I feel so incredibly overwhelmed and hopeless

[FedupFederer]

I hope this is a season of life but I just can’t see my way out of this. DH was made redundant 6 months ago and hasn’t found any other work, he’s been snappy and difficult. To add, he’d been job hunting for about 3 years pre-redundancy with no luck, as his industry was in decline (fossil fuel related). He was a high earner and hasn’t adjusted. Despite me scrimping wherever I can, DH has blowout spending sprees to ‘relieve stress’ which undo all my savings. We constantly have conversations asking him to curb his habits (multiple Deliveroo and online shopping orders a day) but he won’t listen. I’m now doing 100% of the childcare for 2 DC, 100% of housework, working full time and trying to manage DH’s moods. I no longer have access to any bought in support (cleaner/ meal delivery etc). I’ve moved to working full time. I’m working my butt off for a promotion, so I can cover our outgoings and we can stop burning through savings. I’m now doing 100% of the childcare for 2 DC, 100% of housework, working full time and trying to manage DH’s moods. I have an unwell elderly parent that I have to support through appointments etc. dc is unwell with a chronic (but thankfully not serious) condition that I have to manage. I genuinely wish that one morning I just wouldn’t waje up, every day is a constant marathon of stress and obligations. I’m so so lost. I feel like I’m barely just surviving. Has anyone been in this situation? Any tips? I’m so so so tired and can’t see any way out.

That sounds so tough. I guess you need to try and see if you can get thru to your DH that you can’t keep doing it all. Being made redundant and out of work is a real blow but he needs to rise to the occasion and be a better person about this. I expect other people will be along with better advice and the leave him crew will pile in (and maybe explaining to him that’s a possibility might help him realise how stretched you are)
Presumably there are things he could do, structured things with kids, cooking , do some appointments with the elderly parents, might be the easiest things for him to pick up. Not that he should be doing the easiest things just that it might be more likely to happen. Hope you get some good advice.

Your husband is being very irresponsible and is taking you for granted. What's his reason for not contributing more with childcare/home life?
Maybe it's time for a stern talk with him to get him to understand the impact this is having on you. He is not contributing in any way, so you're living the life of a single parent except he is giving you more stress and work on top of that.
Tell him things have to change.
Is it possible for him to take on a less paid role for the time being? Any income is better than none. Your families survival is more important than his pride...
Hope it all works out for you...

How old are the kids?

If they're old enough to leave with him at weekends and in evenings I'd be booking in some you time pronto.

What's your overall financial situation? Pensions, rent/own?

Don't kill yourself if he can't be arsed to rein in spending.

This sounds very hard, and he's not being fair. He should step up.

I know this is a pretty big suggestion but would he look at skilled occupations in other countries that are in the same sector?

Of course you'd have to be happy and the dc to do that and you might have ties that are too strong to here.

What does he do all day? Honestly I wouldn't suffer this for 6 days, let alone 6 months. How dare he contribute nothing to the household. Go on strike, do no housework and be out a lot so he has to do childcare. Id also be having my salary put into my account that he as no access to and paying all bills from savings so that runs out while my savings he has no access to build up. Dont let him run your family financially into the ground. Id end up with the ick so fast in this situation.

OP, this is totally unacceptable and you know it. I think it’s time to sit him down and lay your cards out on the table. It may not be his fault he was made redundant and struggling to find work in his field. It is 100% his fault for not making any positive contribution to the family. You need to set firm expectations on what his contribution needs to be. Give him full responsibility for certain household tasks and don’t step in to help him. For example, When I went back to full time work I told my DH that he was to take ownership of laundry. I don’t do anything about the laundry. If the kids don’t have clean clothes they take it up with him. He also has set days where he is 100% responsible for running the household. This includes school drop offs and pickups, taking DC to and from activities, cooking and cleaning up afterwards, walking and feeding the dog. It’s up to him to manage it just the same way it is up to me to manage all of those things on my days.

on top of that, your DH is being a very negative presence in your and your family’s life with his moods and spending sprees. He can be sad about his job loss, but he doesn’t get to make the rest of the family miserable and he certainly doesn’t get to send you bankrupt. He needs to think about retraining or finding a new industry. It might not pay as well as the old one, but at least it will pay something.

