Struggling with husband's cancer diagnosis after years of unequal parenting

[aponyatblackbirdcottage]

I met DH in 2018; we became parents at the very end of 2020 and got married in 2022; our DD was born a year later. So we’re now over five and a half years into having children: DS is six in December and DD was 3 last month.

In that time DH has not really been very hands on. He’s married to his job really. He doesn’t do their baths and stories or tidy up while I do, he just sits there while I sort the children then the house. He doesn’t get up with them at night if they wake or in the morning if they wake early. Even if he does do something it’s been instigated and sorted by me and he just doesn’t seem to think he has to do anything. So for instance he used to take ds to his swimming lesson on a Saturday morning. I’d get DS’s swimming stuff ready, he just had to take him. Then he’d say something like ‘oh, you didn’t pack DS’s goggles’ - it just didn’t occur to him that he could have packed his goggles.

I am sure I wasn’t blameless. I was working three days a week after maternity leave with dd and became increasingly resentful. It was very hard having both children home on my days off and I felt very alone. DH never took them to the park for a couple of hours. Sometimes he’d take one (usually the older one) and make out that was a favour.

Anyway, I did seriously consider ending the marriage but money was a big issue and I didn’t want to disrupt the children or be a part time mum. I also kept thinking if I could get through until both children were at school I could have a couple of days a week for me and they’d be a bit older and more independent and things would be better generally.

DH then started complaining of pain this year and I didn’t pay much attention at first but he does have cancer. We’re waiting on biopsy results.

He is genuinely in huge amounts of pain and I feel awful for him. Despite all I’ve said above I do care about him as the father to my children and someone I said sacred vows too and meant, but if I’m being really honest I am finding it hard to feel any sense of impending personal loss or grief. Which does make me feel the marriage was maybe not in a good place.

So now … DH can’t walk far. He is only able to sit on a specially adapted chair, which is in the main living area of the house. (Please don’t suggest we move it; we can’t.) He is insisting on working throughout, and holds teams meetings on the chair with the children gambolling about because it’s school holidays. Obviously this isn’t practical at all so I’m having to have them out all the time. I am exhausted as a result, and so so fed up.

I know this is a terrible thing to say but I’m so worried about life looking like this for the foreseeable. DH cured would be one thing but in all honesty this does not look likely. DH dying is awful and I don’t want to wish this on us. But this half life, where our home is no longer a sanctuary but a place or stress and anxiety and an office as well is just a nightmare. It really affects the children having DH there but ignoring them and just frowning at his laptop, which affects behaviour.

It will probably drag on for years like this and as it does I’m losing my children’s childhoods and my mind! I can’t just leave of course. I don’t know what to do.

Just sending you big hugs, as it sounds like you are really struggling. You have so much going on without the support you really need.
I'm not sure that I have any helpful suggestions. Can you write stuff down, so that you are at least getting it out of your head. Is there any possibility of trying to see a counsellor to help you work through everything you are trying to manage?
The big thing that stands out to me is that things weren't great before your DH because I'll. It was however, manageable because he was out a lot of the time. Now you have him at home, taking it over and not seeing the negative impact he's having on everybody else.
There is nothing wrong with walking away or insisting your DH moves out, if that's what is best for you and your children. Just because he's sick, doesn't mean he can behave how he wants.
This is about his behaviour, not his illness.

I feel very sorry for you OP. When I was going through a similar situation with absolutely no end in sight, the only thing that kept me going was the knowledge that nothing stays the same for ever.

At some point this situation will change. You don’t need to worry about how, just know that it will. Because that is life. This awful period will come to an end. You just need to know it.

I tend to agree this is what needs to happen for DH to see it isn't working, but if you can't bear it, is there anywhere else you can repurpose?

Turn bedrooms into part bedroom, part playroom / lounge. Get a big gazebo for the garden in the summer - they really went down in price at the supermarkets / b&m this year. Or go to a relatives or friend with kids during the week.

