop red-hot sex (I hear you, @EvenMoreFuriousVexation)!

I think he has the brains/skills/dedication to find his own niche, given time. But not here!

I just thought of an example of his "good man" tendencies. There's a old woman in the village who is what back in medieval days would have been called "the village idiot" (yes! there's another one here, not just me!). He always stops to give her a lift home and/or carries her bags, even though he has to have the windows open in the car because she stinks.

So I suppose this again is good practice for me later on!

Awwww we have a lady like this! Honestly, it takes a while for the car to recover when I've given her a lift, and she leaves mud all over my car.

She has flashes of remembering stuff when I give her a lift and I always wonder if she'll get run over if I don't pick her up, as she jumps into the road waving her arms to any car

He does sound like a really lovely man OP.

It occurred to me this morning that my talk of not wanting to push him into slavery (crappy badly paid labour) here is probably connected to our isolation generally. We avoid a social life because that seems like a kind of slavery too, getting hoisted into an endless cycle of dinner parties etc when we'd rather be at home with each other. So it's kind of even worse to deliberately seek involvement with complete strangers who tell you what to do all day, deprive me of my chef, and give him just a few quid for his trouble.

OP, I have genuinely warmed to your good-humoured response to posters over the course of this thread, but it does sound as if you (and Pete too, from what you say) have some somewhat maladjusted behaviours towards other people both socially and in the world of work.

I'm towards the introverted side of things myself, in that I need a lot of time alone, but to view ever seeing people other than one another as 'slavery' and being sucked into a cycle of endless unwanted dinner parties seems really extreme, and suggested that part of the reason you find one another appealing is that you are neither of you good at friendships?

Especially as you then correlate an unwanted social life to the 'slavery' of Pete getting a job, which you describe, really significantly, as
'to deliberately seek involvement with complete strangers who tell you what to do all day, deprive me of my chef, and give him just a few quid for his trouble'.

That's quite an odd correlation, as if getting a job of any kind constitutes some kind of infringement on his human rights, as though 'being told what to do' is necessarily a bad thing, as though 'depriving you of your chef' is a really big deal, and as though cooking can't be combined with a FT job.

Why is it only ill-paid labouring jobs Pete can do or nothing? If you've been in Portugal for years and have settled status, surely his language skills (especially if he already speaks fluent English as well as his mothertongue) will have opened other fields to him?

And if he doesn't speak Portugese well, why not? (I hurried to learn Arabic when I was briefly a trailing spouse in an Arabic-speaking country although the job I got was entirely English-language (working for an English-language newspaper) because it was entirely possible I would need it.) And what about him working towards online qualifications while he's not working, which could open things up for him?

I think the notion of "adequate compensation" is a bit skewed, too, by the fact that I'm a high earner. I do realise how incredible lucky I am, and how privileged, in these times when so many people are struggling financially, to be in a position where I can actually afford to support a hot Russian gamer and take the gamble (if it is a gamble) that it's his turn next.

I think that's true -- your notion of normal salaries are skewed by what you are capable of earning, and I think it's blocking you (and presumably Pete) from thinking outside the box of 'builder labourer or nothing'. Which is surely going to make it very difficult for him to suddenly switch from being kept man who spends most of his time gaming and doing a few household chores to the sole breadwinner, if he has been completely out of the world of work for so long.

I know you say that he's going to earn healthily from his online business, but it's not clear to me why he wasn't able to continue that outside the UK, why he was so happy to close it when you left for Portugal, and on what basis he thinks there will still be a market for whatever goods or services whenever he decides to start it up again? I mean, Covid has changed a lot of things.

@FittedSheet
it does sound as if you (and Pete too, from what you say) have some somewhat maladjusted behaviours towards other people
Yes, I think that's a fair comment. 😋

[Maybe] part of the reason you find one another appealing is that you are neither of you good at friendships?
Believe it or not we do have friends! We just don't see much of them. In previous relationships, I relied heavily on friends to make sense of my partner. It's the other way round now.

That's quite an odd correlation, as if getting a job of any kind constitutes some kind of infringement on his human rights
This is going to sound bonkers (but then I know you won't be surprised!), but I think we have a different view of our human rights than many people. Probably the most important "human right" that we defend for ourselves is not having to deal with other people's bullshit.

Re the business opportunities, Portugal's an odd place. We love that it's like going back 50 years, that's what drew us here! but it has repercussions we didn't anticipate (because reckless, poor planning, etc -- to be revised going forward).

The initial dropping of the business that had been successful in the UK was that it involved sensitive electronic components, and there was water running down the walls here. The two are not compatible. Then all our resources went into an expensive rebuild.

Just to explain the "50 years behind" thing, Portugal has this odd idiosyncrasy where they prefer doing everything face to face. When I was sorting out my tax here, I visited the tax offices in the capital of our region. It's almost an hour's drive away. A few days later I got an email asking me to come in again. I phoned to ask what the problem was, given my difficulty taking a half day out of work. They just wanted my tax number.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[just one example of many; anyone who's lived here can tell you plenty]

We have a few Portuguese friends who had no idea about eBay or Amazon and were amazed to see it in action. But they still prefer to go down to the shopping mall and pay twice as much with less choice.

I know none of this prevents selling EU-side (or further afield). The hesitation about relaunching just yet is that it will require some up-front investment and the timing (COVID etc) is not ideal. Yes, he's done research into markets etc and is quite canny. But I think we're in the wrong place. The trick with online retail is to go BAM!!!!! Here I am!! Come and get it!!!! 24-h delivery!!! etc... and there just isn't the infrastructure here to support it. The last thing you want is to launch a shitty online business that everyone soon ignores.

Aaaggghhhhh!!! Yet another name change fail 😂 😎

But [just quoting myself]
In previous relationships, I relied heavily on friends to make sense of my partner. It's the other way round now.

I've just realised that this is what got to me about "John" asking me probing questions about my financial security. It's the one area of life where I feel defensive. And then because of the historical "John to the rescue" thing (he saved me from abusive situations with my first husband, who was his friend), all the dominoes lined up and clattered along into a very pretty pattern that I had trouble ignoring.

However, that was just a game of dominoes.

Oh and P.S. working towards online qualifications - he already has all the skills he needs to do what he is planning. Extra qualifications on paper would be useful if he was seeking employment... but, I refer you back to our "human rights" and maladjustments 😎

Some parts on Portugal are on a par with the UK when it comes to online businesses, but maybe not if the business is exporting/ selling physical goods and it necessitates delivery via vans.

A friend of mine managed the Portugal office of a UK business (lots of travel involved to Portugal).

Is there a huge regional variation would you say?

@whatkindofdaughter

Some parts on Portugal are on a par with the UK when it comes to online businesses, but maybe not if the business is exporting/ selling physical goods and it necessitates delivery via vans.

A friend of mine managed the Portugal office of a UK business (lots of travel involved to Portugal).

Is there a huge regional variation would you say?

I think being in a city makes life much easier.

You might not be surprised to know that we're not even in a village. Even the postman won't come out as far as us.