I am sorry you are dealing with this. I think you need to tell him straight what you have told us here. Give him 6 weeks to improve his behaviour and have another chat if nothing changes. In the second chat be very clear that he is negatively impacting everyone else’s life and if he is not going to be a positive member of the family then maybe it’s time to go. I would not go straight to LTB, but if you set very clear expectations and he doesn’t improve, followed by very clear consequences and he still doesn’t improve, quite frankly he is showing that he doesn’t want to be part of your family and doesn’t deserve to be. Your life will be infinitely easier and better without him in it, so he needs to earn his place in your family if he wants to stay part of it.

Sending hugs, this sounds like a horrible situation for you and your DC.

Thank you everyone, I’m in tears reading these replies. He’s asked me not to tell anyone irl that he’s been made redundant. He’s looked overseas as well, which was a big mental hurdle for me at first and I really didn’t want to consider, but now I think might be better than the last 6 months. The problem is, anytime I ask him to do more, he says that I was only happy when he had a good job, or I only ask him to contribute now to ‘punish’ him further. The fact is I was part time before, I didn’t have pressure to progress and I could buy in some help, so I wasn’t as stressed

He wants a rocket up him, self pitying pillock.

Over the last few months, he’s become fixated on the idea that we can return to our parents’ country of origin, which has a much lower cost of living than London, without either of us securing jobs there. I think it’s utter madness to even consider for a second uprooting the kids without any security, so the atmosphere has been tense.

This!

He needs a kick up the arse and to be doing the childcare and housework.

You'd actually be better off without him right now.

He is destroying his marriage, plain and simple. I suggest you get a book Why Women Talk and Men Walk and point him towards the chapter Why Women Leave. The book is written by a male-female team of family therapists so both perspectives given.

DH and I have been in a very similar position. It’s incredibly stressful. Mine was a trader in a bank and his sector became automated, he was also a high earner. The job he’d done all his life simply didn’t exist anymore and the skill set wasn’t really transferable - certainly not at the income level he was used to. He was applying for hundreds of jobs but getting nowhere.

Looking back now, he completely lost his identity and sense of self worth. He became severely depressed, I’d find him sat in a dark room, just staring into space. Eventually, it was quite clear he was at risk of harming himself and I insisted on a GP appointment. He didn’t want to go, but I said if he didn’t, I’d leave. Like you, I was working FT, dealing with the DC etc because he just couldn’t function. I had to make the GP appointment, he couldn’t make the phone call, but he went and started takings anti depressants. Within a few weeks he started improving and found a job in a pub. Completely different to anything he’d done before and there was a certain amount of swallowing his pride, but once he started, he firstly found he quite enjoyed it and secondly, benefited enormously from being out of the house, working and getting his self respect back.

He carried on looking for work back in finance and did manage to find something related, although on about a third of his old salary (still considerably more than his pub work). He’s essentially now working up through his second career, and whilst he much preferred his old career, he’s happy enough doing something new now.

Do you think your DH is possibly depressed? Of course he might just be lazy, but worth exploring. Then he really needs to start thinking about looking for any job to bring some money in. He can think of it as a ‘career break’ if it makes him feel better. He doesn’t have to stop looking for a career job, but does need to perhaps accept his previous career is over and he needs to take a few steps back to start a new one. Has he got colleagues who were also made redundant? Have they found new jobs in a new industry?

I think you need to stop waiting for him to be different, his ego has been bruised and he’s taking it out on his family and that’s not on. Another conversation isn’t going to change him, you need to take action.

I don't understand, if he isn't working why are you doing 100% of the house work and child care?
Tell him today, as of right now the house work is 100% his job and mean it, completely down tools. He should be doing any school runs etc as well. Basically anything a sahm would be expected to do is now his job.
You might find if you drop the rope he finds work much more quickly when his cushy lifestyle disappears!

He’s not behaving rationally (unless he’s a total prick and always has been..) so I’d be sending him to the GP. I’d also be reorganising the finances so he doesn’t have access to money that is priority for your family and kids for bills food and emergency savings. I’d be having serious serious talks with him and if he doesn’t move forward in some way I’d probably be threatening to kick him out. What is he doing all day? It’s extreme and far from ideal but if he’s not doing anything I’d be giving him a list of chores. Is he depressed? If you think so try and get him to the GP. I might also try and get him to meet up with old colleagues or do some networking. Makes no sense he can’t find a job at all after such a long time. Lots of luck to you x

So it's all about him.
Don't accept this, he had to get over his ego.

