DH just sabotaged my lie in in the most spectacular fashion.

[bananamuncher]

I was up most of the night with writhing breastfeeding toddler, DH promised me a lie in as I sobbed at 3am about my poor battered nipples. Morning arrives. 5 year old wakes and DH takes his sweet time to get up and take him downstairs which means I’m basically awake now. I hear screaming and sighing and much drama from downstairs. I do get brought a cup of tea in bed though, (proofof no intention to let me sleep...?) While delivering tea he asks me lots of questions about where things are and the day’s weather (how the fuck would I know?).

Five year old comes flying in, switches on lights and climbs under the covers, waking toddler and bringing dog into bed. I can hear DH downstairs playing the fucking guitar! He finally comes up to collect five year old and also takes toddler downstairs. Complains he is useless at making coffee and he can’t find many, many things.

I hear more screaming and shouting from downstairs and decide to give up and go down. I get downstairs to kitchen,DH, five year old and dog all covered in milk ( some bizarre accident apparently) DH inconsolable and flapping about incapable of cleaning it up. Five year old now running around naked except open dressing gown, DH still quizzing me about toddlers missing slipper and the fucking weather!

He’s now taken himself off for a bath....

WIBU to bury him under the patio?

I’m laughing about it to be honest but Jesus Christ....

So tomorrow, you bury your head under the blankets, headphones if you need them and let him get on with it.
I'd have broken his bloody guitar over his head. (What is it about men like this - they always have a sodding guitar!) They're kind of charming up to the age of 25 - and then they're not.

I’ve ripped this post off from another thread. I think it’s always worth saying.

(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.

I ignore the noise and sighing on my lie in days. I used to go haring downstairs but I am too tired and cynical now. They cope just fine.

@WizardOfAus That is brilliant ^

Sadly, I feel some women won't take heed, and will just laugh off their husband's incompetence as him being a bit silly/useless/daft, and will continue to say ''LOL wot iz he like?!'

Awful. And very sad.

@bananamuncher

He’s honestly a bit clueless but usually thoughtful. He was up most of the night too, but yes, he could do better

Saying he'll do something for you, taking the kudos, and then not fucking doing it isn't thoughtful. It's manipulative.

Bet he doesn’t do this at work

This in droves.

When I was a child, I did nothing in the house, not a thing. I was big into a sport and became a professional athlete, so it worked out well for me, but I look back at my poor mother who did everything and I feel bad, I have thanked her btw. That said, I learnt how to use a washing machine within minutes, because I wanted to learn, because I didn't want to be an incompetent adult and I wanted clean clothes. It certainly wouldn't have been my mothers fault that I couldn't be arsed to learn, such a cop out to say "Mummy didn't show me". And that's not even bringing Daddy into it.

God sorry, the athlete thing was mentioned because I was always out of the house and when I was home, I did school work and my mum gave me a pass on the housework etc.

@WizardOfAus that needs to be a sticky at the top of the Relationships board!

Every bit of that is true.

I had never thought of it as a form of domestic abuse before but yes, putting your leisure time as a man above your wife's mental and physical health is domestic abuse.

@WizardOfAusizard Needed to be said. Fabulous piece of writing.

Why are men so fucking useless 🥲

Yes totally agree it’s not on to say you’ll do something and then not do it and then get pissed off when you get called out on it. He did apologise but initially it was more of a ‘for fucks sake I’m soooooo supportive and this is what I get?’ Response

We moved to Portugal, can’t move back because it was for work, and kind of stuck now anyway. He’s not English but his family aren’t here either. I really feel like a total idiot, I can’t bear the thought of another break up and divorce, especially from another country...

@bananamuncher

Yes totally agree it’s not on to say you’ll do something and then not do it and then get pissed off when you get called out on it. He did apologise but initially it was more of a ‘for fucks sake I’m soooooo supportive and this is what I get?’ Response

We moved to Portugal, can’t move back because it was for work, and kind of stuck now anyway. He’s not English but his family aren’t here either. I really feel like a total idiot, I can’t bear the thought of another break up and divorce, especially from another country...

Could you go home to family with the dc? Just hypothetically.

Stop. Doing. Shit. For. Him.

@OhCaptain maybe....

Speaker as a resource manager, he appears to need a considerable amount of extra practise, before being competent.

