To wonder why women stay with partners who don't help?

I had twins and I have no family support so by the time expectation met reality I was already in a position where literally any help was better than none.

My DH thinks he does half... probably more than half. He thinks that the home admin he does (car insurance and the like) is much harder than simply cooking and cleaning and pretends to himself that school admin (which I do) isn't a thing. When I do the jobs that he claims for himself it takes me a fraction of the time it takes him.

He seems genuinely put out if I mention any of this. I know people always say on here that if they're smart enough to do their job then they're smart enough to understand how long it takes to do the housework but honestly he is like this with everything. He's going to become one of those grumpy old men you just can't reason with within the decade.

I'll stay until the kids are out of the house and then I'm off. He fucked up my career as well, got made redundant when the kids were little and then was too scared that he wouldn't get another similar job in the UK so he went running off to his home country and I had little option but to follow as the kids were tiny and I had no friends or family in the place we had recently moved into - again because of his job. I had made a career change but I didn't have enough experience to get another similar job abroad so I ended up being a SAHM for years before managing to get reemployed in my old career. He all thinks this is entirely fine and got upset and defensive when I tried to raise it.

I don't know what to tell you. My parents relationship was awful, my mother was abusive to both me and my dad. My dad stayed married till he died despite telling me daily how much he hated it. I didn't really wake up from how I was repeating those themes in my own life, trying to please everyone, oddly inert when it came to my own happiness - until I had my own kids, and by that time my choices were somewhat limited. I'm not going to tell you he's got redeeming qualities or whatever, he's good with the kids - he's OK, but it doesn't make up for his selfishness. I feel knackered from arguing it out in my head and with him and I look forward to a time when the kids are a bit older and I can just stop worrying about being right or wrong and just enjoy being somewhere else.

So depressing. A woman asked on a wide local fb mum group for tips managing if you both work full time. The majority of the responses were great - he does x I do y try this method etc. But a depressing minority of women responded saying they did everything despite working full time . Absolutely shocking.

Not all women care, or worry about being equal/equality.
I mean look at the women right here on MN, who defend their men watching porn.

For lot of women having a man, ANY MAN, is the most important thing.
And a lot of women (men also I guess) are afraid of being alone.
Also standards for men are so fucking low, and not than many women want to challenge them, or they are afraid of being seen as a bitch, mean, cold, bitter, forever single etc…

First time round I married a lazy oik.

I'd been brought up to be a people-pleaser with no self-esteem, so I believed it was what I deserved.
After 4 years of feeling tired, drained, unfulfilled and resentful I woke up and stopped being so damned obliging.
He didn't like his Stepford Wife becoming a person in her own right and the mask slipped and he got nasty.
I stuck to my guns and refused to be brow-beaten any more.
To cut a long story short he started an affair and I divorced him.
He married his OW and now he's her problem.🙂

I got into therapy, worked on myself, raised the bar, and am now married to a wonderful man who pulls his weight.

Because they can't afford to leave.

Don't forget those that have completely bought in to the nonsense idea that men 'can't see' dirt/mess/the need for things to be done in the house the way women do. I guess it's easier to use this excuse and remain in denial that their 'partner' is nothing of the sort

Also it doesn't help that there's a certain type of disdain developing among women for marriages where people do attempt to divide work fairly.

There was a thread yesterday along these lines, something like "how do you expect to have joy in your life when you have responsibilities" and a shocking number of people tipped up to say basically the only solution was for one parent to work and the other to remain at home. One poster even suggested one partner should be paid to remain at home until children were at school to avoid the horror of childcare (no prizes for guessing which partner would end up staying at home).

When you get women advocating to a return to traditional gender based divisions of roles and responsibilities on a site like this it makes me wonder if a lot of the progress we have made over the past 50 years is being fatally chipped away at.

Yes of course some women will always want to remain at home and should be supported to do so if their partners can afford it. But this narrative that suggests this is the only solution to women being tired and stretched is quite worrying for people like me for whom not working is not an option.

The handful of women I know in these situations sadly have no self esteem at all and are chronic people pleasers. They seem to have a real fear of children “coming from a broken home” and put up with terrible behaviour to keep the family together. However, there are also men who don’t start off showing this behaviour and it often gets worse and worse since having kids. Since having DS I’ve stepped up with the majority of housework, cooking, admin whilst on maternity leave. It’s been hard to readjust working part time and going back to college and I’ve had to tell my DH several times not to be such a lazy arse as he very much would have continued to do minimal housework if he was allowed to do so.

This. I call myself a feminist, I work full time, earn the same as my husband, keep control of my own time and finances, and I still do more than half at home. My husband thinks he does his fair share, and there is probably one other straight country I know that divide housework and childcare more or less equally. Everyone else I know, doesn’t even come close. I am generally considered to be an absolute ball-busting witch. The societal and cultural expectation on men is so low that getting anywhere near it is a major achievement, imo. It shouldn’t be like that, but it is. And those standards come from women as well as men.

