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I (35F) pay for everything, and work all the time, including (unpaid) for my husband's business (M33 (by Sparky)

 Sparky (0)  (29 / M-F / Massachusetts)
24-Jan-21 4:50 am
I (35F) pay for everything, and work all the time, including (unpaid) for my husband's business (M33), while he refuses to discuss/do housework

My husband (M33) and I (F35) have lived together for 5 years. Since we've been married (2.5 years) we have huge, ridiculous fights over housework.
I've read and shared with him the comic ?if only you asked? and the blog post ?She divorced me because I left dishes by the sink?. It doesn't sink in.
After we got married, he started studying a full-time master?s, and while he?s taken on debt to pay for school, most of the living expenses have fallen to me. Which was never clearly discussed/asked of me. We got a studio apartment and try to keep expenses down.
I am a freelance writer and my income is unstable. The uncertainty can be tough, and my projects are maximum 2 months so I'm always at risk. But when I am working it?s on deadline and it?s intense, so I literally can?t do anything else and put in long hours.
Last year my husband graduated at the same time as covid lockdowns hit. So any chance of him getting a job seemed to go out the window. He applied for a few months, but in the summer I encouraged him to start a business and even offered to invest and finance it.
I also work for his business (unpaid), partly because I wanted to monitor my investment, and partly because we have compatible skills, I can contribute. If his business succeeds, it should benefit both of us.
Despite all this, we still have huge fights over who is responsible at home. I feel like I'm already giving too much by:

  1. Paying for literally everything for the last 2.5+ years
  2. Financially supporting his business
  3. Working for free on his business (even though I?ve asked him to work for/help me, he refuses)

Quite frankly, I am working all the time, or sleeping, and don?t have time for housework. I also have the huge burden of feeling responsible for literally everything in our relationship, including his business.
We have already fought a lot about housework before this, and these fights even if trivial have always been explosive. I?ve asked him in calm moments to work on a plan for sharing household responsibilities, to break the unhealthy/unhelpful pattern.
He refused to even have the conversation about it and insisted that he?d just do everything. I still paid for a biweekly cleaning person for a deep clean while he did most of the day-to-day tasks. Of course, I would chip in when things needed to be done.
We live in a large studio. If dishes are piling out of the sink (we have no dishwasher) then they?re visible in my background on Zoom which looks really unprofessional. Further, very simply ? it stresses me out. I don?t like having a dirty place, especially it's easy to procrastinate by cleaning instead of writing - which is what pays the bills. I?ve explained all this to the husband many times.
Yesterday morning I was annoyed because the kitchen was a mess. I?m talking disgusting. Dried crusty tomato seeds on the tablecloth, pieces of cooked rice stuck to the floor, the entire stove was covered in dried sauce, and the sink was so full you couldn?t use it. Not a clean utensil to be found.
The husband could see I was bothered, and asked me what was wrong. I told him that I was upset, the place was a mess and I couldn?t make my breakfast without cleaning first and I didn't have time.
He became explosively mad - because he?d made dinner the previous night and ?he would get to it?.
After about 48 hours he still refused to talk about it and decided to get an Airbnb and ?move out?.
This happened once before where he left for a week (I later found out he was also having an affair) but in other moments when he's bitterly mentioned he would leave, I said if he goes then that's it for me, it would be the end of our relationship. It's unhealthy and it shouldn?t happen. Moving out to avoid a constructive conversation about how to resolve an issue, isn?t going to improve things, it just makes it worse.
He left.
TL;DR! Everything in my marriage is off-balance - I (wife) pay for everything, work all the time, including for my husband, for free, and he refuses to discuss/do housework, which is a minimum that he can contribute. He wanted to move out for some space and I told him doing so would end our marriage. He left anyway.


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