Husband not pulling his weight financially

[Havra]

Hi everyone,

I'm reaching out for support as I find myself in a challenging situation with my husband and our financial dynamics. After 15 years together, it has become increasingly difficult for me to cope with our differing attitudes towards money, and I'm considering making a tough decision. I hope to find guidance and understanding.

I work full time in London, earning an above-average salary for the UK. My husband is a self-employed private hire driver. Despite my efforts to manage our family's finances, I feel a significant burden on my shoulders due to the disparities in our contributions.

Currently, I cover the rent, which amounts to £2,000, all the bills, and our child's extracurricular activities. On the other hand, my husband primarily contributes to grocery expenses, although I often end up covering additional costs. When I bring the subject and ask for £££, he promises to contribute only if my income falls short, leading to a situation where he contributes nothing when I have sufficient funds to cover all monthly expenses. This pattern has persisted for several years and most of the time he contributes between £200 and £300 per month.

My husband's financial struggles extend to his business, with a monthly profit of less than £1,000. Unfortunately, his confusion regarding turnover, business expenses, and net profit complicates our financial discussions. His remaining funds after business expenses barely cover personal expenses, I get that.

At home, the division of responsibilities has become uneven. While he’s in charge of the daily school pick-up, I manage cooking, cleaning, laundry, looking after the LO after school ....

Despite me being the main breadwinner and doing everything around the house, he always finds fault in my efforts.

Recently, our disagreements have escalated, leading to stress for our child. An incident involving a grilled fish in the garden sparked unnecessary tension, with him fixating on cleanliness concerns that were unfounded. As a result, our child had a nightmare.

I am feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. Despite endless discussions, I see no improvement in our situation. His dismissive attitude towards my dreams of owning a home adds to the strain.

While I am contemplating leaving, my primary concern is the impact on our child's life without a father figure.

I appreciate any support, advice, or shared experiences you can offer.

Thank you.

Re: the grilled fish

I cooked fish for dinner yesterday, and just as we sat at the table (barbecue still hot), he started going on and on about the fact that I need to clean the grill thoroughly to avoid attracting any rodents to the garden. Dear readers, I’ve never left the grill dirty after using it, so there was no need for that “lecture”.

As a result, my son shared this morning that he had a nightmare involving rats entering the kitchen …

My lovely, why have you taken on the role of this man's financer, cook, cleaner and general dogsbody? You are your own person with a wonderful life to live do not waste another second of it on this person. Who does he think he is expecting this of another human being?
He is NO role model for your child YOU are. Plus he will still be involved with his son but his time with you will dilute his father's uselessness. You have sacrificed enough time, money and energy on this man, start putting that towards giving you and your child the best life possible.

Thank you 🥲

Agreed.
Time to lay this all out clearly to him with an ultimatum.
Although if he got a salaried job, contributed 50% to costs and housework, would you still want him?
You sound like you checked out a bit OP. Hardly surprising with a partner this useless. 💐

You need to give him an ultimatum. I’m not a fan of them but tbh I’d do it. If you both work full time and you earn more then yes of course financially you should be paying the higher percentage of house and living out goings but he definitely should cover more than £200/300 a month. As you are both full time he needs to do 50/50 in regards to chores etc and if he wouldn’t agree I’d tell him I’m off

You are welcome @Havra . You work full time out of the home and do everything IN the home. How strong are you? You are wasted on this man.
Personally, I wouldn't even waste time with an ultimatum. He has been happy enough to take from you, watch you do everything and still have the nerve to put you down. I would be done with it all. He is worth nothing.
Start thinking about what a happy home looks like for you and your son and aim for that. Good luck!

When I bring the subject and ask for £££, he promises to contribute only if my income falls short

Why would you agree to that? Why is it ‘your’ job to earn the money and he’ll only step up if you can’t?

If you are married then really all of your money is “joint” and should be treated as such. So rather than you paying for X and Y & him paying for Z, it should be your wage + his wage - all joint bills, and whatever is left split between you or just left in a joint pot.

When you share a home, a marriage and a child there’s just too much “joint” for there to really be a fair way to split.

Sorry, deleted-I was on the wrong thread

If the so-called business is not making money, then it's not a business.
He needs to pay his way by his own efforts, however it sounds like paid employment would be more suitable.

He sounds frighteningly like my Ex, who proudly announced after its first year of trading that his ebay business had made 5K profit, and would take another couple of years to really get going. I was on Sickness Benefit at the time. Prior to this he earned anything between £0 and £15,000 pa doing weekend training (max ~12 weekends/year) - and the 15K was a one-off which was never matched in the following 6 years.

The announcement about the £5K profit was what finally made me decide to start divorce proceedings.

Agree.
Been married 27 years. DH always the main breadwinner. I worked before children although earned 1/2 of his income. Took time out when the children were little. Went back part time before increasing hours. Still earning a lot less than him.
He retired 2 years before me.

