Help navigating difficulties

[LazyoramI]

So, I have name changed for this.

My DH has been having a difficult time since christmas. His attitude towards me and sometimes the DC (older teens) put me on edge and triggered some trauma responses within me. This resulted in me withdrawing from day to day life.

I am a SAHM and have been for over a year due to having multiple disabilities. Some of which cause me extreme pain amd fatigue. I also struggle with my mental health.

So the house has become more of a disaster zone since the start of the year. Mostly laundry and general tidying. Up until this point I was slowly working through all the things that needed doing. This took me far longer than it should due to my health.

When I left work my husband agreed to do certain jobs that cause me increased pain. He never does these jobs.

Over the weekend my DH was off work and I raised the issues that have been happening. dh said that he has been behaving the way he has due to feeling lonely and not appreciated.

So I started a conversation around his loneliness and how we can work on this. This is something we have discussed previously and I have tried to make changes such as touching him more (like touching his leg when I'm siting by him ect), encouraging him to go out with friends and the dc and organising more dates.

Dh said that he feels lonely because he is at work (he works alone 99% of the time), then he comes home where he is asleep for work or he is doing laundry/housework whilst I am in bed. So I tried to explain that I have been withdrawing since christmas due to his behaviour and I have been trying to rest more and listen to my body.

DH essentially wants us to all want to help him and him not need to ask for help with the house. I tried to explain that we aren't mind readers and the DC just don't think about housework but when asked they will help. I suggested he sends a list of jobs that he wants the DC to help with every week or day. This was not good enough and he said he wouldn't have the time to do this.

I refused to take on more of the mental load of organising and managing the household. I did except that I haven't done anywhere near what I usually would and progress with the house has slowed. This is inpart also his fault as there are jobsbI have asked him to do that have not been done.

So he is once again not speaking to me and I am at a loss as what to do. I have had a really difficult start of the year health wise and this has caused me to need more rest so that I can do the things that I have to do.

So wise mumsnet please help!

Sorry OP, it sounds like a tough situation. You say DH attitude has put you on edge, is he angry and shouting or withdrawn and distant? What has caused a 'trauma response' from you?

While you're obviously dealing with awful health issues and pain, are you having treatment/doing physio/working towards improvement in your health or is this something that's unlikely to improve? I can understand your DH feeling overwhelmed if he's solely responsible for providing for the family financially and also taking on the majority of the housework. If he's coming home from work and doing the chores while you're in bed, it's understandable that he feels lonely and unappreciated.

Could you all sit down as a family, including your teens and divide up responsibility for the housework? Who does the laundry, food shopping, cooking, cleaning up after dinner, hoovering etc?

If you're home all day, I can understand your DH feeling resentful that chores aren't getting done. Even with rest periods, could you take on a bit more? You say you're not willing to take on the mental load but do you think it's really fair for him to have all the mental load, a full time job and coming home and doing chores, when you're home all day? There needs to be some compromise to reach so that you both feel that you're a team and working on these problems together.

Just the not speaking to you is bad enough. Not a good role model for the kids is he?

I’m on the fence here.

It’s not OK for him to not speak to you, and if your health issues prevent you from doing certain things then he should be understanding to this.

But - we see countless threads on here from women getting frustrated that their husbands don’t help & that they shouldn’t have to ask or tell them what to do. I think it’s unfair of you to expect your husband to write a list of what needs doing - that is just giving him another job to do. You live there, you can see if laundry needs doing or things need tidying. If you’re not able to do it yourself, you could tell the DC

Ideally you all need to get together as a family and work as a team. If your children are older teens there's no reason why they can't share the chores. Why can't you get them on side and give them an allocated list? It shouldn't be solely your DH's responsibility when he comes he comes from work! Of course he's going to feel resentful if it's all on him.
I hope you are having physio and the appropriate meds for your pain and also help for your mental health. Also what is the trauma response you mention and how is DH triggering it?

Get a cleaner?? For 1x2 hour blitz a week??
to do hoovering and floor washing?
I hope you recover soon..
can he have a hobby? That he meets other people one night a week? Chess? I’m finding in my 50s it’s harder to keep socially active.. my husband doesn’t have the need for social contact that I thrive on but I don’t rely on him to fulfill that fully..

I’m also on the fence

If you are expecting him to be the sole earner, and do the majority of the housework (so bit like single parent) of course he will resent you

Why can’t you plan the chores for the children from your bed, under these circumstances you should at least contribute to making that list?

Additionally although clearly not your fault, it might take some time getting used to the idea your wife is going to be bed bound for life

Sorry OP, I'm with your husband.
He's the sole provider for the household, comes home and is expected to do laundry and housework?
There is no surprise that his attitude has changed since Xmas, since you state the house has been in a mess since then. The man sounds incredibly stressed.
Surely you can put on a load of washing or tell your teenage children to help when they come home from school?

I should have been more clear, I am currently responsible for the mental load. I meant I am not willing to take on extra mental work by dividing up jobs he wants done between the children.

My health is not going to improve, I am working on improvements and also I am in therapy for my mental health.

He does very little housework, laundry and changing the bin bag are the current jobs he will do. Everything else is divided between myself and the DC. Although some of my jobs have slipped due to my bad patch.

He is grumpy, has a very short fuse and has recently spent 20 plus days not talking to me. The kids avoid him for the first 2 days he is off work as he is horrible.

