Feeling overwhelmed with baby and job and man child husband

[jutasking]

I had my first baby in January this year and decided to go back early from Mat leave for financial reasons. My job is full on and high pressured. I keep getting to breaking point and just losing it and crying and screaming but my husband just doesn't seem to get it and makes me feel like I just whinge and I'm dramatic.

I just don't know how long I can keep doing this. The housework just gets on top of me as it's my sole responsibility and until a few weeks ago so was my baby girl. I told my husband I'm just breaking and he needs to help. Sometimes I just want to leave him and run away. I just can't see how I'm ever going to be happy in my life / situation. I had a nanny but it didn't work out so I'm on my own at the moment. My husband stays home some days and other days my mother in law comes. Some days I just kind of have to manage and work late when she's sleeping.

It's the housework though. It brings me to breaking point when I see the mountain of laundry I have to do and all the other bits that I just keep needing to do to keep things going. I'm also starting to feel guilty about not being able to give my baby girl 100 percent . She's been going through a strange couple of weeks of just crying more and I just feel so awful when she's upset.

I got upset tonight and my husband just said ' he doesn't need this right now ' and I'm always dramatic and I should just ' chill out ' about housework. I'm really just doing the bare minimum to keep the house from imploding and to have some kind of order as we can't live in a complete mess. I just don't know what to do. I just want to run away. I just feel stuck. I feel like other mums can just do all this, I just can't do it all. I also suffer from a chronic illness. Which doesn't yet affect me day to day, but could make me disabled in the future so it's hard to say how much this plays into what I can take on. I just feel rubbish.

Your H and your mum though it was acceptable to let a newborn and a mother recovering from childbirth to sleep on the fucking sofa?!

Honestly, go it alone, you don't have one child you have two.

@Oreservoir that's lovely 😊 it's funny you say I treat him like a prince because I know in his eyes I fall extremely short of how he thinks he should be treated or how a woman should treat a man. In his world he expects that I work and bring in a substantial amount, as well as do the food shopping ( always have everything he wants in stock ), cook every night and also at the weekend when he's home- he complains that it's just not in my 'psyche' to cook every day. I would also keep the house tidy by picking up after him, do all his laundry and keep his drawers tidy as he chucks everything around and can never find his stuff ( so ideally I would constantly tidy the drawers for him ).... I would then take care of the baby alone and he would play with her a little when he felt like it.. then I would dress up all kinky every night and give him what he wants in the bedroom .... all the while not complaining or being unhappy ever. That's how he thinks it should be hahahahaha !

[quote jutasking]@Romanticrights he definitely does play with his daughter and he holds and cuddles her a lot and gives her kisses. She loves him so much. He just doesn't take that much interest in health stuff / milestones / sleep regressions / behaviour / just generally research stuff that goes a bit deeper if that makes sense ? I would love it if he came to me and said that he had read an article about brain development at our daughters age and found out XYZ about it. Or if he researched games we could play with her for her age or experiences she could benefit from. All that stuff is left to me. I'm not sure if dads usually get involved with things like this ? I would just like it if he did. [/quote]
Yeah, he's a Disney Dad. Happy to do the stuff he finds fun and rewarding, like a visiting relative, but not any actual parenting.

Aka - fucking useless.

@Biscuitsanddoombar at the moment no I can't really remember. I just want to be alone and chill when I have time 'off' when my daughter is asleep. I don't even want to hang out with him. Neither does he.

@thatwouldbeanecumenicalmatter yeah he says his odd bits of opinion on how we can do stuff with her. Usually it just really p*** me off because it's not well thought through and unhelpful.

This man does not love you as much as he loves himself. He will always put himself first - the bed story proves this. You say he would be heartbroken if you left him - actually no. You might be heartbroken for a while, he wouldn't be : he doesn't love you.
As others have said, he would miss having a wife and baby at home, would miss the live-in childcare/cook/maid/etc. But he would not miss YOU. He does not love you - his actions prove this. Believe his actions, not his words.
Go back to your mother and file for divorce.

This isn't helpful but why on earth did you have a baby with this man. But there must have been something appealing there. Anyway I'm not surprised you're struggling! So you're not failing he is.

OP, what is the point of him? What's the point of being with him?

He doesn't respect you or listen to you, and he just makes your life harder. What's the actual point of him?

Goodness, you really are the household skivvy to him, aren't you? No wonder he'd be sorry to lose you...If I had a slave who provided all the services you do AND brought in a wage, I'd be devastated if they left.

He just doesn't take that much interest in health stuff / milestones / sleep regressions / behaviour / just generally research stuff that goes a bit deeper if that makes sense

^

So basically he likes tickling her?

