Arsh, I do care about my husband and how he's screwing up his life but I have to admit I'm also concerned about how his instability affects us. No matter how I do the math, I can't cover all the bills even with a full-time job. We live in one of the most expensive areas in the country and it's been five years since I've worked full-time so my salary and job level have stayed somewhat stagnant. There's also a big risk that I will miss too many days of work - if we get sick like we've been and I don't have enough sick days then I'll have to pay someone $150 or more to stay home with my sick daughter if I can even find someone. I need to downgrade everything in my life to the mere basics to survive and even that isn't enough. It just feels very unfair. I also don't think that's right that I have to be totally on my own financially. My husband has a responsibility to contribute. If he won't do it informally then it's immediately back to getting divorced once he's working again because I could end up bankrupt if everything collapses. All these years I've had a top credit score and no debt and now within the past year everything is crumbling from underneath.
My friend who is closest to my situation and who is also a physician believes my husband will find a new job quickly. He also says I should be tough with my husband and tell him in the meantime either he contributes financially or he moves here to care for our daughter while I work full-time. That makes sense, although I doubt I could convince my husband to care for our daughter.
I do care about my husband and I've invested 12 years of my life into him and this marriage so I wish he would get treatment for whatever is wrong to fix his life. I know there's nothing I can do about that and it's hard because we're still married so our financial decisions and mistakes still affect each other. At this particular moment when my husband is unemployed and I'm only a part-time consultant it's not the best time to get divorced either because we can't even afford the mediator expenses. We just have to get through this somehow.
My husband is now here in our area staying with his family for the next five days. We haven't seen him yet. I again feel upset that he's lounging around with his family when he could be here helping with our daughter. Hopefully he's busy applying for jobs. He's been acting nice but I've been too nice in giving him all this time and space, removing all the pressure, and letting him do whatever he wants instead of finding leverage to get him to care for his own child.
We'll see how it goes when he visits. I do believe DB is right in suggesting you give a spouse time and space and it has helped in our case, but I guess the thing about staying in this limbo period is at some point the wayward spouse almost takes advantage of the time and space and starts to think this is a perfectly fine scenario. We don't have to get divorced anymore, but there's no need to work on the marriage either. I'd still like to wait up to another year before filing for divorce if my husband doesn't do it first, just in case he does decide to turn his life around and for me to be stronger and more stable. It'd be wonderful if my husband chooses to start going to counseling, gets on medication, and wants to reconcile and we slowly see where it takes us. The chances of that appear to be very slim though, so more than likely this "up to one year" will just be more of the same thing.
