He's not going in to the office

[Mmmmdanone]

Husband and I separated but still living in same the house. He's been wfh since the beginning of Covid but has now been asked to go into the office 2 days per week. He's just refusing to go in. I can't take it any more. I'm off this week for school holidays and I was so looking forward to a couple of days of him being out. It's changed everything in my eyes. We were trying to get along for the sake of the kids but now I feel like I'm going to explode. I can't look at him, don't want to "get along" any more. He's pathetic and I hate him. He won't move out. I want to make life as difficult for him as I can but this will make life hard for the children too.
I've stupidly been doing his laundry and cooking for him with the rest of us. I'm stopping this now. I don't know why I'm posting this, I'm just so done with him and can't face living with him any more. I would move it to a rental but don't feel that's the right thing to do for the children. He would then be sitting in a 3 bed house while me and the kids are in a rented flat. He's never put much effort into the house either. I can't stand the thought of him being here and letting it go to ruin.
What can I do?

I wonder if he is trying to get dismissed so he can weasel his way out of providing child support and get a settlement that is more favorable to him. What an arse he sounds. Don’t lift another finger for him.

Where is he sleeping? If he's in a spare bedroom then he can sleep and work in there. No more working in the living room.

Such a lovely thread in which a poster vents her hatred for soon to be ex husband (understandable - I make no criticism of that -they're getting divorced after all) and the overwhelming response (the first page at least - I couldn't bring myself to read the rest) is she should behave like an abusive spouse and indulge in the kind of petty micro aggressions that cumulatively amount to domestic abuse (or would amount to it if OP had started her thread complaining about it).

Book into a London hotel for a few nights and at least decompress from this. You need space from him and to have fun with your kids. God knows why anyone bothers living with a man to be honest. They’re all selfish and boring and suck the life out of women they are married to. Time for society to start kicking back at these losers. The 1950s is gone people

It’s a beautiful day for frozen cocktails. Go buy a blender to crush some ice

^ made me laugh 😆

There is almost nothing worse than living with someone you can’t bear to be around. But often things are almost unbearable by the time couples go their separate ways.

MEANWHILE you will just have to be STRONG, Op. You can do this. Strategies to pass the time: hobbies, interests, going out, tidying your wardrobe, cleaning etc etc. Try going into ‘’observer role’ around him. Grey rock and the long game. Pray if you’re religious. Focus on future positives just round the corner! Pettiness and losing your cool won’t help much. Hope your solicitor has come up with plan speeding things up.

too right two 🙂

Tell him to go to the office so the children can have THEIR house.

He’s a dick.

@Mmmmdanone

Thank you so much. It gets worse. After I blew up at him he wanted to talk about the financial split and then took the piss out of my career, saying I had never gotten anywhere before I met him so he didn't I think that I had been financially disadvantaged by going part time after the kids came along. He said laws are in place to stop time women being disadvantaged in the workplace. He really doesn't have a giving clue. He also frequently states that men are screwed in divorces which is utter bollocks. Deluded. I can't do this any more.

That's because they only value paid work and believe that unpaid work is valueless. Wankers. The response to this is very simple:

1 Whether or not my salary could have been higher, I would have earned double what I earned over the lifetime of our marriage, including double contributions to pension etc. In addition, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that I would have seen additional increases in pay and responsibility if I had been 100% committed to that career, EVEN IF THAT CAREER IS LESS WELL PAID THAN YOURS dickhead

1. YOUR career and finances have massively benefited as you have not had to a) pay for childcare b) take time off to care for children or c) take time out to do any of the organizing/planning that goes with children.

In addition you have d) benefited from being able to devote significantly more time to work as you have not been thinking about other household (but non-child related) things such as holidays/cleaning/cooking/shopping/bill paying/social arrangements/ washing/ decorating/ diy/ gardening / insert or delete as appropriate.

Others have given you good advice which is to just to you and the kids shopping and washing.
To be honest I would also be leaving the kids with him a few evenings here and there for him to parent. He is splitting from you not the children.

In the short term and be inviting some friends over for coffee with their kids to play with yours in the daytime! Tell him all kids have play dates, so what's the problem! ( depending on how old the kids are of course)

I wouldn't even engage with him when he tries to belittle your career. Just nod and smile. It'll kill you but stick with it. Don't give him any ammunition for later.

Good luck and get the ball rolling otherwise you are going to be stuck in a ridiculous limbo for a long time.

OP - this is tough on everybody. You, your kids, him too.
Unfortunately-, as hard as it is for you - you need to survive this and not have your kids witness too much hostility.
The current issue at hand is halfterm - and he does need to understand that. However, given how things are at the moment - he can’t hear any reasonable arguments from you without feeling defensive. It’s human nature.
You can try to talk to him in a calm way, maybe with your kids around, saying you understand he doesn’t want to go to the office, but kids need to be able to use the house in halfterm.
If he is unwell - can he, at least, move his calls to the bedroom?