OP, your husband is a selfish man. His cancer has not changed that.

As others have said, why not keep the children at home and let him deal with them shouting and playing?

Why does he want to spend all of his time working and not with his family? The fact he has cancer and would rather work, suggests that he isn’t wanting to be in the family any more - he’s checked out and focusing on work only.

I know it seems taboo, but you CAN leave your husband when he has cancer. I’m not saying jump to this outcome but know it is an option for you.

In the meantime, tell him you need to talk. Let him know that his work is optional and it’s unfair and unkind expecting the children and you never to be home in the day.

Honestly, I think you need to sit down and have a really frank chat. He needs to determine his working hours, which is not full time. It won’t be possible for it to be FT, especially after he starts treatment. M, W, F 9-1 or whatever. You go to the playground or to visit a friend those days or the library or something similarly free.

As much as he sounds useless as a parent, I think there is value in supporting his current capacity to keep life normal. Especially if he is the higher earner. I have cancer, classed as incurable but I’m hoping to hang around to see my dc grow up. My employer kept me on full pay for 9 months. I was grateful. Then I was let go. But those 9 months helped us a lot as a family. It also gave me time to come around to the idea of letting my career go. Dh has made it possible since for me to have time to rest (he takes the dc out a lot so I can sleep), to continue with my hobbies and things that make me feel normal, and to stay as financially independent as possible. He’s working extra to give me personal spending money so I’m not ever without and still paying all our bills and doing more than his fair share of childcare.

But time as a family becomes a lot more important now. I think you need to be really frank with him that it is time to curtail some of the focus on work and to spend time, to the extent that he’s able, with the children. This time is very precious to them. Realistically, if he doesn’t live a long life, they will have few memories of him, especially if he’s not been around much. Now is the time to be around. His employer is not going to give a shit when he’s dead. Mine locked me out of my email and didn’t even send a card when I left. 😂 Not a thank you for all your years with the organisation. Wish you well! Literally, my inboxed locked me out and I got my redundancy pay and no one even said goodbye. 🙄 But one day, if he does die from this, he’s not going to look back on his deathbed and wish he spent more time on Teams calls. Cancer is fantastic for clarifying what your priorities really are. Hopefully this will be the shake up he needs, but you may need to open up that conversation if he’s living in denial.

Someone further up thread mentioned Scouts - squirrels, which is the youngest group is 4 - 6 years and Beavers is 6 - 8 years old. If the biopsy results are not good this might be something where the kids can be out of the house for an hour or so a week doing something fun. Scouting is boys and girls, or your dd could start Rainbows ( youngest guides) at 5.
These are usually term time only.

Marriages can be messy - add children and it starts to escalate exponentially. Add cancer and it becomes a descent into hell.
I've not been in your exact situation. DH was always very hands on with the kids for one thing. But I recognise the stress and the feeling that you have no space or time.
Can you give yourself permission to go out on your own even if it's just for 5 minutes to start with?

I think you should let this happen. Yes he's in agony and has cancer, poor him and all that. Put the shoe on the other foot. You know damn well you wouldn't just be spending all day every day say on your special chair ignoring your kids.

But he can. Because it's convenient for him. It isn't affecting him. He gets to sit, do what he wants to feel better about himself, ignore you and the kids and focus on himself. Because you are running yourself ragged to make it convenient for him. Stop doing that. Let them make team meetings difficult. Let him say "working from home is far too much for me , I can't do it while the kids are home."

You said terminal cancer but also tests, so I don't know if the hope is treatment and recovery or palliative care. But either way, YOU are going to have to carry the family though this, YOU HAVE to survive this. Or else no one does. Yes he is the one with the physical cancer. But that doesn't change the fact that this has a massive effect on you and your life. You matter too. And you are allowed to prioritise yourself. He has doctors prioritizing him. You have to keep yourself alive too. You can't just work yourself to death to make him comfortable.

And you know damn well if it was the other way round he would still be working and you would still be doing everything you have always done.

