Sorry for length - I don’t have anyone else I can really share this with, sadly so once I start….
DH has been invited to the evening of a wedding 30 minutes away. It’s someone whom he classes as a very good friend but he’s not been invited to the wedding itself which he’s upset about, because his wife to be wants to invite the partners of a couple of friends invited to the day, so there isn’t room for him, despite the groom assuring DH he tried to fight his case to have him there over them. A few other, not as close to groom, friends are in the same position of just being invited to the evening without partners. The wedding is midweek.
As the friends don’t have children, they’ve decided to book a hotel near the venue to stay in afterwards. DH told me a while ago this was their plan and he wanted to discuss my thoughts on him doing it too. I shared that I wouldn’t be too pleased with this -
*We have no childcare aside from FIL, who’s just had a knee replacement and wedding is only a short few weeks away. He’s expecting FIL to have our 1 year old all day, collect 4 year old from school and then me finish work to take over. 1 year old does go to nursery twice (funded set days now) but this isn’t one of her days.
I work in a very difficult and stressful job which has been really getting to me of late, which DH knows. I come home exhausted and just want to cry. I’d be coming in from work with extra jobs than usual, rightly so, because I can’t expect FIL to be tidying round and sorting things out too much.
*Our 1 year old is a sleeping nightmare the second she realises something isn’t ‘normal’. DH has only recently came back from a 4 day stag do abroad where she spent most nights screaming for hours, asking for him. The thought of being at work all day, to be up for hours, to then have to get up really early to rush round getting them both up and ready for FIL to come again, to go to work on limited sleep, is filling me with anxiety. I don’t think it’s fair for FIL to be doing that much either, whilst he recovers. The next is also a really important day for me at work as it’s when I take on new clients and have to risk assess etc so need to be ‘on it’ and can’t take time away.
It would be more helpful IMO for him to go, have a lovely civilised time and come home so he can help in the morning. When DD was a baby she’d scream for hours every day and night which ruined my MH so when it happens now, I go back to that place.
The discussion didn’t go well but no more was said about it for weeks. Earlier this week, when I was organising our family e-calendar, I asked him about it. He then told me he’d booked and paid for the hotel and wasn’t going to tell me unless it was brought up again.
I tried to communicate to him that this wasn’t the best way to deal with something and quite frankly annoyed me that he’d be sneaky about it rather than say something like, it’s getting booked, I want to go but can we discuss a compromise or anything that could make it easier on you.
It was completely turned on me in that I’m trying to control him, he’d be having to miss out, he doesn’t want to get a taxi alone and it will be too expensive. I’ve checked and it will cost about £30, the same price as the hotel. He sees having to come back home as a major inconvenience to him vs the minor inconvenience to me. He then started protesting lots about how it’s clearly because I don’t trust him and how the wedding will finish after 12:30 and then they might want to go to the casino or out after.
Just to add, we struggle with disposable money, don’t have nights out for us and I’ve never had a night out for nearly a year, where I still came home after.
He berated me for trying to be a victim and essentially how he’s so badly done to because he doesn’t go on every drinking meet up with the friends (who’re childless) and it must be because I want him chained to the house, then started comparing me to all the other partners who don’t have an issue or they must just put up and shut up.
He can see his friends whenever he wants and often meets them for coffee etc and they have a group chat that’s always going, where they put on weekly football group bets so he’s not kept away from them by any means. He seems to not be bothered about us doing things but if the possibility of not going out with friends is on the table, he gets very defensive and angry. When pregnant with DD, I started developing PGP and could barely walk on a day he was due to go out day drinking. I asked if he could consider not going to help me with DS or compromise and come home earlier, to which he stormed around the house bellowing (scaring DS) and then went anyway, not coming back earlier.
For more context, I have ADHD so experience life differently and struggle with constant perfectionism vs never feeling good enough. My work involves taking on lots of others’ trauma and problems when this year has been quite frankly awful for me mentally - developing a near fatal health condition after birth, all of the impact of DD as a smaller baby with the screaming (undiagnosed allergy) and the DA perp my DM used to be married to, turned up as a volunteer at my work so I had all the impact of reliving that and reporting him (which happened twice as they promised to remove him once and failed to do so).
