Letting Go With Positivity, Peace, Courage, And Interdependence

M

mysblossom


Greetings, all.

I hope this post finds you well.

I have been married for about seven years to a really nice and giving man who does not provide. My spouse does everything you could imagine desiring from your spouse, except work and provide.

I need to let go, move forward, and get back out there very strongly in the job market so that I can obtain whatever I dream of for myself. I know I can do it.

It would be great to have a place to receive encouragement, receive inspiration, celebrate, cry, get and give advice, etc. I'm hoping this thread can be that space for myself and others who either have done it or are doing it.
 
I have a relative who had a husband who worked but often lost his jobs. The last job he got, he started complaining right away about the boss and how the office functioned etc. My relative told him that she didn't care about what he was complaining about but he better do whatever he needed to do to keep his job. I believe she was at the end of her rope and gave him a serious ultimatum (but that's just a guess). He kept that job and has been working for about the last 20 years. I think he just doesn't like working but didn't want to lose her.
 
hopeful said:
I have a relative who had a husband who worked but often lost his jobs. The last job he got, he started complaining right away about the boss and how the office functioned etc. My relative told him that she didn't care about what he was complaining about but he better do whatever he needed to do to keep his job. I believe she was at the end of her rope and gave him a serious ultimatum (but that's just a guess). He kept that job and has been working for about the last 20 years. I think he just doesn't like working but didn't want to lose her.
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I think my spouse believes that he will always be able to explain to me why he cannot take certain jobs. I believe my spouse does not believe I will permanently leave. (We separated once before.)

I have a really good male friend who would do ANY job because he loves his wife just that much. I always feel so hopeful about men when I talk with him. He is so sad for me.

Having to talk your spouse into working is really disgusting and heartbreaking. It's so destructive. I feel so devalued and used, even while my spouse does a million wonderful things a day for me. This hurts so badly.

ETA: This is NEVER going to end if I don't just let go and give up on it and move forward. As I type, I'm just shaking my head: It is INCREDIBLY disgusting to watch a grown man live off of others.

I've got to stop looking at THAT (my spouse doesn't think enough of me to work a job) to looking at WHAT COULD BE (me working to have a home some day and be able to travel some day).
 
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keyawarren said:
Was he working at any point in the marriage? How did you guys meet?
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We met at an internship. He was working when we met. He made good money, was a saver, and helped his family financially all the time when we were dating.

His company shut down and he next took a very easy job making half of what he used to make. I never complained. Then that company shut down, and he hasn't been back to work since.

At first he couldn't work because his car was in disrepair and wouldn't make it far. I offered to repair it, but he said he was having a family member look at it. Months and months going around in circles about that. He then told me he couldn't get anything. I told him to volunteer so that he could fill the gap in his resume. He said he didn't want to drive to the volunteer place everyday because that would cost gas and he wasn't making any money to contribute -- he didn't want to cost me extra.

He promised to go to counseling with me. I was so relieved. Then when the appointment day finally arrived, he refused.
He stopped talking to me about whether he'd submitted applications or had obtained interviews. Said I was too stressful to talk to about the job search. I disagreed internally but said, "I don't agree but okay: You must talk with someone, though, and then they can talk with me, because I really need to stay in the know."

I finally left and eventually moved states (back home where my family is). My dad invited him to live with him so he could help him get a job. Here we are. Nothing.

There were a ton of entry level jobs about a 15-minute drive away. He won't take it. It's not in his field, he says. He'd rather work with my dad, though they haven't been able to get that arrangement going for the last 12-15 months. He says it'll be different this time because this time he will MAKE it happen.

My thought: Yeah, but why didn't you feel the need to MAKE it happen before, and is it really going to be different THIS time?

FULL DISCLOSURE:
He hasn't worked for so long that when he asked if he could wait an additional 3 weeks . . . to allow me to finish my school project while he helps cares for the kids who now due to a tragedy are in my care . . . I said, "Thanks." Supposedly in 3 weeks he starts working with my dad.