So prioritise yourself, because no one else will, and that doesn't make you a bad person. It makes you a responsible mum.

This is a better way of expressing what I was trying to say. It’s not forever because nothing is.

Thanks, all

@zurigo my parents have been dead a while, unfortunately, they never met DH or our children.

@WelshRabBite that is an astute observation. He wouldn’t go to counselling and I can’t see it helping to be honest.

@Noshadelamp i guess it would just still be me impacted, it’s incredibly hard parenting while their other parent is ‘there but not’. I said on my (in) famous Other Thread I feel like Patrick Swayze’s character in Ghost and I do. It’s horrible to be honest.

@YourJoyousDenimExpert unfortunately you cannot talk to DH, you just can’t. That’s where we were a couple of years ago, I kept trying to raise things and he just focuses on the minutiae of a situation (but you knew I had to work late, how was I supposed to get from Penzance to help with the dinner sort of thing) rather than the general point. In this instance there’s no talking to be had because he’s right; he is in terrible pain, his wishes are paramount.

@Lovelyview he would only be prepared to do that if he was willing. I did ask to please have DD leave nursery at the end of August not July to give a couple of days respite but he wouldn’t.

I realise in some ways he sounds absolutely awful and he isn’t - I don’t think he is fundamentally a bad person or toxic or abusive but some behaviour has started to slide that way and I don’t think it’s intentional. It’s more a lack of understanding about just what a lot of work the children are, because he’s never done it.

@MyDarlingRose i am sorry to hear that the club no one wants to be in.

DS does Squirrels but it’s term time only and in all honesty a bit of a pain as DD and I have to sit around for an hour. He enjoys it though which is the main thing.

keeping the children at home would only really negatively impact me - DH can tune them out in a way I can’t. I guess the problem is without DH they play OK … not always harmoniously but we’re mostly all right. When DH is around they become awful. Probably because they want attention. So it’s down to me to manage.

One major problem is lack of thank yous. It’s like he thinks all wives are out all day every day with young children.

It may not be and if I had an end in sight one way or another it would be different. As it is, things easily could drag on for years much the same with the children (and me!) getting older and more tired and before you know it their childhoods have half disappeared. I know that sounds maudlin but it is how I feel.

💐

Shameless begging - if you are in any WhatsApp groups for old nursery parents don’t be afraid to say ‘if anyone is able to think of DD this holidays and would be willing to include her in a swimming trip or something like that in the next few weeks, it would make life while Dh is so ill so much easier’

Ive been told I’m ’easy to help’ which I think probably means ‘shameless freeloader’ but your kids desperately need time and space to be kids at this time, to shout and run and do kid stuff. And you need a break.

I think people struggle to relate to being in this sort of situation. When someone is terminally ill people seem to expect you to forgive them for all their past mistakes and shortcomings and treat them as if the sun shines out of their arse. I had exactly this with my toxic, schizophrenic, alcoholic mother - who I lived with - when she had bowel cancer. She may have had cancer but it didn’t stop her being a narcissistic warthog. And I needed to have people accept that and not come out with all the usual “oh isn’t it awful / she’s your mother (husband in your case, obviously) etc etc”. It’s actually okay if you decide to leave him. It really is. But if you feel you can’t - and that’s understandable too - then you do need to make some changes for the dcs sake, as well as your own.

Incidentally I have done my best to ‘pay back’ parents who helped me when Dh was so ill and ignored ds’s needs…

@Sparrowsandbudgies I don’t know why I’m reflecting on it so much, perhaps it’s because we’re forced into one another’s company so much and without any real end in sight it’s hard. I’ve done so much, not just now but over the last five years, have given my absolute all and yet I don’t think anyone’s really even noticed!

The thing is, if I left DH, people aren’t going to understand that it’s actually because of years of no support, they are just going to see a heartless, cruel woman who left her husband who is in huge amounts of pain. And while it’s easy to say ‘who cares what people think’, we all do, I have to live here and raise my children here.

