we are having extremely difficult conversations about how WH has felt like he's gone along with a lot of the major choices we've made in our life.
I can relate to this a lot. I heard the same thing after DDay.
At DDay, we had 7 dogs. That sounds like a lot, but we were breeders. We both got involved in this breed when we were dating, owned this breed for 15 or so years before we became breeders. We showed our dogs - both of us. Actually, he showed them more in conformation shows, and I was active in obedience trials. We both took dogs to classes. It was OUR hobby for quite some time.
As he moved up at work, and worked more hours, it did become more my hobby but we did still attend shows a couple of weekends a month. We'd travel annually to our breed's national specialty, which moves around the country, and we'd make it our holiday. So we didn't stay at the show site the whole time - we'd go see the local sights and do touristy things as well (as much as we could with a couple of dogs in tow). He'd attend some of the breed seminars with me. Obviously, he had more than the average interest. It wasn't just me. In fact, one time, a puppy became available from a breeder that I really wanted to get a puppy from, but it wasn't good timing, I was the one that didn't really want her at that time, and he insisted! I wasn't entirely driving this whole hobby but he did jokingly refer to himself as my financial backer for the hobby. We weren't the sort of breeders pumping out litters to make money. We had litters very infrequently when we thought we had something to improve our breed, when we wanted a puppy for ourselves to continue our lines, we almost never made money on a litter (broke even once), and spent in the neighbourhood of $15K-$20K annually on our hobby.
It coloured our whole lives, obviously. Our hobby determined the kinds of vehicles we needed to buy, the kinds of houses we needed, etc. By the time DDay arrived, we had been at this for 30+ years.
You can imagine my surprise after DDay when OUR hobby became his issue with ME. I spent too much on the dogs, the dogs were more important than him, blah blah blah. I'm not saying he was entirely wrong. I did spend a lot. I didn't realize his oft-repeated joke about being my "financial backer" was no longer a joke. FTR, I did work as well but only p/t, certainly not enough to cover the hobby bills but I did contribute. He spent all of his time at work. Literally, the dogs had become my companions. They always wanted to go out with me, they always were happy to stay home with me. Things I couldn't count on from him.
As the others are saying, your husband/my husband ... either could have stood up for themselves before DDay if this was such a problem for them. And loving a dog or dogs is not akin to screwing someone outside of your marriage for heaven's sake! It just became a convenient and lousy excuse.
I had no interest in placing my 7 dogs at that time. I did go into crisis mode, though, and spayed/neutered what I had just in case I did become forced into placing any of them. We did manage to patch the marriage back together, the dogs have died off at good old ages for their breed through the last 11 years since DDay. We got down to our last one of our own breeding, and did agree to purchase one together so she still had a buddy. I gave up the hobby that I loved. That I thought WE loved. But I sure didn't give up having at least 2 dogs.
