Other half refuses to work...

[pocketpairs]

I would appreciate some genuine advice, so if just going to write "finish relationship", please don't comment.

Both mid 40s, married 18 yrs, 2 DCs. When we got together, DW was very career driven. I grew up in poor family, before we got married , I said in no uncertain terms that "I won't marry someone who won't work (in some form)"

After DC1, she dropped to part time. After DC2 to 1 day w/p, then we mutually agreed she'd stop work until DC was started primary school full time.

Last few years, I've broached the subject about her restarting work, but she's proposed counter-arguments (i.e. who's going to pick DC from school, etc).

Now DC2 is starting secondary school next year, tried to have a serious conversation, and she's said in no uncertain terms she "won't work". She feels we have enough enough to live a comfortable life.

I'm at my wits end, as we don't have enough, and certainly don't have enough for future. Mortgage paid off, I earn £56k (approx), some savings, & £80k pension pot (not much I know!). She has 3 years in DB pension.

So what next?!

Can you drop a day or 2 at work? Think I would be saying you are considering this - if it's OK for her to not want to work then you can surely do the same. Appreciate she is running the house do you take on some of the load cleaning, cooking, homework, clubs etc? Although if she is spending most of time "pottering and volunteering" I'd struggle not to be irritated

Unless you have massive travel to work costs the £56k and no mortgage doesn't sound as though you're at the Workhouse door right now.

Coercion won't work. Does she have a hobby or interest out of which she could develop a self employed business?

Could she do some volunteering with a charity or at a school? I was made redundant in my mid fifties, admittedly with a generous early pension. Volunteering at Citizens Advice led me to a salaried role 3 days a week which suits me well.

Does she do all the chikdcare/ housework whilst you work? If so how will this change if she goes back to work and can't do it anymore? You would pick up the slack or employ someone to cover what she's done- which means your outgoings may negate her working income depending on income. Or you cutting back your hours at work to cover school drop off and picks ups and housework chores also means your worse off depending on her income. I'm getting alot of you want her to work now but she's sacrificed all these years to raise the kids and they don't stop needing her just because she's now got 6 hour block free in the day - presumably there's after school clubs, homework etc all to be dealt with so it really comes down to how hand on of a parent YOU are and what your doing to facilitate her being able to have a job and not kill herself having to do it all. You want it all- but can't. Have you also considered with the amount of time she has had out of work raising your children her confidence may have taken abit of a knock so maybe some voluntary work/ low level stress work would be best to help ease her back in.

Ha. Yes. I’ve just gone back to work after 5 years at home (with the occasional paid project that former colleagues asked me to help out on). Two kids under 6.

My husband (high earner) was desperate for me to find a job and moaned a lot about shouldering all the financial responsibility. He now instead moans about having to take his own kids to school and nursery one day a week, and me not being as accepting of him staying as late as he likes in the office (as I don’t get this luxury!). It turns out he didn’t just want me to find a job, he wanted me to find a job that paid loads while also enabled me to run the house exactly as I did when I didn’t work. It’s a shock to him this wasn’t possible!

If both dc go to uni, how does she propose affording this? What would happen if you said you couldn’t afford the endless new trainers/school trips for the dc? Why exactly won’t she work? Is she lacking confidence? As a teacher, I earn similar to to you, no dc, 2 income household, also mortgage free but I have no idea how we’d manage on only one salary. We’ve had unexpected bills this year-almost £14k on a pet, 2 new starter motors (old cars) etc. What will you do if your savings are decimated by an unexpected bill?

Well if you take on 100% off her workload to get her back to work I think it's doable. Not sure how much you actually do with kids/household responsibilities but I would guess it's probably zero. Should make it fair!

