My husband offered me an out yesterday

[pkhaney]

Some back story to set the scene:

Last year, my husband(27) our 4 year old, and I (pregnant, 25) moved two hours away to a new town for his job as a police officer. He loves his job so much and we’ve been very happy. We love living in our new town. Our daughter is happy, I am happy, had a wonderful birth and PP experience. Im grateful to have a good life. I had our baby 5 months ago and ever since his birth it seems like my husband hasn’t been himself.

Husband works midnights and has not adjusted to the schedule at all. He also does about 10 hours OT or side jobs before he goes in for shift each week. He Sleeps a crap ton on the weekends to catch up sleep from the week and is constantly in a hazy, brain foggy state.
I do all the cleaning and care for the house/children. I run them around, do grocery shopping with them, etc. he takes care of financials.

He puts our 4 year old to bed and sleeps with her from 8:30-10:30/11 every day on top of sleeping from 7-8 until 3-3:30…we dont get much family time all together due to his schedule or him just being in a bad mood.
I have found it’s easier to do things with the kids without him. We have our system and adding him to it throws us all for a slight loop I guess. He doesn’t seem to want to do activities with us also lately. Last week, husband started free therapy through his department.

Sooooo yesterday morning at 4:50am, I woke up to a notification on my phone that my Apple ID was used to sync my text messages to our laptop. Strange. I get on the computer and check web history while husband is asleep. He logged into my email, changed Apple ID password just to sync messages, deleted the emails to cover his tracks, got on safari and logged into my Snapchat, FB messenger, Facebook, Instagram. So unlike him and immediately broke so much of my trust. He knows he is openly welcome to look at whatever he needs to on my phone as I have absolutely nothing to hide.

I go into the bedroom and calmly ask him what happened. He blatantly lied and attempted to cover it up. I told him to cut the shit. he admitted to it all because “he had a bad dream”. I let him sleep until 4pm because I didn’t want to see him and have to deal with this shit. I was shaken up and nervous and couldn’t eat on top of caring for our babies.

I woke him up at 4pm and he ignores me. Eventually he the conversation goes:

Him: “you seem mad.”
Me: “I feel like I have a right to be mad”
H: “I shouldn’t have done that”
M: “you shouldn’t have…aaaand?”
H: “aaaaand that’s it.”
awkwardly pacing until he starts talking again*
H: “The past few months I’ve felt like you think you are trapped here. Everybody you love is two hours away and you’re just stuck in the house everyday. I want you to know if you want an out, you can leave. That’s why I’ve been asking if you are still happy here. You don’t have to be stuck here if you don’t want to be”

M: “I’ve always told you I love being here with you and the kids and im not unhappy. I have no desire to leave you or take the kids back to our old town. Are you unhappy?”

H: “im not UNhappy. But im having a hard time separating the job from home life. I don’t want to be in work mode every day but when im home, im anticipating just getting back to the department. I hear my radio even when it’s not attached to my vest. Nights suck on my day off. Just playing Xbox, looking at my phone, and scrolling Netflix until I find something decent for hours until I feel like im finally ready to close my eyes. And by then you guys are waking up. I have a lot of anxiety and I panic when you leave the kids alone with me. I feel like the baby will flip out and I won’t be able to comfort him like you can. I need a hobby outside of the job but we don’t even have time to go to the gym together since I wake up so late everyday.”

I guess he just feels stuck. I feel overwhelmed handling literally everything this house and life is offering us. Most days I can take care of everything and everybody (except myself) to keep us all functioning but if I step off beat, everything is shot to hell and I don’t have help getting our shit back in order. I think we’re slightly sinking and now with this new broken trust and disregard to the only privacy in my life, I feel like my husband is self sabotaging our marriage? Maybe he doesn’t want this life anymore? Why would he give me an out I didn’t ask for? When I ask him these things, he denies it but it’s not very convincing…I don’t have much more to pour into his own cup without taking the last drops from my own. He also agreed to up his therapy sessions to 1x weekly instead of 1x biweekly. Idk how to help him.

 

[gospeltv]

@pkhaney He doesn't seem to be coping well with nights at all. It messes with your body. Is switching shifts an option at all?

 

[pkhaney]

@gospeltv Hopefully after this year is up. He’s so low on the totem pole it’s either midnights or afternoons. If he’s on afternoon shift he will literally never see our girl once she starts kindergarten

 

[gospeltv]

@pkhaney Ok hear me out. He will be sleeping again at a normal time. That will improve his mood. He can get up with her in the morning and do breakfast and wait for the bus or do school drop off. He barely sees them now as it is. And this way he sees you and baby during the day and you can do things together. This seems like a much better solution.

 

[acaudpdrkkl2015]

@gospeltv Plus he gets weekends with her back that way, not just some foggy daytime and nights of video games.

 

[gospeltv]

@acaudpdrkkl2015 Yes true!

 

[samkruger]

@pkhaney My husband was in law enforcement for 9 years. He changed careers right after our son was born because he hated the schedule so much. Nights were so incredibly hard on him. I remember right after we got married, he laid in bed one night and just sobbed (This is one of 5 times I’ve ever seen him cry in almost 10 years together) because he felt like he wasn’t doing enough for us. He was always missing family events. Never home. When he was there, he was sleeping. It really broke him that we’d just started a new life together, and I was spending every day and night at home alone.

So it’s possible that like others have said, he’s cheating and giving you an out. But it’s also possible that he genuinely feels like he’s failing you with the lack of quality time and still giving you an out.

