Hello all,

This got a lot longer than I wanted. It's just a dump... but i'm just not sure what to start with here.... so here it goes.

My life is a mess to put it mildly.

My husband and I married in 2000. Both of us were married previously. He has 3 children from his previous marriage. He had custody of the two younger ones. I had custody of my son.
My husband’s two children (21 year old son and 19 year old daughter) have been a real problem with drugs, alcohol, dangerous friends, stealing, neither will get a job, etc. We kicked the 21 year old out a couple of months ago. He has now joined the military and is headed for Iraq next week. The 19 year old stays with us sometimes but has to abide by our no drug, etc. rules if she comes to our house.

My 20 year old son lives at home. He is in college working on a degree in physics. I’m trying to preserve some semblance of a normal life for him so he can get through college and on with his life.

In 2002 my husband lost his job due to the economic down turn after 9/11. Since that time he has never found anther permanent job. He’s a web developer. He has had a few contracts he worked. He usually has had a couple each year for about 4 months a year. We started a business, had a few contracts lined up but now with the economic down turn all of our customers backed out and say that they need to wait until the economy picks up.

So, since 2002, I have been basically the sole support of our family. His ex-wife did not participate in raising her children nor did she help out financially. My husband always put whatever he earned into our joint account. But he I feel that he has not enough to find a job to even support his own children.

During these years of unemployment my husband has spend most of his time sitting in front of his computer playing games, surfing the internet, etc. I do need to give him credit that he has kept up on his technical knowledge and has taught me a lot about web development and the computer languages used in doing that. He’s an excellent writer and it now writing a book that he hopes to sell.

All these years, although he was home most of the time, he did not really help with the kids. He would not help around the house. Basically I’ve done it all. For the last 4 months or so he’s started helping by doing dishes a couple of times a week and cooking dinner 2 or 3 times a week. Helps a little with our two dogs.. by giving them their food and letting them out into the yard a couple of times a day.

Two months ago his son got him involved in coaching a semi-pro football team. So now he spends all day Saturday and Sunday doing that. At least he’s out of the house and with people now. Though this cuts into any time we might have together.
My husband wakes up every morning at about 7 am (that’s when our dogs say he has to get up). He makes his coffee, feeds the dogs and disappears into his home office. When I come home after work he might come out of his office to say hi to me for a few minutes. Then it’s back to his office where he eats dinner by himself. He then comes to bed at midnight or later.
On weekends I seldom see him for more than a few minutes.

I’m alone all the time when I’m at home. I have no help from my husband financially or in any other say. Basically I don’t think I really have a marriage anymore. He says that he still loves me and knows that we need to work on our marriage. He is very familiar with the Marriage Builders concepts, has read all the books, etc. He just will not do any of it.

I know that I am not perfect and have a lot to work on myself. For one things I’ve gained a lot of weight with all the stress, etc.

I’m totally lost on how to get my life back on track and how to fix my marriage. It all looks very hopeless right now.

Hi there,

Are you willing to do some very hard work at setting some marital boundaries? It seems you let him do whatever he wants to do in the marriage.

I would start learning why you did not set any boundaries in your marriage first. Why did you let him get away without working for 7 years!!!! Why let him continue getting away with that!

And then learn how to set and keep boundaries on what you will accept and what you will not. He must not respect you much to do that.

The other thing I would do is try and rope in your health issues. I am 15 lbs overweight and i found out last week I have pre-diabetes. Anytime your fasting blood sugar is over 100 in the morning...you have prediabetes. If it is over 125, you have full blown diabetes. The good news is if you find this out now you can lose weight, drop the junky foods, and reverse the diabetic symptoms. I have lost 8 lbs so far and now my blood sugars are almost normal.

Please get a DR visit to check your weight and health. I know when you are busy dealing with that LEACH of a man, and are not setting personal boundaries or making him respect you, you tend to let him walk all over you. When you let a man walk all over you like you are a doormat, you tend to get frustrated and eat and get unhappy. After awhile you stop caring for yourself.

