Abusive, selfish husband. Don't know what to do.

[konoyaru]

I'm posting his on behalf of a family member going through this. She is aware of me doing this and is telling me what to type. She's looking for outside advice that I cannot give, so here we are. I'll try to make this as short as possible because it's hard to describe 11 years of marriage without going on forever.

 

The husband in the relationship is extremely selfish, self-absorbed, and disgustingly dirty. He refuses to do anything but go to work, and when he comes home, all he does is sit around and watch tv or sleep or make a mess. He doesn't clean up after himself and he expects the disabled wife to do everything for him, including yard work, all the house work, and the finances. Basically, everything.

 

I'll try to do this in a set order; first I'll start with his, the husbands, selfishness.

 

As an example of his selfishness, if the wife goes to the grocery store, he will tell her not to buy too much food. He will get upset and try to argue over buying bare necessities, such as bread and milk. Yet he will come home from a grocery store at midnight with $30-60 dollars of junk food that he buys just for himself. Or when bills are past due and he knows that they are past due, he will ignore plea's not to buy things and then he will go out and buy movies or junk food, or collectible figurines that he KNOWS they don't have the money for. Recently, he took a bonus check from work to buy a slightly upgraded iPhone for $500 dollars, when his previous version was perfectly fine. Instead of using that $500 dollars to pay past due bills, he spent it on himself. He also will not get his wife a cell phone because he thinks that he is the only one that needs one, and he pays $125 dollars a month on his cell phone alone. There are many other selfish things he does, such as buying firearms that he does not need instead of paying bills, and they sit collecting dust.

 

The wife is disabled and on SSD and Medicare. The husband works full time, and he makes enough to pay for all of the bills, but his selfishness and excessive spending make it so that they cannot afford to pay their bills. So the disabled wife is forced to sew 10 hours a day and sell her products on eBay, just to make ends meet. He never shows appreciation. He spends EVERYTHING they have on selfish desires.

 

Now I want to talk about his disgusting habits. He is LAZY. He does NOTHING AT ALL at home. He will come home from work and sit and watch tv all day. He won't clean the dishes, he won't take out the trash, he won't even clean his own bathroom. It's covered in his urine, and the disabled mother is not physically capable of cleaning it, but he doesn't care. It's a health hazard and disgusting. When he comes home from work, he will literally fill the sink with dishes within two hours because other than being lazy, he does nothing but eat. He is obese. He will spill syrup on the floor and oven and he will leave it for the wife to clean up. He will spill drinks and food all over the house and not clean it. He will also throw wrappers from candy all over the floor, KNOWING that the disabled mother suffers to try to clean it up. He even refuses to do his own laundry.

 

Recently he started drinking very heavily and taking drugs on top of it. He will intentionally come home after work, drink 10 to 12 bottles of beer and then pop sleeping pills on top of it to get high. He is always looking for a new way to get high. After threatening to leave him, he claims to have completely stopped drinking and trying to get high. However, the wife is aware that he continues to abuse his sleeping medication to get high. He is bi-polar and extremely aggressive. The wife asked him to go on medication to control the anger, and he did. However, he now blames her for "drugging" him with medication and says it ruins his life and makes him feel like a "zombie".

 

He blames her for everything that goes wrong, and never takes responsibility for his own actions. After multiple talks and deep heart to heart conversations, he has promised on multiple occasions to change, to stop spending money they don't have, and to stop being selfish and putting his own desires above the bills, but he hasn't. After the conversations he will put in effort to change for maybe a week or two, and then he goes right back to being a selfish lazy person. He has no real desire to change and he doesn't care about anything but himself.

 

As an example, he was abusing the wives service dog physically, and she had to get rid of the dog to protect him. That was a few months ago. He has also tried to kill her pet bird a few months ago. He blames her because she "brought the annoying animals into his life.", which he agreed to get. He has stopped the physically abusive stuff to the remaining pets after she threatened to leave him.

 

Two days ago, the wives pet dog (not the service one, just a small pet dog) died, and when she came home from the vet to bury the dog, he sat on his couch and continued to watch tv, and didn't even care that his wife was upset. And to top it off, yesterday the fridge broke and she had to go get another one, and instead of helping her, he went to bed at 2PM and made her go pick out a fridge by herself after she was upset over her pets death. He didn't help cleaning out the old fridge and stocking the new one, and he didn't help remove the old broken fridge from the house either.

 

 

Personally, I think that her husband is a stuck up, selfish pig, and that she deserves better than him. But she is looking for more input on what to do.

 

Keep in mind please that this is a very summed up explanation of what is going on. I couldn't even explain half of the selfish and terrible things he does without going on forever.

[JJ2980]

Seems like your mind is made up. What about hers? Most wouldn't put up with that behaviour but its really up to her to decide what to do. Has she tried having a serious discussion with him about the issues?

[konoyaru]

Seems like your mind is made up. What about hers? Most wouldn't put up with that behavior but its really up to her to decide what to do. Has she tried having a serious discussion with him about the issues?

 

They've had multiple conversations about it, for years now. He always promises to get better for her, and he does for a week or two, and then he goes right back to his selfish ways. From what I can see, he doesn't really care.

 

But it's her husband and her decision, and she's just looking for some input from others.

[JJ2980]

It's really hard cause she relies on his income. I know you say she's got some kind of disability. Would she be able to find part-time work to sustain herself along with any govt assistance? You mentioned medicare. If she does leave she'll need support. Is that available to her? Maybe she needs time out from him. In saying that only she can make any permanent decisions. Can she live the rest of her life with someone who doesn't pull their weight other than financially? Of more concern than his messiness and stinginess is his attitude. That's the one I'd worry about most. It'd take a big mental toll eventually

[Purusha]

If you're looking for an opinion on whether she should leave it is a resounding yes from me - after 11 years it's not going to get any better, and what you've described would suggest to me that he has mental health issues that need to be addressed (such as the violence towards animals, his emotionally and mentally abusive behaviour towards your friend and his self destructive attitude towards his own life).

 

When you're in a financially and practically tricky situation you will need outside help in order to formulate a plan for leaving, over here they have something called 'women's aid' which can help you with that.

 

I would recommend you get in touch with Sistercare which is available in your state - link removed - they deal primarily with domestic violence cases - I would imagine that if your friend hasn't been physically harmed that she is very probably physically afraid of him, and they will be able to help. They have a 24 hour hotline and have community contacts that can help you to find a way out of your situation, and formulate a plan. They also will be able to refer you for counselling services that will help you get your head straight whilst you're dealing with this.

 

Get some facts together on what you can do, who can help you, and what advice you might need legally in terms of your marriage.

 

Good luck and stay strong - and nice one konoyaru for supporting her, good friends are certainly a blessing in these situations.