TL/DR Old manager is divorcing her house husband after his house-husband role is no longer required and he can't re-enter the workplace. He goes from brave soldier to fat hobo in under two years

About three years ago, I was working as a software developer. I had a female manager. Before you go talking about affirmative action or pussy passes, she was actually a decent manager. She was technical enough to effectively manage the team and had a good mentality about her to boot. She is probably the only time I have seen a female in tech worth her salt. Just to background, she had obviously worked hard for that position, coming from South Africa and playing as one of the boys couldn't have been easy.

There was one thing about her though. She was married to a guy and when she was having the first kid, they decided that as she earned more that he would stay at home while she would continue working. Financially it made sense. He would mind house and home, take the break out of his engineering career while she continued managing her team and climbing that corporate ladder.

It's now three years later. Last night, I attended a get-together where a lot of my old work colleagues were. It just so happened she had shown up too.

I asked her about the family and she mentioned her Mum was looking after the kid tonight. When I inquired, it appears that she's in the process of divorcing her husband. AWALT moment came served on a golden dish when she said he was "fucking useless" and even slotted in the world "creep" in there too. There was no limit on the discourteous attacks on his manhood that she could conjure.

When she first came back from maternity leave, it was very obvious to anyone that the husband-at-home dynamic wasn't working. She was much less happier at work because, like all mothers, she wanted to be home with the baby. Like it or not, I believe such an experience is more important to women than men.

I even found her crying in her car one day when her baby had done something (I'll let you guess) which the husband had texted her about. She hadn't been there for the moment and it depressed her. Call me blue pill, but I was more concerned about her going back into work with her head straight as we were meeting vendors that afternoon. Yet she would still describe the husband as great and brave, albeit these descriptions did slowly lose their edge over the time I knew her.

It seemed the house-husband relationship dynamic just had not worked out. She freely admitted that he became fat, she had lost attraction for him and she had grown tired of coming in at 7pm and having to "look after two children" one being the baby, the other being the husband.

The kid reached 18 months old. The husband offered to get a part time role now that her Mum was over from South Africa permanently. The Mother could look after the kid for 1-2 days per week while the husband got some extra cash coming in.

While fine in theory, she first spat about how he had brought this up and actively sought her permission. She said, "Why would he ask me if he can get a job? If you want a job, then go get a fucking job!". I knew here that the husband had totally let go of the reigns in the relationship. And frankly, being the home-husband and no income to speak of, he had no means by which to get any sort of power whatsoever.

Regardless, his plan failed. Oddly, nobody seemed to want a fully qualified engineer for only two days per week! Even his old company declined his offer of less than part-time employment.

When the kid reach 24 months, the wife told the husband that he needs to get a job and stop making excuses. The house-husbandry was no longer required as Mother was now in the picture. He had been made redundant from fatherhood. The wife even started taking her Mother to trips without the husband to fairgrounds or shopping.

The dynamic: the husband with no job, the powerful woman managing a full-time role and junior to boot... You can see where this is heading.

I asked her, why didn't she just bring the Mother over sooner? It seems that she wanted the dynamic to work. It seemed like a good idea that the husband does the child rearing while she brings home the cash. When the Mother arrived, the idea wasn't that she became the child carer as that was the husband's job. They had planned it this way.

She continued, as time went on, it seems the husband had lost more and more battles with the Mother on proper child-care and as I read between the lines the wife had the cast iron ruling. When the wife finally told the husband he needed to go back to fulltime work, it was like the husband had been a lazy bum for two years.

Now came the straw that broke the camel's back. For anybody who works in this field, two years is a long time to be away. And certainly if you have a specialist skill set which is valuable at one company, there is no guarantee it will be of any value whatsoever at another! And this is the position that the husband now found himself in.

It took three months before he found a few short term contracts which still didn't measure up in the wife's eyes. Being where the husband has been before, I know it takes a long time and a lot of sweat to retrain into a different branch of engineering or computing. To do it in three months is practically impossible. But remember we are talking about a guy who was of the understanding that he would be house husband for around five years while the wife squeezed out baby number 2; once the mother was on the scene and his house husband duties were no longer required, he was now useless.

Apparently, the husband lost his last IT contract (it was in the motoring industry in the UK, life for some firms is not good right now) and that was it.

When discussing divorce, the husband kept moaning about how everything was fine until the Mother showed up. The wife seems to agree, but still maintains that there is no excuse. He stopped caring at some stage and dropped the ball. She even said, "He just wouldn't man-up!" The fact he couldn't walk straight back into a role earning the salary he used to be on was no excuse either. A man who has lost his place at home, who is unemployable and who can't bring home the bacon? God what a creep!

Lessons Learned

  • The house husband dynamic does not work. Even when suggested to other females, the instant reaction is "What, I go out all day while you sit on your ass?" And when put into practice, that's exactly what is believed.

  • Even if it does work for while, the day it doesn't work is when Briffault's Law comes into effect

  • The house husband dynamic disadvantages women. They miss out on moments with the kids that are way more important to them than they are the fathers.

  • There is absolutely no infrastructure in place to get men back into work after prolonged length of child care either. However hard it is for women goes double for men. I know as every company I have worked at has had some program to enable mothers back into the workplace. Every single one!

  • If the man is not earning the topmost income in the house, he has absolutely no means by which to retain the leadership role. Once he is forced to pass these reigns to the wife, the entire dynamic is on its ass which only breeds contempt

  • Once the wife's Mother joins her at the Captain's table, the man of the house is nothing more than yet another "child". The wife will take her Mother's side over the husbands in every situation

  • All of this means the classic nuclear family ends up on its ass. The nuclear family does not work when the wife is at the head of the table. Women are chemically designed to be submissive. When they are flipped out of that comfort zone, they are just not good at handling it.

  • When men are forced to be submissive, they are not respected, their opinions don't matter and any failings whatsoever are amplified 100%