AIBU in expecting OH to do more around the house

[wowfudge]

This is my first post and please forgive me if someone has already asked the same thing... and if I ramble on too much.

My OH goes out early in the morning to commute by train to work (about an hour and a quarter before I go to work) and gets back around the same time as me in the evenings. He also runs a small business from home which takes about an hour of his time every evening - that's his estimation BTW. He has a couple of hobbies - in the football season he is out all Saturday pm and on Sunday mornings. His other hobby involves one or two evenings out a week from 7-11.30pm. He is also involved in running a team for hobby No. 2 - sorry not to name this hobby, but I am concerned it will make him easily identifiable if anyone we know is a member here! - and some admin activity for a club he used to chair. I go to college one evening a week and sing in choir another evening. Every 8 weeks or so, we have a concert which will usually be in the evening on a weekend.

I get up before him in the mornings and get his breakfast & lunch together then he grabs his stuff and goes out. I do all the cleaning, all the food shopping and cooking (I quite like shopping and enjoy cooking0, all the laundry (apart from ironing - he pays someone to iron his stuff), 90% of the pet feeding and clearing up after. I empty the bins and put the recycling and rubbish out. He mows the grass and I do all the other gardening. When it comes to ad hoc tasks, I often find I end up doing them because I would have to wait months to get things fixed/a shelf put up, etc or get accused of nagging. When I ask my OH to do things like empty the bins around the house or put used crockery in the dishwasher, 99% of the time he forgets I have asked. The other 1% he rolls his eyes if he doesn't think what I am asking is necessary or puts it off for as long as possible - sometimes on the pretext he is too busy.

We have different attitudes to housework - he says I am a neat freak and the place doesn't need cleaning as often as I want it done - which is only once a week and we have a long-haired dog and a cat! For him, there is no need to have a routine, you just do things when they need doing.......

AIBU asking him to do more around the house? I feel as if I have relatively little time to myself and that it's not fair of him to say he's too busy and I have more time in which to do these things when his time is taken up with his hobbies!

Please advise.... We have so many rows about this and I am really resentful of this, IMO, inequality.

Nothing wrong with making breakfast if dh is also doing stuff around the house but if they arent why nake breakfast,anyway,what are you lot having for breakfast,we pour cereal into a bowl and slosh on milk,not hard,even a man can do ot

Wow - some interesting replies again! In my OH's defence(!) the small business he runs has paid for most of the furniture we've had to buy and home improvements we've made since we moved to a bigger place just over a year ago. He pays someone to do his ironing because he doesn't want to do it and he didn't expect me to. That's his choice as he doesn't want to spend time doing it.

I think part of it is me having to learn to be more patient about when things do actually get done if I ask him to do them . I do not want to be confrontational - that hasn't worked in any shape or form so far - so some of the leaving things until they are noticed will have to happen. It's hard because I don't want my standards to slip but there has to be a compromise somewhere. Nagging just doesn't work because he just digs his heels in.

As for his mother, well she died when he was 12 so I think it was more a case of being in an all male household (brother and father) where the bare essentials got done and other things were seen as more important.

Good luck. I have to say I've tried the 'leaving things as they are' approach, but I end up doing it but being angrier and more frustrated than if I'd done it the first time, because I haven't mentioned it to DH in the ridiculous hope that he'll notice tings himself and so get angry (!) every time I see the mess until I'm ready to explode! :o

Good luck. I have to say I've tried the 'leaving things as they are' approach, but I end up doing it but being angrier and more frustrated than if I'd done it the first time, because I haven't mentioned it to DH in the ridiculous hope that he'll notice tings himself and so get angry (!) every time I see the mess until I'm ready to explode! grin hmm angry

I have to agree with you, HubbaBubbaBubba! I just do everything now as it makes me less cross than leaving it, but still having to look at his mess! My DH isn't here all day, but I am and it's me that cracks first.

Which he well knows...