I also don’t want to leave him now in his hour of need so to speak. I genuinely don’t. I didn’t before and I don’t now. But I also can’t pretend this is happy for me.

In many ways the ideal would be for him to go into a hospice with his pain managed and the children and me get the house back but no. And that does have to be his choice.

I'd say your DD needs to be in nursery, regardless of expense

This may sound stupid, but when you are under stress and the threat of bereavement, the brain can do odd things to preserve its sanity. It could be that you are now "realising" that he has always been selfish, not because it is an objective truth, but because your brain is trying to make the loss of him seem easier, more bearable. You may have seen a version of this when people rewrite old relationships. Don't trust that you are now seeing "clearly". But you do need help and support, abd you may have to pin him down and make him agree to make the room with the chair also the bedroom, or some solution so you can get a little rest.

I don’t mean to sound naive but if he’s a high earner and you work 3 days why isn’t their money to send DD to nursery?

OP, I’m so sorry that you’re having to face this and with such young DC - you sound like you know that you’re in for a tough slog, but you also sound smart, resilient and adaptable. My lovely Mom died from metastatic cancer last December, after five years of treatments and brutal surgeries which left her disabled. We adored each other and my single DC was a young teen at the start, but even so it pretty much broke me.

The only advice I could offer is to tell you that you will get through this, and that one day you will look back on this as a really difficult time that you battled through - something bad that happened, and that hopefully your DC won’t remember in great detail. Find any support that you can and grab onto it with both hands. There are some really supportive online groups - talking with people who are in or have been in a similar situation can be so beneficial.

Please think about contacting MacMillan for support - I promise that nothing you have to say will shock them. Cancer happens to couples/families across the whole
spectrum of happiness. There’s no shame at all in saying that your marriage wasn’t in great shape in the first place, the diagnosis and subsequent changes have made the cracks much wider and you have no idea how to navigate this new reality. There is no shame in saying you now feel trapped in the marriage and resentful and utterly bloody furious about the impact it’s having on your DC.

There’s an awful lot of guilt in helping to care for someone with an incurable, life-limiting disease - in women, anyhow, in my experience, not so sure about men who statistically are much more likely to leave a wife diagnosed with cancer - and the uncertainty and inability to plan things was extremely difficult for me to cope with. MacMillan support has many facets, so please don’t think you’ll be judged harshly. All of your feelings are understandable and perfectly human.

I can really relate to what you are saying, op.

The only thing I can suggest is that you'll have to force his hand. You're working??? He takes care of the kids. Just stick your head out and say, 'DH! DD needs you!' and shit the door. What is he actually gonna do, say no??

You need to delegate. I've started doing it. My DH is another one who can't/won't/ doesn't see the need to get shit done, so I've started delegating : 'Could you sort xyz. Please call and make a dentist appointment for DD. Can you go fetch a Halloween costume for ds' etc etc.

You shouldn't have to spell it out to grown men, but needs must, apparently

@canuckup i would agree but DH didn’t and that is that. She’s left now anyway. And there aren’t any spaces anywhere.

@TheLemonOtter it isn’t stupid. I am trying to be fair, I don’t think he’s a horrible person or a bad man or anything and of course I care for him, am upset for him and want what’s best for him. Equally, I can see now how unbalanced and unfair things have been for a while now.

@the7Vabo It would cost £900 to have sent DD throughout August. I couldn’t afford to make that decision unilaterally and DH said no. Anyway, it is done now, she’s left and there won’t be space anywhere else and even if there was I’m not sure I want to settle her somewhere for three weeks and then uproot her again.

@NotTheMrMenAgain thank you for such a lovely kind post.

@canuckup he genuinely is very unwell, he can’t safely care for the children alone.

Has he actually been given a prognosis? Is he receiving treatment?

What is so special about his chair and why can’t it be moved?

I deal with specialist seating as part of my job and it would be unusual for the rest of the family’s needs and home environment to not be thought about at all when something like this is needed.