I need advice in a big way.
Find a Conversation
| Sat, 02-21-2004 - 1:12am |
I realize that his field of employment is very bleak right now and I think he has finally accepted that he's going to have to look into something else. He's looking for work again but I had to get on his case for him to file for unemployment. We can't make ends meet on my salary alone. Our savings has dwindled to almost nothing. I've asked him if he wants to go to school, I've suggested other careers to him. He always seems to have an excuse and makes no effort to figure out what he wants to do. I know he's feeling sorry for himself that he has all these skills that no one seems to want (the jobs are being sent off-shore).
He's been in a pretty good mood until a few days ago. I don't know what changed exactly but he suddenly got very depressed and irritable. He actually said he was going to tell his doctor about the depression. That really surprised me because he's usually in denial about things like this. I tried very hard to listen to him and then we had a stupid fight over a phone call he made. He used a 10-10 number instead of using the long distance plan that I pay a monthly fee for. I have told him at least 2 or 3 times not to do that. He got more irritated and so did I. Then I blurted out something I shouldn't have. I asked him why he didn't get my a Valentine's card. He got really mad then and stormed out of the house.
First of all, he was wrong for not doing anything for me for Valentine's and I was extremely hurt. I gave him a card that evening and he said that he thought we were going somewhere that weekend so I guess that's his excuse for not having anything. We didn't go anywhere due to weather, but even if we had, he should have had a card at the very least or, he should have been more aplogetic about why he didn't have a card. I cried for hours that night. He sort of apologized a few hours later but I still wanted to know why he didn't do anything. Does he just not care? Is he really that depressed? What makes me madder is his mother sent us some money last week and he immediately got her a card (I'm pretty sure it was a Valentine's card) and sent it on to thank her. While I think it's wonderful that he thanked her, how in the world could he go out and buy his mother a card and not his wife? He knew that I'd sent a card to my parents, so it wasn't like he forgot. Did he somehow think I sent my parents a card and didn't have one waiting for him? I get even more irritated when I think that he spent about two hours on the phone with his mother that evening. What's up with that? But he did absolutely nothing for me an like an idiot, I asked him about it when he was down.
He knows that things like this are important to me. When we had our very first wedding anniversary, he didn't get a card or a gift or anything. He figured that since we were going somewhere for the weekend that that was enough. Well, perhaps if he planned the whole weekend and made all the arrangments, I could understand that, but he doesn't. I'm the one that always has to make all the reservations and do all the work. I layed down the law then and he's been pretty good since then until now.
When he gets upset, he won't talk to me. In time he'll eventually snap out of it, but the problems still remain. They are never resolved. I want to discuss things, but he can't seem to handle that. He takes everything as an insult.
He hasn't really talked to me for three days now. There are a few things he should be doing for our pets that he's not doing. I'm so tired of his immaturity. He didn't have an easy childhood and he has a lot of issues from that. I have tried to be understanding but I can't make him deal with those issues. He's got to do that himself and I don't think he ever will.
Sometimes I think I need to leave. It gets so tiring to see him answering emails instead of doing more things that might help him get a job. He actually had an interview for a temp job and they wanted him to bring a lot of things to the interview. He didn't do anything about it for two weeks and suddenly started blaming the employer that he had to do so much when they probably wouldn't hire him anyway. I think that's when his bad mood started. He started whining to me about it and I didn't know how to respond to it. I said very little and I kept my opinion to myself. I think he most likely canceled the interview. I don't know how he can do that when he knows we need the money. Where is his sense of responsibility?
We have a lot of issues and nothing has really been the same since about two months ago. I emailed a friend of mine and had made a comment that I was tired of not having any money and wished that my husband would find some work. She wrote back and told me to kick him out. It made me mad that she would say that (although I don't think she really meant it, she probably thought she was being funny). I didn't answer the email right away and he saw it. He got really mad. He told me that I wasn't ever kicking him out. That it was his house too. I have never threatened to kick him out and I told him that I was mad at my friend for saying that. Eventually, he calmed down after about a week or so (for a time I thought my marriage was over). He really hates my friend but now I'm starting to see why he does and I'm not liking her much either. Since that time, though, I don't think that he's truly gotten over that incident. He seems to think I whined to her about Valentine's. I didn't say a word to anyone about it, least of all her.
I could go on for hours. Any insight would be helpful. I either need to end this or find a way to get through to him. I am having a hard time living like this. It's getting me down too. Really down.
One more thing. He went to the doctor the other day in my car. I went somewhere and found some anti-depressants in my car. So maybe that's a step in the right direction and perhaps I should be patient for a little longer. I still worry that nothing will change. He is very smart and has so much potential and he's a lot of fun when he's not in a bad mood. I just don't know what to do for him or how to deal with him.

I went through something similar to your situation. My husband is a Mechanical Engineer, and has had a hard time finding work in the city we live in. He has been out of work for months on end, and when he does find work, it's usually for short-term contracts, and then he's out of work again as soon as they've ended.
DH would also be VERY irrisponsible with his contract jobs. He'd sometimes not go into work at all, or drive half-way there only to turn around and come back because he decided he didn't want to go. And on contract jobs, you DON'T get paid for sick or vacation days. So I could never count on his income to pay the bills. And to make matters worse, he had a TON of credit card debt when we got married...so I felt like I was paying (literally) for his mistakes by myself.