All income has always gone in one pot. We are lucky in that we had disposable income each month. Big expenditures were discussed. DH never complained if I bought clothes etc. I think we were just on the same page with regards to personal spending money.

He is coasting along doing less than the minimum while you are doing everything else. I totally get that you are worried about the effect on your child if you split. I recently split with a similar man, should have done it years ago but was worried about the children. The thing is this minimal effort types are also minimum effort with the kids, mine haven’t missed a beat there have been no tears or upset. They could all see the writing on the wall and don’t miss him because honestly his impact on them was minimal when he lived here. Very sad really but it’s completely his loss.

So if you weren't keeping the roof over his head, bills and groceries how would he pay for it then? He thinks £300 is enough of a contribution?

I bet he does enjoy being his own boss. I would too if someone was financing my life and I only had to pay a small amount.

He needs to pay much more even if that means dropping this entirely unsuccessful business. Or he goes.

It always astounds me in here scenarios that women still do these dead bears laundry and cooks them dinner

i cannot imagine cooking and putting a plate of food in front of this awful man. Or making sure he has clean undies.

he’s awful OP. And what sort of a role model and father figure is he

get rid - you’ll be better of financially and wmotionally

and he won’t change

I'm not sure how on earth you've done this for as long as you have. I couldn't respect a man that let me carry the weight of the family on my shoulders.

@Havra I was in similar situation dh had own business wasn't making money. It worked OK for us whole kids were in primary school as not on a bus route. When youngest finished primary I told him you really need tp be getting a job that pays and for the last 4 years he is out working too.
He did all cooking and basic bit cleaning washing ironing.
If he not going to change his job get him doing more in house.
I can do my work from home and have flexibility for school run
.

I wonder...
If the roles were reversed (eg woman not earning much and man being the breadwinner), would this be seen as more acceptable?

Did you mention to him that no one was going to stop him from cleaning the grill?

This is not a life partner - I get there can be significant differences in wages but as long as both partners are pulling their weight it can work out. In your case your husband basically has a hobby and is using you to finance his lifestyle, as well as manage a home and bring up his child.

He does not have your back and neither does he seem to respect you. I suggest you make a decision and decide whether you want to continue this way or split. As you are renting this may make things easier. Do not buy a house until this is sorted. Maybe see a solicitor to work out what an exit strategy would look like if you were to go down that route. Knowing this might help you make a call.

Right now your child is learning how to treat women badly from his father and seeing the bad sides of a marriage. He needs a strong parent to improve his childhood.

In all my years of reading this site, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a woman doing as little as this man, who then has the sheer unadulterated gall to tell her when and how to clean the grill that he’s just been generously fed from. He should be thanking her and counting his lucky stars and scrubbing that grill with a smile.

This sounds very controlling, like he’s getting off on her enslavement.
This is also outright blatant financial exploitation.

I am furious on your behalf, OP! I wouldn’t speak to a paid housekeeper that way! The disrespect and contempt is breathtaking.

He has been spoilt absolutely rotten, so much so, he is completely delusional, he’s going to have a very rude awakening when he has to pay for all his own things. Good luck getting child support, he doesn’t seem the type.

I’m curious to learn what positive roll modelling he has been doing for your son? Surely this is an example of how NOT to treat your own wife and child.

It sounds like he is really in love with the idea of being a kept man.
Is he spectacularly gorgeous and sexy or something?

And I’m not sure I buy what he’s telling you about his earnings, are you sure he’s not squirrelling some money away somewhere? This happens more often than would think… men starving their own families for personal gain or for the gain of others, these types generally aren’t very smart, or very compassionate.

No doubt he thinks he’s a genius for setting himself up such a cushy soft landing place, he is simply exploitative and disgusting.

I really don’t know how you fed him that fish without making him choke on it, your must have monk like levels of restraint.

Do you have any stock lines for his disgusting behaviours?
If not, we can help with suggestions while you deal with this situation.

Did he explain why he wasn't volunteering to clean the fucking grill? You'd already done the cooking.

No idea how you've lasted 15 years in such an unequal partnership.

Oh fuck off with your oh so original musings about role reversal when OP has made it quite clear that SHE'S the one carrying the entire weight of the household on her shoulders as well as nearly all the financial burden.

@LorlieS if the woman was doing all the domestic load plus childcare etc then I see it as no big deal- if she was doing sod all domestically and there were finite and tight resources and she was fit and well then I would think that was shitty too

@Crikeyalmighty Thing is, we (quite rightly) expect men to go out to work and pull their weight domestically/with childcare etc when they get home.
I think that should also be an expectation for women, too.
It's certainly not equality if one carries more than the other, however that looks in reality.

Why isn't it viable?

Does he refuse to put the hours in?