Anyone else feeling wifeworked over by Christmas (and DH)?!

I think the problem is that neither me or Dh have that much free time. I also do more in the morning but I'm a morning person while he is an evening person, so I've been going since 6.30am non-stop and he wonders why I am knackered by 8.30pm and don't fancy doing another couple of hours of housework/admin stuff. When I go back to work I know I will still have to do all the kids stuff and most the household stuff but he thinks I'll be more efficient at it as I would be less bored!

I think with some couples, you can get one person who gets all excited about Christmas when the other is a bit meh, and I can imagine that would lead to conflicts. Socially though, I believe there is the "expectation" that women will make sure there is a "good Christmas," or whatever holiday it is.

It's sort of happened pretty evenly and organically here. I did the tree. DH did the rest of the decs around the house. I did presents and cards for folks I knew. He did presents and cards for folks he knew. He's cooking the mains and I'm doing the puds.

Maybe it's about expectations - not just along gender "role" lines, but also the stuff you did as a child, how much faith plays a part in the festivities, what you think is the "right thing" to do for your kids, stuff like that.

Not entirely related but linked - Christmas is one time of year when families probably spend alot more time cheek by jowl than any other. The weather's usually cold and naff so you're probably stuck in close quarters as well. (At least there's a bit more space and plenty of diversions if you go on holiday.) That can be a recipe for disaster if there are underlying things that you can't avoid when you're in each others' pockets. Oh my.

I think I am the lazy one in our house, although DH wouldn't agree because I am ill. I work full time and he is at home as he had to retire with ill health. We have two DSs, who are now young men. DS1 is also disabled and DS2 is at Uni. DH and I married in our early 30s so he had already lived for years in his own house, on his own. He was a very capable cook and cleaned, washed and ironed for himself.

In our early years, he worked whilst I was a SAHM for seven years. Then I went back to work and he had to stop. I have now been the main breadwinner for more than 10 years.

In all of that time, we have divided the household jobs by type. He does all of the food shopping and almost all of the cooking. He does all of the finance and paperwork. I do the washing and ironing and the garden. Now I am also ill, we have a cleaner and someone to help with the heavy gardening.

When it comes to Christmas, he does all of the food and writes the cards for his family and friends. I do the presents and decorations and write my side of the cards.

We are now in our late 50s and hope this kind of division has rubbed off on our DSs. Hopefully, they will be good partners themselves. I used to laugh when they were younger if we went out to someone else's house for a meal. The DSs would always thank the man for the meal (assuming that all men could cook). They would also assume that women were good with technology. Just goes to show how much is social conditioning! Oops, sorry for the long post!

Malificence - have you considered Relate?

LRD , it's been this way from day one in 1985, I think that military training came in handy, they have to learn to clean, iron and take care of things, although he was pretty good before he joined up, his mum wouldn't have let him get away with doing nothing.
He's always been highly domesticated, even after I gave up work when I had DD, he did his share of stuff - when I came out of hospital after a week he had cleaned the house from top to bottom and all the washing was done, fresh bedding etc. He cooked me a breakfast every day for a fortnight while he was off with us and did all the nappy changes/baths.

He enjoys cooking and faffing and all that shizz , I'm incredibly fairly lazy and do the absolute minimum.

Okay, so things still aren't equal even looking at a broader scope.

Could he do more of something else in exchange for you doing more of the cleaning? Would you consider this? For example, what if he did all the cooking and more of the shopping? (could you also do online shopping to make your life easier?)

As I said earlier, I find it easier to take on whole tasks than split individual tasks 50-50. For us it feels balanced that way but I know it might not work for everyone.

Chestnutx3 I think a good way of working out what's fair is to aim for equal leisure time and, crucially IMO, equal respect for the work you do, however you organise things. It sounds like your DH is not doing his share, doesn't have much respect for what you do (hence grumbling about the state of the bathroom etc.) and is cherry-picking the jobs he does (DIY).

i agree with blackcurrants comments and think dreamingbohemian is correct that you need to look at the entire household work.

i dont subscribe to making lists for someone else to execute as for me it is micro managing. I think you have to hand over responsibility for an entire task. I would not take responsibility for getting the house work issue sorted ? more of ?either we need to come up with a solution that works for both of us or need to work out how to pay a cleaner?. Then just keep trying different ways of making it work & keep on till you do and you DH realises how much you have been doing and you aren?t going to give up on finding a solution .

At Minto Towers:

• DP does all the cooking and also makes me coffee & breakfast in bed every day. I can go months without making anything in the kitchen more than a cup of tea?
• I do anything financial or organisational
• We have a cleaner/ironer.

We do some jobs together and also do planning together. It can be a semi formal meeting - we go to a coffee shop with a laptop. A reoccurring topic is ?how do we make life easier?? and a current topic is what jobs do we need to sell the flat at a good price?? & we will come up with a to do/purchasing list & book time in our diaries to complete the jobs.

We got together when we were undergrads (now late thirties). We used to live in student houses of the ?classic style? (sink blocked for weeks, empty takeaway boxes living in the house for months). We now live in a nice clean hassle free home. DP is not less clean or less good at any household task (except those using power tools, I am the daughter of a carpenter) he is just a different person and does them differently than I would.

I think they ( the men ) don't care because they aren't judged on the 'success' or otherwise of Xmas. There's almost even a macho competition to see who can leave shopping until the absolute latest.

If the dcs don't get fed or get presents then it's the mum who'll get the blame, not the dad.

In my family its the opposite I would never cook a roast and the whole idea of having my family round mine for a meal I cook is incomprehensible. My mum wouldnt cook an xmas meal though either, its mainly a mans job either at home or at a restaurant.