Please you are precious and your health and mental health are both important!

So here is my advice without knowing more:

1. Get a counselor to help you find out why you have allowed this man to quit contributing to your household for all these years.

2. Find out how to set marital boundaries and push him to get a job, any job, and start contributing and respecting you.

3. Get your health issues roped in, check for high lipids and high blood sugar and high blood pressure. Start a fitness program so that you can save your health and your life.


You can start this now, my friend. No man is worth losing your precious health over.

I read your other thread where you kicked out two drug using children. So that tells me you do have some BOUNDARIES.

But NOT WITH THE HUSBAND> Only with the children.

What stops you from setting some boundaries with your husband regarding his contributing to the household?

Can any of us really make another adult do something that they refuse to do? I have sat down with him many times and talked about things like spending time with me, finding a job, working around the house, us working together to do things like mange the house hold. He gives it all lip service and does not follow through.
I’ve used many tones in this too… been nice, understanding… other times and more recently have just lost my cool in talking about it.. I have yelled.
This is an area I’m hoping that I can get some help with here.
The only way I can think of to not ‘let him get away with it’ is to kick him out. Looking back maybe I should have done that a long time ago.
I thought I was doing to right thing to not kick him out with his kids as his kids needed some kind of stability in their lives. But I with the way they have turned out to date I’m not sure I did any good. The both of them tell me that I saved their lives. But who knows if it was worth it or not. All I know is that I’m totally burned out now.
I have helped him job hunt a few times…. Sent out thousands of resumes. I monitored the responses he got just to make sure that he was not ignoring them. He went on a few interviews but never got the job. I have wondered if he blows the interviews on purpose or just by turning people off. I don’t know since I cannot attend the interviews.
How do I set boundaries? In order to set boundaries there has to be something he cares about. I think that the only thing I can do is to tell him to leave. I have felt for a very long time that he must not respect me very much. I’ve told him as much. And of course he says that’s not true. I’ve some to the point that I think he’s just comfortable with a lazy live here and will say whatever it takes (as long as he does not have to really do anything).
This is what I’ve been thinking… that I have to start to tackle this mess by fixing me first. My health needs to be my first priority right now. The problems with his kids have been terrible. I’ve missed so many nights sleep over the years.
Yep.. That’s about where I’m at. I’m so angry at myself for letting it get to this.
Good ideas… you are right that I need to do these... next week would be a good time to start them.

Thanks for your reply… I really do appreciate it.

That’s an interesting observation….. I’m thinking on it……

Let me mull this over for a while. I think it’s an important thing for me to understand.

A good first step is to read the book The Dance of Anger. It tells you how to stop being the only Giver in your life.

As for boundaries, you find things that he cares about, and stop contributing to those things until he evens up. He wants to play games online? Cancel the Internet service. Tell him that you don't need it and since you're the only one paying for bills, it had to go. If he wants it, he is welcome to go get a job at 7-11 to get the money to pay for it.

If he doesn't help around the house - EVEN THOUGH HE IS HOME ALL DAY!!!!! - stop doing HIS work. If I were you, yesterday would be the last day I washed any of his clothes - he has plenty of time to wash them. It would be the last day I made food for him to eat - he has plenty of time to make dinner for ALL of you! It would be the last day I bought those special food items he loves - he wants them, he can get a job at the grocery store like 20 million other unemployed people are now doing. He wants a t-shirt from his favorite sports team - tell him that Joe's carwash has a Now Hiring sign.

That is setting boundaries.

ETA: If he isn't an abusive personality (using you on purpose to get to live like this), then he probably has depression. You might want to try to get him to the doctor, too.

I read that book years ago. Maybe it’s time for me to read it again. I do not recall it being about being the only Giver in one’s life. So maybe I missed the point. I’ll pick up a copy today.

I’ve already done this one. So now he plays games that he does not have to go online for.

But the above gave me an idea. He smokes. I can remove all the money from our joint account and tell him that we are out of money. If he wants a cigarette he can go get a job.

