Should I rely less on my husband for emotional happiness?

[SooPanda]

Saw this recently on a thread about someone’s husband upsetting her basically and it has made me pause and think.

“you need to stop making your happiness and world revolve around him. He's not your carer and not responsible for your emotions.”

This is an attitude I’d like to relate to and something I think I need to work on.

My husband is a nice guy for all intents and purposes. He means well most of the time but can be careless, or thoughtless, and often upset my by making me feel un-appreciated. Then I get upset, but he struggles with conflict resolution and making up, I always end up brushing it under the carpet which I think is part of the problem as it becomes a cycle.

On the one hand I want to be able to rely on my husband to look after me and my feelings, the way I feel I do for him. But on the other hand, this comment about not letting a husband control your happiness has got me thinking. Would I be happier if I let things slide more and made myself happy in other ways. Or is this admitting the failure of the emotional side of a relationship- you’re supposed to want to make each other happy?!

I think it would be weird to be married and not have that person be a huge part of your life or very high on your priorities list. I don't really understand what is meant by relying on him for your happiness though, what does that mean practically?
I chose my husband to become my family and I do rely on him a lot as I'm disabled. I would be quite screwed financially without him. He also makes me happy and that's why I married him.
Surely the point of marriage is that you want to share your life with someone else very intimately and therefore of course your happiness gets tied up into that?
I would be devastated if we split up, of course, and would grieve. But I do also have my own stuff separate to him (hobby groups etc)

I think perhaps you need to work on something in couples therapy, because I'm not sure your relationship sounds that good or healthy if you're feeling the way you are.
I may be misunderstanding though.

Op. Do you have friends, family, a job? Are you lonely and solely reliant on your husband?

my happiness is impacted by many things,my husband isn’t responsible for it. I am. Sure if something upsets me and pisses me off, he will talk it through, empathise, give suggestions, but I’ve also friends, family colleagues and the person I discuss it with is dependent on why I’m pissed off.

it sounds like you’re hugely isolated and think it’s his job to ensure you are happy. And the question is how did this occur if you are?

When you finish up widowed as I and many are, you have to make sure you know how to make your own happiness.

Lots to think about. Thanks all. I’ll come back later with some solid examples.

I think what it means is that you shouldn't rely solely on the opinion or behaviour of someone else to give you a sense of identity and self worth.

You need to be a whole person in your own right, not a half a person who is only made whole by someone else.

I think it’s natural that you rely on your husband for your happiness because as a sahm your whole world revolves around him and your children.
It may be that it is a little more balanced if you find something else in life - if not paid work, then volunteering?
I feel like I have been a million times happier since I married my husband but day to day his actions don’t impact my happiness that much. If he is eg dismissive of me I get angry, not sad. I think that is because I have the confidence that comes from success at work and being the main breadwinner. We share two children and both work, broadly it is a good marriage and we get on.
When I was sahm, eg during maternity leave or once when I quit my job, my husband was very solicitous and rang up every day and left on time. He appreciated that was a hard existence for me as I like to work and use my brain and wasn’t so great with kids. Him being attentive made a big difference, but he only had to do that for short periods, not for ever!

I think it’s quite common for SAHMs to rely too heavily on their partners for emotional support and validation. It’s a major downside of the arrangement. You say a lot of the problem is that he doesn’t make you feel appreciated, but it is not normal to have constant appreciation thrown at you just for raising your own kids, looking after your own home and having the luxury of not having to work.

What do you do to show you appreciate him? If you do make effort to show appreciation, is it stuff that you enjoy doing that you think will matter to him, or is it stuff that he would genuinely need and choose for himself?

OP it sounds to me like you want your DH to give you validation, partly because of the SAHP role meaning you don't have a professional validation and partly I would guess because of the lacking of closeness you mention in your birth family.... I think you need to find some validation elsewhere, and add things to your life that make you feel good about yourself. Do you enjoy a challenge? Are you creative? Some people feel good when they run/walk/cycle further or faster or just more regularly, some when they create something (a garden, a painting, a craft, music), some when they volunteer with people or places in need and some when they spend time in nature... any combination of these even.... apart from your children what would make you say 'I did that' and feel a glow?