Other than that - when you have conversations about the settlement with him - try your best to ignore his snipes. He can’t see your side. He will not share your views on things. Divorce is horrible that way. It brings out the worst. And things we have not seen in our partners. Partially it’s the hurt if it all. Partially - those are the sides of them that were hidden deep inside.
If you are going the way of solicitors/FDR - it doesn’t matter what your H thinks. It’ll be decided by the judge. The law is there to protect both sides, not to make him lose. But he won’t see it that way.

Stay strong and move the process along as fast as you can. And be careful with solicitors bills - they tend to snowball.

Sell the house and start again is my advice, he is not going to leave why should he. It is his house too so he will manipulate as much as he can. Been there - unless you can buy him out quickly - just sell and move on.

OP, it cracks me up that he tells you that you're not helping him when he's poorly, with your hostility.

News flash - it's not your job anymore!

You can't make him go in the office, and making it so apparent how upset and frustrated you are, is giving him power.

But you can make it clear to him, that at half term, the house becomes a home, all day, every day, and people will be using it as such, with friends over, play dates, housework to catch up on, and if he's going to have trouble working in that environment he needs to make alternative arrangements.

Think if it were quicker I would just sell up and go tbh. Dunno if that would need the divorce too mind you. But seriously, I'd do whatever got him away from me fast enough.

I lived with my ex for two years after we separated.

Family helped me to buy him out. I couldn't get a new mortgage with him still in the house (no legal right to be there once bought out) so he had to become a lodger with a lodger's agreement when we completed. The same must apply in your case. I gave him three months' notice (he was furious) but had to point out that if he didn't sign the lodger's agreement, I wouldn't get a mortgage and he wouldn't get his share of the equity. And you can give a mere two weeks' notice to a lodger so three months was generous!

We divided up childcare as it would be post-divorce while we were still living under the same roof. He kept saying he wanted to do 50/50 residency, but it took me nine months to get it close to that by incrementally pushing him along.

While we were both at home, the agreement was that whoever was on child duty got the communal space and cooked. He definitely got the better end of the bargain there! He cooked some weird meals that I had to eat or also make my own. He got to eat my cooking on 'my' days (good, normal food).

We didn't touch each other's laundry.

I continued to pay for the family food shop out of the joint account for simplicity.

I feel your pain and it's a nightmare. When he goes, you will be amazed at how relaxed you feel. Hang in there but get some rules in place to help make it more bearable in the meantime.

And good luck!

so he didn't I think that I had been financially disadvantaged

Such a shame for him that he doesn't get to dictate the terms of the asset splitting huh.

Don't engage with him on this shit "talk to your lawyer, & they can talk to mine, I'm not interested in your opinion" should do it.

Tell him if he fucks off quickly then you will only go after 20% of his pension.

Don't tell him this.

If he won;t fuck off quickly, OP can bite the bullet & sell the family home. he'll have to fuck off when the new owners rock up.

It may not be ideal, but it gets OP out of the untenable house-share situation asap.

And that will be a minimum of 50% of his pension into the bargain, thank you very much.

Where does he sleep? Does he sleep with you in the same bed?
Can you not set up an office in the bedroom for him.
Yes, I get you are pissed off with him. That you have told him you have decided to split.
He still lives there. Just because you find it annoying that he chooses not to go into the office doesn't mean he's 'bad' or 'mean' for not doing it?

Thank you all. This thread has cheered me up no end. I'm taking the kids and going to my mum's for a couple of night. It will be horrible coming home though.
I won't do any micro aggression stuff- I'd be as bad as him then- but they did give me a laugh at a difficult time.
I've emailed my solicitor to try and get the financial order sorted. Hoping we can physically separate before things get even worse.
When we first separated we were going to be so reasonable and fair. Everyone told me that would never work. How right they were.

I think leaving the home is a mistake 😳

I agree. It is always advised on here to stay in the family home.

I'm sleeping in my daughter's room. Not ideal but no spare room!

And there's no room for a desk anywhere but the dining room. It's all a mess 😭

What if you said to him this is not working. I cannot live like this. One of us has to leave.
It's not fair to uproot the children from their home so they stay here, either with me and you leave, or with you and I leave.
You choose.

I don't think he'll want to be RP and if he thinks that's what will happen I honestly think he will choose to go. But you have to appear completely serious.

you know he's doing all this intentionally... he is moving you out by stealth .. and he's winning

Although I sympathise with you, I equally sympathise with your husband.

You have no more right to the house than he does, and his solicitor will have strongly advised him not to move out until you have something in writing about child arrangements and financial split.

It is a shitty situation for all and you being aggressive to him for working from home is not helping. And now, with his retaliation, you have both reached a new level of unpleasantness.

My best advice is to move along with the divorce as fast as possible and be polite (although not a doormat) in the interval. Negotiate a fair split of chores and house access, as you would with a housemate.

If you keep it amicable, it will get done quicker and minimise the harm to your children.