To think DH needs to do more than just hold down a job!

[rOsie80]

So here I am juggling job, toddler, home, home renovations, family finances and DH thinks it's his god-given right to do bugger all else if he manages to turn up at work 5 days a week.

For reference, we have jobs on equal salary and status. I feel like I do at least 2/3rds everything else and when challenged he bucks up grudgingly for a bit but moans constantly about how tired he is / how stressful his job oblivious to the fact I do all the same without making such a fuss. He takes an hour to do things that should take 10mins. Do men stop just assume women will do everything for them as part of a relationship? I don't, but can't help thinking he resents me for that! What can i do, if anything! to make him feel like things outside of work should be more a fairly distributed effort?!!

You could try doing a week's calendar/diary with what each of you are doing each hour or half hour of each day side by side. This should show you how much time each has free. You can use this just to get things firm in your own head or you can show him it to open up discussion.

Thing is if he was on his own then some of these just wouldn't get done. It wouldn't be that he would suddenly pick up his game.

Yes it should and yanbu. He isn't going to change.

My ddil nags my DS to within an inch of his life. He looks after the DC when she goes out to an evening job 2 days per week; she goes out on spa days with the mateys, and she has a list of jobs for him to do when he gets in from work. Washing, up maybe hoovering or cutting the grass. He doesn't do these things instinctively but somehow they make it work.

It’s a constant struggle for womankind to try to get mankind to understand that family/home life is a lot of planning and hard work, rather than something that the fairies do. We haven’t got there yet...

Make two lists each. You list what you think you do and what you think he does. He lists what he thinks he does and what he thinks you do. Include mental and emotional load stuff. Compare the two. Can be quite illuminating.

It's a good point you make waffly about some things not getting done - I believe that's his primary fallback excuse. I'm just more and more staggered at the full extent to what wouldn't get done!