I don't think that men generally are good at emotional support. That role usually falls to women by default and is a combination of nature and nurture. We're used making sure everyone else is happy/comfortable and putting ourselves last in the pecking order. So I don't think it's ever a good idea to look to men for validation or emotional support because you're unlikely to get it, certainly not on a sustained or regular basis anyway.

So to answer some questions

Yes I love him and consider him my friend. I like spending time with him and we do help to solve each others problems.

I have a life of my own I don’t just stay home, I have two hobbies that keep me fulfilled and healthy.

Some examples that I feel are thoughtless or “not helpful” and take my role for granted include.. walking past items that need to be put away, leaving things on the side because he doesn’t know where they go, putting the washing on the wrong setting, these are things that I have to fix or do automatically and that’s fine but it’s not because I’m a SAHM that I do those things, it’s because we should take care of our home and our things (it would be the same if we didn’t have any kids)

I don’t think it’s fair to treat your wife as the default person for a task that both adults should be able to do.

Other more emotional examples include knowing that I’ve had a bad day eg I’ve been to visit my DM and it’s made me feel low, or I’m unwell with a heavy cold, but not behaving any differently, sticking to the exact same rigid routine, dinner on the table, tv, bed etc. And I just think it would be nice for something to change to reflect the circumstances, oh I’m aware you’ve got this terrible head cold so I’ve brought home some soup for our dinner so you don’t have to cook, for example. Or I can see you’re feeling low after seeing your DM , do you need to have a quiet rest/lie down? (I do this sort of thing for him, feeling unwell - buy favourite food, hard day at work- put your feet up while I sort the kids bedtime etc)

That’s where I start to feel like part of the furniture.

I know I could just ask for these things at the time but it’s exhausting and it makes me sad that he sees me having a bad day, or making extra effort to do something nice, and it doesn’t reflect in his behaviour towards me.

We had a long chat last night about supporting each other. I said I find it harder to support him when I feel resentful that I’m not supported. We agreed we have similar but opposite faults - he is emotionally immature and doesn’t deal well with it, buries his head in the sand a lot. I am more open but also more needy. Neither of us have parents that set a good example of marriage. I do need to work on my own internal happiness and not rely on him to deal with my emotions but at the same time I think it’s nice to be nice to each other a bit more often!

You could try asking to begin with and then see how it goes. For example ‘when I see my DM I often come away feeling down so I am not up for cooking that evening, could you sort yourself out/bring home a takeaway for us both/have your main meal at work that day etc and see how that goes?

Sounds like you want him to be a mind reader. I do feel a bit sorry for him.
It’s inevitable that you become the default person to do things in the house if you’re a SAHM

I agree with @landmarkyear. Think things would change for the better if you got a job and in doing so gained an external form of validation. So many posters have suggested a job and @SooPanda, you seem to be avoiding addressing the issue of you contributing to the economic side of the home.

I have addressed it. I said haven’t had a job I liked - ranging from high paid in the city to low paid local jobs - and I really love being a SAHM. I work hard and manage the family, the household.

The idea of getting a job, any job, having a positive impact right now is bizarre, surely it would only be the case if I found a job or career that I enjoyed and found fulfilling, like my DH’s. Getting a job for the sake of it will not help and the added pressure of a job would help my mental health right now.

The issue isn’t economic, it’s emotional.

I’m happy to look into look into a course or volunteering as others have suggested in order to gain more personal/internal happiness.

We’ve got a good relationship when it comes to money it’s one thing we never argue about and we are both on the same page. We were equal in our careers when we had kids but neither of us wanted to pay for childcare so chose this route, we support each other and he can’t do what he does without me and vice versa.

It’s also terrible that in 2026 we still consider a woman at home not to be “contributing to the economic side of the home”. I don’t earn money but it is a massive saving in many other ways.

Is it a mind reader thing though? I’m not keeping any of it a secret. I’ll text him when I’m having a bad day, and he does me when work’s being a pain.
When someone says I’ve got a headache, do you not then behave in a nice way as if they have a headache? I do but not because I’m a mind reader, but because I am aware of the circumstances and making an effort to make the other person a little happier.

