To resent doing 100% of life/household admin

[Lostwords]

My DH struggles massively with admin, planning and organisation and just avoids 100% of it on home front. I arrange all bills, do all banking (he doesn’t know how to log into our online banking), do all dates for the diary, plan and organise all aspects of holidays etc. And this stuff is not my strength. I’m actually dyspraxic (which can come with difficulties with planning, organisation and memory). But if I don’t do it it doesn’t get done, which is too stressful. We have 2 kids, age 4 & 2, (quite full on ages!). I work one short day per week in paid work. I have another short day supposedly for writing (I’m a writer, but not earning anything from it until I have enough for another book contract). The rest of the time I’m looking after the kids. Recently we had a couple of lapses in admin - one we could have actually got fined for for being late. Also I recently did a budget spreadsheet for us and DH doesn’t know what his own salary is or where he’s put his contract. I find his lack of engagement a bit stressful. I said to DH I’d love to have another pair of eyes occasionally on this stuff, and that I think it’s normal for both partners to engage with it. He reacted angrily saying do I have any idea of how much admin he has to do for work and how much he is constantly fucking up at work and forgetting stuff because he is so tired. He told me I have time to do it and he doesn’t. I pointed out I’ve always had to do it all, even when I was working full time before kids. Still wondering somehow if I should be sucking it up because I’m not in much paid work currently compared to him.

My DH really struggles with this stuff and eventually he was diagnosed in adulthood with ADHD. Worth reading about?

Two words of warning though - it's not uncommon for adults to feel very disoriented while adjusting to an ADHD diagnosis. And there's a really toxic ADHD spouses support group on Facebook - avoid at all costs.

Thanks, ToLiveInPeace. Yes, I think there might be some neurodiversity but DH doesn’t, and would never want to seek help. Perhaps I should have more of a read in any case. In his case ASD is more likely (and there can be some overlap with ADHD in terms of executive function problems: with planning, organisation, sequencing etc.)

To be fair, I can see his point. He’s working FT and you are only working very very part time

To be fair, I can see his point. He’s working FT and you are only working very very part time

Funny how so many single people manage to hold down important FT jobs AND do all their life/home admin too, isn’t it?!

In a partnership where admin isn’t a strength for either of you, I’d say you need to devise systems to make it as painless as possible (eg making a spreadsheet to show when when things need to be done.) You then divvy up the tasks equitably.

As you’re currently doing far less paid work than him then it’s reasonable for you to do more. What wasn’t reasonable is that you were doing it all when you both worked full time.

You need to have a straight conversation with him: when you return to full time work he’ll need to do his share, so what is he doing now to prepare for that?

And coming at it from a slightly different angle, if he’s constantly getting stressed and fucking up at work due to his difficulties with it, does it really make sense for him to have this pressure of working full time and for you to be only doing one short day? It must be a source of stress for him, going into work every day and thinking he’s going to mess up. Maybe you could carve things up so that he reduces his hours (thus having more time to focus on home stuff) and you up your work hours and then can quite reasonably expect more from him

I don't think it is unreasonable to expect your husband to be a pair of eyes to double checkover things. It is absolutely rediculous that he has no idea where his contract is or what his salary is.

Yes you work very part time, but it is to look after very young children, he doesn't shirk joint financial planning just because he works full time.

I’m torn on this one. I do see his point if he’s working significantly more hours than you are. Depends whether you both see the house admin as something that ought to be picked up by the person who’s in the house more and part of being at home with the kids, or not?

Either way he’s clearly not gonna do any more until things start to slide as why would he? You’re covering it without his help. How would he respond if you drew up a list of tasks and asked him to take ownership of a few of them so you feel it’s more balanced? You have to play to your own strengths but you sound sick of it and overwhelmed and resentful. Are you planning on working full time once both kids are in school? As I wonder what would happen then, whether he’d say ‘of course we’ll share admin now!’ or continue to expect you to do it all.

Is there the option of switching so he’s home with the kids and you go back to work full time?

My dh has always completely refused to engage in household admin. I do all of it, I arrange our holidays and very busy social life too. The very rare occasions I've rebelled and insisted he take responsibility he's looked so stressed, worried and uncomfortable I've ended up feeling really sorry for him.

In fairness I have no diy skills whatsoever and he's fantastic at carpentry and decorating, electrics etc so I can't complain.

It's when it's one person doing absolutely everything it's unfair and unbalanced.

I do 100% of life admin and it is exhausting and a constant niggle in back of my my mind as to whether I have forgotten anything important. DP has dyslexia so struggles with things like that. Although I think if I had carved out responsibilities earlier on in our relationship he would be fine taking on some of it.

Does you DH do any of the xmas and birthday planning? I find that is another massive source of stress.

My DP would argue he does all the cooking (which we have jointly made easy frozen batch cooks for...my idea), all the laundry (mixed responsibility) and helps hoover/dust...

It is difficult even delegating admin tasks at this point as you would still have to track if the task has been completed.

Would it be possible to delegate easy things or things which directly affect him? E.g. simple car admin (hate bloody MOT, insurance and tax admin), researching holiday destination, researching new broadband or fuel fixed deals. Basically things you can easily keep an eye on or are more open ended (research admin).

I agree with PP that this is part of being at home, but you need to break it down more what this workload is to you.

We have very little life admin, because everything is on a DD. We have a joint account that all expenses come out of, and get food delivered (£36 a year for unlimited Tesco deliveries Tues-Thurs - weekly shopping takes about 20m altogether).

Life admin doesn't have to be that much of a heavy load these days!

That’s true thecatsthecats, I did wonder what OP meant by doing all of the bills, surely she’s not manually receiving and paying them all each month? The extent of our ‘managing bills’ is that we both transfer a chunk of our salary into a joint account on payday and then everything is paid automatically.

Perhaps OP if you share here the specific admin bits you’re doing people can help you to see whether you’re doing any unnecessary work that can be easily modernised?

I’m pretty ‘on it’ with life admin, every few days I’ll spend five or ten mins first thing in the morning with my diary and phone and get all of the odd bits done I’ve been putting off, correspondence sent, and so forth, and that’s more than enough time. Curious what else you’re doing that takes up so much time and headspace.

we both transfer a chunk of our salary into a joint account on payday

We even do that by standing order!

@LeeScoresbysBalloon. I know!! We have done so for years but we still manage. For some reason we don’t seem to have a massive amount of “life admin”. Most things are paid by DD, and we have a board with all our tasks on them. Whoever has time or expertise carries the task out x

thecatsthecats we decided to stick with it manually as the amount differs each month atm due to moving house and variable bills etc. but it’s certainly so easy to set up a standing order I agree!