AIBU to expect dp to be doing the lions share of the housework just now?

[MsMarvel]

I've Recently started a full time job, with long hours. Most days Monday to Friday I'll leave the house at 6am, and get home at around 5/6pm. Job involves a lot of travelling to different sites, and then working on site for 7/8 hours, then travelling home.

Especially because I've just started and getting used to the long hours, I'm coming home knackered, can barely muster enough energy to have a bath and iron my shirt for the next day, and go to bed.

Dp is a student, and has only just gone back to classes (3 days a week for a few hours a day...) After his long Xmas holidays. But he will deliberately leave housework for me to do to make sure I'm still 'pulling my weight around the house'.

For example, this weekend my parents were visiting my brother in a nearby city so I went over to join them. When I came back there was a sinkload of dishes waiting for me, because it was my turn apparently to do the dishes. Which technically it was, but none ofother dishes were mine, I had t even been in the house since the dishes had last been done.

He seems to get annoyed when I come in from work and want to sit and chill for a while, because there are 'things that need done' but when I ask him what he's been doing all day, he'll have been doing nothing all day.

I know uni is tough, I've been through it myself. But it's not as if he's spending hours in the library and coming home tired. Yes mooching about all day and then moaning that I'm not doing anything to help out around the house. Surely as the person with more free time in the house he's the person who should be doing most of the housework, and not acting like a martyr about it??

Sorry that's a bit long..

May I just give a suggestion as to how a balanced relationship works? I am a full time student. As in really full time, either in lectures/library all day or on placement working long shifts (leave house at 6.20am and get home at 9pm) and working on my evidence file or on essays on days off.

Dh works 9-5 mainly from home with a couple of days travel a week where he leaves at 7.30 and gets home at 6.30.

We have 3 children.

Dh does all the cooking, the washing up and most of the laundry although being in a house not a flat I will often chuck a load on as I head out the door so he can hang it before the school run. Because he does the cooking he stays on top of the kitchen (with the exception of cleaning the sink, it never occurs to him to clean the sink!) and he wipes down worktops etc as he goes. He does most of the childcare pick ups and drop offs, even on my days off he still tends to take them in the morning so I can stay in bed a wee bit longer and have a relaxed start to the day because most of the time he stays in bed until 7.30 when the kids wake up and I am up at 5.30 for work.

I do the general cleaning most of the time, the hoovering, bathroom cleaning and I fold and put away laundry and do the ironing.

As a general rule that means we get a similar amount of downtime.

When one of us is getting up early though, mostly me, we get our stuff ready the night before so I will get my clothes, deodorant and everything together and put them downstairs so that when my alarm goes off I get out of bed and I don't go back in to disturb him. I think that is only fair. But then he gets up at 7.30 not 12.

We appreciate each other's efforts. We thank each other for doing something but neither expects huge amounts of praise. These are basic jobs that are necessary for keeping our household, our joint household going. At the moment dh does more than me really. That's the way it is. When I qualify and have a job the chances are the balance will tip the other way. It all boils down to respect for each other and what you are doing though. It sounds like he had little respect for the fact that you are supporting him through his degree. However, and I appreciate that I have no idea as to how much he is actually studying, but it sounds as though you have little respect for his studying either. If he actually lazes around doing nothing towards his study then fair enough but if he is putting the work in then you need to respect that.

If it was me, I'd get out now.

"What's the rewarding job that I'm doing? if you are referring to my career, then yes it's rewarding because I've worked up to this point and can now do this job. "

Yes, and you now expect your DP to do loads more jobs he hates (and presumably you hate) What does he get out of your career, because you are expecting him to contribute to it at the moment.

From the sounds of it, he gets a place to live, to lie in bed till noon.

He contributes nowt to her career, because if he weren't there, when she got home, there wouldn't be a sink full of dishes he used waiting for her to wash up.

She is doing her own laundry and ironing.

fredfredgeorgejnr - are you the DP?
Sorry, but I can't see anything reasonable in any of your posts.

I thought the OP said they're splitting finances 50/50 with him paying more this month so you can't really argue that the OP is providing a place to live...

You come home to a sinkful of his dirty dishes?

Bet you really feel like sex when you see that...

She said she came home once to a sink full of dishes bobblehat. I don't know if its a regular occurrence. I don't think there isn't quite enough info here to confidently declare him an utter cocklodger, that's all.

Op says she doesn't do laundry in the op and he is good at having food on the table when she gets in. That doesn't suggest to me that he is doing nothing all day.

I do all the laundry for the week at the weekend because more often than not he just doesn't do it. And because it's more essential for me, ie work shirts cleaned,I end up doing the weeks worth of washing at the weekend.