Yeah well join the club, only I'm the woman. I'm fucking sick of the hand wringing, but now that's he's done absolutely fuck all (other than a whole heap of laundry) for over two years, he's fairly unemployable anyway. Won't go for interviews or entertain any application that isn't his dream job "because then I might end up with a job I don't like". Completely skating over the fact he's nearly 50 and has a near zero chance of getting these jobs anyway, and meanwhile I'm working my arse off in a job I hate because newsflash we need money. Don't like your tone but guess I would probably sound similar, only it never crossed my mind he wouldn't work.

Well, if that is his attitude to women, it is even more important that his wife returns to some form of employment to give her more options if her marriage fails.

Having a disrespectful husband is another reason why she should become financially independent if possible.

You only have one choice if you won't leave and that is to suck it up, but what is your plan and her for excuse for when the children have leave school ?

We don't know, but the thing here is - he is feeling abused financially, which is absolutely his right to do. I am the main breadwinner in the family, the only one, really and my dh looked after our dc, did everything, but he insisted on getting a part-time job around school hours. He said 'if I were just to stay at home, I would despise myself, I would feel I was ripping the arse out of thins, whilst you are slogging your guts out'. To be totally honest, because of the cost of parking where he worked part-time and getting there, he was always stressed, always rushing, very occasionally not able to pick up on time and because of that our private school stuck them into the after school club for 1 hour or so, so all that and petrol made his part-time job make absolutely no sense, no financial sense, but he felt like a decent human being, he said it allowed him to to lose his self-respect totally and I felt I was not being financially abused. In today's climate it is wrong to financially abuse your other half, it is wrong and in the end it will destroy the family as such behaviour would lead to resentment and you can't come back from resentment to be with your other half, there is no way back.

Too much store is being put on OP having a "chilled work life".

OP did not ask for a chilled work life. On the contrary, he said to his wife "I won't marry someone who won't work (in some form)".

OP's wife is the one who wanted to cut her hours and SAHM. She largely did it for herself against OP's wishes (though she managed to wrangle an agreement out of him over the years), not because OP wanted to or saw the benefit in it.

@spuddy4 said I don't understand why secondary school children need to be picked up? Surely they are old enough to get themselves to and from school?

If they're nearby or, like round here, kids are bussed to large comprehensives the you're right. OTOH a combination of poor local schools, a decent one in the next town but no public transport and roads too dangerous to cycle on you're a school run parent until they can drive.

I'm a sahm and I'd honestly take a very dim view of my husband if he forces me back to work once the hardest and most tedious part of the early child care years are over. It would feel like he's used me for the hard part whilst he built up his career and now that the kids are older and I can finally catch a breather he wants me to enter another rat race where I'd have to start all the way from the bottom. And chances are you'd still expect her to do all the housework and admin because you don't even have an answer for her when she questions you about what's going to happen to them.

Typical MN. If this was a man he'd be slated. A woman - oh no. What about cleaning and life admin. Such crap. She's lazy and has been for years. People like this are takers and grifters. They are also generally boring. Your error was agreeing to it earlier.

You need to speak to her and say that you feel you are being financially abused. You feel like a slave, not even like a servant. You say you are beginning to feel resentment and this is not what a family should be like.

If you don't want to leave her, you can always leave your job for a year or six months and that will force her to go to work.

If this was a man, the chances of his female partner having benefitted from him being a long term SAHP, whilst also being this oblivious to the things he does and having zero plan for how the practicalities would be split and no intention of doing them himself would be much lower...

I think you need to get to the bottom of what the issue actually is. I doubt it is concerns about childcare or plain laziness.

Is it a lack of confidence? Was she bullied in her last job? Have her skills become rusty? If so can she apply her teaching to volunteering roles and then undertake part time tutoring?

I think you really need to push the pension aspect. I expect the state pension will be means tested at some point.

It’s blatantly unfair that one person is responsible for bringing in all the income when the other is able bodied and capable of working.

Yes, if his wife was on here I'd tell her to get back into something asap and make sure he was in charge of a proportionate share of the practicalities.

