Totally had enough now...why is everything my job?

[Schooldilemma2345]

My husband and I just had a huge row about wrapping up a vacuum cleaner to post that I sold on eBay. It sounds ridiculous but it feels like the whole argument epitomises everything I’m feeling! I’m totally fucked off with being the only person in a household of 5 who does any life admin. I’m juggling a hundred balls and nobody notices or cares. I feel totally and utterly overwhelmed and under appreciated and if I try to explain how I feel he just doesn’t get it. Lockdown certainly isn’t helping but it’s definitely not the route cause.
It’s like that philosophy teacher who fills a jar with stones and then asks his students if it’s full, “yes it’s full” they say. But then miraculously he manages to add smaller stones, then sand and then finally water til the bloody jar is at bursting point. My kids are the stones, the housework and the cooking and food shopping are the smaller stones, the sand is my work which I seem to be expected to complete in a spare 30 secs here or there whilst stirring pasta sauce or vaguely supervising an online lesson and bloody homeschool is the water that has somehow been shoehorned into the mix.
Nobody seems to care that I can’t bloody concentrate on anything. When I complain to my husband that I can’t think straight he just says “well I can’t do my work from home can I” but I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t get much done if he was in my shoes either.
I’m sick of being gaslit about being constantly on my phone too, I’m not looking on social media or playing Tetris- I’m doing an online food order (so that if someone offers to cook to give me a ‘break’ I can say yes, we’re having sausages- they’re in the fridge, on the second shelf down, behind the yoghurts- yes, they’re definitely in there), or emailing a teacher or catching up on work emails or buying a pair of wellies in the next size up or something equally boring.
I don’t want to ask for help- I don’t want to delegate something on my to-do list and then spend the next half an hour explaining which pan to use or where the nail scissors might be hiding or what my Amazon password is or what number cartridge the fucking printer takes. I just want some of the shit to vaporise completely- I want it not to be my job in the first place. And if I hear one more time that I’m a control freak who won’t ‘let’ anyone ‘help’ I’m going to stab someone.
Sorry rant over!

Sounds like he’s decided all the shit jobs he doesn’t want to do are yours. Sounds like a nice life he’s living - all of the cooking and cleaning done for him, never needs to worry about anything as you’re his safety net picking it all up behind him etc. Read him the riot act.

slumber cannot sympathise as I’m blissfully childfree, and I do not tolerate ‘sulking’ or any form of abusive behaviour choices. There’s no need.

My OH regularly said..."I would cook... if you look up recipes/buy ingredients/leave out ingredients and leave me to do it uninterrupted (by kids)". Arrrrgghh its not Masterchef, wouldn't we all love that ?! No idea of the workload associated with all that and how ridiculous he sounded.then on occasion he does cook ...the absolute STATE of the kitchen afterwards...so much time spent staring at this meal and stirring it instead of cleaning as u go. Any suggestions on my part taken as criticism..... but questions every two minutes...'where is cumin/we don't have any cumin/what can I use instead of cumin?"......"its.in.the.spice.rack." no real solutions but you have my sympathies OP. We have a whats group for us two and I write things for him to do and then remove them from mental load. Have accepted thats its easier to do cooking/meal planning but delegated much other admin. Get kids to do more. Lose the plot every so often and demand more ! And take advantage of the autonomy you have and buy nice things for self/house and plan to go to x place - whether anyone likes it or not..Become less available (this is sooo hard with Covid but afterwards..go the gym etc and leave him to it more often.. breezily saying byeeeeee).I don't think you can change them much but it does improve a bit. (the opposite type of OH must be equally or more difficult to live with I think)

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Why do so many women pick and tolerate and service such shit males?
I don't think that's fair. They're very good at hiding their failings but when children come along the cracks start to show! I agree with delegating wherever possible. We used to have a rule that whover didn't cook, washed up. Now I just leave the kitchen so he does it which, considering how much I do, is only fair.

Don't facilitate this OP.

I’m doing an online food order (so that if someone offers to cook to give me a ‘break’ I can say yes, we’re having sausages- they’re in the fridge, on the second shelf down, behind the yoghurts- yes, they’re definitely in there)

That is an example.
Assuming your OH is home early enough to cook then be a little clearer.
I will be cooking Mon/Tues/Thurs this week only, I am letting you know now.
If laundry is an issue then don't do any for OH.
Leave it in the basket.

