Hello
Another longtime lurker here saying hello. @supersparrow your post really stood out to me. I’ve been signed off work with burnout. A part is a very stressful and demanding job and dealing with my DM dying after being ill; however, home life has massively contributed. I’m sure my DH has ASD (and probably ADHD). He has no emotional intelligence, quite happily sit for hours on his own, gets into sulks (often over utterly random things (although has taken years for me to work out what these are)).
With my DM he thought he was being brilliant by saying, “you go see her, I”ll look after the kids”. Not once did he offer to come to the hospital or even ask what did I need.
Home life is fine when I’m calm and managing everything (and taking on all the mental load), but if I struggle/get a bit stressed he either gets grumpy (and then often defensive and nasty) or just ignores me and does lots of “I don’t know what to say” (and in fairness I genuinely think he has no idea). We have a ND child who my DH just does not get and so they are highly dependent on me.
He is also terrible with money and I have to check his bank account every month as he’s massed huge debts before and secret credit cards. He goes through obsessions (last few years as been games on phones and buying credits to get items/next levels).
I’m just utterly burnout by doing it all, and yet within 36 hours of being signed off my DH was complaining how stressful and difficult it was for him and how my actions were impacting the whole family. I shouldn’t be surprised he’s always been terrible when I’ve been ill.
I want to leave but, I am the much high earner and do rely on him being around if I need to be away overnight for work (we have a Nanny till bedtime), my ND child is in private school (couldn’t cope with size of state school primary and I couldn’t afford to pay for this as well as bills if DH moved out and was only paying child maintenance. We would probably have to sell as I would struggle to buy him out (he would get a much bigger proportion of the equity to rehouse as his earnings are 1/3 of min).
Part of my burnout has been caused by working harder to go for promotion to get more money so I could afford to do all this.
I also worry about the children having to spend every other weekend with him and me not being around. Today he made my eldest cry becuase they couldn’t find their watch, “apparently they treated the watch like dirt”. It was in the car - charging. The eldest is such a good child it was just so unnecessary.
My DH would also be upset if I filed for divorce and I’m sure he would be adamant he wouldn’t want to be separated from the kids (again I’m sure that is actually true, although if you asked him to explain why would say something generic like, “I’d love them and miss them”).
When he’s in good form he can be a good fun Dad. He’s quite good at playing the clown - I think it’s a form of masking.
I would be interested to hear from any posters who have left. I wonder if my DH might in fact be better if he only had to deal with the kids say EOW and say one night in the week, so he could decompress in between.
On the counselling point, we’ve tried twice. One was a man who was basically told me, “he’s always been like this he’s never going to change”, which is probably true but then the suggestion for counselling was effectively for me to change to manage it (so the status quo). The other counsellor we had a couple of sessions. My DH can say the right things so lots of, “I need to step up”, “I know I’ve not been there enough and I need to do more”, but then on being questioned and probed got grumpy and defensive and refused to go back. The problem ultimately was he didn’t want to be there.