The mistress in the corner in The View from the Terrace

I got upset with Hubby last night. I won’t call it a row because he didn’t get upset, he just sat there quietly defending himself and behaving as though everything just happens to him and he is not able to control the way his is. It was over the constant television watching. Sometimes he will happily watch all day and seems to think that is normal. It feels to me more like an addiction or perhaps a way of escaping from life’s problems instead of trying to deal with them.

The house is a mess. There are endless DIY jobs that need doing and almost every room needs decorating, some rooms have never been decorated and we have lived here almost 40 years. When we bought this place it was his idea to get a cottage in the country. It was the late 70s and he had a dream about becoming self sufficient. He bought a book on self sufficiency and had big plans. We have quite a big back garden and he was going to grow all of our own vegetables and have a goat for milk and make our own cheese. He was even going to build a loom and make our own clothes. I think he had been watching The Good Life on TV.

I got quite enthusiastic. I was into the green movement at the time and thought it would be a great project. I was more realistic than him but I did expect that we would do a lot of these things. He was also going to renovate the house. Before we found our house we looked at another not far from here that was literally a ruin. I mean it had 4 walls but no roof. It was in a beautiful position with a view to die for and Hubby wanted to buy it and renovate it. Thank goodness I put my foot down there, we would still be living in a tent.

After we bought this house we had to do a few things as part of the mortgage agreement so we planned to stay with my mum while the chimney was being pointed and a damp course was put in. The day after we signed the contract we went to the house to make sure everything was ready for the tradesmen and found the dining room ceiling had collapsed, and that was just the beginning. After we moved in Hubby did make a start on renovations. There was one of those old Triplex grates in the dining room with an oven and a back boiler that heated the water. The previous owner had told us that you could get 2 baths a night out of it. Well, after waiting several hours for just enough water to wash up with we decided to replace it with a wood burner. I was at college at the time and I remember coming home to find Hubby had accidentally smashed a water pipe while trying to get the grate out and was desperately sweeping the water away from the living room where we had just had a new carpet put down. It took Hubby a whole summer to get that Triplex grate out and put in the woodburner. After that he slowed down even more and eventually stopped working on the house unless I nagged and nagged. It has been like that ever since and it wears me out.

He does grow a few vegetables and, over the years, has built several sheds and greenhouses, all of which leak. We never got the goat, thank goodness. Last night I got angry and said he had promised to do so much. It would have been better if he had said from the outset that he wasn’t any good at DIY and found it hard to complete tasks and we could have bought a more modern house that didn’t need work. He told me that he had really believed he was going to do all of those things.

Over the years he has done less and less as the house falls down around us. What is really upsetting is that he does jobs for people in the village. He is paid for those of course which may be why he can get motivated. I have had people ring me up and tell me what a great helpful man he is and how lucky I am to have him! I feel like screaming sometimes.

The trouble is, over the years, my health has got so bad that I can’t be behind him motivating him all of the time and sorting things out after he has messed them up. If I have to spend the morning in bed and he is not out doing jobs for others, perhaps because the weather is bad, he will spend it watching old films on TV instead of getting on with a job in our house that needs doing. Then he will watch TV again in the afternoon and after tea he watches all evening. If we have been watching a show together and it finishes at say 7.30 and we plan to watch something else at 8.30 he will switch to an old film even though he can only see part of it, whereas I will get up and do a few things. It really gets on my nerves because it feels like an addiction or an escape from reality. If I say this he protests that everyone watches TV. He can’t see the difference between choosing a few programmes and doing other things in between and watching constantly.

I think it may be partly his upbringing. When we used to visit his mother the TV went on as soon as we were up in the morning and stayed on all day. Sometimes I turned it off if no one was watching or because I wanted the children to get away from it for a bit and she would come into the room and say, ‘Is something wrong with the telly?’ It wasn’t as though she was watching herself, she just used to feel it should always be on. My mum was the opposite. She would say, ‘You’ve been watching that for a while, now turn it off for a bit and do something else.’

I find if I’ve watched something really good I like to go away from the TV and savour what I’ve watched. It spoils it to go straight to something else, especially if the something else isn’t anything particularly interesting. Hubby seems to want to go straight to something else. It’s almost as though he can’t think for himself something always has to be stimulating him. On the other hand conversation tires him and he will go to sleep while I am discussing something or get very irritable. It used to feel like he loved the TV more than me When we were younger I used to call it the mistress in the corner.

Yesterday I wasn’t well and Chris called round and we all sat and watched TV together in the afternoon. That was OK, but after Chris left we had tea and were planning to watch Casualty together at 8.30. I was feeling better and was going to get a few jobs done first. I went into the living room and Hubby had put on a film that ran till 9.pm. I pointed out he wouldn’t be able to see the end. He said that was OK there was nothing else on. I just flipped and asked why he had to watch something as he had already watched all afternoon and we were watching again later. He looked at me as though I was being totally unreasonable. ‘What do you want me to do?’ he asked. I said he still hadn’t finished decorating the bathroom. He said, ‘What part of it needs decorating I can’t remember?’ That did it. Can’t he see for himself? He said he doesn’t notice things like that. I didn’t let it get to a proper row. I need to watch my blood pressure, but it hurts so much that he hasn’t any pride in our house and doesn’t seem to want to make is nice. He watches those programmes on TV about renovating houses and talks about them to me, about how lovely they made it, and doesn’t see how that is hurting me. He helps others do jobs in their houses and comes back and tells me about their lovely houses, and doesn’t see he is hurting me. I tried to explain all of this to him and I could see he actually sees the mess the house as something that has happened to him rather than something he has created. It overwhelms him because he sees everything that needs doing. I would be happy if he just spent a few hours a week fixing something or decorating a room. If he did this it would lift me and I might be able to do more. He just sees the whole thing and it overwhelms him and so he escapes into the television, at least I think that is what is happening.

This morning he did do some more to the bathroom. He always does after we have had words but it will only last so long unless I keep nagging. The TV has been playing up lately. Sometimes some of the channels start breaking up and occasionally they disappear. Tony said we needed a new aerial but I got one and it is still the same. Now he says I should get a new TV. He says I should get a bigger one as he hates our small screen, it is 30 inches. that seems big to me. Chris says if we got Sky we wouldn’t need an aerial and we could have more channels. What they don’t understand is that I am quite happy with the one we have. BBC channels work and I can watch anything else on catch up on the computer. The last thing we need is more channels and if the film channel stops working I might get the bathroom finished! As for the screen size, I grew up in the 50s, 30 inches is enormous!

Incidentally we drive past that other house we looked at sometimes, the one with no roof. They have made a great job of rebuilding it and extended it and created a beautiful garden. Meanwhile in 40 years he hasn’t even finished decorating ours.

Last updated March 04, 2019