She’s Spent Years Financially Supporting Her Husband, And She’s Tired Of It
Six years ago, this 38-year-old woman got married to her husband, who is the same age as her, after six years of dating.
Ever since she entered into a relationship with her husband, she was always the breadwinner. He went back to school and she was happy to financially support him as he accomplished this goal.
But then, when her husband graduated a couple of years into dating, he couldn’t find a full-time job in his industry.
“This really hit his mental health hard, and I continued supporting him for a few more years,” she explained.
“Eventually, I got really fed up with this dynamic and insisted he start working about 4 years ago. In that time, he’s had a couple of part-time jobs, neither of which worked out long-term (not due to him, just unfortunate circumstances). ”
“After the first job went south, he was out of work for about a year before getting the next job. This one ended a few weeks ago. While I fully agree that the circumstances causing the end of this job were legitimate and not easily avoided, I begged him to start looking for jobs quickly, and he assured me he would.”
It has since been several weeks that her husband has been unemployed, and he has only applied to one single job.
While she works from home every day, her husband putters around with his various hobbies. Sometimes he does chores, but it only takes him half an hour or an hour to complete.
Any of the more time-consuming chores around the house don’t get done unless she does them or unless she nags her husband nonstop to do it himself.
Denira – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only, not the actual person
She’s so irritated with her husband that she’s going out of her way to pick fights with him, which she acknowledges as unfair and something that’s keeping them both in awful moods.
The thing is, she’s sick and tired of financially supporting her husband, and she’s not sure how to force him to finally get a real job and be an adult.
She has got her husband to attend therapy to discover some motivation and improve his mental health, but he complains about it so much that she feels like she is forcing him to show up for his appointments.
“I’m becoming someone I don’t like, starting fights and being miserable,” she said. “I really love this person—he is incredibly kind, and he does support me emotionally more than anyone I’ve ever met.”
“But I am so stressed out about finances, I work all the time to support us (probably about 50 hours a week on average, frequently more, and my job is very challenging and stressful). I’m also getting to a point where the stress of being the sole breadwinner combined with aging is starting to result in physical issues, and I’m losing hope that things will ever improve.”
“I desperately want advice on what I can do to improve this. I don’t want to leave; I love him and don’t want to lose him in my life—I also worry about what would happen to him if I did because he has no savings and no job, and I wouldn’t want him to end up homeless. I would much prefer to make it work if at all possible.”
What do you think she should do?
You can read the original post on Reddit here.
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