This may be a bit of a mess but I’m at my wits end and seriously need to know if I’m going crazy or if this is normal. Me (20f) and my husband (21m) got married almost 2 years ago. Of course like the beginning of all relationships it was good, but the second the honeymoon phase was over, I was greeted with a man who can’t clean up after himself, is a borderline hoarder, constantly sleeps, and hardly tries to help with our baby.
To lay out our schedule, he goes to work at 6am Monday-Friday. Comes home around 2-3pm and sleeps or played video game the rest of the day. I wake up around 7am with the baby, feed, wash and then spend the rest of the day struggling to clean my house with my heart disease (ventricular tachycardia) all while trying to entertain and keep my child out of trouble. He’s an extremely clingy baby who just started walking. My day ends around 8-9 when baby finally falls asleep. By that time, I’ve gotten almost NO house work done. My kitchen sink is full of dirty dishes right now. If I wanted any silver wear at this very moment, I wouldn’t have any. On good days, I’m aloud to take the car after my husband gets home to pick up baby formula, yet the only thing I could cook in my house right now would be a cassava cake (Filipino cake). I spend every day all day caring for a baby while struggling to cleaning up after what FEELS like 5 children and a tornado from hell.
But with everyone, there’s 10 god 10 bad right? Yet when I try to list it out,
1) he pays the bills
2) he claims he loves me?
3)…
4)…
5)…
6)…
7)…
8)…
9)…
10) he… nope still nothing.
I can’t remember the last time he took on an actual date, he doesn’t help clean, his idea of helping with the baby is putting baby in the crib and leaving him there to scream and cry so my husband can continue to sleep. He won’t let me get rid of any of the junk he hoards (grange and living room and spare room closet absolutely packed with stuff he hasn’t touched in over a year). Won’t do any dishes, does one load of laundry a month.
I seriously don’t know what to do anymore. I have no finances of my our or even an account at ANY bank. No high school degree. No car (gave it to my parents when I moved). No way to get to my home state, no friends where I live, no support from my mom (she will always take my partner/s sides over mine every time. ALWAYS HAS). I literally feel like I’ve got nothing. I’m so sick of feeling isolated and unappreciated.
Even if I do decide to leave, I’ve got no way to my home state and family and money. What do I even do at this point?! We already has a cps investigation because i was so burned out, tired, alone and getting no help that my house fell to a whole different level of disaster. I’m terrified of that happening again but I starting to feel that exhausted again and my house is falling apart. Even as I type this, my baby in his crib crying and my husband is in bed AGAIN. I’ve got nothing anymore but my baby and I don’t want to lose him. EVERY TIME I talk to my mom about it I get the exact same reaction: “he’s just stressed and tired,”
“He’s such hard worker”
“You just have to keep supporting him and doing your best.”
Yet the last time I kept trying to just “do my best”, cps was called. I feel like I spend EVERY night crying anymore. I’m disgusted in my house but no matter what I try, it doesn’t get better. He’s the type of man that I had to beg for a real wedding ring for months before he got me one. If I don’t agree with his house decor ideas even a little, he give me the cold shoulder and gets passive aggressive with everything he does. If I doN’t want to do the deed when he wants he gives me the cold shoulder even though he knows intimacy hurts me. If I actually get after him for not watching our baby for 30 minuets max, he gets passive aggressive and whispers things like “it’s okay, I know, it’s okay” to my son like I’m some horrible villain. It makes me feel like I’m going insane and like crap.
I have been giving everything I can to this relationship and I’m met with a basic“goodnight” at the end of the day when I join him in the bed been on for hours. I’ve done everything right, I’ve ignored the pain to satisfy him, I’ve spent nights in a row without sleep trying to clean a house so I can actually get stuff done. I’ve made dinners out of chicken and whatever I can scrounge in the pantry while holding a baby the whole time so my husband could eat.
I’m exhausted and I want to leave so I can have a cleaner less cluttered with garbage off the side of the street life.
TLDR: I want to leave my marriage because I’m sick of giving everything I am to someone who gives nothing in return.
14 comments
He’s not just shitty, but that paragraph about all of the things he punishes you for – that’s abuse. You should see what resources there are to help you in your area. While it’s not the worst abuse out there, a domestic violence hotline might be able to hook you up with resources or help you form a plan to leave, since you are in an abusive relationship, and you are being sexually coerced.
Lotta unanswered questions here. You mentioned CPS and then breezed past it. I get that raising a small child and keeping a house kinda sorta clean can be tough, but it’s also something a lot of people pull off. It’ll certainly get easier as the child gets older.
But one full time paycheck and one full time parent *should* be enough to keep the baby in safe and clean conditions. What’s going on?
Dannng, that’s a lot.
I think what got my attention was that being intimate causes you pain and that you ignore it to keep him happy. That ain’t no good and that fact that he is willing to ignore your pain is fucking sociopathic. Put that next to I’ve been isolated from my family and support systems and it starts to sound dangerous.
Reddit can’t help you and your baby. The only people that can help you are the local agencies. There are services available for you and your child. It will be uncomfortable and they aren’t always nice, but you will be safe.