I am severely physically disabled following an accident.

my dh resented me becoming disabled so much. He hated having to work and then come home to kids who needed looking after and chores that needed doing.

he put a lot of pressure on me to keep going with chores even though I couldn’t walk at all and used to collapse and lose consciousness with the pain.

there’s a lot of people on Mumsnet who don’t have experience with disability and will happily tell you that you just need to do more.

sometimes this is possible and sometimes it is not. My dh also refused to step up. Fortunately my kids were reasonably old and I was able to book them into breakfast club at their school so they had breakfast and lunch at school and they made their own dinner.

they got good at shopping and cooking fast because their dad wouldn’t cook for them (in fact quite a lot of the time he’d come in and ask to share whatever they had made).

my kids really struggled in that period and as adults have told me that they hated to see me suffering and were horrified with how little their dad cared about them.

unfortunately some men do see women as a household appliance and just get cross when you are no longer working.

you will know if this resonates with you or not.

advice:

focus on the essentials. Keeping you and your kids fed and getting to school. Cleaning is not essential.
depending on the money situation there are lots of hacks for food and similar to keep people fed.

unfortuately sometimes situations like this show you what someone is really like.

happy to pm if you want advice on managing disability and kids.

When I gave up work we had many conversations about what it would look like as I am unable to be a traditional housewife. So we agreed DH would be in charge of vacuuming, sweeping and mopping as this causes me a lot of pain. we both cook but I do more cooking due to him being at work.

The children do their own laundry although folding it and putting it away is an issue that I have tried to.implement systems for to help them. They keep their own bathroom clean and they tidy up after dinner and do the dishwasher.

I do all the mental load, declluttering, decorating, gardening, I used to do all of our laundry until this became unmanageable 100% of the time. I do all other household tasks.

Once his behaviour changed after christmas when he became distant, snappy, short fused and stopped communicating with me. I gradually stopped doing the laundry, the diy and the house became untidy because I didn't take things to the tip. The decluttering and decorating has stopped because I am waiting for DH to do some jobs that I asked him to do in November.

Some of the jobs like the laundry have become more difficult due to my health which we talked about.

I do give the DC jobs to do when needed but I don't know what my DH Wants help with as he will not tell me. He thinks we should be able to know what it is he wants. His example of this was he washed some of his uniform and it was in the tumble dryer. Nobody did any laundry for 3 days as his uniform was still in the dryer.

The kids do their own laundry on certain days and I hadn't done any laundry last week.

I note you say you have older teens.

i would suggest reallocating household chores. This will involve doing a meeting but after that should reduce the household load.

so suggest changing the chores so that everyone is responsible for their own laundry. This means everyone takes on the mental load of sorting their own clothes. It also means that if your dh or kids do not do their own laundry the consequences are on them.

you can sell it to your older teens as promoting independence and being like a house share.

also make everyone responsible for cleaning their own room. Set up a bag that has a cleaning kit in it (duster, polish, load of j cloths etc). Again, if it is not done the consequences are on them.

does their school have a breakfast club? Some secondaries do. If so book them in it, or get them to make their own breakfast if they are not already doing.

can they cook? We set up a rota for the weekend so each of the four members of the family (me, dh and two kids) were responsible for one meal. Again this is so obviously fair it’s hard for them to fight against it. This means you are cooking much less and can (ideally) do nothing or just supervise.

So reading this I’d suggest prioritising:

diy is not urgent decorating is not urgent taking things to the tip is not urgent.

sounds like your kids are actually pretty good and most of this is about his frustration and anger which he is taking out on you.

i’d suggest saying to him “at the moment I’m too ill to do laundry regularly and I know this is difficult for you. So we’ll each do our own laundry and then we know where our clothes are”.

i bought twenty ikea blue bags, and we sat down and had a household meeting and agreed that:

if anyone comes down and wants to use the washing machine but there is finished washing in it you pull it out and put it in an Ikea bag but do nothing more with it.

ditto with the tumble dryer.

it did actually help the situation in that it meant ny then dh shouted at me a lot less. He was still pissy and angry though and it moved onto other things.

i’m really sorry you are going through this.

Thank you for your understanding, luckily I manage more often than not to do the basics. I have been having a rough time since christmas and added on my mental health difficulties that DH is triggering things have gotten worse.

It is mostly catching up on jobs that were not done when I was still working. I have a huge amount of clothes that need sorting. I also have a backlog of laundry that I am ashamed of. Our bedroom is horrific but I am limited due to DH sleeping during the day. Which is why I have mostly been focusing on the other areas of the house.

My kids are amazing too and thankfully I only have 1 that needs to be taken to school. My Dc are all neurodivergent and have some other difficulties so I still do a lot of driving them around. They just don't "see" the things that need doing. If they are asked they will do it even if they sometimes need a reminder.

I have tried helping him with his loneliness but he won't go out with him friends or get a hobby outside of the house.

Sounds tough for both but terms of doing their own laundry can instead do the laundry. They can step up and help more, it’s not a lot, laundry, vacuum and mop.

Your husband seems to have as much of a load to manage as you, possibly more but you have a the psychical pain as well (I have chronic pain so have some understanding) and work full time.

Sounds like more understanding needed from all of you as a family to chip in.

Unless he accepts the situation then it doesn’t seem like his mood will improve

Can you afford a cleaner?

Is there no light at the end of the tunnel for your illness?