He’s washed his own cloths since we got married. When he and his kids moved in (they were 10 & 12) I told them all that their laundry was their own job. My son does his own laundry too. It’s the one thing that I have been successful in getting them all to do… to include my husband.

For a long time I had quit doing any housework at all in the hope that he’d take charge. I was very clear with him why I was not doing it… Because he was home all day and could do it. After months it got so bad that it was not healthy… I mean really bad. I had to hire someone to cleanup inside and the back yard.

For several months I tried moving him into one of our extra bedrooms, out of his office, thinking that if we was near the family more he’d break out of the isolation. Well it made little difference. He let the trash, books, etc etc pile up in the room. The carpet in that room is now totally trashed. So I tossed him back out to the office that we had built in our third garage bay. He seems to like that the office is isolated from everyone else in the family.

You give good examples of how to set some boundaries. I’ll have to think this through. I was thinking of boundaries as large things which I guess is why kicking him out was the only boundary I could come up with.

The only special food items he wants are coffee, Doctor Pepper and milk. Otherwise he’ll eat any leftovers in the fridge. When he wants something else… that’s when he cooks for us.

I really do not think that he’s abusive. He worked all his life until he was laid off in 2002. He’s 55 now. Before he married his ex he worked and helped to support his mother and 3 sisters. When he was married to his ex he supported her and his children.. working long hours to provide them with a good home. It was mostly his ex’s drug, alcohol abuse and affairs that broke up their married. When we first got married he worked at a very good job with a 6 figure income. It required long hours…. And he was more than willing to do the work. When he has gotten contracts in the last 7 years, again he works very hard putting in long days and does a great job for those who hire him.

I think that he is seriously depressed. Losing his job and not being able to find a permanent one has devastated his feelings of self worth. I believe that he refuses to get work like a grocery clerk because he thinks he had achieve a level of success and cannot face that he has lost it all. He applied for jobs at places like Sam’s Club and home depot. And he gave them his resume… the resume of a high level Information Technology person… and of course they did not hire him.

In technical fields, the longer one is unemployed, the less likely anyone will hire them. He’s kept up with technology, has done projects just to keep his skills up to date. But has not found a permanent job. Most of the jobs in his field are not in our area. He’s been resistant in taking a job elsewhere. I think that if he can find a job anywhere, he needs to go there.

I have been talking to him about him getting help for depression. I think that is the root of his problems.

Thanks for your post...you have given my many good ideas.

This man sounds like a real prize. Wow. I hope you can change things. If not, get healthy and get a divorce. What a millstone he is around your neck. Do you get some good sex out of him at least? Or is that dead too?

yea I know... it's been hard to even get help with this because it's hard to even talk about it to anyone. It's more than embarrassing.


Sex was incredible up to about a 18 months ago. That's gone now too.

What I’ve come up with so far is that a few things contribute to this.

My home life as a kid contributes… my parents were pretty good at setting limits for and parenting. All 8 of us are successful adults.

We all got our degrees; all went on to have good careers, families, etc. There is no way that my parents would be put up with the crap my step children have pulled. I did what my parents would have done… make them take responsibility for their bad choices in life.

But my parents were far from perfect. My mother was a basket case and my father just put up with her. I recall when I was in 9th grade I told my dad that I could not put up with her craziness and abuse. She would do things like make us clean house over and over and over. If one of her copper bottom pots was not shinny and had a water spot on it, she’d take all 25 of them out and make me re-clean them. There were times when she made me stay up all night to clean those stinking pots (today I have only two copper bottom pots and they don’t shine).

My father spent a lot of time on travel so he was not home all that much. His response to me when I complained was that my mother was not well and we simply had to put up with her.

Maybe I’m doing what my father did.. my husband is not well but I’m simply putting up with him.

Scary stuff.

For a few years the drama of his kids was center stage. I hardly had the energy to deal with that. Now that they are gone, I’m left with having to face this mess of a relationship.

