To be completely pissed about DH making demands of me?

[fcbnsw]

We have two children, 2.5yrs and a 4mnth old. I’m on maternity leave and have had a pretty rough run with the new baby. He’s clingy, barely sleeps more than 2hrs straight, and the two year old makes any kind of routine for the new baby next to impossible.

so, I’m sleep deprived, breastfeeding, managing a toddler, and also managing all this while giving DH a chance to go do his exercise a few times a week (where he is out for three hours at a time), and do the mornings, bathtimes and bedtimes for both kids now.

don’t want to jynx it but the new baby has had two decent nights in his cot after 4 months of cosleeping, and tonight DH pipes up asking for more time with me, for me to stay up later, to start having more sex, etc.

I am beyond annoyed, I have absolutely zero me time, I feel less than human, and this guy who gets 3hrs off every second day sometimes more is asking me for things? I feel like everyone wants to make demands of me; when I don’t even get to poop alone or have time to apply make up.

AIBU? Do new mums of babies actually make time to doll up and put out when their partners don’t even give them the time
or support to do so?

Three hours alone every other day, while you never get a second to yourself?! He needs to be giving you three hours alone on the alternate days! Outrageous. No wonder he can’t grasp the issue.

YANBU. I found this with my husband and we had a good chat about everything and now he is picking up more of the mental load. He goes out to exercise once in the week and usually goes to football or similar once over the weekend. He does more school and nursery runs now and does bath time when he’s around. He knows that makes me more relaxed and more inclined to want to spend time with him 😂

The three hours of completely free time to do whatever you like (which can be sleep or go out or whatever) needs to be alternated equally.

That has to be kept up for a sustained period and without complaint before he can even talk about “making time for him”. Good grief.

My ex did this, he wasn't working, I had to go to work when dd was 6 weeks old (worked up until 2 days before I had her).

I would be out to work at 6am, get back mid afternoon, then tidy up because he hadn't done it, do the school run for my older dc, do everything else, I was still breastfeeding as well so had to pump milk and feed dd.

He then had the audacity to complain because I never wore makeup for him or made the effort for sex anymore.

This is a huge part of the reason he is an ex.

You deserve better op. Tell him you'll make an effort for him when he makes an effort to share the load at home.

so, I’m sleep deprived, breastfeeding, managing a toddler, and also managing all this while giving DH a chance to go do his exercise a few times a week (where he is out for three hours at a time), and do the mornings, bathtimes and bedtimes for both kids now.

why on earth are you doing this?!

he sounds like an arse and you sound like a total martyr. Even split of parenting time for the hours you’re at home together (ie non work time) should be the norm. If he takes 3 hours off for a hobby so should you

how many of these threads honestly

Stop it. Just stop it.

write him a list of everything you do every day.

And what you do when he has his ‘three hours off’.

or this will be your life forever.

Well you say no, I don't want sex, because I work like a fucking donkey while you're fancying about on your bike/down the golf course and I'm exhausted. Sometimes you have to spell it out.

"I'm too tired for sex as I have too much to do" rinse and repeat.

YADNBU, he is. Tell him if he wants sex he can set aside some time for it, not treat it like an add on to your already overloaded days and nights. So he needs to give up some of his sporting time to enable you to have some time to yourself, to de-mum and de-stress and get in the bloody mood.

I don't think men have any idea sometimes how physical and intimate you are with a baby/toddler, especially a breastfed one. How they are on your body and in your space literally all the time. And that it is difficult if not downright impossible to just flick a switch and go from nurturing, protective caregiver mode to sexy, pleasure-loving minx mode and back again just like that. How you can't just breastfeed and cuddle a baby to sleep for the umpteenth time, jump back into bed with your husband, and then suddenly find someone else who wants access to your body in a completely different, dissonant but equally intimate way and it not be utterly jarring. Especially when you're bloody knackered and want some sleep!

You need to have some separation between all these incidents of bodily intimacy with/for others, to return to yourself, to remember what you like and what gives you pleasure and to have the energy to want to pursue that. Otherwise you just feel like a service human whose body belongs to everybody else, used by everybody else.

Yeah I would have ripped dh face off if he had suggested that when I was so sleep deprived

I did go through this a bit with my DP - he was miserable because we weren't having much sex and i was rejecting him. But that was because after the children were asleep, he'd fill his evenings with things he thought were worthwhile (reading, writing etc) instead of hanging out with me, then the second my head hit the pillow next to him, ready for sleep, suddenly that was when he would decide to slot sex into our day. I explained to him I needed energy and time to get in the mood, I needed some form of intimacy that wasn't sexual as a build-up, and I needed sex to be a prioritised activity in its own right, not a throwaway add on to the end of the day when I was exhausted. I had to spell this out very clearly for it to sink in. Because I think, for him ,sex was a nice relaxing thing to do at any time, and he had no perception that I felt completely differently about it!

OP,

Raise you bar because your standards are on the floor.

Three hours at the gym every second night?

Are you out of your mind accepting this?.

The selfishness of him would mean I couldn't look at him, not to mind have sex with him again.

Loads of great advice above, but this one sentence from @MessyBunPersonified sums it up beautifully:

Tell him you'll make an effort for him when he makes an effort to share the load at home.

I found my OH extremely desirable when he was cooking, cleaning, story reading etc, to help get all the jobs done. (long time ago now!)

I completely agree with this!! When my (now) XH actually did things around the house and got on with sharing the parenting and mental load (I was the breadwinner too), I was in a far better mood for sex. Alas, this did not happen often. Ergo, for that reason (and others!) he’s now an XH!!

This.

What a selfish bellend.

Of course they don't. What was he like as a parent of one child? If he didn't do his fair share then why would you think he would miraculously change? If he was hands on but now isn't then you need to talk about it or go apeshit. Tbh you need to talk about it anyway he shouldn't be getting to leave you to it. He can go to the gym once the 2 year old is in bed.