This is exactly what I'm talking about. IF I'm finding solutions to everything on my own and getting things done without him in the equation - THEN I'm right back where I started. This IS what I was doing for years and it worked, but it has drained me. I worked, saved, built, bought, planned, secured, and conquered to give us a great life. My husband just hung on to the lifeboat.

I even gave the same advice to my sister (married to a similar type of man) and she has been successful too. But, this is the double duty I'm talking about. I don't want to do it anymore.

I've got to be honest, ladies, I'm so tired that when I was hospitalized, I thought "wow, I'm finally getting some rest". I took one vacation in the entire time I had my business and wanted many more but couldn't afford to do it. Meanwhile, my husband took a year off work to remodel a house and I ended up having to manage that too and work on it in my spare time. It was horrible. He was goofing off while I was doing triple duty. Ladies, I was doing 2 & 3 all-nighters a month with my work and his - exhausting. And the reason I was doing his is that it was my mother's money who funded the project and she was calling me yelling at me about it because she could not get him to respond at all to her. The project was a 3 mo. project MAX and he worked a year on it? It only got done when I went in and managed him and prioritized it and got to work on it myself. I had to do it for my mother.

It has permanently damaged my & my husband's relationship with my mother, however, she does now see the truth of our marriage - the rose colored classes of Mr. Nice guy are gone.

You sound very smart when it comes to making a living and learning a carreer. Yet you are so in the dark about how to run a successful relationship and marriage.

Your husband is like a 16 year old who you have given a PORCHE to. Do you think he is responsible?

You have tried and tried to sabatage your life. But why? Do you hate yourself?

1. You married an irresponsible selfish man
2. You had 4 kids knowing this man was irresponsible
3. You work hard and give this loser man money
4. You turned over the financial reins to a man who cannot manage it.
5. You listen to some errant idea from the church instead of your own common sense.
6. You continue with this man no matter what he does or how much of a slacker he is.
7. you are still with this man even though he had not the sense to keep YOU FROM DYING! He is a real selfish idiot.
8. You continue to complain about this man but you dont do anything about him.
9. YOu are supporting this man emotionally, spiritually, financially and physically and he gives NOTHING in return!

Honey, when you gonna get some common sense? Get rid of this "millstone" you are supporting. You dont need another child.

Why do you think you need to try and "make it work" when you CANNOT CHANGE THIS MAN, you picked the wrong man to begin with. If you want the rest of your life to be ruined, then give this man more control over your lives and just complain about him.

Your Mom knows the story. Why dont you get a clue!

W2BS,

I am not even CLOSE to being that Psalms 31 gal either! LOL!!!

I only meant to point out that it's okay for a wife to handle finances.

I turned finances over to my H at one point and it was a disaster. I was sick of it and overwhelmed also.

We pretty much work on these things together now, but as I said, he has grown a lot.

I say taking on the foster care children is awesome and certainly describes a Psalm 31 gal.

My H was also very passive aggressive. But yanno? It had nothing to do with me and everything to do with his family of origin. He had to figure it out and change himself. I couldn't do it for him.

You remind me of myself way back when.

I remember being deathly ill and unconscious with the flu for a few days with no care and young children.

At one point I woke up and my DD had gotten into the lemonade and rice crispies, fed herself cause dad had gone to a gig and left me there comatose with the kids. There was rice crispies and lemonade from the kitchen thru the dining room and to the front door. I'm so lucky she didn't take off down the street. Whew!!!

I understand how frustrated you are, especially with the babies, a lot of care and laundry and cleaning.

You are getting a lot of great advice here, this is a great place to be.

Best wishes!

Love in Christ,
Miss M

Honestly, I have several reasons.
1. LOVE AND COMMITMENT
2. DON'T LIKE FAILURE
3. NO GUARANTEES OF A MORE SUCCESSFUL MARRIAGE TO SOMEONE ELSE.
4. HAVE BABIES I LOVE AND DON'T WANT TO LOSE.

This is Marriage Builders, not Marriage Breakers. I do have common sense and have realized through analyzing my life, that if I start over, there are just no guarantees about what will happen. It's apparent that I could pick someone else just like my husband and find myself re-living the same experience but have a previous failure in my life leaving me wondering why I just didn't figure this one out!!!

Does that make sense?

I know this. My H is just like his mother. Took me a few years to figure her out too. She was always the victim of others - very nice lady, yet, very underhanded and uncooperative as well. The truth is I'll never know the whole truth about my H's childhood because I have a very biased picture painted from a PA mom and a H who cannot remember much of anything about childhood.

What's funny is that my MIL drives my H crazy with her behavior. She has made some small improvements since getting saved just over a year ago! But he knows what the behavior looks like from the outside!!! He just does most of it unconsciously. That is difficult to address.


You know I think what happens when you live with a very PA man for a long time, you get frustrated with others too misunderstanding or downplaying their behavior. My H is so outgoing and nice - people want to tell me how lucky I am all the time. They just don't see the other side of it. I think I need some validation that my feelings are normal.