Elenor:

I have a question. Are you 100% certain he is not online? Could he have found a free provider or something like that? Is it possible to install a keylogger on his computer to see exactly what he's doing? Does he lock the door? Does his behavior when he's interrupted concern you?

Is he ever out of the house where you can do some investigating on his computer?

I was thinking since the weather is turning nicer and you want to lose some weight, how about asking him to help you with this and walk with you a few miles each evening after supper? Maybe this will be good for both of you and give you some time alone to talk.

Also, check into your health care and see if it would cover counseling for your husband. Approach him in concern and tell him that your tolerance for the situation is shifting and that you feel your health is declining as a result, from the stress and the worry - that you would like to see him consider counseling (have a list ready after investigating your health insurance) and offer to make an appointment for him. Tell him you're so concerned that you've been contemplating separation. He needs to know that his inaction is affecting your feelings for him.

It is important for him to feel the gravity of the situation, for you to be totally honest with how this is affecting you and, thus, affecting the health of the marriage.

If in the past you've conveyed your stance on it and then acted later as if nothing was said, it could be that he will think you're crying wolf. Something has to change in your delivery and followup, if that was the case.

Our house has a computer network hooked up to Comcast. So he has total access to the internet. It is only the paid-for game services that I have terminated. I need the internet for my job. There is no way I can limit his use if I have internet use.

To get to his office I have to go through the garage. He can hear the garage door beeping as I go from the house into the garage. Then I have to open the door to his office. He has plenty of warning.

There was a time a few years ago when I found him doing things online that were not appropriate. After that, with his knowledge, I put a key logger on his computer. All of our computers used to be on the network with a server so I could go to any computer in the house. This is how we make sure that our children were safe online. They had key loggers on their computers too. But in the last couple of years the server is no longer running… it went down and he’s never set it back up. He now has his computer password protected and I cannot get on it. So I’m going to have to ask him for the password and take a look as what he’s been up to. I have suspicions that I will not be happy with what I might find on it.

After that time I found him doing stuff on the computer our agreement was that we would put the passwords to all of our computers and accounts in a file so that it was available to both of us. … ‘radical honesty’. But over time he stopped doing it. I still the password to his email account… the email account I know about anyway. But there’s nothing going on there.

Lately he’s been coaching semi-pro football. It’s the only time he’s out of the house. I want to get his password and do that the next time. But he’ll have warning and can clean things up.

I’d like that. We had agreed to do this a few weeks ago. It’s not happened yet. I guess I need to get more vocal about it.
You are right. I need to say this much more clearly than I ever have before. I’m getting very concerned about the toll this is taking on me. I’ve got to do something.

He does talk about how he wants to put his life together. So I asked him to write me a letter for tonight in which he tells me what it means to him to have his life back together. I’m going to write him my response to the same question relating to my life being back together. We plan a mini-inhouse ‘date’ tonight to read each other’s letters and discuss the topic. This would be a very good time for us to talk about it.

By the way, something odd is going on today. He’s been cleaning house on and off all day. A while ago he was up here in our bedroom/bathroom and even in the kid’s rooms gathering trash and dirty dishes. He set the dishwasher. I can hear him down there now emptying the clean dishes. He just came up and said that he put the oven on self clean (he’s never done that before). He also asked if I’d help him out by talking to my son about cleaning his dirty bathroom. … hmmmmmm

You are right that in the past I’d talk to him about things but there was no follow through… I guess I just have not known how to do that.

And I have not been willing to throw him out. Throwing him out might actually be the most effective way to get his attention. He has now where to go. His family lives on the East Coast. But they are not going to put him up. He really has no friends. Maybe he could to live with the guys in that foot ball team he’s coaching now. How long do you think they would feed him… one day?

I've told him in the past that if the problem is that he does not want to be married to me anymore that's fine. He's free to go. I'll buy him a ticket to go live with his mom.