He does an amazing job with the kids, by the way. Like unbelievably amazing. Takes on a lot. But it's always like that: He's always got something he must do INSTEAD of working a job. He doesn't ever do two things at once: Work but still help. He always needs to put off working.

Sigh.

I just don't understand why he won't start from the bottom again and get going. After all of these years and years and years, it's just gotten hard to believe that he cares about me as much as he cares about himself.

And it's mind-rattling because this is a man who does any and everything else for me. You simply wouldn't believe it if I told you.
 
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hopeful said:
I have a relative who had a husband who worked but often lost his jobs. The last job he got, he started complaining right away about the boss and how the office functioned etc. My relative told him that she didn't care about what he was complaining about but he better do whatever he needed to do to keep his job. I believe she was at the end of her rope and gave him a serious ultimatum (but that's just a guess). He kept that job and has been working for about the last 20 years. I think he just doesn't like working but didn't want to lose her.
Click to expand...

My spouse let our phone and electricity get cut off. After some years into the situation, I tried the serious ultimatum: I will leave if you don't AT LEAST get a volunteer position so that you can put something on your resume or perhaps even turn it into a job.

9 months later he was STILL explaining to me why he wasn't volunteering.

My spouse just knows (and EVERYBODY ELSE knows it, too): With Blossom, he doesn't have to work. She can't make him. And that's the only way he will work . . . if he's made to.

Words can't express what this has done to my spirit.

Maybe if I can be brave enough to accept the single life I can stop crying and start living.

Nobody wants their marriage to fail. But I haven't enjoyed living life under these circumstances for a while now. I just take a deep breath every day and try to focus on my blessings. I just hold on because people tell me to.

I've done counseling (had to go alone because though he promised to attend, he backed out the morning of). After months and months, my counselor told me, "Blossom, five years from now your spouse won't be working." He was right.

I just want to try life not screaming on the inside, "Please love yourself and wife enough to work! Please!" That's getting painful now after so many years. I physically feel it.

What if I just get in agreement with him and just take care of myself on my own? Maybe that will feel better, even if the best would have been a healthier marriage with him working along with me.

My single friends don't internally beg/pray for a man to work. They peacefully support themselves. Maybe that is God's life for me and I've gotten off that path?
 
You are allowing this man to use you and stress you out. YOU have decided to stay and be drained.

Being married can be wonderful. Being married to the wrong person is harmful. When YOU decide you have had enough of being the horse that pulls this man's comfortable carriage , you will leave.

You only get one life.

Decide.
 
Can I ask what happened last time you separated? Where did he move to, how long was the break and why did you decide to get back together?

I did read in one of your posts that you gave him an "serious ultimatum", but when he didn't comply you let him explain it away for 9 months. I'm trying to figure out if you have really stood firm before and followed through with consequences. If not I would suggest if you break up again you don't let him back into your life, or affections until he has a new job and is settled into it.

If you do break up it will give you time to heal and build personal strength, whatever the outcome is for your marriage. You have to take care of yourself and your mental health too.
 
Harsh... but it sounds like you don't love you enough to provide for you.

Meaning, I agree that you only get one life and you have to love yourself and fill your tanks up. Let a man come along who wants to add to you, who is inspired by all you've done to make you great that he only wants to be an asset to that. Not one who seems so injured he can't muster up something that is so ingrained in manhood or if he's not injured he is trying to renegotiate the deal you made to marry him without your consent and that is not very loving either.
 
Many thanks for the words of wisdom and encouragement. I am listening. I won't be able to submit a post with answers to questions until Sunday likely.

Again, thank you all. I feel encouraged and better. I don't come from a background that permits remarriage, so this is a serious decision. That's one of the main reasons I've put so much time in. But I'm feeling more and more okay with moving forward, and your posts help.

Many blessings.
 
Op, I wouldn't go as far to say that your husband doesn't love you, but I would say that he may be depressed/discouraged and so I feel a little compassion for him. Working and providing is tied to a mans ego. He most likely feels horrible about his situation and is immobilized from discouragement.