Hmmm... one thing strikes me, and I hope you aren't offended, but... it sounds like you have over-extended yourself and you need to find some responsibility that you can relinquish, something to say no to. It sounds like you are not able to take care of yourself and your family as it stands right now, and it is having severe and long-term consequences on the family's financial security, your career, and your marriage. So, maybe at this point in time it just isn't wise or feasible for you to care for foster children as well? Can you truly say that you are able to care for your home, your M, your own children AND foster children in the way they deserve, right now?

I hear that you are TIRED, dead tired. It's ok to say no to some things. It really is.

Well, the foster children were not planned. We didn't decide "Oh, let's foster". It is a kinship placement. These are my cousin's kids. So, the only choice is to let them go to their grandmother's (65 yr old, single, does not discipline, gets easily frustrated, raised their father, is not loving)! She's a great grandmother when it comes to buying them things but I think raising them is another concern. The 8 month old baby girl believes already that we are her parents and she has whole-heartedly bonded with us. She was very tramatized when she came at 2-1/2 months & we had to work day & night with her. She screamed if you tried to make eye contact and arched her back away from you when holding her. She is still a high maintenance baby. I cannot imagine sending her to her grandmother now. She would most certainly end up with an attachment disorder.

The 2 & 4 year old children are bonding to us as well. It takes longer the older they are, but you can tell they love coming home. The 4 year old was torn until I assured her it was "awesome" to have 2 mommies and 2 daddies. I think that took a weight off her shoulders.

We did consider stopping our fostering, but the only problem is that kids regress 6 mo-1 year in their development when they move them. They were already delayed when they came & we have worked so hard to try to catch them up. Is all that time going to be for nothing?

It's just easier to say then to do. We love the kids all very much.

I can see wanting the kids to stay; very admirable. However, you haven't discussed the elephant in the room: you not setting boundaries and letting him get away with the PA behavior. You really really need to do some reading and studying on how to deal with him effectively. This is in your hands; once you change your part of the dance, he will be forced to change his or suffer consequences. The Dance of Anger is a good place to start; have you read it?

Oh, I understand now about your foster children... I had an inkling it might be something like that, but was hoping not. I can totally see that the consequences of not taking these children in, are worse than the added stress from taking them in. I pray God to give you the strength to cope with all this.

Cat's right, you need to learn techniques for dealing with P/A ppl. I've read The Dance of Anger and loved it.

I will look into getting the book. I admit, though, as I have stated before that I do resent the fact that this is one more thing that is up to me to accomplish! Where is his responsibility to do right?

Yes, I could not even consider allowing these kids to go into the system and didn't think my aunt would help the situation for them. My husband and I have fostered in the past (thinking we would adopt) so we know the system and its failures well.

Just look at what is going on here:
Bleak Stories Follow a Lawsuit on Oklahoma Foster Care
Oklahoma Foster system in "severe disarray" lawsuit claims

How could I let littles ones fall into that? Now you see why I felt I needed to help them.

I do need help with what boundaries to set, what consequences and how to do this. I'm not sure where to start - help!

First, give him a week to get a job, any job. And keep the job. If he quits it he must get another one within two weeks.

Make him apply for 100 jobs a week and take the first one.

If you cant do this, and stand up to him in this way, then you cant do anything.

I am curious about your husband (the monster in my mind).

Does he not feel a bit bad about:

1. Losing your house
2. Quitting job after job
3. Watching you work two jobs
4. Seeing you get sick and then letting you almost die!
5. sitting on his butt while you work

What kind of man is this anyway! I could not love such a self serving man as this one. I would kick him to the curb.

I struggle with the same things, so I don't have anything useful to say right now. But I am here with you, and listening, and will let you know if I think of something...

Maybe if we can figure out some things to do, we can do them together!

He has a job now. He has been working since the first of December.


Honestly, he "says" he cares about what he does, but I do have a hard time believing it because of the PA behavior of minimizing it and excusing it.

He does take care of the kids when he's home. He lets me get some sleep and he watches them. Then, when he goes to work, I take over. So, I am getting help in that area.

As for working, our entire marriage he has worked most of it. He typically has a job, but just ends up tired of it & moving on to something else.

2008 wasn't typical at all. We got the foster kids while both of us were working. My job got put on hold (I started to lose work) so I asked him to come home & I would work while he helped with the kids (since I made the most money). I was already sick for 3 wks and thought I had recovered (although I was extremely exhausted from whatever the kids brought with them from the shelter). However, right after he left his job to come home, I lost more work due to the economy & some due to slow turn around (because I couldn't work with the kids), then got really sick so I didn't work at all like I expected to. That created a major financial crisis after a year of mismanaging funds on his part. So, I did have a part in him not working for a few months in 2008 and in us not having income. However, if the funds had not been mismanaged for a year AND he hadn't wasted so much time remodeling the house, we would not have had the crisis.

Also, taking on 3 kids didn't help because DHS doesn't pay kinship foster parents until they complete classes (even though the kids are living with you) and with me getting sick, we took a much longer time to complete the classes and still have yet to be paid anything for the kids living with us. So, we have had that financial burden on top of our own. So, our house situation I believe isn't 100% his fault, but he set us up for failure.

As far as the sickness goes, I'm not sure what happened there. I told him to take care of the kids while I rested and that turned into 4 days in bed without eating or drinking.

Yes, most definitely, because I sometimes feel like I'm going to go crazy!