It appears that there have been opportunities for some five years. What needs to change, so that he gets the practise? Maybe start now

@Sinful8

People really need to learn an early night beats a lie in.

Nothing beats a lie in IMHO.....wish I had them occasionally 😂

You have an extra child on your husband. Stop sorting everything for him, let him deal with things and sort his own mistakes before he goes from child to toddler (some do)

@bananamuncher - only with his agreement if the toddler is his, which I'm assuming is the case.
Hague Convention says that you can't take the child away from where they are considered to be "settled" without the other parent's agreement.

I mean, if he'd go for it so that he could work in peace and you could get family support then it's worth considering - but on the other hand, he might have difficulty commuting back to see you in these Covid times, so it rather depends on whether you really want to stay married to him, I think.

@ethelredhead

Mothers you have created men like this.

All those domestic chores you did for your sons so they never learned how to use a washing machine or tidy up. All those meals you cooked when they came home tired from school, nights out, random drug taking. All those times you told them they were wonderful and sorted out their mess so they actually believed it. All those times you acted as their domestic slave so they could feel like a real man.

Mothers of sons you created men like this DH. There is no hope for him - with luck he earns and fortune and is fantastic in bed at least.

But you can break the cycle and stop turning boys into useless men. You can do it mothers, just stop idolising your Darling Sons and start seeing them through the eyes of the poor so and so who will end up married to them for decades once they flown your feather-bedded nest.

Or we could acknowledge that some men are shit without insisting that, actually, a woman must be to blame?

@dyslek

Im going to get a load of flack for this but...maybe wean the toddler?

FUCKING WHY? The toddler isn't the problem, it's her lackwit husband who can't apparently manage breakfast with a five yo on his own.

Even if she wasn't being kept up nights with toddler she'd be entitled to the odd bloody lie-in, it's not a luxury when there's TWO PARENTS.

People really, really, REALLY seem to hate it when someone wants to breastfeed past the tiny infant stage. It's utterly weird and intrusive.

@Draineddraineddrained

Glad you find it funny! He sounds flipping useless, if you'll excuse me saying so.

My DP is very big on the loud sighing and huffing about when I'm supposedly at leisure in another room as well though do I sympathise - not to mention the massive flapping if anything wet or messy happens to him (spills, dropped crockery etc). I have taken to going to the other end of the house as if I don't rescue him, he'll simply have to sort it it himself. I think he might have been a bit embarrassed recently by the 3yo (parroting me) saying "don't panic daddy, we just need the dustpan and brush, it's not a disaster!" last time he dropped a bottle on the kitchen floor 😆

😆 Well done that 3yr old!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏

I really feel for you OP I think you need to next time shut your door put headphones on and leave him to it

@DietrichandDiMaggio

A toddler doesn't need feeding in the middle of the night though.

If I made a list of all the things I do for my child's benefit that they don't 'need', it would be a very long fucking list. I assume this is the case for you as well?

@Pumpertrumper

This kind of shit just doesn’t fly with me. DH works long hours as an NHS doctor and given current circumstances I cut him a lot of slack.

However, he recently got into the habit of thinking his ‘days off’ were his and he ‘really deserved them’.

He never wakes up with DS it’s always me at 5am but the other morning I was suffering so badly with back ache (I’m pregnant) DH had to.

When I got downstairs around 7 (still earlier than DH ever wakes up on a day off) I found DH, disgruntled he’d not got his usual lay in, hadn’t even managed to give DS breakfast.

He’d continually fed him baby crisps to stop him crying because he was hungry. DH ‘I don’t know how to do his breakfast’

Well that was it. I totally lost it with him! DS has REDYBREK for breakfast. DH knows this but apparently isn’t capable of makinh f redybrek!?!?!
Are there not instructions on the box?
Had I not told you a million times?
Is it not literally a case of ‘add milk and microwave for 60 seconds?’

Even if he was physically incapable of adding milk to a bowl the least he could have done was chopped up some banana from the fruit bowl.
‘Or do you also not know how to peel a banana?’

Apparently this made me ‘angry’ and ‘always having a go at him’ he sulked the rest of the day.

FFS men are not incapable they’re just lazy when they think someone else will do it for them!

A DOCTOR incapable of making Readybrek?!?!?! Bloody hell