Wow, a meal for two ready when you rolled out of bed at noon, that's a real accomplishment.

Lot less stress for you, OP, being on your own and popping something in the microwave.

Mintyy given that he's financing everything himself, cooking meals and doing his turns on the dishes, I can't see how we can describe him as a cocklodger at all.

This month yes dp is paying the bills. But after that I would be able to cover all bills myself, whereas dp wouldn't be able to regularly.

The flat is in his name only. It's housing assosiation and when he first put his name on the list I wasn't with him.

Find another place to live. Big fucking deal, he does a spot of cooking.

Believe me, this doesn't get better, the whinging, the tit-for-tat, the matryrdom, sulking and competitiveness. Don't waste your time and definitely don't procreate with a lazy bones like this.

Sit him down and have an honest chat or write him a letter. Explain you need him to pick up slack on housework during the week as your working long days. You will do washing at the weekend. I would compromise a bit and get ready in the sittingroom/bathroom as used to do that when oh was a sahd as no one likes being woken up

I don't think yabu to expect him to wash his own dishes up when you haven't even been in the house! During the week he should be able to keep on top of day to day stuff such as washing up, tidying his mess up, running Hoover round, with both of you chipping in at weekends to do bed changes, bathroom etc.

He's being a cunt. If my DP left me dishes when I hadn't even been there so that I'd be 'pulling my weight around the house' I'd suggest he shoved the dishes up his arse.

Try saying that. See how he responds.

So, if I've understood this correctly, from next month when your salary comes in properly, this is the situation:

You are working long hours
You are earning considerably more than he is
You are splitting the bills/expenses 50:50
You expect to split the housework so that he does more like 25:75.

I'm going to against the grain here and say that YABU. You are going to get the advantages of your long-hours job - the extra spending money, the career advancement - but he's going to get the disadvantages, i.e. you not being able to pull your weight at home.

If you were planning to share your money in proportion to your incomes, I think it would be reasonable to expect him to put in more time but I'm not sure that - given that you're not planning to - it's reasonable to expect him to do that.

That said, it does sound like you have a dynamic where he expects a cookie for doing stuff around the house and that's unacceptable but I'm actually not convinced that he should be doing more than half the housework, if you're not willing to pay more than half the bills.

Is it just the two of you? I can't see how there can be that much housework to do, tbh. Most of the chores will be shopping, cooking and clearing up after cooking. And laundry, but for two of you ... 4 or 5 loads a week max?

Then cleaning (hoovering, mopping, bathroom) - can it take more than two hours per week?

I would say you are both going to find it quite a shock as to how much needs doing if you have kids. And there won't be the luxury of just coming home and sitting down cos you feel knackered when you've been out to work, either . Plus you'll be doing everything on patchy sleep, juggling childcare, and your flat will be overwhelmed with baby equipment and strewn with toys.

If you can't manage between you now then it doesn't bode well for a ltr with children.

I would split up, let him find his own place as he is behaving like an absolute pig. He obviously thinks that you have to work a lot harder than him, therefore he values himself more. Do not have children with this man.

Seriously, he saved his own dishes for you to come back to?

Years ago DH was injured on the job and as a result was off work for about a year, then entered a retraining scheme for another year. The retraining scheme started at 4 hours/day then upped to full time OTJ experience. I worked full time and we had one child in school, one in nappies.

During the time he was totally off work, he pretty much did all the housework. I pitched in on the weekends with some laundry, cooking etc. When he went to the 4 hrs/day training (which did involve some home study) he still did the lion's share, although I usually did dinner (he'd start it though) & dishes as well as more weekend work. I'd say at that point it was perhaps a 75 his/25 mine % division of labour. He certainly didn't 'save chores' to see that I did my 'fair share'. That's petty and small-minded, IMHO. When he went full time and later got a new job, we shared the work. Some weeks I do more, some weeks he does. But it all evens out in the end and we don't need to 'keep score'. Yes, we tried to work things out so that we were each doing the things we didn't mind doing. He really hated dishes, I didn't mind them, so I did them. I really hated 'floors', so he did them as he really didn't mind. Other things were shared or swapped. But there was certainly no 'eyeballs on the cake slice' to be sure one didn't 'get the smaller piece'.

Do I think your partner should be doing more of the work? Yes, as he has more time to do it. But the real problem isn't the division of labour per se. It's the childish 'your slice is bigger than mine' mentality. I think you both need to sit down and come to an agreement as to who will do what. If you can't do that simple thing, perhaps the whole relationship needs to be reevaluated.

there's actually quite a bit of housework, if one partner is almost always at home, creating mess.