Me and ex have demanding jobs in the sense that you are expected to work outside of hours and progress etc. We are in different industries.
I have taken a step back in terms of pay in order to do nursery runs. I also took a job with more flexibility which pays around 25k less a year though at the moment I do still have take home pay of around 4.5k.
Ex pays maintenance as he never has ds overnight, his choice, he can’t with work apparently…. He is work obsessed and that comes before everything.
Anyway getting to the point… he sees her 12-7 every other Saturday and sometimes more if he can. He is constantly agreeing to overseas trips and conferences so says he can’t commit to more than that.
I just feel so angry. Before anyone criticises me for that, of course I love parenting ds (mostly!) but I feel penalised for being female. He gets to pursue his career and dip in and out of parenting when it suits with zero actual responsibility (all his time with him is fun stuff never things like dentist or doctor or bath time and so on).
It feels so unfair and I spend more time than I should being angry about it. I KNOW I’m only hurting myself in feeling like that and nothing can make him change. But running and home and doing every little last bit of parenting while making all the sacrifices career wise feels shit. And on top of that he has absolutely no idea how relentless it is as he’s quite literally never done it. So there’s no actual recognition from him.
I have said plenty of times that he should take parental leave to spend more time with him, he refuses even though he can afford it. He offers to pay for holidays for us which I’ve taken him up on as he can afford it and I feel I do hundreds of hours of labour on his behalf for free. But I just can’t shake the frustration and anger.
I think it’s recently got worse as ds thinks ex is brilliant, I get that, he’s his dad and he’s very fun and engaged for the snippets of time he’s with ds. But it hurts. I’m not jealous of that exactly but it again feels so unfair. I always support their relationship as I know it’s important to ds as he grows but I just feel totally taken the piss out of that society allows this to happen.
I know I could go to conferences and leave ds with a childminder or nanny but I don’t think that’s a realistic answer. Why do I feel the moral and instinctive need to parent but he doesn’t? Why can he so easily get away with it. Just having a moan really. Very fed up.