DH’s contempt at my lack of job

[Clawsible]

I need to preface this by saying I know I’m viewed as lucky because I’m not working and we can survive on one very large salary.

But it is not all it seems. The contempt I now have from DH is off the scale and it’s infecting the DC. We both come from poor backgrounds and feel utterly broke once tax comes out and the huge school bills are paid. I feel terrible for saying this as I know families out there are relying on food banks.

This is a long one but I don’t want to drip feed. My confidence is in pieces. I know I’m viewed as a worthless person. Not only am I not working after being pretty good at what I do but I’m also absolutely terrible around the house so can’t even claim to be a housewife. Possibly ADHD masking for years. I can’t follow instructions but somehow got straight As at school when I stayed up all night cramming having zoned out during lessons…

I’ve had very fleeting thoughts about walking away - possibly into the sea somewhere - life as I know it is over. My confidence has always been low which is how people with arguably less talent (ok so maybe it’s not THAT low?!) have leapfrogged me career wise.

DH and I have been together since I was at uni. He is five years older and has always worked. We are now pushing 50 and 55 with two young teen DCs.

I was always ambitious and did well to secure work in a very competitive field as an outsider (not wanting to go into details as quite outing) but did not land well paid roles until about 7 years ago when I used transferable skills to go into a better paid field. I’ve had several blips - two redundancies including one in new career. DH has remained steady and now earns about £250k (including bonus).

DH has stayed in the same sort of role but climbed his way up. He’s now hit a ceiling on pay and possibly promotions. He is very keen to retire and feels burnt out and trapped due to school fees and future uni costs. Yes I know it is a luxury but DC thriving and our catchment schools are simply not good enough. Moving would cost more in upfront costs which we can’t finance.

When my last contract ended, (I can’t believe it but 20 months ago!!) we agreed I would take my time to get a really good role. So many jobs were around. Then the job market tanked the summer before last and the roles I interviewed for dried up. I had some freelance work but not enough and that has now been largely taken I think thanks to AI and firms not having budgets.

Perimenopause also hit hard and I had zero energy and felt very off my game. I’m now better on that front I think and ready to work properly.

I’ve only had a handful of interviews and have not secured work. I’ve been prepared to take significant pay cuts. Some hiring managers have noted my experience very positively but are bewildered as to why I have wanted those particular roles.

I am now facing ageism inadvertently perhaps but it’s there. Meanwhile DH said last week this was unacceptable and he will want a divorce. He thinks I’m a shit parent and shit around the house and the DC hate my cooking. They also undermine me to DH when I annoy them, so it is becoming a toxic cycle.

I very much want to get a kick ass job now to pay the bills but also to contribute as much as I can to my own savings and investments so I can have an escape plan if needed.

I’m sick of this “I have ADHD, I can’t work or clean my house” bullshit.

I have ADHD, I work 12 hour shifts, I have 2 young children and manage to keep the house tidy and my life organised.

Seems that lazy people these days are using any old mental health condition to justify themselves doing fuck all for themselves, their families and society.

@Clawsible Get a job, any job. Start doing your share for the family and stop being the reason your husband is heading for a breakdown.

No, I'm not interested in inventing excuses for someone who:

We hosted a dinner party recently and I did all the cooking as DH said it was my idea. He told the DC later that the food was terrible.

He is highly critical of both DC

DH says I can’t parent. He says this in front of DC so it is super undermining.

I'm more interested in the OP who has already said that she has thoughts of walking into the sea.

But she does clean the house. Just not spotlessly. She does laundry.
And she does cook.
It's just that all these are not to the standard of her husband.

I wonder what you would do about work if you were a single parent.

Some of us don’t have the luxury of scraping by on someone else’s £250k salary while blaming our “failure to launch” on the job market, an undiagnosed neurodiversity, perimenopause, our childhood, more ambitious colleagues, blah blah.

If you are following manifesting accounts rather than knuckling down and actually getting a paying job after nearly two years, I’m afraid you don’t have much high ground to stand on when it comes to judging your husband’s online activities.

A man who came out with your list of excuses for neither getting a job nor managing the household well would quite rightly be accused of cocklodging and weaponised incompetence.

You already have a pension that many your age would envy and a mortgage that’s nearly paid off (though it’s baffling that you seem unable to save for essential house repairs on the kind of total income you have reportedly enjoyed).

Your decision to send your kids to private school can’t be the only ruin of making you live like a pauper (even I can afford a haircut a couple of times a year and I’m a single mum on half your husband’s salary - which allows me to live a comfortable enough life) and if it is the sole reason you’re shopping at Aldi then you need to suck it up and ask yourself what other life advantages £60k a year can offer your children.

As others have said, keeping the house in a decent state and putting meals on the table when your kids are teenagers is hardly rocket science and if you were able to manage to hold down a high-paying job you are more than capable of managing that.

You need to stop coming up with excuses and start coming up with solutions, it’s as simple as that.

Would you say all that if it was a man having trouble finding a job?

Good for you being a single parent and having your shit together. I’m a single parent too and I certainly don’t have my shit together, but I try my best.

And I don’t have a twat of a husband bullying me either thankfully. That is precisely what is happening to the OP and she is on the floor and trying to find a way forward, so your post is just plain cruel.