With that being said, its been too long. You can't help him from the inside and the situation is also wearing on you. I don't think an ultimatum is necessary because he isn't and wasn't in a position to provide for quite some time. Talk to him, tell him what you're going through and just go.

I know its easier said than done though :bighug:
 
No matter what your intention is right now, I would seek some legal advice on exactly what happens to you if you leave him. If he really is out of work a lot and taking care of the children, you may find that he will become a new monthly obligation in the form of alimony.

I get you, I used to be a permissive person because I confused it with being a loving and understanding partner (it isn't). Unfortunately, those of us who act like this do put ourselves in a pickle because people understand we will default to being loving and understanding rather than firm and erect the boundaries that we need to make ourselves secure and taken care of. From now on, you need to offer that same love and understanding to yourself and allow yourself to say "no" to situations that only serve to take away from the life you wish to build.
 
You said you're not ready to live the single life, but in reality you ARE living the single life. You're taking care of yourself and your children while he hangs out and plays with the kids.

Really now, how hard is it to be a "good father" when you're not financially supporting your children? HE IS NOT A GOOD FATHER...HE IS JUST HAVING FUN WITH THE KIDS. He is their playmate...and YOU are taking care of all of them. A good father takes care of his children's needs....and they need money.

It's frightening that he is okay being the way he is. That usually would eat a man up inside.
 
Sumra said:
Can I ask what happened last time you separated? Where did he move to, how long was the break and why did you decide to get back together?

I did read in one of your posts that you gave him an "serious ultimatum", but when he didn't comply you let him explain it away for 9 months. I'm trying to figure out if you have really stood firm before and followed through with consequences. If not I would suggest if you break up again you don't let him back into your life, or affections until he has a new job and is settled into it.

If you do break up it will give you time to heal and build personal strength, whatever the outcome is for your marriage. You have to take care of yourself and your mental health too.
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Thanks for asking, @Sumra .

When I gave him the ultimatum, we were married and renting an apartment with both our names on the lease. My ultimatum was that I wouldn't re-sign the lease if he didn't get the volunteer position. When the 9 months left on the lease expired, I left.

When I left he moved in with his parents. He began working a job a few months after that. It was a non-paying position at a start-up that was the only thing he said he could get.

I moved states back to where my family lives. My dad said, "Have him move in with me. He can work with me, and I may be able to get him a job." He moved here (not in with me, but in with my dad). That plan has fallen through.

INTERVENTION
Recently we traveled back to his home state. Everyone ended up talking with him one day, confronting him about the employment situation. He was pretty offended and hurt. But he promised his mom he would leave here (my family's state) if he didn't get a job by December. Then tragedy struck. My tiny nephews' mom died. We've been working together to care for them.

BUT . . . I have spoken to him and his family to make sure they understand: I appreciate the help, but this can't be the thing my spouse does INSTEAD of job searching or going back home to his state or whatever.

Everyone agrees (except for my dad because he doesn't believe we should ever stop trying).

SPOUSE'S CURRENT PLAN
(ETA: Given that I am uncomfortable and have asked him WHEN he can return to my dad's house or return to his home state)
My spouse says, "Once you are done with your graduate research, I know you'll have time to handle the boys and all the house care yourself. Then I'll leave and just focus on working with your dad to earn money for my own car so that I can get to work at a more secure job. It's just three weeks. If it all doesn't work out, in December/January I'll move back home to my own state or perhaps to my aunt's state."

MY SENSE
I believe my spouse has allowed himself such a huge gap in his resume that he has a hard chance of getting hired. I believe he did this because he gets his self-esteem from the status of his job, so he never took any "lower level" jobs. I come from a family wherein everyone just works, and so this took me by surprise. I believe that by putting his sense of status above his wife and responsibilities, that he displays that he should not be responsible for a wife. I believe that he thinks that if he does everything else (cook, clean, be a great listener, help with any task, etc.) while waiting for that status-satisfying job, that all should be okay.