BigBlue - I'm smooth. Most of the time.

LRD - My mum has accepted that my husband cooks, but his family still think it's very odd. They are of the "women in kitchen, men on sofa or in pub" persuasion. When grandma-in-law phoned up the other day and I told her my husband was busy making Yorkshire puddings to go with the roast he was cooking she didn't believe me.

Crumbs! Clean and mop the WHOLE house?? Every week?? Even if you don't think it needs doing?? A tad inter-personally oppressive??
Well, there's a challenge....

Sorry, just had to say EndoplasmicReticulum I love your MN name! Dare I ask if you are rough or smooth?!

Sorry, I know the thread has moved on, but I just wanted to second this from blackcurrants:

"do NOT have a baby with a man who hasn't got into a 'every week, whether you think it needs doing or not, you clean and mop the whole house' mentality."

So so true. I did - and it was a huge mistake.

I honestly don't recognise this "wifework" stuff , DH does as much, if not more than I do , regarding Christmas ( and everything else ) .
He's independantly (with zero input from me) bought some presents for our nephews and he's bought a couple for DD too. He's wrapped everything
(apart from his own pressies) , he puts the tree up and the lights , I put the decorations on ( because everything has to be completely symetrical), he does all the veg for xmas dinner , all I really do is make the gravy.

He made a fab, very boozy xmas cake a few weeks ago and is feeding it copious amounts of rum .

He also works more than double the hours I do.

I read a ridiculous article today, about how mothers are critical of their daughter's / daughter-in-law's attempts to cook Christmas dinner. No mention of sons / son-in-laws doing this. Yes, it was in the Telegraph, so what do I expect? (I didn't buy it, my mum showed me as she knew it would make me cross). I pointed out that my brother always cooks Christmas dinner for his family, but apparently "that's different because he's a chef".

I have posted on an AIBU thread about present buying for his family - which I admit to doing, although I know I shouldn't. However, I look on it as something that I'm better at than him, rather than a chore - we have a pretty fair distribution of jobs. In fact during term-time he does more than me, as he has managed to fit his work around school runs. We're sharing the wrapping over several glasses of gin tonight.

I've got rather depressed reading this thread. I have tried pretty much all of the tactics suggested on here:

• text reminders - he claims he didn't get them, then I have to tell him again which I feel defeats the purpose of the exercise
• drawing up a list together - he loses interest after approximately 30 seconds, then never looks at it anyway
• note on fridge - ignores
• email - ignores
• meltdown - tells me I'm mad to get annoyed about small things.

One concession has been to get a cleaner. This has solved most cleaning issues, but has thrown up a new issue in that I have to remind him every single week to get out money to pay her!

Sorry LRD didn't mean to hijack your thread. In response to your OP, this year I admitted defeat well ahead of time and bought all the presents (for everyone except his father and me) and wrapped them with the DDs. I bought and decorated the tree with the DDs. We will go to his parents for Christmas so I don't have to shop or cook. But much of this has been facilitated by my decision earlier this year to leave my job and work from home, partly because I hated commuting, but mainly because I was the main carer for our DDs (aged 5 and nearly 2) and I was getting stressed out at always being the one who had to leave work if anything happened, juggle the holidays, and do everything else I do (run the house, organise the social calendar etc). In DH's defence, he has a well paid job and works quite long hours, but...

If you want certain things, a certain way and DH doesn't then really its not fair to be annoyed with DH. FWIW, my DH got DDs writing xmas lists in October, he then reserved presents (I picked them up, he was going to do it but had an emergency op), we wrapped together, he bought all his families, we bought tree and decoated together with DC (he retrieved decs from loft), he will happily cook on christmas day (we are doing M&S). The split is usually 95/5 in his favour.

The thing is, LRD, how do you articulate 'equal' in this context?

After I had lived with DH for a bit, I found myself a bit annoyed that he didn't do more cleaning I thought it wasn't an equal setup. When we talked about it, it turned out that he wasn't just looking at the cleaning but at all the household stuff that needed doing shopping, cooking, paying bills, etc. And he did a lot more of that, so he'd thought everything was pretty equal.

As an academic (yes even if you haven't finished yet!) you must be familiar with scope -- what is the scope of the household stuff you are looking at?

Does he make up for lack of cleaning in some other way? Is it possible he's looking at things with a broader scope?

Not making excuses, just throwing out some ideas...

I actually don't aim for equality in this context -- I aim for happiness, which tends to come when things are balanced, but not always. Sometimes things at home are very unequal, when we're going through certain circumstances, but it's okay.

It might be good to think in terms of: how much more work would he have to do around the house to make me happy?

With DH I just text him a list and then he will do it. Send it bits at a time so not to write too much at one time. men love that kind of thing according to my dad as he always says a wives job is to boss their husbands about

next year I am taking the "tick off and initial'' approach to Christmas tasks too. It bothers me that I bought all the nieces and nephews' presents (due to the logistics of getting nice things to various far-flung locations, some had to be bought in June!) - not because I minded doing it, I rather enjoyed doing it, but because DH hasn't thought: wow, she really saved me a lot of thought and effort by doing that. So next year there's going to be a list, and I will damn well highlight what I've done. And he will probably do more of the in-home prep, in recompense.

LRD it does sound like you're dealing with someone who doesn't know how to maintain basic hygiene in a living space because someone has always done it for him. Tragic for him, but even more for you if you don't do a real black-and-white intervention. And seeing things in writing will work better than "why is she so upset with me/always nagging?" will, because he won't be able to rationalise that he was 'about to do' something that was due last weekend, and still hasn't been done.