(Please dont post this one of Facebook, I don’t want my husband to see it). My husband and I have an almost 6 month old son. Shortly after the baby was born, he lost his job. We went from being pretty well off (he made twice as much as I do) to needing help from my parents just to make ends meet. He spent over three months fighting to get unemployment instead of trying to find another job. Initially he said he wanted to stay on unemployment for a bit to get his mental health straight. I didn’t fault him for that, his last job messed him up bad. They drove him into the ground and he worked to help the office even when he was at home, often working evenings and weekends, and management still treated him like shit. The turnover at that office was insane. (We recently found out corporate demoted the manager of his office, which was a little bit of sweet karma coming back at her in my opinion). Anyway, after a couple weeks, he had an interview lined up, and ended up not going because he had no clothes that fit (he gained a lot of weight during my pregnancy and due to his depression). And even though he was filing weekly, still no unemployment. I asked when he was going to start working again. He said he wanted to get in shape first so he could fit in his clothes and feel confident again, and to work on his mental health some more. I get that, I’ve dealt with severe depression before, and I know mental health is important, and I want to support him in his goal to get better. But he stopped working out after just a couple of weeks. Then he said he wanted to try to work from home and build his own business. But after several weeks it was clear he wasn’t working on any of that either. He said that he wanted to wait until unemployment went through because he didn’t want to start building a business/project and then having to give up on it if unemployment got denied and he had to go back to work. After about 3 months, unemployment finally went through, and still he wasn’t working toward any kind of income. He started talking about wanting to stream professionally but has seemed to not follow through with that either. I get that my husband is struggling with his mental health, depression is no joke. And we’ve been having issues too as I learn to be a better wife (I come from an abusive marriage, and as a trauma response I get defensive about everything, which leads my husband to feel like I don’t care how he feels because I’m always explaining what my intent was when something upsets him rather than accepting his feelings, and I get that, I’m slowly getting better, but trauma responses take FOREVER to unlearn). But when I DO mess up and get defensive, he basically calls me selfish person and treats me like I’m this awful person that doesn’t care about him at all, and shuts me out for several days, sometimes weeks. I know this is a lot to read, so thanks for sticking with me so far.
Now, I am still the only one working. My husband takes care of the baby while I am at work. Which we prefer, because we don’t want to send him to daycare. It costs almost as much as I make in our area, plus we don’t trust people we don’t know with him. Now that his unemployment is coming in, we can make our bills without help again. But on top of the full time 8a-5p job, I also am our son’s primary caregiver whenever I’m home. Basically, once I’m home, or if it’s a day off, I have the baby. My husband will play video games all evening when I get home or all day if I’m off. I also do most of the cleaning (almost all of the cleaning if he’s in one of his mad-at-me episodes). Sometimes, not often, I’ll ask him to manage a task or chore while I’m at work, and when I get home and it’s not done, and I ask why, he said it’s because he had the baby all day. Meanwhile I cook and clean all the time while caring for the baby. I can’t tell you the last time I was able to spend an entire evening (let alone an entire day) doing something just for myself like my husband gets to do while I’m not at work. I would LOVE to spend a few hours playing video games like he does. But he treats watching the baby like it’s his job and once I’m off from work, he should be too. I asked him once if he wouldn’t mind watching the baby for an hour or two each evening so I can play games and he basically said that’s his down time, that he needs his time off from watching the baby, but he’d be willing to watch the baby for an hour on my days off so I can play a game. And he did, for a little while. Once that hour was up, he expected me to take the baby back. And it’s been a while since he’s done that. I’m afraid to ask him to watch the baby for a few extra hours for a girl’s night out with some of my work friends, because I’m afraid he’ll say no because he watches the baby all day and he needs a break. But I feel like I never get a break. Another minor thing that gets me is that if I’m at home, he will rarely change a diaper. He’ll tell me the baby needs to be changed, or ask me to change him, instead of just changing him himself. It’s like all these little things are adding up, and I am overwhelmed. Add to that the fact the baby is going through sleep regression and I am so sleep deprived, I’m having even more handling all this than normal. I feel underappreciated. Now, don’t get me wrong, when he’s NOT upset with me, he’s super helpful. Cleans while I’m at work, wakes up with me in the morning to make me coffee and breakfast before I go to work to make my morning less rushed, he’s super affectionate, talks about how we are a team and works with me to manage finances and get stuff done. He just spent the money he got from his 401k from his previous job to help me finish catching up on bills and to buy me a desk for when I start working from home in January and to finally make our basement a living area so that I can use the living room as my office. But as soon as we have an argument, he stops all of it. He talks about how HE paid for most of the stuff in our house, HE bought everything down in the basement, HE bought the bed we sleep on, etc. (never mind the fact that I paid for EVERYTHING from the bills to the groceries to even stuff he wanted [not needed] before his unemployment came in), stops showing me affection almost entirely, barely talks to me, rarely does anything to help me in the mornings or in the evenings or on my days off, and generally just treats me like a roommate instead of a spouse until he’s not mad at me anymore. Needless to say right now he’s mad at me, and I’m just feeling so overwhelmed, and exhausted, and feeling taken for granted and underappreciated. Every time I try to talk to him about this kind of stuff, he tells me how I’m treated when he’s mad at me is basically my fault for “not caring enough about his feelings.” When I try to ask him to do more around the house while I’m at work I’m often told it’s hard to get anything done while he has the baby (even though I do housework just fine while I have the baby). And I’m afraid to ask him what he plans on doing in the next month money-wise, because unemployment will run out the end of January and he still has no concrete plans for bringing in income after that. He was briefly talking to his old office about going back once he learned that the old manager was demoted and the office was under new management. But the one time I asked him if he had heard anything (he hadn’t) and suggested he reach out to touch base, he got a little irritated with me saying he wanted to relax and have a good day and not have to think about that kind of stuff and can I just let him relax. So I’ve been afraid to ask about it since.
Now, the main question for this novel of a post. How can I get him to understand how all of this is affecting me without him getting mad and deflecting? Every time I try he’ll either explain why he needs all this time off, or blame his depression on my selfishness, or say that he deserves all this time off because of everything he’s done for our family (never mind that he’s now been unemployed for about twice as long as I got off for maternity leave) or that watching the baby is a lot of work and he needs to relax whenever I’m not at work. He doesn’t have insurance until January starts so he refuses to do therapy or anything for his depression (and I would KILL to do couples therapy, but my insurance doesn’t cover it and it’s expensive) and I don’t even know if he would do anything about it once insurance DOES kick in. And despite all this I do NOT want to split up. My 16 year old son (from a previous relationship) loves him, and he’s a great dad when he’s being a dad, you can see how much he loves the boys. And of course I love him too. I wouldn’t have married him otherwise. He’s a great husband when he’s in a good mood. It’s just the back and forth is killing me. I don’t know how to tell him he needs to be a father and a husband even when he’s mad, or tired, or it’s my day off, not just when he’s happy. I don’t know how to tell him that it feels unfair that he gets all this downtime to play video games when I get no downtime at all. I don’t get to take a break from being a mom (unless you count 9 hours at work a break), but he seems to be able to take a break from being a dad. I want my marriage to work. I don’t want our baby to grow up in two separate homes. I don’t want to have split custody (I already feel like I don’t get enough time with my oldest because of custody arrangements). And I don’t want to lose him, the man I love. I feel like I’m bending over backwards to provide for the household, take care of the baby, take care of the housework, and hold our marriage together, and I’m just so tired. I don’t know how get through to him. He’s convinced he’s always in the right. How do you get someone like that to listen?