I really appreciate all of my spouse's support and treat him kindly while asking him to PLEASE just take anything so that the job situation can turn around. But appreciating him and supporting him has still led to all of these years of him not working. I'm so hurt now that I can sometimes barely feel it. I'm getting numb and just surviving. I need something different now, and it doesn't seem that he can just take a job. That's his choice, but I just can't agree with it. Time to move forward, as there is nothing more I can really do.

MY GOAL
One of the main problems I'm having is that I don't have a positive vision of what's on "the other side" of all of this. It just all feels like loss to me. I know I have to get disentangled from all of this and move forward to the other side. I get that. It just FEELS bad. My goal is to process the bad feelings involved, but to also start understanding and feeling that life can still be good even though I will be living differently in my forties than I ever dreamed. That's hard for me because all of my friends are married and well-off with children and that was my dream. :) I'm kind of the odd girl out. Need to hang around happy, single people, I guess. :) I don't want to be single, but I will be. I don't want to be childless, but I will be. I've had the opposite vision for my life since I was a tiny girl. Time to think differently. That's a lot of decades of thinking and dreaming and planning to switch around. I know I can do it.
 
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Kimbosheart said:
Harsh... but it sounds like you don't love you enough to provide for you.

Meaning, I agree that you only get one life and you have to love yourself and fill your tanks up. Let a man come along who wants to add to you, who is inspired by all you've done to make you great that he only wants to be an asset to that. Not one who seems so injured he can't muster up something that is so ingrained in manhood or if he's not injured he is trying to renegotiate the deal you made to marry him without your consent and that is not very loving either.
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Thanks, @Kimbosheart . Very helpful. :)
 
Mortons said:
No matter what your intention is right now, I would seek some legal advice on exactly what happens to you if you leave him. If he really is out of work a lot and taking care of the children, you may find that he will become a new monthly obligation in the form of alimony.

I get you, I used to be a permissive person because I confused it with being a loving and understanding partner (it isn't). Unfortunately, those of us who act like this do put ourselves in a pickle because people understand we will default to being loving and understanding rather than firm and erect the boundaries that we need to make ourselves secure and taken care of. From now on, you need to offer that same love and understanding to yourself and allow yourself to say "no" to situations that only serve to take away from the life you wish to build.
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Thanks, @Mortons . :yep:

My cousin is a lawyer. She'll be my guide.

The children are not ours.

Starting this thread is me starting the process. Next year I hope to attend a divorce/separation group at church.
 
MzLady78 said:
Umm, are these nephews from his side of the family? Because if so, I'm definitely not feeling his current plan.

Also, I'm not getting depression here, I'm gettiing laziness. JMO.
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I kinda agree. Not to say that he wasn't depressed at some point during this...but he seems to have gotten comfortable with this situation.
 
MzLady78 said:
Umm, are these nephews from his side of the family? Because if so, I'm definitely not feeling his current plan.

Also, I'm not getting depression here, I'm gettiing laziness. JMO.
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Nephews are from my side of the family.

Regarding depression: I wondered about this at some point, but I don't think so. Besides not working, he's his same old self: Jovial and social. Listens to music. Eats out. Attends church. Jokes around with everyone. Etc.
 
mysblossom said:
Nephews are from my side of the family.

Regarding depression: I wondered about this at some point, but I don't think so. Besides not working, he's his same old self: Jovial and social. Listens to music. Eats out. Attends church. Jokes around with everyone. Etc.
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Oh ok. I wasn't really liking the idea of him taking off and leaving you alone to care for HIS family.
 
(You answered as I was typing.)Are the nephews your relatives or his? I hate to sound callous but folks get funny when money is involved and if their mother worked then a social security check will be forth coming. If your intention is to be the full time caregiver for these boys figure out what their babysitting options will be so your husband doesn't have an excuse/in for claiming to be caregiver. If any arrangements even temporary are being made make them as Mrs. Mysblossom not Mr. & Mrs.