I'm on the verg of getting mean here… it’s gotten to the point where it’s hard for me to be nice anymore. I’m turning into a real witch over this. It’s hard to contain my anger anymore.

OK, I'm going to change my advice then. You still have Internet? and you try to convince us that you 'trust him'?

Get real, elenor. If you trust HIM, then you are being a fool.

You shouldn't be containing your anger. Why should you?

Stand up for yourself, woman! You deserve better than the crap he is doling out to you, one piece at a time, just enough to keep you from throwing him out.

Stop making a fool out of yourself. He certainly is having no trouble having a laugh over you.

I think that you misunderstood me. There are two issues about the internet that I have discussed here: 1) on-line paid game servers and 2) interacting with women and other inappropriate internet activities.

I know for a fact that he is not playing games on paid on-line game servers because his only access to money is through our joint account. I know where every penny goes. I cancelled his on-line gaming accounts months ago.

As for whether or not he spends time online with women, porn and so forth… I do not know if he’s doing it right now. He’s done it in the past. I would not be surprised at all if he was doing this and hiding it. The way things are set up right now it’s very easy for him to hide it because he’s in an office that’s separate from the main part of the house and he has all the privacy he would need… plus I don’t have the password to his computer right now. I agree with you that I’d be a fool to trust him on this issue. I don’t…

IF he’s having one (or more) online affairs I know that they are only online (not that this makes it any less serious). He’d have to leave the house for that or have a woman in our house. He seldom leaves the house. He cannot have anyone over to our home because there are always other family members and friends of my son here. They would tell me in a heartbeat if he had anyone in the house. They would call me at work to tell me. They are angry with him too.

I agree that expressing anger is important. However, to just start spewing nasty stuff is not productive. Anger can be used as the source of energy to get things taken care of. What I want to do is scream, holler and throw things… that’s not good idea. What I need to do is to stop stuffing my anger and find productive ways to express it.

Yep, that is exactly what he’s doing…. He seems very good at knowing my boil point.

You’re right about that. Like today when he suddenly started to clean house. He knows that I’ve been doing a lot of ‘house cleaning’… like my throwing his kids out. He knows that the focus is now on him. So he starts doing things around the house…

I don’t know if he’s laughing or not. I do know that he is taking advantage so that he can live his non-life in a room with a computer. If he’s laughing he’s a pretty sad person. I have a life outside of one room. He does not. He has no friends (unless they are online). He seldom communicates with his family… they email and phone me all the time asking why he will not answer their phone calls and return their emails.

Think of it. What does the mindset of a person have to be that they will spend most of their day in one room, in one chair at the computer?

""He has no friends (unless they are online). He seldom communicates with his family… they email and phone me all the time asking why he will not answer their phone calls and return their emails.

Think of it. What does the mindset of a person have to be that they will spend most of their day in one room, in one chair at the computer? ""

The mindset is, YAY, I dont have to work! I can sit here all day if I want. My wife will work and make the money. I can sit here and smoke all day and waste time. She can work! YAY I got it easy. YAY!!!!!

All this means is that he has replaced one addiction or pasttime - away from you - with another one. If he still ignores you, the problem is still there, no matter what vehicle.

Sorry, that was a figure of speech. Meaning you are the one not getting your needs met.

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No, there is not a keylogger on his computer. I need to get the password for that computer and take a look at it. I also need to find an updated keylogger.

Yep, no matter what it is he’s doing alone in his office; it’s as damaging as an affair.
That is the bottom line, from my perspective anyway.


I’m thinking that I need to tell him that he either needs to get his act together or he needs to get out. That means get a job, pull his weight around the house, & spend 15 hours a week with me. (That’s the short list. He also needs to give me the password to his computer and let me put a keystroke logger on it.

I need to find a new keystroke logger. The one I have is very old and will not work on his computer.

What about Plan A and Plan B? My gut reaction to them is why should I have to do anything here to ‘win him back’? While I know I'm not perfect and there might be things I have contributed to the problem I'm so burned out I hardly care enough to do it. What your thought on that?