Hello, I am a 26F is my friend is 26F. I met her through my husband and we have become best friends. I have two children and she has four, one of which is only two weeks old. Two of her children have ADHD, one is violent. She is a fantastic woman and tries her best despite her situation.
She is engaged to 27M, and has been in a relationship with him for 10 years. He met her when she was in an abusive situation in college. I love her to pieces but hearing about him, a man who is best friends with my husband, at how he treats her the kids is making me very angry. I feel helpless because I don't think that she is in a good situation and I think she can do a lot better. And I do worry about the kids too.
This man has been unemployed for 10 years. He claims benefits a man has claimed that he has anxiety and depression but it does not affect his social life. He sits at home for most of the time, usually eight hours plus, playing video games. Despite this he does not help out with the children. He expects my friend to do all childcare related stuff and also expects her to do every single bit in the house. Every time that they've had children he is turned to her and said he will not be doing any nappies. Even during her giving birth he left her multiple times despite her being extremely frightened. In arguments I have had him use ‘well you wanted them’ to shut her up when she is talking about his lack of engagement with any of the children.
He has spoken to me and my husband about essentially giving her a favour By allowing her to be at home with the children and that he is a traditional man. And he believes that women are better at home and men should provide. But he doesn't. He has got his family into extreme amounts of debt an I have watched him on multiple occasions use the Universal Credit budget on himself. I don't understand how he can have a wonderful computer and a whole gaming setup costing a large amount of money and brand new TV's whereas his fiance can't contact anyone because she doesn't have any credit, and the children have holes in all of their socks and underwear. They're finding themselves struggling for money for food an he goes to the shop and purchases a £7 bag of crisps for himself.
My friend is clearly struggling to care for all four children by herself and clean the entire house by herself while she has a man making mess and not cleaning up after himself 24/7. She's clearly unhappy but she keeps making excuses for him and I don't really know what to do at this point.
She would be better off being single then being a single married mother.
He has used the excuse for a few months while she was heavily pregnant that he might get a job. And that if he does get a job she will have to do all of this stuff. He used this as a way to make sure that she would continue doing all of the school drop offs and nursery drop offs, while heavily pregnant with gestational diabetes, because he may get a job one day and therefore won't be able to do it.
I am concerned about the kids too. He screams at them and at front of me too. One of his particular children that has ADHD he's particulary nasty to. He will constantly belittle this child and say that everything this child is doing is wrong. And he will scream at this child and tell this child to sit still even though these children are stuck in the house in a little room behind him playing games for hours on end. He will not take any of these children out to the park or anything fun for them and just plays his games but he is OK with going out and getting drunk if he feels like it. I have watched him throw a toy at this child's face because this child was playing with this toy loudly.
When I was told that social services had been called on them I was really hopeful that they may have told him that he needed to do better than what he was but nothing happened and I think this is because my friend is trying so hard to protect her fiance but is also doing really really well with her children despite the situation. He was in complete denial that he even needed social services involvement.
Now she has a two week old baby and he refuses like he did with the last three to change any nappies. He is now expecting had to do the school runs and look after this baby all by herself again. He took the boys to school a few times and then he's given up an his being quite nasty and grumpy towards her with the excuse that he's quitting vaping but this is not the first time.
while she was heavily pregnant he opened up the home to his stepbrother Annie step brothers girlfriend. His stepbrother is extremely sexist. Both of the men expected this heavily pregnant woman to pick up after both of them, make them all dinner and take care of all of the kids. Not only that they expected her to make separate dinners for them because they didn't like the same thing. This man took their youngest daughter's bedroom for months and eventually abandoned it. I help my friend by cleaning out this room and this step brother left piles of food rotting, had clearly been smoking in the room and destroying the furniture the windows and the bedroom with cigarettes and even left needles out. I really don't understand how this quote unquote fiancee is allowing this to happen to his fiance, my friend and think this is OK.
he can be nasty to her. Despite getting them in thousands of pounds worth of debt he keeps hold of her card so she doesn't have access to the money and he's very selfish with his money. He's lazy and quite frankly does not have any decent excuse for what he's doing.
I'm going around the house I'm cooking them food, I've cleaned up the house on multiple occasions and I babysat the kids. I'm trying my best to support my best friend but I don't know what to do. She shouldn't be treated like this, what can I do? And what can I do because if this man is OK with throwing a toy at his child's face in front of me, what else is he doing to those children?