Girl, he’s literally using you. Using you!!!!! You are literally his mom omfg. He won’t even make FOOD FOR HIMSELF. Are you serious rn??? Plenty of people get their doctorates while raising babies/young children and working jobs. You are raising a baby for a husband (idk, you gonna buy your own ring too? Heard amazon has good sales ?). You sound waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too good for this dude.
I won’t lie, the way you have wrote this post has been entirely amusing, I don’t have advice (although I can feel and understand the frustration you must feel rn) but the fact you was like “yknow what, we are going onto bullet points” made me snort, you are very good at writing, I love it
>Is this actually going to end when his degree finishes?
It probably won’t change because this isn’t “stressed out, abnormal behavior” him… this is a man who has comfortably settled into a relationship and started treating his partner like an emotional punching bag.
This man is taking advantage of you, and you are letting him. He should at the BARE MINIMUM be pulling his weight with household chores, and tbh he should be greatful you are financially supporting him. Normal people doing phds make do on their stipend and manage to live their life and finish their PhD. You are financially, emotionally and physically supporting him (by doing all the household chores) and he has the gall to be rude to you and criticise your cooking!! He doesn’t respect you as a person and is using you.
Lay down some new rules, give him a week. If he doesn’t shape the fuck up then leave him. He’ll never change, there will always be something stressing him out, and you sound like you have your shit together and could do SO much better. Get a partner who is willing to be your equal, not your dependant.
I can sorta relate, just finished my PhD earlier this yeah (also in the UK) and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. my question to you is how long has this been going on? if it was the entirety of the PhD I would say bail. If it was only the last couple of months I would try and have another serious chat with him. In my final days I barely remembered to drink water, was up at 6 worked until 11 and ate at the computer if I remembered to eat at all. My so was incredibly supportive and without him making all the dinners/doing all the cleaning I have no idea how I would’ve coped. Probably just lived in filth I guess. when I submitted though everything changed and we got back on track with kinda like a new honeymoon period, so I do believe that PhDs can seriously deal some damage to a person.
That being said, the one glaring difference between me and your SO is the constant criticisms/attempted isolations, and to me this is concerning. you’re doing EVERYTHING in your house to help him and support him and he can’t even appreciate that? on top of that if he can’t support you he doesn’t want you to get support elsewhere? thats concerningly selfish. I can understand if he doesn’t have the energy to be supportive (i barely had the energy to take care of my own hygene) but he should be understanding when you need to take care of yourself by finding support.
Also for me it wasn’t the entirely of the PhD that I was this stressed, just the very end (last 6mo). I think this gave my partner hope that it was an extraordinary time and not the future we have to look forward to. so I also gotta ask – has his behavior been a slow slide into dysfunction or has it been a marked change in response to stress? if it’s the first it’s likely he just got comfy in the relationship and probably difficult to change. if it’s the second it might be worth waiting it out.