My [F36] husband [M38] of 15 years was fired from his job yesterday. This may be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Longish post, thanks in advance for reading and advising.

My husband is incredibly smart. One of the smartest people I have ever met. However, he has never lived up to his potential, and he is stuck in this perpetual cycle of doing the least amount of whatever he need to do so that he either gets what he wants or it keeps people from being upset at him. I thought it was so cool in our 20's that he could show off his smarts, then laugh at being able to use his smarts to do the most amount of work with the absolute least amount of effort.

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But we are now in our mid/late 30's. When we were in our 20's, and we had 2 kids, he was fired from a job for figuring out how to clock in from home, then not going to work. Then in our early 30's he was fired when I was pregnant with our 3rd, because he forged a signature he needed. Now, yesterday, he just got fired from his job because he spent 2 years as a salaried department manager, and he had an audit ran on him, and it showed he had not been working his contracted number of hours each week. I am so fucking angry that he can't just do the fucking right thing as a grown adult. We now have 4 kids, 2 car payments, a mortgage, and all other bills that go with having a big family.

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Last spring, his car died, and he pulled 8000 dollars from his 401K without telling me. I happened to get the mail when the check arrived. He used that to buy a car, but never discussed it with me! That turned into 200 taken out from his check (he's paid monthly). 6 months later, he was texting while driving and rear ended a lady, and it totaled his car. He took the check from that and just used that as a down payment for a nearly new car, but took out an 11K loan for that car. That's another 265 dollars per month. He has amassed 10's of thousands of dollars in student loans, because he went to 4 universities but kept failing out while using the GI bill. This all came to a head last November when, he spent years ignoring emails, phone calls, and snail mail. Then, BOOM! 800 dollars taken out of his paycheck. So, prior to being fired, he had over 1200 dollars being taken out of his paycheck and nothing but a single car to show for it. Now, we still owe the 1200 per month, but he is no longer working.

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I spent the first 12 years of our marriage as a semi-stay at home mom When my 2 older kids were 3 and 1, I went to school to get my BA in psychology at the local university here. There is a 10 year gap between my oldest and my youngest. When my youngest was almost due, I applied for grad school, and while he was an infant, I earned my Masters in Teaching +30 (adding the 30 extra credits gets a decent pay bump.). Before I started teaching, I was not June Cleaver, but I took care of everything. My husband did nothing, other than work. However, I encouraged that. I always said that as long as he's the sole provider, I will do the rest. And he really took me up on that.

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Then I started working. I work as a special education teacher in a huge high school. I love my job, but it is so demanding. Things didn't change for the first little bit, but when I explained that he needed to pick up slack, he agreed, and we decided that I took care of inside and he took care of outside. Inside ended up including everything except mowing the lawn. Outside ended up only including mowing the lawn. I still paid bills, made dr. appointments, registered and took kids to their sports and clubs, made sure they were all ready for school in the morning and picked up after school. I got so frustrated because he always told me if I wanted him to do something, to tell him. However, I have severe ADHD, and I suck at remembering things unless I put them in my calendar and wrote them down. To remember to tell him or remind him to do things was just so hard. Last summer, our backyard never got mowed, and our front yard was only mowed enough to not have the HOA yell at us. I was gone for over half of the summer with the kids visiting family in various states, and it was mowed when I would come home. I had him read the mental load article. He agreed with me. We decided to go to marriage counseling.

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I opened up during counseling. We spent a lot of time talking about how ADHD makes it hard to be married to me. At first, I thought we were just kinda doing my part, then we would eventually move over to him and he would open up and we would talk about his faults and how they affect our family. That backfired, because he always seemed to turn it back to me as we would talk. I finally got so frustrated, that I flipped out. I accused him of not being genuine and not actually trying to better himself. I accused him of going in and taking advantage of my openness, and reveling in the moments where the counselor would "side" with him. He agreed, and apologized. He said he knew he was doing it, and he felt bad for it. He said it just felt nice to have someone agree with him. It assuaged his guilt, I guess.