This can be temporary (if you run now) and in a few years won’t matter much, or it can burn into your brain and fuck you, and your kid, up forever. You are young, this doesn’t have to define you.
Call 211 or go to your local library to find resources for you. You need to leave, but you are going to need support to do so. Do whatever you have to, to not get pregnant again. Does baby nap well? Try to regulate the mess to your husband’s space and keep the baby’s space clean. But figure out a plan to leave
I’m sure others are gonna touch on the relationship but I just wanted to talk about your ventricular tachycardia. I had a form of it that I developed when pregnant with my first and eventually I had an ablation. Having the ablation done changed my life and my ability to not be as stressed over my heart. I’ve had no episodes since and it’s amazing. Are you currently seeing a cardiologist for your VT? If so, please ask them if you are a candidate for ablation. It will greatly improve your life.
1. Local agencies and hotlines as others suggest. If you can tell us where you live and what your home state is then maybe someone can help you with more specific details.
2. Maybe get a part-time work from home job answering phone calls.
3. Throw out your husband’s stuff or organize everything in boxes.
4. I know taking care of a child is tough. But it shouldn’t be so tough to clean the dishes while your child naps. It’s okay to leave the baby crying in the crib for 30 minutes. It’s okay to place the child in a rocker or a swing and sweep. It’s okay to just leave your child alone for an hour. What’s the real problem? What’s happening? Explain it. You’re home all day and you have a pile of dishes in the sink. Take me through your day so I can see why the dishes are not being done.
5. Consider working full time and putting the child in day care.
6. Your husband is a fucking joke and needs to throw video games away… unpopular opinion. Grown men need to realize family first, games absolutely last. If your husband won’t fix his video game addiction, then yeah he is a dead beat dad and you really need to move on.
I am so so sooo sorry for the situation you are in! That sounds awful. No wonder you are exhausted – all of it is so draining. Good job getting as far as you have and for reaching out for help. That’s a big step.
I don’t know where you are, and I know this suggestion might feel like it’s not your favorite thing to hear, but as others have suggested there are some options you might not know about if you look for resources for mothers and children. I agree there is some abuse in your relationship, namely with intimacy but likely psychological abuse as well. That qualifies you for certain special types of support if you truly want to get out of this situation. Depending on where you live you could get the financial support to get your own place without him, file for custody, help with groceries and much more. That kind of thing exists! I hope you will consider looking into it because it sounds like you have almost no other options.
You will have an easier time being a parent without him, because you have a lot of extra responsibilities by having to clean up after/provide for him. It’s like he is your other child. It doesn’t have to be this way. There will be less stress. And there’s ways to get financial support.
I’m really sorry your mom is not helping. I wonder if it would be worth it to tell her you the situation is abusive and you are looking at every option to get out. That you absolutely won’t do the relationship anymore, regardless of her input, and you are going to pick the path that best ensures the health and wellness of both you and your baby. Maybe that could get her to see it from a different perspective.
It’s not that hard to take care of a kid and keep your house clean, especially when you’re not working. There are many single parents who have to work a full time job AND still come home, take care of the kid, and clean the house. And they’re not getting CPS called on them.
Two children got married and don’t know how to be adults. Shocking.
Quick question: did no one you know try to point out that getting married and having a baby immediately after high school was a bad idea?
I don’t know where you’re geographically located, but you need to Google “help for single mother leaving spouse”. Contact an attorney. Many provide a free consultation.
Some of the responses here are crazy. I’m not in the USA so I can’t advise you on available resources to help you leave, but I wanted to say that your husband sounds abusive towards you and neglectful to your child, and anyone in your position would be struggling.
To those saying that OP is at fault: she isn’t just cleaning up after the child, she also has to contend with her hoarder husband’s mess. When you have a clingy baby it is basically impossible to clean while they’re awake so she only has tiny windows of time to clean AND cook AND tidy etc…. And I assume zero time for herself. Why should her husband get downtime every day and she get nothing?
There will be a way out of this, and your life will
improve.
if you have not been screen for postpartum depression please talk with a physician about this possibility.
Otherwise would agree with other commenters that your husband is a deadbeat dad and it’s time to look into leaving him.
I left the father of my child for this reason. And also because while he earned the money, he was ridiculous with it. I was lucky I could move in with my parents (albeit in a different country so there’s headaches there) and I’m now paying his mountains of debt out of child maintenance and my parents money.
Sometimes it won’t get better – such as my case. Sometimes it will: for a little while after a conversation. But it normally regresses to the same as it was. Have a look and see what support you have around you – family, friends etc then what support you could get such as women’s shelters, financial aid etc.
You both married at such a young age, people change so much and mature differently 🙁
You do what’s best for you and your baby, even if it doesn’t seem the easiest way. You are not alone in this OP…. Even if we’re a bunch of strangers online, we are here for you and a lot of us are going through/have gone through this.
Just a hunch… but if this is a military marriage, the service has lots of resources that you can take advantage of, and they will make sure that child support is paid if you do decide to leave.