Don't want to wake up!

5:40am is not getting up time unless you have to, so no more having breakfast with your DH. And don't feel guilty about it, or about the fact that you are not bringing in an income. Generations of women contributed to the 'team' by keeping house, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry etc. Ill health has put you in this position don't feel guilty. Take the advice from others about persuading him to get up quietly, you need your sleep.

So, essentially you are feeling guilty about having health issues that prevent you working! If you are contributing to your family & society, as you are, you are actung in the helpful side of life & not just filling time. No guilt needed except for feeling guilty. Useless guilt is a hard one to shift so just accept it & don’t let it nest in your hair.

I do think that women of a certain age are drawing the short straw-later state pension apart from anything else. I would find a way to increase your sleep by either going to another bedroom or asking him to. It’s not unreasonable to hope to sleep longer if you’re not going off to work. Also, I would try to find some things that I enjoyed doing, either voluntary work, or taking up some pastimes that would give me a lot of pleasure. Plan your week out, so you know roughly, what you’re doing so you have something to look forward to even if it’s something small. It’s bad enough feeling tired, but adding insult to injury if you’re not enjoying life as well. There needs to be some changes.

rubysong and GadaboutGran - thank you, you've actually put it put it in perspective for me . Now I just need to learn to cook/keep house etc
SussexGirl60 - so many of us have "lucked out" with the pension . Also as I said I DO voluntary work, I'm doing a degree, am a phone buddy for an elderly person, knit for charity in a group - busy, but its actual work I miss.
Now what I'd really love to do, and wouldn't find the least bit boring, is to take a trip to the Galapagos Islands. Just need to win the lottery and turn the health clock back a few years

put it put it?

Dontaskme I understand precisely where you are coming from with missing work. I stopped work in February when Carillion collapsed and I gave myself 3 months to see if I was ready to retire. My days are busy, I collect DGS from school twice a week and tutor him in Maths, so I spend a lot of time researching how to help him. I have redecorated one bedroom and am halfway through another, (stripping the wallpaper off revealed a need to re-plaster an area so its taking longer than I expected) and since the better weather I am in the garden for at least half the day. I am also doing Futurelearn courses and my daughter and I are trying to fit in long walks with the dog to lose weight.

But, I miss work. I miss the social side, I loved the team of people I worked with and I miss the feeling of earning a pay packet even though I have enough to manage on without working. I am starting to think about looking for some temporary work next month. Voluntary work would not do it for me, I would hate the idea of being committed to something that didn't value my time enough to pay me, and I have done plenty of it in the past so I have paid my dues!

Rubysong it all sounds a bit masochistic to me why? Would you do that to him if he had to leave work because of ill health and he wasn’t feeling very fulfilled? No you wouldn't. You’d feel very sorry for him and do your best to make him feel ok. Don’t make him a tyrant, stand up for yourself make him respect your needs and wants.

grannygranby I thimk you may have the wrong end of the stick and Rubysong is not the op! If you were to address it to op's DH it would hit the mark though!

Hi Dontaskme,
Please don't feel guilty for not being well enough to work. Also don't feel guilty that your husband is supporting you as the pair of you did promise no doubt to look after each other in sickness and in health and anyway even if you didn't legally you have a duty of care to each other.
If the boot was on the other foot.....right?

What I'd like to add to the great support you are finding on Gransnet is this- I' m guessing any statutory sickness payments you were entitled to have run out, but you could be claiming incapacity benefit now or Employment and Support Allowance as it is now called.
Look on a gov.uk site or click here
www.gov.uk/incapacity-benefit

If you ask your husband to let you sleep on in the mornings and he doesn't co-operate then sorry but that would be very selfish and it is he who should then feel guilty, not you.
Oh and don't feel guilty for claiming benefits either. You didn't set the retirement pension ages did you?
Good luck and please no more guilt.

DONT feel guilty why should you. My Husband is a very noisy clumsy person I am not a morning person since moving into a bungalow noises can be heard quite easily I suggeste he gets dressed in another room when he leaves our bedroom he closes the door quite gently surprisingly I am happy and drop off again once the bed had stopped bouncing and he is quite happy on his own until I get up. Try different rooms or let him have a ”dressing room” Good luck

At the weekend do exactly what he does in the week...especially the bouncing on bed bit putting socks on. He will soon stop waking you in the week. Damn inconsiderate of him....

Make him read all the answers to your letter, then give him a choice -
a) baseball bat around the chops
b)nighty ripping-off
c) you bouncing on the bed at the weekend
d) one of you moving to another bedroom
e) he changes his ways and stops waking you with his antics

Pinny4 - Thank you for the sound advice re:benefits, but I don't claim any, never have. The pennies I do get come from a private pension that paid out from 60, and after years of investing gives me the grand sum of £33.23 a week, whahoo!.
Thank you everyone for your replies - he's asleep on the sofa now so I'm about to start crashing about!
Fingers crossed I'll sleep a bit later tomorrow, although the weather is going to be so nice I might just wake him up whenever I do and make him take me out for the day
I won't moan about him any more but will take action! Clothes in another room, he can use the bathroom not the en suite and if he leaves his phone alarm going off it'll be out of the window. I realise now that I've been letting him get away with it for too long and there is no reason for me to feel guilty, so that's it, I won't

Lyndylou - you have an odd angle on volunteering.

Elrel, why is it odd? Is there only one way of looking at volunteering? I was an Appropriate Adult for 3 years. Sitting in Police Stations at all hours of the day and night including Christmas Day. I gave up when I realised that because that the fact that my time was free meant that it was OK to call me out and make me wait for hours for the professionals ( i.e. the laywers and policemen who were being paid) to turn up. In short, their paid time was valued, my "free" time wasn't. So my odd angle does at least come from experience and it niggles me when volunteering is seen as something retired people can do to stop them being bored. Yes if that is what they want to do that's fine, but while I still have skills an employer wants then I would expect to be paid.