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So here we are now. I spent this weekend working on our new budget (he got a raise last week), I shopped for the week, I premade 8 dinners, and I did all of mine and the kids' laundry. I took the kids to church. I have been feeling resentful as hell for the last month or so. We had a huge fight about how I still feel like he doesn't pick up his slack, because it's just something that I'm always bitching about now. Not that he's actually done any more to help out, but I'm just a nag. He puts the 2 littles to bed most nights, and that's what he always uses as his thing. "You never put them down, I'm always the one who has to do it!" Well, I"m also the one who gets them up, gets them ready for school and daycare. I drop the older 2 off for Honor's choir and Honor's Art in the mornings. Our 5 year old gets bussed to my school everyday, so I have her to keep under control while I teach. Then I pick up the girls and our boy from his daycare (they get dropped off their after school). By the time I am home, it's 5. Then I have to pull out dinner and get it ready. Our dishwasher just broke, and he still hasn't taken it out to look at why it's not draining. So for the last 2 weeks, I've been handwashing dishes. And yesterday he lost his job. Because he couldn't work his 40 fucking hours per week. I'm fucking gone or 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. I don't mind, because I love my job and I'm happy that my kids are doing amazing things at school, but for fuck's sake, I'm so fucking livid. We went from making 120k/year to 45k. Because he couldn't work his fucking contracted hours. 45K per year. He alone has amassed 1200 in bills per month. Our mortgage is 1280. That alone is what I make. Luckily, everyone is on my insurance, so that hasn't been messed up. He wants my pity. He keeps walking by me with big sad eyes, and I can't look at him. I can't fucking stand to see his sad fucking face, because his fucking laziness has messed up my family's life.

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I see men who are ambitious, and I want to cry. I see men who are eager to watch their kids play sports, who notice some shit's not working and try to fix it....I just want to cry. I feel like I have robbed myself of having a partner. I have an immature, selfish husband. I'm no fucking saint. I can be cold. I snap when I'm grumpy. I have to stay on my zoloft or else I turn into a mean crazy lady. But for fuck's sake, I have busted my ass to make our family happy. He adores our 5 year old, and is so precious with her. However, our older girls have absolutely NO relationship with him whatsoever. I have to get onto my 14 year old when she talks shit about how he doesn't do anything with them. He thinks our 4 year old son is too babied, and it makes him upset when I coddle him too much. He gets fucking jealous of our dog, because our dog is really my dog. He has taken me as his "main" human. I'm not just exaggerating. He has told me that it bothers him that I am more affectionate with our dog than him. But the only time dh is affectionate toward me is when he tries to hump. And honestly, it's not fucking fun right now. I can't turn my resentment on and off. And it's raging on right now.

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I want to leave so badly. But my kids are doing so damn well. My 5 year old just started reading like a mad man. It's clicked, and she's the cutest little book worm. My 14 year old just scheduled her classes for her freshman year of high school. She is currently taking honor's English and Honor's algebra and German 2 as an 8th grader, and she's getting all A's. Next year, she is scheduled to take all honor's classes, including honor's art 2! My 12 year old is following the same path, as she's in Latin 2 as a 7th grader, and she is in accelerated math and English and honor's choir. She will take the same classes as my oldest next year. I am torn between feeling selfish and risking the success of my children, and being miserable but knowing my kids won't have a divorce looming over them, hurting their academics. And I think my older girls would emotionally be ok, my 5 year old is over the moon for him. As I write this, I know that I will likely stay, but fuck. I just want to be married to a partner. I want an equal. I want to rely on someone. I want to be with someone who doesn't try to do as little as fucking possible.

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TL;DR: Husband does little around the the house or for/with the family. He just got fired for not working his contracted salary hours. He has amassed 1200 of irresponsible extra bills per month, and his job loss took our income from 120k to 45k per year. We have 4 kids, 1 dog, and a 1280 dollar mortgage, plus all the bills that come along with kids, houses, dogs, and such. I want to leave, but I dont' want to ruin my kids' success.

Submitted February 06, 2020 at 06:40PM by absauuddy25 https://ift.tt/2H4Iqa0