2 things :

Don't have another child with this man, and
Get a cleaner

OP
you've been on a slippery slope - things that were OK before you had your DD are now insurmountable. You need to negotiate a new balance. The problem is - your DH doesn't even recognise that there is a need for a re-balance as he's happy with the status quo of you doing everything whilst he swans about. You can't even get his attention to seriously discuss the situation, hence the crisis.

So you will need to get his attention - this will take energy from you. Not doing his laundry isn't really going to hack it, it doesn't get the balance back.

I would strongly urge you to talk to your GP - you're clearly at the end of your tether. Get some time off. Have a think about what you want - do you want to re-balance with him, or is the situation gone too far and actually it is time to split ? Once you have thought through what you want - put this to him. For example - if DD wakes in the night - he goes on the sofa. You keep saying he has a physical job but he also works on the computer. Well if memory serves looking after a baby / toddler is also very physical, so unless he's a refuse collector ( have you seen those guys run between houses?) his physical job is on a par with child care. If needs be buy a more comfortable spare bed.

If he doesn't man up - move on. Your life is too short and your health too important to act as a slave to some man-child. Actually I don't like that term - he's not an adult male if he can't look after himself and his daughter.

Personally I'd go back to my parents and leave him to his physical career sitting at a computer

@Beancounter1 I left him before. Before we were married and he was absolutely devastated. Maybe you're right. Maybe he doesn't love me. But he absolutely does not believe in divorce. He would never leave me or be OK with a divorce. It would be very hard on him just for that. Not sure if losing me would be hard but he's very against divorce and against children growing up in ' broken ' families. I'm of the opinion that it's not healthy to grow up in families who stay together but are unhealthy ( like my parents )

He doesn't get to make the decision about whether you separate/divorce - you do.

You deserve to be happy, healthy and respected.

I'd suggest you make a list of baby and house chores and divide it fairly into two. Then give him his list and say - this is the half of the work that goes into keeping this family running, you can do it yourself or earn extra to outsource it - I don't really care, I just want it done.

But the reason he would be devastated is he wouldn't have anyone to do everything for him and shag him and look after his kid for him and have this luxurious lifestyle where he does bugger all and everything fixes itself around him. Of course he strongly believes in marriage.

he doesn't believe in being equal life partners, tho.

But he absolutely does not believe in divorce. He would never leave me or be OK with a divorce.

That's his problem. Perhaps, if he's so against divorce, he shouldn't treat his wife like a skivvy.

I’m copying and pasting this excellent post from another thread. Apologies, I can’t recall the original source.

(This post is specifically geared at women in heterosexual relationships.) Ok ladies, we need to talk.

Every few weeks there's a post that makes the admin team spend a day debating if we should say something or not. These posts are always on the same theme; husbands who are not pulling their weight.

Well, after just reading a post from this week were a whopping 4 HUNDRED of you commented in solidarity with the OP I've decided today is the day we say something.

Household chore inequity and child care inequality is a form of domestic abuse. It forces women to work themselves into exhaustion and illness, whilst men buy their free time with female exhaustion.

No one wants to see themselves as being in an abusive relationship. It means acknowledging that someone you love, someone you married or committed to, someone you chose to have children with is taking advantage of you and that hurts on so many levels.

it's heartbreaking to acknowledge, but acknowledge it we must.

If your husband or partner is capable of working at their job without being micromanaged and given extremely explicit instructions, then they are capable of contributing fairly at home without being given extremely explicit instructions and micromanaged. If they act like they are incapable they are gaslighting you.

If they were capable of living independently without living in a rat-infested pigsty without any clean clothes and living off pizza, then they are capable of ensuring children are fed and clothed, groceries are done, and household chores are shared equally. If they act like they are incapable they are gaslighting you.

If they claim they love you and yet your health comes secondary to their leisure, they're gaslighting you.

If they claim they can't possibly function and it would be unsafe for them to work with broken sleep, but it's totally fine for you to have to work, drive and do all the household chores and childcare on broken sleep, they're taking advantage of you.

If they say they are going to get up in the night and help but when the time comes the pretend to be asleep/complain, they're gaslighting you.

If they don't even actually try to settle the baby and had bub back almost immediately with "they just want you:", they're gaslighting you.

If your health, sanity, sleep, work, or self-esteem are suffering because you are the one doing everything, whilst they leverage your exhaustion into their free time, they're abusing you.
Like other forms of abuse, it will not get better on its own. It's not an accident.

So please ladies. Please stop laughing it off as "just men"

It's not just men. It's purposeful.