How family/life work is up to individual couples, as long as it is fair to both.
Personally I don't mind doing the mental load, I like to be in control of finances, have a keener sense of saving money, switching supplies etc, it interests me to find deals and bargains.
I also enjoy doing laundry, so that's no big deal to me.
OH works long hours, is home late through the week, I have to do all the cooking Mon-Fri as OH isn't home in time.
However on a Friday after dinner that's me.
I leave all the dishes, and don't set foot into the kitchen again until Monday morning. He sorts out all the food, buying cooking and clearing up over the weekend.
I meal plan for the following week, OH clears out the fridge on a Sunday- I give him a list of what I need - he does the shopping and has the fridge full for the coming week.
So I take over the kitchen on a Monday, clean and tidy with a fridge full of food.

Sit down with your OH and claim your right a fair system

It's definitely our responsibility to make sure our sons don't grow up like this. I struggle with a lazy husband too - but I'm sure he wasn't asked to do much by his mum when he was a teen and that's where it comes from. She was born in 1939, so from a very different generation, where the men/ boys were not expected to do much in the house other than diy. My DS 15 will cook and clean reluctantly- I'm working on that, but he needs to understand about sharing the responsibility for housework, as does DH. My DH won't clean but does do all the supermarket shopping, which I hate. It's work in progress

It's definitely our responsibility to make sure our sons don't grow up like this.

So releasing any responsibility from fathers again. And implicity blaming women - again.

I swear that the mothers who raise sons tell them that if they do a bad job at a task the wife has given them to do, they will never ask you to do it again !!

I had a man like yours op. You really have to delegate and keep out. Don’t be answering stupid questions about how to do a task. I used to tell my lot.. you have a brain, 2 arms and legs.. so get on with it !!!

This thread has inspired me to pass meal planning and cooking onto my husband for a week. He's had some kind of manflu (no covid symtpoms) for 4 days and has done sweet FA while I have cleaned, shopped, tidied, cleared the garden, worked full time and looked after both DC under 5. He's just been sauntering downstairs in his dressing gown to make his own food, and if 'caught' makes a groaning noise to indicate he feels bad and goes back to bed where he seems to have the energy to play games on his iPad for hours on end.

The problem with strikes is that he has to notice, which ime could take up to a month, and then he has to care that things have gone to shit. Thats not necessarily a given.

This says it all for me, a summary of "the mental load": www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/26/gender-wars-household-chores-comic

Hey OP, I hope you're okay!
I'm in a similar position, I do EVERYTHING and have 2 young children (3yo & 5mo).
DP also has a weed addiction and I have finally lost my shit. I'm rundown all the time, breastfeeding, cleaning, cooking, nursery run, food shopping, cooking, laundry, planning days out and general day to day admin too.
Honestly, I've reached the point of no return, and yesterday told DP that I want to split. I feel like I live alone anyway, so I don't see why I should not just live alone, without the added stress of a weed addict and constantly being let down.

What is keeping you staying with your DH? Is there any reason you can't leave?
Obviously it's not that straight forward, but do you really want to be with him, or is it just for practical reasons that you are?

I get you. Last week I had a massive show down with DH that has been brewing for 20 years. He was very offended and defensive, but he is pulling his weight more now, and has stopped stomping through the house in his wellies because it takes too long to take them off .

Nip this in the bud now as it will only get worse if you don't.

After a while, it’s difficult to respect someone as a partner when you do their thinking for them and become their default mummy. That’s one of the reasons my ex is an ex, I also got sick of thinking for three kids and another adult, just don’t be like me and put up with it for years.

Ladies I was in the same situation with my DH. I was ready to leave him. First of all in his defence he just had no idea how much I did.

It is not going to help you losing your shit in the heat of the moment and expecting your DH to fully grasp the problem and immediately remedy it. Remember half the problem is that we have enabled this to happen. So in order to have a healthy marriage work together to fix it.

In the end I went to my DH in years explaining I couldn’t go on and wanted him to know I would leave him of life didn’t improve. I felt like his slave. He was mortified I felt like that.

So this is what We did.

1. identify the full scale of the issue I.e. list every family chore and life/admin task ranging from dealing with the school pta events, birthday present buying, food shops, insurances etc right down to cleaning the loos. We awarded each task a score of 1-3. Some tasks are more mental/Labour intensive than others, they got a 3. Doing the bins etc got a 1.

2. We then worked out our score each, then for both of us the true scale of the problem was glaringly obvious. I asked DH if he felt it was fair. He said no. He agreed he needed to do more, half the tasks he never appreciated were tasks or even knew they existed. I bit my tongue because ranting at him about it would’ve just got his back up.

