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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

AIBU or is DH?

349 replies

OhThisIsJustGrape · 03/12/2011 15:41

quick back story: DH doesn't cook. Ever. Claims he can't, although has managed to knock himself up steak and oven chips on occasion and can boil pasta (after I had to tell him the instructions are on the back of the packet).

In almost 16 years of us being together he has never made me anything more substantial to eat than toast.

His main excuse is always that even if he did cook it, I wouldn't eat it due to me not trusting him to wash his hands/cook food thoroughly etc. Tbh I do have a bit of a germ phobia but I know that if I thought for one second that he followed basic food hygiene then there wouldn't be an issue. To me, he is using it as a get out cause.

I'm a SAHM, 4 DCs of which 2 are preschoolers. I have tea on the table for him every night without fail mostly. Often it's cooked from scratch. I've come to hate cooking over recent years, so much so that I rarely even eat what has been cooked as I now have zero interest in food. DH works very long hours, only ever has sundays off and the only contribution to the household tasks is putting the rubbish out when he remembers and putting DD2 to bed each night. Kids are bathed before hr comes home and I often iron in the evenings. My weekends are spent catching up on cleaning as he is here to occupy the kids so I make the most of it. I hate that my weekends are always full of chores whilst he gets to play with the DCs, I feel as though I never get a day off.

Anyway, after the DH non-cooking thread the other day in which lots of posters suggested buying the DH a cookery book I thought I'd try that idea. I just said to DH that I was going to buy him a cookery book for Christmas so he could learn to cook, I quickly added that I would only expect him to cook on weekends.

His immediate reply was 'fuck off am I working 60 hours a week to then spend all weekend cooking'.

I am honestly shocked. I told him that it was one of the worst things he has said to me, I feel he has totally devalued everything I do, 7 days a week may I add.

Oh god, I'm over reacting aren't I? I feel really shit because he doesn't seem to accept that I work too. He's an excellent dad but I get no help in the house whatsoever and I'm sick of it. This remark is just the final nail in the coffin I guess.

AIBU?

OP posts:
thunderboltsandlightning · 03/12/2011 15:44

You're not overreacting. You're not the house slave. He's being an arse.

I'm worried that you aren't eating though. That's not good for you.

LaurieFairyCake · 03/12/2011 15:44

Doesn't sound like you act as a team Sad

Splinters · 03/12/2011 15:44

Of course yanbu. Just out of curiousity, does the way the money gets distributed between reflect the fact that what you do is work?

valiumredhead · 03/12/2011 15:46

My dh works 60 - 80 hours a week. I wouldn't ask him to cook at the weekends tbh.

Can you get take away one night, or bung a pizza in the oven? I batch cook so I can get things out of the freezer at week ends.

I know what you mean about not having a 'proper weekend' - I do the bare minimum at weekends to combat this! Grin

I'm not surprised he just wants to play with the kids at the weekends, it sounds like he doesn't see them much during the week if he's working 60 hrs.

Life is VERY hard when they are pre school and to have 4 must be REALLY hard. Anyway you can get a cleaner in to help out a bit?

thunderboltsandlightning · 03/12/2011 15:51

How many hours a week do you work in the home OP?

valiumredhead · 03/12/2011 15:51

I don't think HIBU but at the same time YANBU either.

Original poster
OhThisIsJustGrape · 03/12/2011 15:52

I do eat enough but it's crap. I'll skip tea then eat 3 biscuits after the kids have gone to bed. I've just spent years trying to cook with screaming babies wrapping themselves round my legs and all the pleasure has gone out of it.

In essence, I wouldn't ever expect him to come home after a 12hr day and have to cook a meal. Because he works so hard (and he really does) I have the luxury of staying at home with my children and I am grateful of that. All the money goes straight into the joint account and he has no issues over how it's spent as long as we've got it to spend iukwim.

I'm just so fed up of never having a day off, I am going Christmas shopping tomorrow but I need to get everything done today so I can relax knowing I don't have to come back to it tomorrow and Monday. Therefore, I have 4 bathrooms to clean and the whole house to vacumn before cooking tea tonight.

Things have always been this way, it's more the fact that by making this comment it just shows that in his eyes he works and I don't.

OP posts:
valiumredhead · 03/12/2011 15:53

WRT the food thing, are you cooking complicated dishes from scratch? Perhaps you need to lower your standards a tad to make things a bit easier?

valiumredhead · 03/12/2011 15:55

Things have always been this way, it's more the fact that by making this comment it just shows that in his eyes he works and I don't

Tbh I can imagine my husband saying the same thing but he would actually mean "Fuck off, I am SO tired by the time I get in I can't cook as well"

Cleaner?

