Is it time I left my jobless, layabout husband?

DEAR BEL,

I GREW up in a rough area of Liverpool (I know you know it, because I read you once lived near there) before they bulldozed it. My dad always said if you can survive that area, everything else is easy.

We then moved to Warrington, but I hated the place and when I was 20 packed up and moved to Holland. After four years I moved to Bristol and after a while met someone and got married.

Fast-forward 16 years . . . we own our own house (with a mortgage) and have always worked hard. I’m now in my early 40s and my husband just turned 50. Since Covid struck last March, he hasn’t had a real job. He’s been doing bits and pieces for cash but not really making a great deal of effort.

I’m lucky enough to have been able to work from home throughout this. But my patience is coming to an end. I’m paying for everything while he sits around doing nothing.

I’m working seven days a week to keep on top of my job, then he expects me to cook and clean the damn house. He complains he has no clean clothes and feels hungry. Sometimes I could kill him. I feel like I’m losing myself, my history, my carefree attitude.

I can’t talk to my family for various reasons. I don’t want to open up to my friends in case they turn on him, but I can’t carry on.

I have tried helping him to find work and he just comes up with reasons why he can’t do it and then doesn’t do anything about anything else. I’m at the point now where I want to sell the house, get divorced and move back to Liverpool.

Do you have any suggestions for me? JANET

Sorry to state the obvious, but it’s a sad fact that we’re all living in very testing times, when minor irritants loom so large they threaten to overwhelm us. your email comes as yet another reminder of stress — and I notice them more and more, as people’s responses are scratchy or otherwise over-the-top.

It seems to me to be sensible if the first thing you do is not to assume that divorce and moving would make you happier, but to ask yourself what your relationship with your husband was like before last March.

It’s vital to be honest and not rewrite history. Was he lazy and unmotivated before losing work because of lockdown? or are this general malaise and his selfish demands a result of being demoralised by the situation, both personal and national?

Many people are finding they have lost all their energy and, as a result, their self-esteem. Might this be true of your husband?

Asking that question is not to make excuses for the fact that he expects you ‘to cook and clean the damn house’. I would find that pretty intolerable, too. Homes are shared and work should be, too.

But it must have occurred to you that he might be feeling really low — made worse by a feeling of helplessness because you are now the chief breadwinner.

obviously this needs to be talked through. your tough upbringing turned you into a survivor who values independence — but you might find it a struggle in real life.

you dream of returning to Liverpool, even though you haven’t lived there since childhood. But places change (Liverpool certainly has) and your fantasy of a new life might prove very lonely indeed. you don’t mention

children, but surely the way forward for now would be to try to glue the cracks in your marriage — at least until the time when we can all leave our homes, enjoy a social life and feel that there is some sort of a future.

Only then will you be in a position to make a rational decision about life with your husband. In the meantime, think about seeking professional support ( relate.org. uk) and make your mind up to have a proper, serious conversation with him about what’s wrong.

Please avoid accusations — no matter how much you want to berate him for faults. Instead, explain that you are tired, unhappy and frustrated, and really need his help. A cleaning and cooking rota — drawn up properly — will be a start.

Using a calm, measured tone is vital — because that brooks no opposition. I suspect he is feeling inferior and so needs to know that you have weaknesses, too. Covid has ruined so much, but as a strong woman you should ask if it can destroy the life you have built.

You are still young and ultimately may choose to make a new start on your own — but something tells me now is not the time.