3. I then picked tasks that I enjoyed and played to my strengths and DH the same. We then split the tasks we hated until our scores were 50/50. We did not share tasks, because I felt the temptation to leave it for the other mug to do it would be too great.

4. I printed it off and we signed it. And I kept a copy in our admin drawer. Any pushback on ‘but that’s not my responsibility’ was soon clearly rectified. We don’t actually use it anymore because DH and I have been doing it for years now and we know our tasks. But in the early days it stopped arguments.

5. truly the hardest part of all, I had to learn to accept that DH may not do things how I wanted them done. In my head I wanted my home to be perfect. But now things are done to a good enough standard I have chilled out a bit. Except laundry, he is still not allowed near the washing machine. It’s on my list, and I would have to be on deaths door before i let him near my clothes.

If you think you’re DH wouldn’t care for any of this redistribution of life Labour then I don’t think you will be able to change them. You don’t have much choice beyond putting up with it or leaving. In my DHs case his first wife left him because of this, and he knew he had to change because I was going to do the same. He is truly a different man and we have saved our marriage. We do not argue over chores anymore, and our children see mummy and daddy doing housework equally.

I just want to say it is possible to fix these problems.

Wouldn’t work with my DP. He works 12 hour days and doesn’t get home until 8pm and then he’s on his laptop. I have to remind him to eat. We do have a nanny but it’s still like plate spinning in an earthquake.

I think a lot of this evolves due to mat leave. During that time the mother at home generally has more headspace, time and is physically present in the home so most things do naturally fall to her. I remember reading mn and researching weaning, potty training, looking for and enrolling on tumble tots, swimming lessons etc because I'd be the one using them with the dcs. But when the mat leave ends, in most cases nothing changes. The DH/P has got used to life at home just working around him. It's probably at that point rather than when the baby first arrives that men might realise more that their life has to change, but the mum keeps on doing it all as well as paid work, noticing the too small wellies etc because unless you make a very very conscious effort, that's how it just is and any attempt to change this , as shown on here meets a lot of denial and resistance.
My kids are tweens now and as a single mum I'm determined not to be their skivvy so i've recently started being much less helpful and more insistent that they pull their weighta bit even though it would be much quicker and easier to do it myself.

Wouldn’t work with my DP. He works 12 hour days and doesn’t get home until 8pm and then he’s on his laptop.

Long hours does not abdicate his responsibility.

Many women could work long hours too- but they are usually the ones taking up the slack at home.

My DH is usually out of the house for 12 hours too. I reminded him he has a lunch break and that instead of wandering about for 30mins or reading online newspapers he could a) do internet shopping b) book dental appointments c) email the school for holiday clubs etc. All the things I do in my lunch break. Why is he more special than you?

Days off are mostly spent doing chores in the morning and we can spend the rest of the day together.

@Fucket could you share your list? I worry if I did similar I'd miss off all those small things I do all the time without thinking

This post sums up my weekend. I hear you all even if none of those fuckers do.

I don't think that it's a good idea to set tasks like hoovering or cleaning the bathroomm as that hinges on standards - they could hoover once a fortnight. Better cooking and food shopping.... Hard to avoid long term

What's worked for me is to think about every task - if this isn't done (or is done late/badly), will this a) inconvenience me and b) mainly/only DH? If b) don't do. Of course the problem is, once DD came along, I didn't want her to want for anything. However, he's actually better at doing things for her without being prompted. But then he went back to being crap about everything else. I had to threaten divorce and actually mean it to get an improvement. At that point, the fact I'd always handled the finances was a big relief to my mind. Things are somewhat better now but I never feel I can relax or it slides.

As a PP said, if you get lumbered with all the planning, at least plan so it works for you! Holiday destinations you particularly like etc.

My DH gets up every morning, other than Sunday, with the children. He makes them breakfast, gets them changed, gets them sorted for school and what they need that day, and then brings me a cup of tea in bed!! Then We get ready for work and leave the house.

I was so sick and tired of doing all of the mental load and all the kids stuff. This has been a game changer! I don't feel so resentful as I get relaxing morning. He has to do mornings but doesn't have do book any appointments, liaise with schools, buy clothes or sort uniform etc!

Just reading your first post makes me want to scream. It's so ridiculous and yet it goes on in sooo many homes. Your husband needs to get his shit together or your marriage is going to die.