I think some of these responses have been very unfair. If this was about the father refusing to work I am pretty sure they would be very different. It's one thing being a SAHP when kids are preschool and I think that's extremely beneficial if possible and all parties want it. But both my husband and I work full time and we manage the school admin, medical appointments etc etc just fine. And my kids do multiple clubs, sports, theatre. Something every night. Its tough but doable. Maybe she could get a job in a school so that she has the holidays free with the kids and is home around a similar time as them? Or something part time?

I was in her position, and it's really hard to go back to work from a position of a long time out of the world of work. The reality is that if you want this to work for you all as a family, there will almost certainly be a period of time when things will be a lot harder for you.

Being a SAHP can have an absolutely devastating effect on someone's confidence in the workplace. I've been back at work for nearly ten years now after a stretch as a SAHP, and I still feel surprised when I get appreciation and positive feedback and money for my work because it's so different from the way childrearing and housework is perceived. That means that while you might be certain that she can get a decent job with a bit of effort, she probably thinks of herself as unskilled and maybe even unemployable.

First of all, I suggest you (and when I say "you" in this post, I mean both of you as a team) buy the book Fair Play, and work through it with your wife - it's a really good way of dividing up ALL the household tasks, and making the invisible labour visible. Look at how things are divided up now. Then look at how that will have to change.

Next, be realistic about how much she is likely to be earning. Does she need to retrain? To volunteer to get a reference ? If so, will there be course costs, childcare costs, travel costs? How will you work things to make the household budget cover those costs before she is bringing in an income?

How far will she need to commute? Will she be working at evenings and weekends?

From what you've said, there is no reason why she shouldn't get a job. But it's not as simple as "decide to work; get a job" and if you want her to actually have a decent job with good earning potential, you are probably going to have to pick up more than half of both the financial and ofthe domestic load for a couple of years while she establishes herself. Alternatively, she can get a part-time job with less opportunity for progression if that's what would work better for you all, but if she does that, please be aware that she is still limiting her potential for the sake of the family unit. What would be unreasonable is to expect her to go back to work while you make minimal changes to your workload.

In any event, you both need a serious talk because you are clearly unhappy with the situation as it is, and needs to address that and make changes, but you also need to keep her concerns in mind too, and work together to break down the barriers that are stopping her from working and that are putting you under the pressure of being the sole earner.

So you want to basically be supported by a bloke?
Talk about giving your power away.

She is a lazy mare.

There is no excuse for anyone to sit on their arse all day when they can work.

Like PP have said, if this was a man, you'd get very different responses.

Given that she’s been at home with children and doing all household tasks etc for 17 years could you not have worked harder in your career to earn a higher wage in that time? Men often don’t get that when women stay at home and take care of everything and that you get to walk out the door in the morning without a worry for anyone but yourself. For women it’s a different level of freedom and stress that you don’t experience. For working mothers it’s even worse as you have to jam it all in before and after work. You have accustomed your wife to a modest level of living and now you’re not happy about her not wanting to return to work after being out of the work place for nearly two decades. A lot has changed in this time. I imagine she’s happy being a homemaker, not all women are driven by careers that give them no satisfaction if they aren’t in financial difficulty.

Oh come on. How hard are the primary years when you're a SAHM? Children are at school for 6 hours a day. Unless someone in the family is unwell/ disabled it's a bloody good deal.

it would be a very hard line from me as just ready DC1 is 17 yrs old - do they really need picking up from school fgs .
Other child is secondary age...
why do they need a full time sah parent ?
I also disagree that your financial position is that good.
She has basically no pension and your pension pot is not huge.
You have the most expensive yrs of teenagers ahead...
I also think you have suggested a very sensible route of her doing online tutoring for few hours a day - you havent suggested she goes out to work from 6 am to 8 pm and do everything at home !

I would be selfishly thinking i would be not wanting to fund her retirement at this point and would be askng her exactly what she plans to do come that time ?