Husbands life on the sofa, cont cope with it anymore

[Hadenough91625]

We are in our 40s with teenagers. Husband finished work permanently 3 years ago due to mental health. He had a depressive episode but has largely recovered. During that time he took to sitting /lying on the sofa for 24 hours a day and not moving unless to go to the toilet or get a drink. It was obviously his safe space. No problem.
He insisted he would return to work at some point but never has. It was then decided that I would work (I was a sahm/housewife before as he was a high earner) and he would become the house Husband, no problem although massive dip in earnings.

Since then his daily routine is as follows: (just want to preface by saying he shows no signs of depression, seems very happy and content with his new way of life)

Monday to Friday - he gets up at 6.30am with me , we wake the kids , me and kids get ready for school/work. Husband mad dashes around for 1 hour doing the dishwasher, putting washing in, quickly cleaning round.
Before we leave he is already set up the sofa. We leave and I drop both kids to school on my way to work.
He stays on the sofa. I pop home for lunch as only work round the corner, he's still on the sofa. I go back to work . I finish work, pick kids up from school, get back he's still on the sofa.
He then stays on the sofa until bedtime. I cook tea sometimes, he will cook sometime.
In a 24 hour period , he sleeps for 8 hours, does housework for 1 hour and sits on the sofa for 15 hours.
In addition to this he does not leave the house. We have his car on finance sitting on the drive doing less than 1k miles a year.

On the weekend he gets up about 9am, he will be set up on the sofa when me and kids eventually come down. Me and kids do our own thing in or out of the house. He will not move from the sofa all day from 9am until 11pm at night both Saturday and Sunday and school holidays.
It's become a running joke between myself and the children when we drive into the driveway you can see his head on the sofa and we will say "oh dad's still on the sofa"!.
Any time of day you come in and out of the house there he is!! I often wonder what the neighbours think as they will be able to see him sitting there and that he doesn't go out.

It concerns me so much that a 40 year old is living this way. It's no life. He says he loves it!! Where do we go from here?
Not easy to say separate as been together since we were 18. We are emeshed financially .
As this has gone on for such a long time , we have just got used to it and carry on life around him. But for me now a massive anger is building inside me and every time I look at him on that sofa it enrages me and I just want to scream at him to get up.
We have 4 sofas/chairs in our lounge, he will only stay on this one that is opposite the tv. He won't let anyone else sit on it and he also won't sit on any of the others!! I think it's incredibly strange behaviour. Mentally it's obvious that he feels safe there and it has become his new normal but it's not normal in any way and I can't get him to see it!

He makes all the financial decisions. He lords it over us and has the absolute nerve to tell me that I am lazy!!!!

Why are you putting up with this??

Careful, everyone. LoftyRobin is reporting us for thinking that he should get off his fat, lazy arse. Give over.

This sounds horrible for you and your kids. Does he ever take you out? Do you have a sex life? You are only in your 40’s this life is sad.

Sounds hardcore depression to me. Especially to have that level of medical support.

@Hadenough91625 - the conventional wisdom on Mumsnet when a male partner has depression is to kick him to the curb. It's not depression, he's lazy; he needs to help himself; it's no life for you, put yourself first blah blah blah. (When the other round, the male partner is a shit who doesn't realise what a female OP is going through, that she birthed a human being, what about the marriage vows, that he must have caused the woman's depression et al).

I wish you both luck

Christ, we actually think we understand poor mental health more than we used to ?
what a lot of horrible, judgmental things people are saying about depression.
The OP has every right to leave if she is unhappy. Every right. But are we really calling a person with mental health issues, a lazy fat fuc?
Please god, that your mental health will always be brilliant. If it isn’t I hope you get the empathy you are displaying here
.

Please remember that although I am not an expert , I have been heavily involved with his recovery and all meetings eith doctors , nurses , therapy. I had to take complete control of everything when he was ill. I know everything there is to know about his medications and what to expect from his recovery.
For whatever reason this has not happened. He has not recovered to his original state. He is a different person. But I would no longer call him depressed. I do think his medication contributes to his flatness but I do not think that he would be so vocally involved with us all from the sofa if he was depressed.
He was withdrawn and not interested in anything before. Now he is over interested in everything we do as his whole life is within the home, he has nothing else.
That's where the dictating comes in. He feels he can tell me what to do or not do from the sofa.
If he had to go somewhere in an emergency or for his benefit he would. He just chooses not to for the rest of it, shopping , seeing friends, family, days out etc. I do it all. I take the kids away every half term! I'm sorry but I've just lost patience and sympathy and am really struggling now to see a light at the end if the tunnel

Isn't this the same poster who started the thread about peoples language on MN?

Yes LoftyRobin, just drop it, your comments are Ryan and contribute nothing constructive to the discussion. The OP herself has mentioned her DH’s weight, so it’s legitimate to refer to it in responses.