I was at home from 2000 when I conceived our first child. We had three babies in four years and even though we considered me working from home in similar filed to ore pregnancy, I became ill so didn't start. Then had a baby. I got my confidence back by divorcing my husband a couple of years ago. Might seem flippant but it was fairly instant and it worked.

Exactly.

However this relationship started it has become abusive. And OP may need to get herself out to save herself.

Me me me.

Did you read the bit where she’s been trying to get a job for 2 years, including applying for roles with a massive paycut that she’s over-qualified for?

Does it not occur to you that her bullying twat of a husband may be affecting her confidence which is coming out at interview?

if you have a household income of £250k, then surely you have the funds for therapy for you ?
your health should be a priority. I would suggest therapy and /or life coaching
they will help with your self esteem and life-planning ,goals etc

Well, she wouldn't have anyone criticising her and telling her she wasn't doing it well enough, so it might be quite the win.

And if she's already unable to afford a haircut and having to shop on the cheap then it's not clear that she has much to lose from sinlge parenthood either.

@AmaryllisNightAndDay
👏 well said.

I certainly would say the same thing to a man, which I think is apparent from my post.

Of course the default response is to blame him.

He would be crazy not to be paying into a pension. Also OP says herself in one of her replies they spend too much on their kids hobbies, which suggests to me there’s wriggle room in the family budget to spend a few hundred quid a year on OP’s haircuts.

It’s 250 before tax I think, which is 145k after tax. But she said a part of thay 250 is bonus; so assume a min of 50k on variable bonus, leaves 117k after tax. They pay 60k in school fees. Which leaves 57k left between them without the bonus, he probably pays a lot into his pension, so likely less than that, likely closer to 50k they are living on, then they are running the home, saving, the kids, cars , mortgage, holidays, savings which is likely bonus, etc, all the other costs associated with private education. And they pay a lot she says to the kids hobbies.

so in reality they could be at the level of affording tu clothing and no hair cut. Simply as they have committed so much money to the school fees.

There's clearly a lot going on here. Likely the kids are being too centred at the detriment of parents.

But no one should be undermining their spouse to this extent. An occasional moan: pasta again!- is fine. Attacking your spouse in front of the kids. Not fine.

@CamillaMcCauleyAll I got from your post was judgement and smugness.

Hi OP - were things in your relationship ok before this? Or have they been wobbly for a while - sometimes when we are busy working and doing our day to day life, we dont always notice how things are really going.

There are apps you can use to help you manage your ADHD - similarly there are books like CBT skills for managing ADHD. I am really struck by your DHs ultimatum - what does he want from you? What would being a good parent or wife look like to him? And most important - is that what you want?

The undermining you and putting you down sound really unpleasant - it sounds like a really hard spot to be in.

I think this, I think they’ve moved into co parenting and the marriage is dead. He’s pissed off as he is fed up working, sees all the money going out. She’s not contributing financially, they don’t have a lot of spare money, the house is a mess and even his evening meal is a bit shit. So he’s had enough and is contemptuous. To be fair I would too if it was my husband.

and she as said I don’t think wants to work, I think she’s quite happy with her life as it is, and she doesn’t want to be doing the house work either, so she’s not pulling her weight in terms of their partnership, she’s not even pretending to explain what she does all day every day and is doin that thing where she’s pretending life admin is a full time job.

The entire point of the thread is that the default of this man is to blame OP for everything.

I don’t mean his work pension which is a given, he may be paying into further pensions as well. There should be enough money for OP to have a haircut so he may be withholding some as a stick to beat her with. It would be of a piece with the rest of his behaviour.

More of a tone of exasperation from having to deal with elements of this from the other side.

I don’t think the husband is behaving well but frankly I can understand his frustration with a spouse who has every excuse going for not getting their shit together.

I just have the same feeling of dread and racing heart that I would get before I was thrown across the room when I was a child. Thankfully no physical violence but he definitely has some of the same look of hatred and fury sometimes. Maybe I am projecting too much. And then when he is nice after l jump through hoops to sort out his traffic fine/utility company damaging our property/writing his letter to bid for promotion he’s all OK again and I get that sense of relief I had as a DC when parent had not been violent for a while.

Any apps for adulting that anyone would be recommend. The manifesting ones have helped as I have come closer to getting an income but no cigar.

I’m a great starter but throw myself into too many things at once eg investment course, how to decorate your own house on the cheap, what GCSEs DC need for various pathways; how to pimp your Linked In profile…

I think you are on to something here OP. We talk a lot about SM influence on younger people, but middle aged men are ripe for unfortunate messaging - they are probably at the peak of their earning so expensive and candidates for redundancy, may have had to accept they are stuck where they are with no prospect of more promotion, training, etc. and are facing hormonal changes themselves - not to mention the changes in people around them.

I am not crying 'poor men' before anyone comes from me but I do think there are a lot of challenges for men in this stage of life which can make them quite vulnerable. And with all the awful content out there, would not be surprised if this radicalization is not more widespread.

So you're projecting your experience onto the OP and assuming she's at fault?

Ok and if I said I can understand why you’re single how would you feel about that?

I wouldn’t though particularly if you’d posted a thread asking for help.