I pride myself on being a present parent and put my all into teaching and playing with the children so they are fairly obsessed with me which is lovely but exhausting too as they usually only want me.
I think to be honest this is the latest tip of the iceberg for me as I’m finding I’m becoming resentful of DH. I take on the lions share of the housework and mental planning; down to weekly meal plans (including the weekly shopping list), buying toys and books for the children, arranging with relatives what to get them for special occasions, buying their clothes/organising their wardrobes when they’re needing new sizes and organising the life admin of appointments (we also have 3 dogs who I organise all appointments for), phonics practice etc as well as planning where to go for days out as we’d just end up sat in the house doing nothing (him sat on the sofa barely interacting).
It’s only recently he’s started financially contributing to the children’s clothes as before he said me getting the child benefit to my account was for me to do it.
He’ll make a huge mess with the children in one room, won’t tidy up with them and then moves to another room where even more mess is created and it’s then on me to tidy up. Instead of washing up when it’s manageable, throughout the day he’ll just pile more and more dirty pots up until it’s a huge mess because he knows I can’t stand it and will usually ‘cave’ first.
DH by contrast isn’t a hardworking dad that needs a rest and seems to have gone from fairly tolerable to impossible since having the children. He wanders around leaving mess and clothes wherever he goes; imagine living with a teenage boy. He wears a pair of shorts, changes out of them, then leaves both pairs of bottoms strewn about, dirty socks and pants left on the floor or used wrappers and glasses in the home office. I’ve told him many times this is disrespectful as I’m not his parent and asked him to stop.
He gets to WFH most days a week which is a very relaxed role. He’s doing a qualification at the moment which involves many assignments. He procrastinates until the last minute, then panics and wants to shut himself away for hours in home time and leave me with the children, rather than organise work time to do it. He does some cooking and likes to use this as proof of him doing lots but this can only happen because I’ve planned the meal, done the list and even put a recipe if needed, into the family planner app.
I have to ask him for days to do one household job. He constantly comes up with ideas and ‘whims’ that never come to anything or says something needs doing, to put it on a list but then will never action it. He’ll open a letter and leave it out because it needs him to do something, but never do it and never put it away (we have a filing system).
When it’s just the children and I, everything is tidy and clean and I’m coming to realise he just adds to my stress and the mess.
DH had never lived alone (bar uni which was just a giant drink fest from what he tells me) whereas I moved out at an early age and feel living with him has made me lose so much of my previously capable and confident self as he took on all of the financial account organisation, then likes to berate me for not having anything to do with it.
If I ask for help with something that needs planning or purchasing e.g DS needs his bedroom completing revamping and new furniture, or a holiday for his birthday, I’m doing it alone as he’s no help. He just seems to wander around in his own world, incapable of doing anything. Not excusing but I’ve started to think he’s got ADHD too and he agreed he seems to but is doing nothing about looking into assessment. He constantly wants to put blame on me for things for my ADHD or do things to trigger it, when I’m very open about what does.
I know lots of people would wonder why I tolerate this but I have very little self-esteem and worry about not seeing the children every day and him having an ‘unsupervised’ role with them. Just yesterday, he decided to find a ‘hack’ video for a different way to cut an orange so instead of just quickly peeling an orange for DD with her, got all consumed in this video and cutting up an orange, wasn’t watching DD and she managed to pull her very big highchair over onto her head resulting in a big egg and a bruise.
He then started getting very angry at me saying it was completely unavoidable but also saying it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been ‘fannying’ around upstairs (I was actually putting the children’s washing onto the airer which he knew).
I had to instruct him to get ice out for her and had to demand he ring 111 multiple times for advice to make sure she didn’t need to be checked out, whilst I sat icing her head, as I hadn’t seen what had happened. He refused a few times saying he’d just Google it and wasn’t taking advice off someone in a call centre.
I’m sorry about how long this was! If you read it and have advice, thank you.
As I say, I know others may say I’d be happier/better separated but I have my worries and if I was to, I’d have no idea where to start or what the ‘process’ would be.