Help me to stop being an ungrateful cow please.

[RoyKentsTieDyeTop]

I am post surgery. In real life I am a ‘busy person’ and a tiny bit of a control freak. In my current reality I am stuck on the sofa being waited on, this is day five and I am on the edge of losing it.

My breakfast toast was burned and to marmitey. My coffees have been either too weak, too milky or not milky enough. The house is a fucking disaster zone. He brought me the wrong book and looked like a kicked puppy when I said. Worst of all was that he went to the shop and came back with the wrong chocolate mousses.

I’m awful. I’ve kept all this inside mostly, and I’m trying to manage him a bit by asking for the next coffee to be slightly milkier etc but it’s horrible being at someone else’s mercy and I feel like I shouldn’t complain too much.

He is working full time (at home), doing 100% of the parenting and absolutely everything else and I am being Queen of the Sofa and complaining that there’s too much water in my noodles (I mean they were ducking swimming in it, how hard is it to make fucking ramen correctly).

Help me to suck it up please, he is my husband not my butler and I need to be reasonable even though my cheese toastie was undercooked and he fetched the wrong charger.

The reason I was cooking dinner and making my own lunches & cups of tea 3 days after my hysterectomy was due to all of the above. It was just easier to do it myself than be constantly disappointed.
DH says I’m never happy. He might have a point though. I was looking forward to a rare cuppa in bed this morning but had to get out and take it back to the kitchen to add more milk. 27 years we’ve been together and he still can’t make me a decent cup of tea!

I hope you have a speedy recovery so you don’t have to suffer rubbish toasties and coffee too long.

Haha thank you!

It’s also that he won’t let me do anything, so if I do get up to put the kettle on he fusses.

He’s going into the office tomorrow so I will at least be able to make my own food (I’ll miss the fetching and carrying a little bit though).

I’ve got at least another week of this, I’m not allowed to go back to work until my sick note runs out and he works from home every day, tomorrow is the first time he’s had to go in for months.

I really thought I’d enjoy being waited on but it turns out the staff in this establishment are a bit rubbish.

Hope you get better soon OP.

I live by myself. Last time I was unexpectedly ill I would have killed for someone to bring me the 'wrong chocolate mousses'. Instead I had to try and walk to the kitchen and just grab whatever was in the cupboard and get back in bed, I was too ill to focus on making a delivery order or cook. After a few days the house was a pigsty so there was the joy of cleaning that up too once I was feeling well enough.

So yes, you are being a bit ungrateful.

I'm sure it's the frustration of being at the mercy of some else talking,OP but ABU.

You have someone picking up everything and looking after you, they are doing their best. As someone who was a long-term carer to someone who often made me feel like whatever I did want good enough, I can tell you now, it's hurtful.

wasn't bloody autocorrect.

Can’t he just bring you a milk jug?

Seriously. though, if you really want to be more grateful, you could try a gratitude list? Just write down the things you’re grateful for each day. (if he’s on the list, you could tell him)

He is working full time (at home), doing 100% of the parenting and absolutely everything

Maybe focus on this whenever you feel a bit ungrateful? I get that it's a bit annoying but the alternative is that you could be on the sofa with sweet FA, and then you'd really have something to complain about. I'd find it very hard work if my DH was unable to parent, cook, clean, etc. for five days and I was doing it all on top of working full time.

And really it's presumably quite short term so I'd just make the best of it. While I obviously don't want to have an operation or anything like that, five days on the sofa being brought food and drink and having to do fuck all would suit me quite nicely right now ... even if my tea wasn't quite milky enough.

Fucking hell, the bar for men is so low it's laughable. The house is a "fucking disaster zone?" Why? He can't manage to keep the house even somewhat tidy? Please. If the roles were reversed, I'd bet my life the op wouldn't let the house become a disaster zone.

I probably would. Not a disaster zone but it would certainly be a lot untidier than usual. I don't see how it wouldn't be, given I'd be going from doing 50% of everything to doing 100% of everything. I'm afraid the house would probably be bottom of my priorities for a few days if I was working full time, doing all the parenting, cooking, and looking after my husband who was recovering from an operation. I guess if you're in an unequal relationship where you do most of the stuff then it might not make much difference to your life though.

I hope you feel better very soon OP . Just to say husband still makes tea too milky and coffee too strong and still never puts sugar in . We have been married for 30 years !