What about the OPs mental health? I bet her DH hasn't given it a second thought, the mental load must be driving her to the edge....

Sorry, don’t know how Ryan crept into my comment above!

He will never get better if he's enabled like this. OP, don't ever stand for him calling you lazy.

You are holding the family together.

You supported your husband through a very dark time. Time to put your physical and mental health and that your children first.

I’ve not read this full thread, only some and OPs posts but my first reaction is I absolutely could not put up with this.

i listened to a podcast recently and it described depression as an ultimately selfish illness because it’s so inward facing. I have and have had very close family members with depression so know to some extent what it can be like for some people. But hearing that perspective of it as an illness did change my view on it slightly.

I think I my last resort would be to raise “this has to change otherwise we need to divorce” conversation. this is no life for you or your children and ultimately I think your children would thank you for that in the future.

the bit of your post the struck me was that he can do stuff, eg housework and controls the finances but can’t bring himself to do anything else but sit on the sofa. My patience for this would wear thin incredibly quickly.

wish you the best of luck as this is not a nice situation for anyone

Could you just leave, find somewhere to rent and go.
You said it would be to difficult as too financially emeshed but have separate finances.
You can't afford your house currently if you have nothing left at the end of the month.
You need legal advice.

It's hard to get sympathy towards his mental health issues when he starts bossing you all around, controlling finances and calling you LAZY!

I wish you could just split and leave him to it...you have children that are being affected by this and will impact their adult life.
It's very hard to draw a line between helping someone and being a martyr but the true is you only have one life so you must decide if you are happy to put yourself and your kids in this situation potentially forever.

That will be why he's getting discharged then will it.

I agree with this. From my experience, physical fitness declines rapidly with inactivity.
Surely he'll be in a wheel chair within a couple of years?
Is this what he wants?

This is no life for you and your kids, and staying any longer will either make no difference to him or it just enables him to keep wallowing.

My mother's bf was deeply depressed for about 5 years, and was being treated and under psychiatric care. Everyone walked on eggshells around him, especially my mother. He was a petty tyrant, awful. When I had my first kid and visited them with the baby, he was so obviously long suffering and disgruntled and churlish about the noise that I told my mother she had to visit me from then on, because I didn't feel comfortable in their house. That was the last straw for my mother - now he was preventing her from seeing her daughter and new granddaughter in her own home.

I suspect she told him she would leave him if he didn't get his act together. The next time I saw him, a few months later, he was much more pleasant and a year later was no longer under treatment. I'm not saying he was faking being depressed originally, but the setup and being pandered to by everyone, it got very comfortable and cosy for him and he wasn't trying to improve anymore. My mother's kick up his backside helped him to complete his treatment and return to a normal life.

So I think even for his sake, you need to take action ie get your ducks in a row and then tell him you are leaving. Either it will galvanise him, at which point you can pause the ducks, or he will keep sitting on that sofa while you and the kids live elsewhere and are spared from helplessly witnessing this decay. Either way, the outcome will be better for the children.

To Hadenough91265, I hope you don't mind that I started laughing while reading your post. Not because the situation is funny, certainly not for you, but because I saw it in front of me and I also got glimpses of Al Bundy in my head 😀. Also the first solution I was thinking about was that you don't have to throw the sofa out but you should definitely to throw the TV out 😁!
No it's actually terrible. While reading this I was wondering if you guys still have a sex life and how it is. I can imagine that he is not very active in bed either...
I was also wondering if when you come home at noon he has at least done the effort to do some cooking so that you just have to put your feet under the table. It's what I would do if I did not work and my partner was.
I see that this is not a relationship you can leave but I can also imagine that you don't just want to leave someone you know since you are 18 and have kids with, and I presume had better times with.
It's time for some tough love here. If he does not want to go working for the moment he should at least do a significant part of the household chores so that your life is less stressful.
So I'd say it's time to... sit him down...

I'm sorry but I've just lost patience and sympathy and am really struggling now to see a light at the end if the tunnel

im sorry op but from everything you’ve written here, there isn’t one
this is as good as it’s going to get. The question is, can you live like this forever? Do you want to take the pain if a split or the pain of staying?

Frankly , I don’t see a pain free option

It seems to me that either the husband has to go or the sofa since the sofa seems to be the center of his world.

PLEASE go and get legal advice.

This is no way to live for any of you. He can dig his heels in all he likes, but if the house has to be sold in a divorce he cannot stop it.

I would use the 1 hour in the morning to use the sofa as a toilet. Encourage the kids as well.

Tell him his car will be torched in say, ten days if he isn’t using it to job-hunt.

He's basically been lying on the sofa for three years while telling OP that she is lazy. I doubt that she feels in the mood to be kind.

Exactly. At least OP's paycheck should go on her own bank account so that Mr Sofa will not gamble away that when he's playing with stocks.