I dont want my husband to come home

[IveNameChangedObviously]

If you recognise me, please don't say anything.

My husband was unexpectedly admitted to hospital 7 months ago and is still there. I dont know when he'll be coming home.

He is not the same person now and never will be. He doesn't like who he is now either but it is what it is.

I think I'm going to have to take on some caring duties. I don't know what yet. He is going to need support, maybe a little, maybe a lot, maybe short term, maybe long term. It will be a lot to begin with. I dont want to be his long term carer.

And our lives are never going to be the same. The list of things he can't (won't?) do is going to be huge.

Our 16yr old is missing him but is dealing with that by pretending he doesn't exist. She simply will not even entertain discussing him.

I dont think I want him home. 😪 I have gotten use to him not being here and I dont think I want a relationship with this new person and these new rules.

He has decided that he might pop round today on a day out from the hospital. This is his house but it feels like he's invading. It made me want to ask for his key. He'll probably go for a lie down which should be fine but I'm almost repulsed by the idea of him lying on the bedding I changed yesterday. I know I'll want to change it again tonight.

I am sat here looking at his normal spot on the sofa and all I can think of is all those minor annoyances everyone has. I just cant imagine laughing or watching TV together anymore.

We've not been great for a while. We were mostly OK and it could have been fixed but him being away his has just put a huge spotlight on everything I wasn't happy about.

I have also realised I don't need him. Which is healthy, don't get me wrong. I was too dependent on him before and this has forced me to stop being that way, which is good. But equally that will change our relationship dynamic when he comes home. I honestly don't know if he'll be releived or displaced that I can do and actually do what I always asked him to do. I think a bit of both.

I have all sorts of unresolved anger issues and resentment towards him (mostly unfair probably) but I just dont have the mental energy to deal with those right now so they are packed up to deal with at some point in the future.

I'm not willing to say that we're done before I give him/us a chance. But I feel like my head has already decided that.

I just dont know what to do.

I think your feelings are perfectly understandable, trauma, and dealing with your husband before and during hospital admission would have been traumatic, has a real and deep.impact. Also during his absence you have changed to cope and you have no doubt discovered hidden depths. So both of you are different. It's how best to move on. Is there any possibility of selling up and buying two small homes?

This made me so sad, reading you hate most men. I can't imagine what you must have been through in life to get to such a point 😔

The men in my life are absolutely wonderful human beings (husband, Dad, brother, FIL, BILs, friends etc). I'm sorry you've obviously had such a rough ride and not had the benefit of decent men around you.

It’s your life op. You can choose something different. Even if others expect you to devote your life to caring for everyone else. You don’t have to - ever. You can walk away and I for one, would never judge you for that. The whole family sound traumatised. I think I remember your other threads.

' In sickness and in health' is easy to say by people not in there situation but much harder to do, especially when someone's entire personality has changed and will likely not be back. My MIL did the whole ' In sickness and health' thing. For years through psychosis, depression alcoholism, you name it. What that entailed was basically not protecting her children and simply saying 'But your dad's ill he doesn't mean it' a lot while he verbally abused them, flew into unpredictable rages etc and she ran herself ragged trying to appease him. As a result, I am in largely the same situation as OP as I am certain ( because he has told me in the past) that it is not only at the root of H's own MH problems but also the reason he has not accessed thetapy. It has caused long term harm to my ex h and his siblings, as well as her relationship with her child who escaped the MH issues but not the fallout. OP in your situation I would ask for him to be put into supported accommodation as you cannot care for him. In my case, H came home, it was all fine until it wasn't. The Community team have been crap. He has had no therapy, just increases in meds, and we are stuck living in the same house ( but separated) I don't think he understands what's going on, so I can't see how he could possibly live alone, so If have to ask for supported accommodation for him but because he has somewhere he already is and people in the house he's not a priority.

I think you need to reframe it in your mind.

See it 100% from your daughters perspective. A man who looks like her dad but isn't anymore, comes back to live with you. He's threatening (even if not physically, mentally). His relationship with her mum is bad. Mum isn't coping.

How is her life going to pan out in that situation? From her perspective, her life is going to be irretrievably altered for the worse.

@IveNameChangedObviously

You are mourning the loss of your marriage and the partner you used to know, but you are allowed to set boundaries and step away from a role you cannot possibly sustain. There are specialist health care professionals for that.

Compassion for your husband does not mean sacrificing your entire life or mental health or that of your daughter despite whatever "guilt" you may feel @IveNameChangedObviously Do not beat yourself up!

As others have mentioned, your first step is to ensure that the hospital's clinical team and social workers handling his discharge plan know, that, you cannot act as his primary live-in carer or resume the relationship.

I wish you all a more positive and healthier future.

Take care of yourself.🌸

Agreed, the early you do it OP the more time there is to sort out proper support/housing when he's discharged.

It's ok that you don't want to care for him. It's ok if you want to end your marriage. Carring is hard enough when one wants to do it - I can't imagine how difficult it would be if one didn't want to do it but had to.

Be kind to yourself OP - you have you and your daughter to consider too.

I would suggest ask the hospital these questions

When he is discharged home, will he recieve the 6 weeks of free care ?
If so what will this care look like ?

What care could he receive after 6 weeks & is it free or would he need to pay ?

