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Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Don’t think DH loves me

189 replies

Admodean · 17/12/2024 21:13

This past few weeks I’ve had the worst illness I’ve ever had in my entire life. Two weeks of horrendous flu, which developed into a nasty infection. For two days I was burning hot and delirious, shivering and vomiting. My mouth and throat are covered in white lumps and so sore. Thankfully antibiotics have helped, but I haven’t eaten for 48 hours. I’m still coughing and shivering and I don’t have the energy to cook anything.

DH has just come home from work at 9pm after being out since 8am. I’m lying in bed shivering and I asked if he’d make me a boiled egg and toast so I can try to eat something. He rolled his eyes and sighed, and said “REALLY?!” in a voice that implied I was unreasonable to ask.

He doesn’t love me, does he? 😭

OP posts:
Codlingmoths · 18/12/2024 23:06

You’ve said he would never ever take a day off work. I’d leave him. Don’t take the kids to school, tell them to tell their dad he has to. And once you’re better see a lawyer. There is nothing to stay for except finances.

healthybychristmas · 18/12/2024 23:32

I really hope he catches this.

ooooohnoooooo · 19/12/2024 02:06

Hello @Admodean I hope you managed to get some sleep and are starting to feel better. Lots and lots of fluids for you. On practical nursing matters as you may not be thinking straight:
Complan if you can get it will help build your strength back up (deliveroo or whoosh or your mum could get it?)
Dioralyte if you're shitting a lot , to replace vital electrolytes.

There have been a lot of very kind and sensible posters on here but others have been pretty harsh and , frankly nasty given your current delicate state. I've been in your position of being piled on by people in Mumsnet who seem hell bent on trying to make you feel even more shit and blaming you for everything. Please do put them to the back of your mind.

To Your original question 'does he love me?' , I think probably not. I'm sorry. At best he's breathtakingly, inexcusably selfish, at worst he's breathtakingly, inexcusably selfish and exploitative using you as an unpaid skivvy. Neither is good for you.

A marriage should be about working in partnership, each bringing strengths and weaknesses, each doing things to make the other happy, comfortable, feeling safe and loved. It's about sharing the load (which comes in peaks and troughs for both of you). It's about having fun together, about intimacy, about you two together against the harsh world outside. It's about devotion, loyalty, patience, caring, and love. That may sound like a big list, and it is, but all those things need to be there for a strong equal partnership to survive.

I think what's happened here is that you've been shoring things up for some time and that this illness has been the catalyst. You can't do the shoring up at the moment and it's all fallen down. You are the main (only?) one making the emotional and logistical effort and now you can't, the paucity of his contribution to your marriage is starkly exposed. And your ability to just ignore it and get on with it is depleted. So here you are. It's shit, and I'm sorry.

Focus on getting well. Gather your friends, family and allies to help with that and to help you as you recover. People who love you will step up. And to those saying you are a drama queen and they've coped with worse, well good for them. I've got a chronic illness and cope with it but by lovely DH looks after me when I'm ill, every time, he alleviates my suffering, not adds to it. That's the bar. That's what being married is.

Once you are better make plans that centre around your needs, happiness and future. If he decides to change and be part of that, maybe you'll let him, Maybe you won't. But right now, get well, get strong and remember that the world is stacked with decent, kind people who are just waiting to be in your life.

EasyTouch · 19/12/2024 02:30

My aunt said that love cannot occur without care.
It's just a pity that the gaslighters on this thread need for a presently vulnerable woman to accept the scraps that they consider to be "love".
I hate the Mumsnet Cabal who constantly try and shame women into accepting the shittyness of a man , as if they are as rare and precious as a Faberge egg.

So many proud Manclowns on this site.

DeepRoseFish · 19/12/2024 05:00

category12 · 17/12/2024 22:16

Treat yourself to a divorce in the New Year.

This. Get rid! He’s also slagging you off to his colleagues. Please divorce the turd!

Petrasings · 19/12/2024 05:50

Well the issue you have is something potentially more serious. If you have cancer or any serious illness you now know you are on your own. He is never going to care. So I imagine it is up to you whether you can live with this? Your mum won’t always be around to step in.