For us, things got better when my husband was able to switch to a permanent day shift. It took him 5 years in his agency to get there. And it got better still when he left law enforcement all together.

Edit: Misspelled a word

 

[iwonder777]

@samkruger

So it’s possible that like others have said, he’s cheating and giving you an out. But it’s also possibly that he genuinely feels like he’s failing you with the lack of quality time and still giving you an out.

As someone whose depression is triggered by sleep issues, this was my first thought. When you're deeply depressed, you feel like everyone in your life would be better off without you/you're holding them back. It's of course possible he's cheating, but it's also possible he's having some mental issues and doesn't know how to communicate.

 

[katrina2017]

@iwonder777 Totally agree. My partner went through a deep depressive phase some years ago and kept offering me an “out,” not because they didn’t want to be with me but because they could not see how being with them could possibly make me happy.

 

[elise8]

@samkruger Yeah as the wife of a medic who was on night shift when our eldest was a newborn, it absolutely fucks with your mental state, and adding young kids into that mix just exacerbates the issue. Night shift is hell on the body and the mind both. I'm a bit upset that everyone on reddit always seems to jump to "he's cheating, he's manipulating you"... Especially when a bad shift in an already tough job is involved. Sleep is so important to mental and physical health, and working contrary to your circadian rhythm has proven adverse effects. OP, I encourage you to research the effects of shift work on the mind and body. Night shift can definitely explain a lot of this.

 

[katrina2017]

@pkhaney My husband is a cop and was on midnights for 3 years. It changed him mentally and emotionally. The best thing he did was get promoted and have a normal shift again

 

[tesshopes]

@pkhaney My dad (not a cop just to be clear) did afternoons most of my childhood and it was fine. He worked 2pm-10pm. Much better for us than when he worked graveyards (10pm-6am). It’s easier to cope on the weekends too.

 

[jesuslover20021234]

@pkhaney Afternoons are awesome. Why can't he take he to school in the morning?

. But don't ignore your instincts and seek your own counselling away from his. You need to get your ducks in a row. If he needs a break from work your return to work could save your family. If he needs a break from you you'll be self sufficient. My PMs are open if you need support. Have lived through it all and somehow still survived.

 

[racer283]

@pkhaney Swings/afternoons are far better than graves, even with the kids being school age.
Even if off days are in the middle of the week.
My kids know that 3 days of the week dad will be home and awake when they get home from school.
As he gets time and experience he will have better pull during shift bids. It won’t always be like this.

On graves he would sleep during the day until almost dinner time and it was SO stressful. I was constantly trying to shush the children on top of running the whole household. His sleep was terrible. It affected all of us all around. He finally talked to his boss- he was still in training at the time- and his response was that family comes first and they will absolutely work with him to make sure things aren’t more stressful than they need to be.

Can you husband at least express these difficulties to his boss and see if they are willing to work with him in anyway? If not, swings are far better than graves were. And it’s nice while the kids are at school because we get a few hours together (with the baby home) without the older kids to hangout or run errands.

 

[gregh87]

@pkhaney is he really seeing her now? it doesnt matter much if hes a miserable zombie. afternoons aren't easy but theyre better than midnights. my husband took our kid to school and spend extra time together on the weekends. it sucked but my husband was better rested, we got to spend more time together during the day and he got more time to do things on his own.

 

[jwilder9]

@pkhaney I did some corporate training contracts with some manufacturing plants that offered third shift and heard some workers who did it long term talk about their success strategies.

One common one was to switch when they slept during the day. I think the intuitive response is to sleep in the morning when you get off shift but there where two other recommended patterns.

One was to more closely mimic what normal workers do. So they slept the 8 hours before their shift (afternoon to evening). This allowed them to be up during the day with their children and they said on days they were off they would "stay up later" and it allowed them to sleep through the night. They compared it to going to the bar on a Friday night and sleeping 3/4 am - 12 pm when you normally go to bed to 10 pm - 6 am during the week.

Except they slept 2 pm - 10 pm during the week and then their "Friday night" was them sleeping 8 pm - 4 am which was closer to what their spouse/family slept and they weren't staying awake all night in a dark and quiet house on their off nights.

The other sleep schedule was to do 2 blocks of sleep with an awake time in the middle. Some did a 4-4 split ( 8 am to noon then back to bed after an early dinner for a 6 pm - 10pm) or a 2 hour and 5 hour block that worked well for their family.

Both of those seemed to prioritize being awake during the brighter part of the day and spending time with children and spouses when everyone was more awake and not winding down in the evenings. Those with only school aged or older children and spouses who worked traditional shifts seemed to like sleeping during the day so everyone was awake/home in the evening together.

All this to say, he is obviously struggling with his current shifts and might need to consider switching it up. He could also talk to his doctor about an anti depressant, or something like Provigal, to combat the known effects of late shift work on the body and mind.

Just some thoughts I had!

 

[dawgone421]

@pkhaney If he doesn’t get off this night shift he’ll be seeing his kids every other weekend or less

 

[christianwriter87]

@gospeltv I worked graveyards for a year. Gained 20lbs. Never ever felt rested. Hated my life. Literally cried all the time. The night shift is so hard.

 

[gospeltv]

@christianwriter87 I worked overnights for 3 months. My period stopped the entire time. I've never had that happen otherwise.

 

[mamazluv]

@gospeltv This was my thought too. My husband worked nights for 3 years and honestly after switching jobs I realized how bad his health (mental and physical) had gotten because of it. I think part of it is never seeing the sun. It's so hard on both of you! I don't have any answer, just lots of sympathy.