When it came to looking for work, he would get discouraged, and there were times that I wasn't quite sure that he was actually LOOKING. For all I knew, he could have been home surfing the web or playing games all day. There were several nights that he would be downloading songs off the internet or playing online poker, instead of looking for a job -- so I'm fairly sure he was capable of doing that during the day too.
Finally, while he was working in a contracting position, things came to a head. He decided all of the sudden that he wanted to become a professional poker player, and started going to the casinos a lot. And then one night, he didn't come home at all (and was aparently too busy at the poker tables to get up and call me). I found out the next morning that he had been there from 10am the previous morning, until 4am that morning, playing poker. To make matters worse, I found out that he had been let go from his contract job -- TWO WEEKS PRIOR. He had been dressing for work each day and pretending to go in!!
I lost it at that point -- I told him that I no longer had faith in him to hold up his end of the marriage. I told him he needed to quit gambling, and that he had responsibilities as a husband and partner. If he was unable to take care of those responsibilities because he was depressed (or something else), than we needed to get him help. I also said that I needed to know, 100%, that he was busting his butt to find a job, and that if he DID find one, that he would do everything to KEEP that job. If he didn't -- then I was going to seriously consider leaving.
He immediately shaped up -- he checked into couseling for depression, looked for a job
(and found one in only 5 weeks!!), has done SO well at this contract that the company is trying to hire him on DIRECT, he's making great money and he says he feels so much better about himself. He keeps thanking me and saying that he needed -- and was actually waiting -- for me to give him a swift kick in the butt. Wallowing in pity had made him forget the reality of his resposibilities and he just needed someone to bring him back to earth.
I hope that you can somehow do the same. Remind him that you love him dearly, but you've had enough of his constant self-pity and depression. It's time that he do something to help himself, and to help save your marriage. He'll thank you for it later...
I hope this somehow helps you....good luck!!
Thank you so much. Maybe that's the way to go. It may not hurt at all. I am miserable, he is miserable and what is the point of living together like this. I will wait until he's in a better mood, however, what worries me is he will just take it all personally and not listen at all.
You are so lucky that things worked out with your husband. Congratulations!
Sometimes I think my husband sabotages himself at jobs (even permanent ones). He has an attitude about HR, sales people, and management, and I don't think he hides it well enough. He can do a great job, but when it comes time to cut people, he always seems to be the first to get layed off. A couple of companies have essentially fired him by making up half-truths. I also think he needs to be more agressive. When he sees things at work slipping through his fingers, he procrastinates. Perhaps if he would actually finish his research into something and present a different solution with facts, maybe he would get what he wants and get to stick around. That's basically what happened with his last job. There was some nepotism going on, and maybe he couldn't have beaten it, but the person he was up against proposed a ridiculous solution to a problem they were having (which they ended up going with behind my husband's back). The solution may have helped some while making things worse for others. My husband kept telling me how he knew of a better way but he never gave them the facts and figures. He had plenty of time to do it and didn't. They didn't really fire him, they just told him the budget couldn't handle his coming in for the rest of the month (this was back last year). He left in a huff and emailed them later to give them his hours and tell them to call him when they needed him. They never called. I think that someone should have had the guts to tell him that they couldn't afford to have him back (which is pretty much the truth since they were too busy overpaying needeless management for a company of 20 people). He really liked that job and he sacrificed for them. He went off contract so they could save money on paying the contract firm but they never gave him any benefits, vacation, etc. He took it when they cut his hours time after time yet they didn't even have the nerve to tell him they didn't need him back. Basically, the money he was making went to the "relative" of one of the investors. I don't know why my husband can't see that this isn't his fault. You can't beat something like that when a struggling company is mismanaged that way.
Another issue is his mother. I have grown to dislike the way she let him be treated by his father. I find that to be horrible. How can a mother not protect her child? Yet, he is close to her. He knows that in the end, she will always pick his sister over him, even though his sister is a horrible human being. So why is it he can't realize that I am really the only person that truly supports him? If I say a bad word about his mother (even though he does all the time) he has a fit. Yet, when my mother was here to take care of me after major surgery, he treated her like crap. She didn't deserve that. He was so immature. She asked him to put away the laundry or something and he got in a huff because she would tell him to do something. She's used to being in charge and he knows that. She's cared for many of her children after they've been sick, etc. She had to fly here to do it and she did so on her dime. After he got mad he wouldn't bother to go eat after she'd made dinner. It was very mean. She came to me once I started feeling a little better and said she was going to take a cab to the airport and trade in her ticket and go home. That's how uncomfortable she felt, and she told me she didn't want to come between the two of us. That's how unselfish she is. She was willing to leave because she knew I was getting after him for the way he was treating her. I begged her to stay and she did. I was lucky. He finally started acting better, but he still doesn't take responsibility for acting like a jerk. He still thinks he was right in that situation.
When we had the fight over Valentine's he immediately said I must have been talking with my "friend" about it. I didn't say a word to her or anyone. He doesn't seem to believe that. I don't lie to him and never have, but he still doesn't seem to trust in what I say. Maybe he can't trust me because he's a big liar himself. Who knows. I'm not a shrink.
I did have another friend tell me I should leave him. She says he's immature. She's not the kind to meddle in our affairs, but she'd observed some things going on and she told me that after he'd done another mean thing. Truthfully, I think she's right. He is immature. I figured he'd mature as he got older just like I did. I was probably almost as immature as he was when we got married. I have done some growing up and he has done very little.