I agree with your second point for the most part but I don’t think it should mean that the role becomes a little thankless.
I appreciate my DH working so hard and say/do things to reflect that.
I feel like that isn’t reciprocated.

But I also wonder if my happiness should come from within and not rely on external input as much.

This resonated so much with me. I have the same, a husband that’s really quite emotionally needy but can’t / won’t support in return and then he resents the close female friendships I’ve got which do provide mutual support.

This is so interesting to read today of all days. I'm still stewing about a weekend away recently when I sent several text updates to my DH and barely got any response. On my return I asked why he hadn't been remotely interested, he said he'd been busy and my messages hadn't warranted a reply. I guess he's right so I've decided to not be upset about it!

He sounds pretty self-absorbed and lacking in care. Sort of treating it as not his problem, and not even considering anything he could do to ease the situation.

I do think that letting stuff go can often be good for your own happiness.

To give an example, DP and I have two miniscule equally annoying habits.

I forget to shut my wardrobe door. Whereas DP forgets to shut the back gate when she's coming in from parking the car.

They're both things that when we spot, we instantly have to sort out. So DP is forever shutting the wardrobe door for me, and I'm forever going out to close the gate.

We both do this on average about 3 times a week, and they are both behaviours that for some reason we are both incapable of changing, despite the fact that "shutting the wardrobe door" is an incredibly simple thing to try and remember to do.

Where we differ is in how we deal with it. When I go and shut the gate, I don't even think about it. I just do it. I don't even realise I've done it sometimes, DP will ask "Why did you go outside?" and I can't remember going, it's that much of an automatic action.

DP on the other hand seethes every time she has to shut the wardrobe door. It is an offence against nature, I'm obviously showing her how little I care about her by not shutting it myself, and I'm reasonably sure she's counting up all the times she's done it as a defence when she finally murders me.

We're both being equally annoying, but I'm happier because I'm just letting the annoyance go rather than holding onto them.

Of course, this only works if you're both equally annoying. If one of you is taking the piss far more than the other, then letting it go isn't going to work in the long run. But it's worth asking yourself whether he really is more annoying than you, or is he just better at letting things go.

I don’t think you’re relying on your h for emotional happiness. What you are is unhappy because your h is treating you badly and doesn’t seem to care about your happiness.

They are different things.

You deserve to be treated better. OP.

OP, why do you text him when you're having a bad day? He's at work, he has other things to think about. Whenever any of us have a bad day, we have to deal with it ourselves and it's not our partner's job to fix it.

If you’re feeling down or unwell, just leave him to make his own bloody dinner. If he can’t use the washing machine properly, tell him to do his own but leave everyone else’s.

If he doesn’t care about where things go or the messiness of leaving things on the side, you can’t make him care. It’s hard if you have very different preferences for those things, but ultimately you can’t make him care enough about where the napkins go to do it your way.

If you were trying to manage the house and family around work, as most parents do, you probably wouldn’t care whether the towels were on the right shelf or the washing machine was on the mixed setting either.

Do you love being a sahm? As it sound like you resent the fuck out of it, you just don’t like working either. But you don’t want to do the work associated with being a sahm either, you want to be looked after and not work and do the bare min and just stuff you enjoy.

i do work, but if I don’t fancy cooking or my husband doesn’t I will just say can you get x on the way home, or will we order in. No biggie I don’t need him to offer, I’m not a child. And if I d had a bad day I can’t even begin to fathom wanting him to say do you need a lie down. If I need a lie down, which I don’t ever, I would say, I’m off to bed, you do x, again, no biggie

it reads to me the real issue here is you wish to be a lady of leisure, who enjoys her hobbies, and who is pampered and taken care of. And you don’t want to work or be responsible for the house stuff either. That’s the issue, your life will never be what you want till you’re of retirement age.

@SooPanda it was a comment about ‘walking past things that need to be put away’ that made me think you want him to be a mind reader. How does he know they need to be put away? Maybe you’ve left them out for a reason? It would then be annoying
There’s a general tone in your posts that you expect him to do the things you want him to do. I think that unless you’re very direct, they are probably not his priority. His To do list will be very different to yours.
And it’s not unreasonable of him to expect that you do the lions share if you are a SAHM.