Original poster
OhThisIsJustGrape · 03/12/2011 15:55

How many hours a week do I work in the home? Well, I'm up at 6am usually and so are the kids. I sit down at lunchtime with them but apart from that it's pretty much non stop until they're in bed at 7pm. I do this 7 days a week.

But why should I cook at weekends instead of him? No take sways round here so that's not an option.

OP posts:
thunderboltsandlightning · 03/12/2011 15:55

What you're describing doesn't sound very luxurious - screaming babies, never getting a day off, four bathrooms to clean, vacuuming a whole house.

And he's decided that isn't work, has he?

Once again, how many hours do you work in the home? Count it up.

You do need to start eating though, 3 biscuits is not a good compensation for an evening meal. It sounds like your unhappiness is being expressed through your eating to some extent.

valiumredhead · 03/12/2011 15:56

If you had a cleaner during the week, you could batch cook for the freezer at weekends while he has the kids?

thunderboltsandlightning · 03/12/2011 15:57

Sorry, x posted.

You work seventy-seven hours a week, so 17 hours more than him. He needs to pull his socks up and stop belittling what you do.

valiumredhead · 03/12/2011 15:58

Do you have a slow cooker? That doesn't even feel like 'real' cooking when I use mine and if you get a big one you can freeze half of it.

I know I keep banging on about freezing stuff but it makes things SO much easier.

WidowWadman · 03/12/2011 16:03

I think YABU, to be honest - expecting someone who works 60 hours a week to share house hold tasks equally is not fair.

I can understand that you don't always feel like cooking but I'd suggest in that case that you can just bung some spuds or other things which don't actually involve work into the oven, so you can have both some time off at the weekend.

MabelLucyAttwell · 03/12/2011 16:04

My X and I both worked before children. I would get home after work at, say, 5.50pm and he would come in 10 minutes later. After about 2 weeks in our first own place, his first words were, "Where's my dinner?" I've never forgotten that (nor any of the other things he said to me and that's why he's now an X

He lived with his mother until he was 27 well, they did then. She had a part time job and cooked for her family (husband and three offspring) after work so my X was used to having food on the table on his homecoming after work.

squeakytoy · 03/12/2011 16:05

He is working 12 hour days, 6 days a week... when exactly do you expect him to cook?

Sorry but I do not believe that being a SAHM is the same as being physically at a place of work where there are structures in place and deadlines to meet.

I am not saying it is not hard work, but it is a different kind of work, where nobody will sack you if you decide to go out to the park, or meet up with friends for a coffee, or even just decide to get takeaway once a week.

valiumredhead · 03/12/2011 16:09

I also think ( and I know this might be unpopular!) but working 60 hours outside the home is NOT the same as a SAHM doing 60 hours.

I have worked outside the home and also as a SAHM. When you are at home you can set your own pace to some extent, have a cuppa when the kids are quiet, sit down when you like, have a lazy day or a really busy day depending on how your night was, there is no driving to and from work or long commute, having to be on top form every day no matter how shit you feel.

It's the utter relentlessness that wears SAHM's down imo. Is there anyway you can have some help with the kids or a cleaner?

valiumredhead · 03/12/2011 16:09

X posted with squeaky

AntiqueAnteater · 03/12/2011 16:11

dont blame him to be honest

if i was working 60 hours a week and the other half stayed home all week, i wouldnt cook either

Original poster
OhThisIsJustGrape · 03/12/2011 16:11

I don't expect him to share household tasks equally at all. Monday to Friday I don't expect him to lift a finger, I accept that I'm a SAHM and it's my job to cook, clean, Childcare etc.

What I object to is the constant run if weekends where my day is no different to a weekday because I'm still doing all the cleaning, tidying up, cooking.

All he would have to do is read a fucking book and learn to cook a meal just for one day a week to take the pressure off me. That is all. AIreallyBU? Fair enough if I am but I really didn't expect to be told that.

I'm so angry with him that I'm veering between rage and bursting into tears.

I've spent the last 5 years either pregnant or breastfeeding, have had PND (which whenever I tried to tell him how much I was struggling all I got back was 'that's how I feel all the time at work') and I'm knackered.

Oh well, best I go and apologise to him then. And resign myself to a lifetime of drudgery.

OP posts:
squeakytoy · 03/12/2011 16:12

Why not go out for a meal on a Sunday, then everyone gets a bit of a break.

valiumredhead · 03/12/2011 16:12

Can you get a cleaner or help with the kids?

thunderboltsandlightning · 03/12/2011 16:13

You're not being unreasonable.

There's a Stepford Club in the middle of Mumsnet but you don't have to pay any attention to it.

squeakytoy · 03/12/2011 16:14

And in fairness.. you chose to have 4 kids.. and it isnt resigning yourself to a lifetime of drudgery at all because if you dont have any more then in a couple of years all the children will be at school, and you will have a lot more time on your hands, and the older children will be able to help out with chores..