To be revelling in playing my newly acquired 'well I work full time too' card!

[broomers]

At the end of last year I went back to work full time after having done 3 days a week and 2 stints of may leave over the last year.
DH is pretty good round the house but it's more the mental load/mothers load that I'm currently offloading some of onto him!
Little things like tonight he said we need to get DS hair cut (which he hates) and thinks we should get a mobile hairdresser to the house, previously statements like this would see me take that on to arrange so I simply said yes let me know when it's booked for, his face looked so confused 😂 it's been happening like that for the last month and obviously I still do my fair share but having help out with cleaning and school drop offs etc and general life admin has been a real eye opener at how much mental capacity it takes.
Somewhat lighthearted but guess my AIBU is should I enjoy it as much as do when I get to play the I work full time too now card!

" I’m willing to miss out on ed Sheeran to remind Dh I’m not the house slave"

🤣🤣🤣 this should be printed on a tshirt or something.

I gave the husband fair warning that I was stopping the thinking, finding, buying, wrapping and sending of his side of the family's birthdays and Christmas presents about 5 years ago. The result is that they get nothing from us, I get nothing from them, but they still send stuff to him 🤷🏼‍♀️ I don't mind, it's a load off my mind.

Love this OP.

Totally relate!

Tbh the relief of not having to think about or organise everything is brilliant - I can't believe I did all that wife work for so long.

Finally a woman who isn’t a doormat and does everything ‘because she is the mum’. Good for you OP!

Good for you OP.

To be honest he's already ahead of a depressing number of fathers by noticing that DS needs a haircut, knowing that he hates having it done and suggesting to get a mobile hairdresser in.

Keep on pushing to get him all the way to the finishing line OP.

When dh started wfh during lockdown and my hours went to full time I remember telling him what time the gas engineer would be coming round.
"But you will be home won't you?"

After I'd pointed out that for me to attend would mean me driving home, waiting for them to arrive, then driving back (which is what I'd have always done in the past, so probably taking about 90minutes to 2hrs out depending on how long it took) whereas he would have to take 5 minutes out to open the door, point them in the direction of the boiler, and possibly take another 5 minutes later to sign/answer any questions, he looked very pathetic.

"But what if I have an important meeting."

I'm afraid I laughed.

He's still wfh, but I don't work full time and he does sometimes do things like take the children to the dentist.

I'm genuinely torn between going from 3 days to 4 or 5 days in September when DS starts school, because I know if I have Fridays off to sort housework etc and cover some of the school holidays I will end up also doing all of the dentist, rest of school holiday sorting, medication, boiler and car service, and insurance shit. I did get DH to sign DS up at the dentist so they call him and he will be emergency school contact as he WFH.

Me and DP had this conversation a good few years ago, however it went a bit differently for her.

We've always been fairly even with most housework, do around the same amount even if some jobs were hers and some mine, so shes the only one who dusts, and I'm the one who cooks etc.

But I'll admit that most of the stuff to do with school, kids activities, kids haircuts, clothes etc. fell to her, as a holdover from when she didn't work.

We had a conversation about it, and I agreed to do more, but said that in return she needed to be more involved in things like DIY, sorting the MOT, insurance renewals, changing broadband deals, researching holidays etc.

We agreed what we thought was fair, she lasted a month before she was begging to go back to the previous arrangement.

Sometimes the mental load really is all on one person and needs rectifying, but sometimes couples take on different areas of it, and don't see what the other half is doing until they have to get involved.

i find it so weird that women even start this! why? they're his family. if he was buying for them before he met me, he'll carry on.

I've been doing 3 or 4 days a week since my son was born (he's now 21 🤣) and I'm starting a full time job imminently! I'm looking forward to unloading some crap on husband too.

i'm a sahm but i still refuse to think of everything.

my favourite was when dc was going to a birthday party and dh was dropping him and asked where the present was as they were heading out the door. "i dunno? where did you put it?" (dc was old enough for a tenner in a card to be acceptable, so they stopped on the way)

Re: Christmas and birthday presents for man’s side of the family -absolutely it should not be wife work.
That said, if you have a very elderly MIL who rarely sees you and she’s not going to get anything bar a card from her son, then a pragmatic decision might be to increase her happiness by getting her some presents.

why not ask him what chores around the house you can "help" with? and if he needs you to "babysit" so he can go out for an evening....

I think I have the best of both worlds as both me and my husband work four days a week. So I get to work part time, plus he knows there’s no way I’m going to carry more mental load / do more kids stuff than he does!

To be fair he does step up and we do around 50% each.

I do this too! I generally respond with 'that sounds great! Thank you.' leaving him looking slightly confused as to how he got lumbered with that chore.

It's funny how when men start trying to counter this accusation around mental load, they always end up comparing jobs that happen once a year like mot, insurance etc, with the daily avalanche of jobs that is dealing with children's schools, clubs, clothes etc.

I suspect the reason your wife changed her mind was that you offloaded some of your jobs onto her, but actually took on very little of her mental load.

This brings me joy. What’s for tea? You tell me hun, I’m starving crack on 😀

OP - brilliant, well done. I especially like that you're being proactive from day 1.

@deeperthanallroses BRAVO! I love it. We have a similar thing in that we miss out on social events with his family /friends sometimes because he doesn't mention them, diarise them, think about them and I've made separate plans in the meantime.

Aaaargh I can relate to this. I've recently took over the dog vet care stuff as husband was getting reminders and just telling me about it and not doing anything about it the poor dog was going a few days without meds. I'm still ripping. We both work FT but husband is studying aswell so feel like I should be supportive. But it's like responsibility creep it happened when I was on mat leave I ended up looking after 90% of house stuff then put it right when I went full time. It's not great for the relationship when one person is carrying the mental load.

Right…….?

This was never something I had to stop, because I never did it in the first place.

I don’t even understand how a random girlfriend (because all wives start out as girlfriends) even takes over this role in the first place……………….?

Go girl!

@NImumconfused Yes, it's funny how every now and again in the past, DH and I would argue about this sort of thing (in particular when DH seemed to think cooking didn't count as a chore becuase I quite like cooking, and therefore he's DOING somuch more) and I'd offer to swap. The offer was rapidly withdrawn and actually, was probably the single most useful tool in making him understand that no, MOTs and bins does NOT equate with endless emails from school, cooking, shopping, parties, playdates, holidays, cleaning etc...."

What is your AIBU though really? I swear half the posts in this topic aren't AIBU. OP it's great that you work full time, bully for you. Put it in chat.