It might not be consciously purposeful, but it is still purposeful. They know they can get away with it.

one of you being on antidepressants because your husband won't help raise the children he fathered is one too many. 400+ of you being exhausted to the brink of PND and breakdowns is heartbreaking for us to watch.

You can't fix this by night weaning. Or sleep training. Or bedsharing, or chore charts, or even kicking hubby into the spare room. There are only two things that will fix this - therapy, or leaving.

I am sorry.

So exactly what does he bring to this relationship? He does no housework, only 'a little bit' of the 'man jobs' 🙄 , and (glory be!) a few kisses and cuddles of his own child. And on top of it all he criticizes what you do and denigrates your needs for help and emotional support. He sounds like a lot of dead weight and emotional negativity to me. Add to that the load of mental resentment you (rightly) feel at seeing him sit on his arse whilst you're running yourself ragged. And the mental resentment of seeing someone who should be helping just sitting around is actually a very real and heavy load. One that drags you down physically.

Personally, I think you'd be much better off without him. You'd have much less housework to do and the house would stay much cleaner without him there messing things up. You may be doing it all yourself if you leave him, but you'd be surprised at how much less tired you will feel without all the negative feelings and resentment that are currently weighing you down. I think you'd see a HUGE upswing in your mental health.

Your mental health is already falling apart. Your physical health will follow in fairly short order if this carries on, possibly irreversibly. Is that really worse than the potential for Covid, unless you haven't mentioned that you're extremely clinically vulnerable for some reason?

Honestly, if fear of Covid is paralysing you this badly from getting in the help you need, then you may need to consider whether you have issues with anxiety that need addressed.

Who cares whether he 'believes' in divorce on not? If you want to do it, do it. If he contests, you may have to wait a few years before you are legally free, but that is not a problem. Why are you even paying any attention to what he wants, he thinks, he believes? You need to stop.
I get it is hard right now when you are so ground down, and he takes up so much of your head-space. First step - kick him out of your head. seriously, you have to stop caring what he likes, what he doesn't like, what he thinks, what he would say, how he would feel, etc.. What about you??

He doesn't get a say if you want a divorce - that's your choice. It will take longer if he doesn't agree but he can't stop you seek one. You certainly have grounds - unreasonable behaviour in not assisting with things that make a family. Gone are the days when all a man had to do was make money and shag his wife to get the next generation. Which he's not even doing if he expects you to bring in a hefty salary.

I also have an inkling it wouldn't take him too long to 'move on' if you left him.............so maybe he would end up want a divorce

@WizardOfAus

Excellent (copied and pasted) Post!!!

I'm a ' career woman ' and I can't do as much cooking and house stuff as our mothers can and that's already something which is discussed at times how I'm not like ' the women back in the day
'Back in the day' men paid all the bills and women didn't need to work so they had time to keep on top of the home life.
If that's what he wants, keep your money for you and use it to pay for a cleaner and some childcare or regular travel to your parents

Also, don't do his washing. Buy a big box and throw anything of his that isn't where it should be into it, be that rubbish, plates, clothes, wallet, whatever. Then it's out of your way and it's his job to either dig through it or sort his shit out.
Put headphones in when he starts trying to guilt trip you.
Google 'grey rock' for when he get angry or tries to push for a reaction / refuses to sleep elsewhere etc

Seriously though, he's being a selfish arse and he's not a partner to you. Dramatic as it sounds, he isn't open to changing so your options are to accept that this is your life and keep going until you burnout, kick off and demand changes but accept they'll likely be short lived, or look into separation. This would be your choice by the way - he can tell you he doesn't believe in divorce as much as he wants but it's up to you if you stay or go.

Also, I don't buy into the idea this is all because of your role models. I was brought up with a very traditional family - dad did a physical but well paid job, mum was a SAHM and only got a pt job once I'd moved out as she was bored. She taught me how to run a house etc but I don't want a marriage like hers so I don't accept the majority of housework and cooking etc falling to me, just as I don't accept DH should be in charge of the finances like my dad is. You learn from your family but with a bit of experience behind you, how your relationship works becomes a choice.

You are worth so much more than this situation. X

I'd like a man who did all the cleaning and housework, brought me flowers every week and washed out the old vases, handy with DIY, earned a fortune selling Apple shares so spends his time dotingly caring for our daughter. It'd be great if he had rock solid abs and a 7 inch vibrating cock too with no needs of his own, just keen to please every couple of weeks when I felt like it. An interest in cooking healthy cuisine is of course a must and just LOVES to manage the family diary, doctors and dental appointments. In his spare time his main hobby is to weed my garden. It'd be great if he had a pilot's licence and a private jet that ran on hopes and dreams so we didn't have the moral or financial guilt of all that jet fuel.

PM me know if you know someone like that x