You don't have to fully envision what's on the other side but don't let fear keep you stuck where you already know you're unhappy. Start making moves with a peaceful heart and the things you want (and can't even imagine right now) will come. Comparison is the thief of joy. You dont know what your friends are dealing with. Being yoked to the wrong person is incomparably worse than being single. Walk in faith.
 
bklynbornNbred said:
(You answered as I was typing.)Are the nephews your relatives or his? I hate to sound callous but folks get funny when money is involved and if their mother worked then a social security check will be forth coming. If your intention is to be the full time caregiver for these boys figure out what their babysitting options will be so your husband doesn't have an excuse/in for claiming to be caregiver. If any arrangements even temporary are being made make them as Mrs. Mysblossom not Mr. & Mrs.

You don't have to fully envision what's on the other side but don't let fear keep you stuck where you already know you're unhappy. Start making moves with a peaceful heart and the things you want (and can't even imagine right now) will come. Comparison is the thief of joy. You dont know what your friends are dealing with. Being yoked to the wrong person is incomparably worse than being single. Walk in faith.
Click to expand...

Thanks @bklynbornNbred. Very helpful.

I stopped working on my graduate degree when all of this happened and went to work full time to pay for everything. I just recently stopped working and am finishing up the degree. Once I'm done, I'll be able to go back to work full time and help pay for a babysitter.

I realize I've come to be a person who is struggling to feel happiness. One of things I really want to work on is enjoying life for what's in it, and not because I'm accomplishing a dream.

I'm going to make a new list for myself of things that make me feel life is enjoyable. My old list only had items centered around being in a couple or being a parent. I need to learn to simply enjoy life . . . the life actually available and not the one I wish I could dream up. That's a basic I would hope everyone has, and it'll be really good to regain that. :)
 
OP my prayers are with you but this is it right here. Time for you to love you!!!!!

Kimbosheart said:
Harsh... but it sounds like you don't love you enough to provide for you.

Meaning, I agree that you only get one life and you have to love yourself and fill your tanks up. Let a man come along who wants to add to you, who is inspired by all you've done to make you great that he only wants to be an asset to that. Not one who seems so injured he can't muster up something that is so ingrained in manhood or if he's not injured he is trying to renegotiate the deal you made to marry him without your consent and that is not very loving either.
Click to expand...
 
I'm thinking aloud here and typing this just in case there is someone else reading who is going through something similar:

Regarding not loving myself enough to provide for myself . . .

I believe if I hadn't been raised in a "serious" christian church, I would have left a long time ago because I wouldn't have had the mentality that you can only divorce and remarry in the case of infidelity. In such an environment, separation is permitted but not divorce and not remarriage if there has been no infidelity. So separation amounts to dating for the rest of your life, but never marrying. And that amounts to sex outside of marriage (which goes against the bible) if you ever have sex again.

So, as a 30-something year old female you sit and think about what that means for your life. You watch your spouse cooking, cleaning, and taking care of everything and treating you very kindly (with the exception of the joblessness thing). You compare (A) trying to get this person help with (B) leaving and being single for the rest of your life. When you do that, you don't view continuing to work on the marriage or help your spouse as not loving yourself. You view it as trying not to "doom" yourself to a guilt-filled sex-life or non-existent sex-life or permanent loneliness.

That all said, I truly get where those words about me not loving my own self are coming from. If I hadn't grown up in a church environment that encouraged church members to actually/truly follow those biblical scriptures, my thinking and mentoring and received advice would all be VERY different. The attitudes of everyone around me and my mentality and leaning and tendencies and everything would just be VERY different. :)

Most people toss those scriptures about divorce and remarriage, and BELIEVE ME I really, really get that.

Tagging @lux10023 and @Kimbosheart . :)
 
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Do you still attend your childhood church (denomination)?

Understand there are different interpretations many which leave women at a disservice.

I don't believe in any God that forces women to stay in dysfunctional or dangerous marriages (or dooms them to spinster hood either). You need to dig deep and talk to your God and listen to what is said to you not rely on what you were taught especially if its not sitting right with your spirit.

You can't work on a marriage when your husband refuses to. Marriage is a partnership and he's breaking every biblical reference to how husband are supposed to honor their wives. No believer should be throwing verses at you about your responsibility if they're not also digging in your husbands behind for not holding up his end of the partnership.
 
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