I think he needs to work, whether it's looking o/s for similar or something different here.

What an entitled misogynistic man-baby he is being. Especially the misogynistic bit. Being asked to contribute his share as an adult and parent is "punishment"????.

As a PP says this is such a ludicrously distorted view of reality that I would question whether he is quite well - he is seeing everything that relates to you and the home and family through the lens of himself and his disappointment. If he isn't usually this much of an uncaring bastard he needs to see a doctor (though Im not sure they can prescribe anything for the misogyny).

If this is who he really is though, I couldn't stay, in your shoes.

Either way you should set up a separate account for your wages that he can't access, or you will really grow to hate him. Why should you work your arse off to subsidise his deeply unhelpful "coping" methods. I mean yeah it would be worse if it was drugs or alcohol, but it's the same impulse isn't it? And in the same way, he really does need outside help to deal more constructively with his distress. Currently it's destroying bith of you..

It also seems really unfair on you (and quite telling) that he wants to keep his situation a secret. If he does that he can never start to recover psychologically, never mind the awful isolating stress of that for you

Men treating their wives as slaves and forcing them to do all the domestic labour while doing fuck all should be recognised as a type of abuse. What better way to express your contempt.

He is bringing absolutely nothing to the table. There are no advantages at all to having him around. He is making your life harder by frittering your income and being moody. Limit his access to your income immediately.

He needs to stop sabotaging you financially. He needs a job, any job. He needs to do half of all domestic labour. And you need to make a decision about what will happen if these things don’t happen within a certain timeframe. Because if you don’t this is going to be your life for years.

Just tell him it's his job now. My OH was on furlough over COVID for 18 months and did everything in the house and garden whilst I worked. ( He wasn't paid as was a consultant) Noone gets a free ride. If he has spent his redundancy money cut him off. Empty any joint accounts except for his benefit money and let him survive on £75 a week. Why cant he get a supermarket job, Deliveroo, factory job etc?

Hi OP

We're just bobbing on here to say that we're so sorry to hear you're going through this, OP.
We hope you don't mind, but when these threads are flagged to us we like to link to our web-guides, which we hope may be helpful. If you'd like to, please do feel free to take a look at our Mental Health page.
Very best wishes from all at MNHQ

Where is he getting the money from? Tricky, if it's his redundancy payout, I suppose. But if he's using a joint account shared with you, OP, then you need to open a new bank account in your sole name, and have your salary paid into it. That'll give him pause for thought.

How is spending money he doesn't earn and using your savings? Has he already squandered the redundancy money? If so that's reason to start reconsidering the relationship as that's just selfish and irresponsible.

If he has credit cards and you are paying them off then you need to stop, and be clear to him you won't be doing it again and any debt will be his. Cut off access to any joint account if you have too and give him an 'allowance' for some smaller spends He simply can't go on spending binges when the family income has lost one whole salary.

Take a stand on the housework, meals & childcare. He's not working so has to pull his weight and more, in the same way women nearly always do when on maternity leave.

I also agree with pp that he should be looking at getting any job to bring in money whether that is using his transferable skills but at a lower level. new sector, or whether it's something totally different like pub work.

He sounds full of hurt male pride - being made redundancy is nothing to be ashamed of and demanding you don’t tell anyone is unreasonable. You need support too.

If he's depressed and needs help he has to go to the GP, it's not your job to make him reach out for that help.

If he won't step up, and won't find any job not matter what, and keeps badgering you to move countries, it may well have to be a question of separating/divorcing as you can't go on like this for much longer. Don't let it get entrenched or he'll never get another job and your life will be come far more miserable than it already is.

I’d be asking him to leave to stay with family
or friends and explaining you’d get more support with childcare from him if he didn’t live in the family home. While he was finding somewhere to stay I’d go on strike and stop cooking, cleaning and doing washing for him. I also certainly wouldn’t be allowing him to access money to spend so irresponsibly.