When I had a hysterectomy I knew I'd be an ungrateful, nit-picky control freak, so I prepared:

Kettle/snacks/mugs by the bed so I could make all my own drinks to my crippling standards.

Dinner requests chosen for their inability to be messed up (fish fingers, ready meals, toasties, etc).

JustEat deliveries. Any fool can open a door.

He works from 6am until 4pm.

In between working he is getting DS up and out the door, walking 2 dogs, keeping the washing pile at bay, cooking, shopping, bringing me endless coffees, ferrying DS to clubs three of the evenings and keeping the house on a surface level clean.

Meanwhile I’m biting back a whinge about the bathroom needing a wipe over and the dust I can see from my sofa nest.

I am actually a monster. He is doing his best, it’s just not good enough. I am in a filthy mood generally and not loving it.

Honestly I’m posting about it so I don’t say it out loud. I don’t mind you lot knowing I’m evil but I’d rather DH thought I was a bit more grateful.

I also booked cleaners. 😆

What about getting a dog walker for a few weeks,?

Yeah I’m afraid I’d feel zero guilt telling him to go back and make the coffee how I like it. How fucking hard is it to take instruction on the proportion of milk and how much coffee on a sodding spoon and just repeat? Same with ‘surface level clean’ and not burning toast! Jeez, Is it strategic incompetence? I very much doubt he is ‘doing his best’.

i don’t know if this will make you feel better but it might help you reframe it. I looked after my mum in much the same circumstance. Up until that point I’d never seen her in bed because she got up early and bed late and never stopped moving. Cups of tea were wrong, too much massed potatoes, not enough tomatoes, was I just going to sit there and ignore the water in thr flowers needs changed, was I just going to return the base without dusting the shelf. Then her brand of shampoo changed its packaging and she refused point blank to accept it and insisted I’d just grabbed the first one I saw. That shampoo very nearly went in the tea.

she got back on her feet and everything went back to normal. Tensions are high, he’s probably feeling it too. He’s not actively testing you, he probably thinks soupy noodles are better.

He works from 6am until 4pm.

In between working he is getting DS up and out the door, walking 2 dogs, keeping the washing pile at bay, cooking, shopping, bringing me endless coffees, ferrying DS to clubs three of the evenings and keeping the house on a surface level clean.

Right, so he's just doing normal, low level, everyday bullshit then. He's working from home, not digging ditches or going down into coal mines. Washing clothes is hard labour now? Making cups of coffee is a challenge? When he ferried your son to clubs was he on your husband's back, going up a mountainside? For fuck's sake.

Like I said, the bar for men is so low it's fucking pitiful.

Yikes. You okay, @Aquamarine1029? I mean I'd be knackered after doing all that for several days on the trot 🤷‍♀️ but I'm not a man so is that allowed? My husband and I split stuff pretty equally so you bet it would be a shock to the system if he was suddenly laid up for a week and I had to do everything.

Maybe if you're one of those super mums and wives who does all that stuff cos you have a useless husband (or one of those MN high-powered husbands who is always away making multi-million-pound business deals in Dubai) while also sewing Halloween outfits for the kids and baking cupcakes it doesn't seem like much, but personally I'd find working a 10-hour day that starts at 6am, doing all the cooking and cleaning and parenting and ferrying kids about and dog walking by myself bloody tiring and would be immensely glad when it was over! My husband is away for a long weekend soon and I will be very ready for him to return (and I can guarantee the house will not be spotless!)

Perhaps instead of the bar being set so low for men, we should stop setting it so high for women and meet somewhere in the middle?

Although I think your post has probably been the most helpful in making OP feel grateful about her husband so there's that

🤣 indeed it has!

Your frustration is a clear sign that you are recovering well from your surgery, so try and focus on that. It's only natural to get cheesed off with being an 'invalid' after an operation.

This is exactly what I’m being like. But so far I’ve done a good-ish job of keeping a lid on it. I nearly lost it at the chocolate mousses but I pulled it back in time (I was after a family sized chocolate trifle thing from the Co-op and he came back with the mimsy little individual pots, ONE EACH).

Oh, you hadn’t made the trifle issue clear, that co-op trifle is worthy a sending him back. Our co-op only gets 3 at a time so you have to be quick. Throw the individual pots at him, then anything else to hand and when he comes back with thr trifle demand a ladle to eat it while barking orders at him about what needs done.