I do have some sympathy if you have been ill for two weeks, it is exhausting being the carer and managing the rest of the house and dc ( which I assume he is doing) as well as working 13 hours a day. Sometimes you do get fatigued and fed up. Understandably.

I hope you feel better soon op

FamilyPhoto · 19/12/2024 06:33

My DH tried something like this once. Id started feeling unwell on the friday evening , by Saturday morning I felt awful. DH always worked Saturday morning ( self employed) . I asked him not to, he rolled his eyes and said I was being dramatic, let the kids have a PJ morning in front of the TV and added sarcastically to ring him if I got rushed to hospital......
Guess what happenend?
I collapsed, my 6YO rang my DM who only lived 5 mins away, she rang an ambulance then rang DH.
This was 25 years ago and he still feels awful about it.
@Admodean I hope you start to feel better soon.

OneThousandFaces · 19/12/2024 09:40

This was 25 years ago and he still feels awful about it.

So he should @familyphoto! I hope he never acted like that again.

Hope you're feeling better today, OP.

ThereIsALifeOutThere · 19/12/2024 10:18

Petrasings · 19/12/2024 05:50

Well the issue you have is something potentially more serious. If you have cancer or any serious illness you now know you are on your own. He is never going to care. So I imagine it is up to you whether you can live with this? Your mum won’t always be around to step in.

I do have some sympathy if you have been ill for two weeks, it is exhausting being the carer and managing the rest of the house and dc ( which I assume he is doing) as well as working 13 hours a day. Sometimes you do get fatigued and fed up. Understandably.

I hope you feel better soon op

2 weeks is pretty short in my books.
it’s not like the op was chronically ill and bed bound.

Sure you can put strategies in place. But he’d have to do much more than just bring a plate 1.5 hour later

AnonAnonmystery · 19/12/2024 10:35

ThereIsALifeOutThere · 19/12/2024 10:18

2 weeks is pretty short in my books.
it’s not like the op was chronically ill and bed bound.

Sure you can put strategies in place. But he’d have to do much more than just bring a plate 1.5 hour later

If he doesn’t care now I doubt he will develop a caring nature for something more serious. It’s at times like this you see who someone is.
I adopted this with my exH in terms of coming to the conclusion he wouldn’t look after me if I was seriously ill based on his behavior when I was recovering from a C section and other “ minor” ailments. I haven’t looked back and he hasn’t changed from what I can see. 2 weeks is actually an incredibly long time and op has been really sick. It’s so hard with kids … it’s like some people on here are bionic or something with all the comments!

Cooriedoon · 19/12/2024 11:20

pearldiamond · 18/12/2024 22:29

Cooriedoon- but looking after the dc for 13 hours = probably a LOT harder than driving for 5 mins

Well yes but no-one will be a risk of death. OP could have wiped out an entire family driving. It was a fucking reckless move.

TheCatterall · 19/12/2024 11:57

@Admodean hope you feel better soon - outside of when you are ill - I’m guessing he still isn’t the most supportive partner?

if it wasn’t for the children would you have already left?

If you are staying because of the children - don’t.

Children with unhappy parents do absorb the atmosphere and often repeat the relationship mistakes modelled to them by their parents.

ThereIsALifeOutThere · 19/12/2024 12:15

@AnonAnonmystery yes that’s kind on my point. If he can’t cope ‘caring’ (which really would have meant taking the dcs to school
And giving the OP a bite in the evening. Not caring as such), no way he’d cope of she is seriously ill or chronically ill.

Talking here as time one who IS chronically ill. 2 weeks is a piece of cake compared to what is a self containing illness.

I also agree on the fact there is a question to ask re stating in such a marriage. Good weather husband only.

Cornflakes44 · 19/12/2024 12:32

I'm sorry you feel so rubbish, I'm sorry you're husband is such as bastard. I'm also sorry that so many people on here are dicks. You have every right to expect your husband to look after you when you are ill, not matter how many hours he's worked. This may be a watershed moment to demand changes in your marriage and it doesn't sound like the kind of marriage I'd want.

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