Hello lovely people! I hope I’m not repeating a thread for this topic here; I just couldn’t find an answer to my question about my relationship with DH.
I am a mother of two young children (6 & 2) in my early 30s and work a full-time office job Monday to Friday, while DH, who is the same age as me, is a police officer. We have been married for 8 years and dated for 2 years before our marriage. I am not from the UK, but my DH is, and we live here. All of my family is in their country, and DH’s parents split up when he was 15; we regularly see his mother and occasionally his father with his new wife. I have been living in DH’s country for 13 years now, and before that, I lived in a few other countries due to my educational choices. My DH has never lived outside of his village; he lived with his mother until we got married.
I had PTSD due to child abuse and other issues when I met DH, and DH has ADHD. I chose to marry him when he proposed to me because I was desperate for feeling loved in a secure environment (marriage), and he proposed to me because he didn’t want me to go back to my country, which could potentially end our relationship.
After our wedding, DH became uninterested in me for the first three months; he refused me and did not have sex with me. He didn’t see any other girls as he never had friends, as he still doesn’t believe he needs one, but relieved his sexual drive by masturbating in private. I did not work at that time, and this made me feel rejected, unworthy, and worthless. I wanted to have a baby and connect with him again. I then got a job as soon as my spousal visa was issued, and that was when DH started showing interest in me again, and I became pregnant in the sixth month of our marriage. He was a factory worker at that time, and I was an academic assistant.
During my maternity leave with our first child, DH wanted to change his job and became interested in a police officer role. I supported him to apply for a special constable to begin with and gave as much time as he needed to focus on his personal development & applying for the new job as a police officer. He got in after the second attempt, and I started a side income business to financially support our family life as his police job salary was 20% less than what he was getting as a factory worker.
My business went well and started to generate three times more than my office job, so I quit my job and focused on my business.
We then agreed to have a second child, and DH promised me he would take his time off via shared parental leave so I can get back to my business after recovering from birthing the second child and stabilising it. My DH did not take his shared parental leave and said that his HR would not allow him to take one. I went back to work three weeks after giving birth to my second child; I still remember walking in pain to the supplier’s site, purchasing products, and driving them to my clients while I was still bleeding postpartum and picking up my first child from her school as my DH was on shift work.
I could not keep up with business demands and childcare at the same time; my health was going downhill, so I had to take a break from the business and care for my children full-time. When my body was fully healed and my second child was sleep-trained, my business clients already had other business plans, and I struggled to get back on track with how my business was. I was then scammed by a business consultant who promised to support me with marketing my business and used my savings to support us financially as DH’s income was very low.
DH was never interested in our finances, future plans, bills, house maintenance, or even mowing the grass in our garden; he wouldn’t proactively do anything for us despite me finding issues and bringing them up to him for discussion. When I used up all of my savings for my children and our family life (food, bills, nursery fees, etc.), I found out that I could claim Universal Credit/Jobseeker's Allowance until I generated income again, so I started to claim UC and gave up on my business dreams, started to look for jobs. One of the job recruitment agencies I came across scammed me and caused a loss of £23k; I reached out to my parents to borrow some money so I wouldn’t go bankrupt. All this time, DH didn’t know what to do and never helped me with anything other than helping to pay our mortgage. DH thought the recruitment agency was legit despite being a police officer and didn’t realise they were scamming me.
I went back to where I used to work before my business and am now full time employed. More than 50% of my salary from this employment is now going voluntarily towards the loan repayment, and I am living very frugally. I feel really sorry for my kids that I can’t provide more than I can afford at the moment.
I spoke to DH about managing things together as a family millions of times…I bought books for him to read/self-educate, we tried counseling, we had countless discussions, talks, arguments, sometimes raising our voices, cries, frustration, etc., but now I’m just depressed and exhausted. I can continue to work full-time and spend all of my money to repay the debts and look after my kids. But I now sleep with my kids in the kids' room, and I don’t feel anything for DH anymore. We haven’t properly spoken for 3 weeks now, and I still don’t want to speak to him. He doesn’t want to divorce or have a separation because he says his parents did that and doesn’t want our kids to go through what he had to go through between his divorcing parents.
I don’t know how long it can go like this in our house—I can’t picture myself being happy with DH at any point in my future life, but I also agree I don’t want my kids to find out if we split until they become adults. We don’t have anything we like or do in common, and I earn twice as much as DH and spend more time with the kids than him. I don’t need him, but my kids do. I feel I've lost the meaning of life, the feeling of happiness, and the motivation to succeed.
Can anyone relate to my experience in their marriage and please share their wisdom on how to overcome this? I would really appreciate your comments…thank you for reading my long tedious thread!