All girls in schools should be able to access assertiveness workshops.Low self esteem and ability to recognised useless males before committing is half the problem.

It’s different if the work patterns are different but if both are full time there is absolutely no excuse for not being 50/50.

I do more but I work flexibly and ensure I have lots of down time so I don’t feel resentful. Dh does what he can and pays for and organises cleaners so I feel it’s very fair. Dd2 birthday coming up he has done all her presents for example.

I agree OP. Mainly because I hate the example it sets for our children, boys and girls.
DH and I split everything equally and I wouldn’t have it any other way, and neither would he!

as a single parent I can totally understand why they stay with them.

trying to share everything 50/50 sounds like a pain in the arse in itself, having to ensure you're earning 50/50, parenting 50/50 and cleaning 50/50 when you could just be getting on with it.

I've always split things differently. My ex, no kids, he was unemployed while I worked full-time, he cleaned the house every day and made dinner.

My husband now he earns the money and I do all the chores and cooking and work from home.

It eradicates rows in my experience. There's no arguments over who washes dishes or who pays for something, no arguments over money or chores - which I hear make up the majority of marital disagreements.

@Worthyornot I am pretty certain that many women ignore blatant red flags.

Agreed. I'll put my hand up to that.

Useless partners don’t generally want the kids 50/50 you will be lucky if they actually bother with them at all once you split up

Was he like this when you met? I suppose eventually he would have had to wash his dishes & clothes but at what point did that happen?

(I'm not having a dig, I'm genuinely asking)

I think sometimes with housework and kids it can be a frog boiling thing, particularly if the man does do some stuff. Like how sometimes pre DC the bloke genuinely does do something around half, but when it's just two adults living in maybe a small flat and working OOH full time there isn't that much to do.

So the woman gets lulled into a false sense of security because he does run the dishwasher when it's full, perhaps likes cooking, doesn't mind beasting it for a couple of days for the end of tenancy clean etc. But then it turns out there's a colossal difference between thinking oh, the washing basket looks full, I'll run our weekly-ish wash cos I only have one clean shirt for work and the amount of washing that needs doing in a house with a couple of small and leaky children, however the man doesn't raise his contribution to match the needs.

I think this is totally true. And I think maternity leave can solidify whose ‘jobs’ certain things are and then it’s difficult to get out of the rut. I have certainly found that most of my friends have a little annoyance in the months after may leave, trying to reconfigure who does what again.

A hundred different reasons. Maybe they see not splitting chores equally as a minor irritation rather than a reason to leave? Maybe a whinge on social media isn't an accurate picture of the marriage as a whole? Maybe he fails to take the bins out but the sex is great?

How the housework is shared isn't the only metric for a decent relationship nor is it necessarily the most important one- it's down to the individuals involved surely?

He had been living alone for years when we met. He ate in hotels when working and at home had TV dinners. His diet was dire. He worked extremely long hours. He had a cleaner who did his washing and a man who mowed the lawn.
Before that he had a stay at home wife who did everything and he worked so when he came home at the weekend he relaxed.
Useless I know but understandable. (wife was an alcoholic marriage was a disaster)

It was only 1 generation ago that it was expected that most things fell to the women. We need to educate our children to change things and hopefully in 30 years time things will have changed.

@mavismorpoth

trying to share everything 50/50 sounds like a pain in the arse in itself, having to ensure you're earning 50/50, parenting 50/50 and cleaning 50/50 when you could just be getting on with it.

It doesn't have to be exactly 50/50. You don't need a tape measure or a stopwatch. It's about building a fundamental understanding that domestic work is both partners' problem and both partners have to pull their weight. It's a mindset rather than an exact division.

The model you espouse has more logic to it if you're not working and your partner is the breadwinner but even then its problematic. Do you want to have to do absolutely all domestic work and all childcare and child-related admin just because your partner is working in an office all day? (or wherever it is he works) Would you feel happy having to clean the kitchen six times a day just because he's been at work and can't lift a finger? I couldn't live like that. Just because someone is "breadwinning" doesn't absolve them of time with their kids or an investment in how their domestic routine works.

I'm a single mother and I'm perfectly capable of working 40+ hours a week and then maintaining my domestic life and looking after my kid. Why should a bloke be absolved of this because he has a job? I would feel so resentful living like this.

Also what happens if you start working to a degree where you simply don't have time to do the same standard of domestic work? You will then find he's developed an ingrained expectation that its not his problem.

I stayed with mine because he was aggressive, chaotic and a heavy drinker. I was terrified of having to hand my very young, vulnerable children over to him every weekend.

Everything you said about my life is correct and that's just how I like it. Yes I clean the kitchen multiple times a day, cook three meals a day etc. etc. I worked full-time for a long time and really wouldn't want to juggle that with school pick up and precious time with my child.

Managing a 40 hour week and being a great parent is a wonderful achievement, hats off to you. I don't know if I could even do that because I can't even imaging trying.

perhaps I'm lazy but I feel I've done my time and domestic servitude is actually quite nice... for me anyway.