Would he need to apply for PIP ?

I reslly don’t think you should post such a harmful message when you know absolutely nothing about their circumstances or history!

Leaving out the backstory made it impossible to provide appropriate, tailored responses to the OP. My response is generalise and aimed the the number of threads we have seen on other situations like this, not necessarily’advice’ for anyone.

but thanks for your opinion

I also think you need to get ahead of this now, by making arrangements for him to live elsewhere. Once he is back in the house, this is going to be so much harder if not impossible to change.

I'm another who doesn't know the backstory but from some of the messages I've seen, it looks as though you and your daughter have been through so much.

One of the posters said something along the lines of loving someone doesn't necessarily mean having them live with you, and I think that applies, here. If you, for whatever reason, don't want to be his carer then you are not the best person to care for him, and the loving approach would be to find a way (pushing social services, most likely) to get a care package that works best for him.

I am so sorry for what you're going through. You have clearly been putting others ahead of yourself throughout this but you are just as important as everyone else. You also have limits - we all do. You can't just keep going forever.

Please don't be hard on yourself. Perhaps think how you'd advise a friend or family member in the same situation. This might allow you to think about things in a slightly detached way.

Take care.

xx

Yep, without it I’m in the dark. I suspect OP left it out intentionally as wanted a flogging…she does need to speak to someone for support on getting through this

He is entitled to non means tested care and accommodation.

I have also come across a couple where the wife didn’t want to accept the husband home due to dementia, knowing this would mean a care home placement or a delayed discharge, the council/NHS threatened legal action as that was his house and he had every right to return. Which he did. The wife refused to do any care though and the council had to provide it obviously

To be clear, I'm not planning on locking him out or anything. I wouldn't.
Me not wanting him to come is not the same as me stopping him.

Only if it relates to his mental health, they won’t accommodate him just because you don’t want him home

Ok, so if it came to that, he has care and accommodation... what's not pretty?

I have a friend in a similar situation… they were separating (but still under same roof), his family were unaware

He had a massive stroke, she didn’t want him home - he’s with his parents as not entitled to council accommodation (as they own the home). She’s not getting any child support for the 3DCs, house to be sold and it’s become very ugly

I can’t comment on what is right/wrong, her biggest regret now is not separating properly and moving out before he got ill

Even in a healthy happy marriage this is life changing - go easy on yourself op

Your feelings are valid and it sounds like a very difficult situation.

But sticking to just facts - it is his home and you have no legal right to kick him out or make it difficult to come home.

Morally you also cannot ask him to leave.
He’s had a horrible few months, his wife wants to leave him because of an illness/accident and then imagine having to leave his family home - that would be the cruelest thing you can do.

You have 2 choices:
Leave asap - find somewhere else to live before he officially returns home.
Or wait - have him come home and see how it goes for 6 months and then move out.

What you choose to do is completely up to you but if it was me I would wait until he came home and give it 6 months.
Not only does it give you more time to decide what you want and sort your finances out/find somewhere to live but it also gives your DD some consistency as she is the most importing person here.

OP, I think I know which poster you are, and I think you're not doing yourself any favours by missing out the background on why your husband was hospitalised and what you and your daughter went through as a result. If you're who I think you are, this isn't a case of your husband being physically disabled or requiring nursing type care; it's something very different.

You've been through hell and if I recall, you'd actually already been doing an awful lot of caring and support for him long before he became so acutely unwell.

And some of his obsessions were already having an impact on your daughter because he was fixating on her having a particular condition that he thought he might also have, and at one point he was indicating that he might take her from you.

Honestly, if I were in your situation I would feel much the same as you do and I wouldn't want him home either, no matter how much I loved him. You're effectively being expected to continue with a marriage to a man with a completely different personality and behaviours to the one you actually fell in love with, and I would find it exceptionally hard to trust him if I were in your shoes. It's almost like being expected to live with a near-stranger.

I suspect we're talking about a man with a condition that's more akin to, eg, paranoid schizophrenia than, eg, someone recovering from a stroke.

I think I commented on your previous threads. I was in a similar situation and I made the decision to separate, and then divorce.

In my case it was a brain injury which removed the decent side of his personality and left the bad side, but magnified. He was in hospital nearly a year and in that time I realised I was much more capable than he’d ever let me believe, but also that the house was a much much better place without him in it.

It was only in this time without him I could see just how bad things had been in our marriage. The DC were a lot more settled without him, and happier.

He came home and I became his carer and it was hell. He was obnoxious to me and the DC and every little niggle from our previous life was obvious on top of his new nastiness. In fact that nastiness had always been there, but had become so normal I hadn’t questioned it until he was away. Tellingly he could still be polite and friendly to others.

After a year or so it became obvious we couldn’t continue, the DC ( late teens) hated him, I hated him, and I think he hated us. We split and he went into accommodation with carers. From what I hear he is much happier, and we definitely are.

I lost some close friends, but also found some in my wider friendships who have become my rocks.

My DC have needed a lot of therapy to deal with both the man he was before the injury, and the man he became, and their feelings around it.

I am like you in that I parked my trauma until i had the headspace to deal with it, and will be starting therapy this year, many years after he left.

A long post to say, it’s ok not to be ok in the new reality of your marriage, and it is ok to do the best thing for all of you, whether that is to stay or leave.