Am I an unsupportive wife ?

[princessses]

My H accused me of this. He said I expect him to be around the family when he has time off and that I don't let him get on with work he could be doing to enhance his career.

Apparently I don't know what it takes and he needs more space from us at weekends, so he can get on and progress career wise.

I'm on Mat leave at the moment and have found it pretty taxing with two small kids. He's hardly ever here, in the sense that I do all housework, getting kids up, any drop offs at nursery, dinner time, bath time, bed times, night wakings etc all on my own. H works 6 days a week. So he isn't here much. I've been really unwell this weekend and he's had to pick up the slack and basically do what I always do. He's falling to pieces and telling me I never give him a break to get on with his career stuff.

I go back to work soon and I'll still be running the show at home. I'm feeling pretty sad he thinks I'm sabotaging his success and I feel like he's basically saying I'm not functioning well enough.

I guess I just don't know if it's me or if it's him. He makes me feel so utterly unreasonable that I'm just completely confused and I'm just giving the arguments here that he gives me.

He's looking at it wrong

In a few years he might have the flexibility in life to build this kind of career

At the moment the only way he can have that flexibility is by burning you out. At the very least he could be encouraging and supportive not rude and critical about how you are supporting him.

He sounds like the kind of man who will get all of the support he can out of you and then when he does have more time, flexibility and money move onto another woman with more energy, interests and enthusiasm because she hasn't been drained by your DHs unreasonable demands

What's confusing? He thinks he shouldn't have to do any of the boring bits of being an adult because he has a penis and you have a vagina.

He openly treats you as less than him. It's not confusing, he's a sexist mysoginistic twat

Regardless of his career, does he not want to build a relationship with his children? Spend time with them? My husband is by far the higher earner in our house and works in an industry with notoriously high expectations of long hours/networking etc but as he loves his children he spends as much time with them as he possibly can.

I think if you're being unreasonable or not depends on what was agreed. Working 6 or 7 days on a business and not engaging at all in family life isnt a decision that one of you make without the other agreeing. When he started up the business did you have kids already? How did you agree to split the chores and childcare when you had kids?

So him already having this job and you wanting to have kids and assuring him you would do everything, would be a very different situation to him starting this business after you had kids and telling you he would still pull his weight.

I'd say though in general, it's not sustainable for one person to do absolutely everything at home and work full time while the other parent just works without it leading to resentment. He wants you to be a SAHP and presumably work full time. Which simply isnt possible

Why does he think your career isnt as important to you, as his career is to him?

I think ultimately if one parent is ill, and the other parent resents stepping up to do a bit more as a result, it doesn't feel like a partnership. And a partnership should be about both supporting each other, not one person supporting the other to reach their goals and ignoring all their own goals in the process

@princessses

Start up company that requires a lot of time. You could work at it around the clock. H has very high ambitions with it and is doing very well with it. Except his wife pulling him down apparently !

Start-up businesses do need a lot of time and relentless work for sure. But it shouldn’t be on you to automatically pick up absolutely everything else.

He knows you have young children. He presumably knew it was going to be very hard work so he could have put things in place to make sure you both had adequate support. Instead of which he seems to have just unilaterally decided it’s your job to do everything domestically. It’s not on.

My boss and her husband both launched startups within a year of one another when their daughters were one and three and they got a live-in nanny because they correctly predicted that the businesses were going to take most of their time. The husband didn’t just assume it was going to be fine without bothering to ask his wife.

Your husband is an entitled and misogynistic prick who doesn’t see you as an individual with your own rights and needs. He sees you as free housekeeping and the fact you are questioning this shows what a number he has done on you. Question is why you are putting up with it?

I remember going through a similar situation with my husband. The reality was that we were both overworked and exhausted. I would outsource some of the housework and get your husband to pay for it. That will make up for the help is unable/unwilling to offer. It will also make things easier for you when you go back to work.

I think that he knows that Op doesn’t have it easy. He has looked after the dc whilst the Op has been ill and has found it really difficult.
He doesn’t want to have to do it again so he has guilt tripped Op into thinking she has an easy life , therefore ensuring that she doesn’t ask him to look after the dc again .
When she goes back to work he will still expect her to do everything because she is working from home.
Can’t see things getting much better

My DP made these noises when I was on Mat leave with DC2 and it’s ended in me being emotionally abused. Red red flag OP. I’m sorry.

His startup is failing and he’s looking for someone to blame

I honestly don't understand why he wanted children until it was to carry on the family name.

And it is sad that instead of both of you thinking children are exhausting but fun, you both look on the children as exhausting.

I was a single mother and I didn't have to cater to another adult in any way so it was a lot easier than you have it, OP.

I honestly don't understand why he wanted children until it was to carry on the family name.

A wife and children are status symbols to these kind of men. Presenting a family man image is part of his start up business ambitions.

Yep

It’s him. And everyone on here is saying it.

It sounds like he needs to change his perspective. I would tell him that 6 days a week on his career leaves him ONE day for time with his family. Your children will never be this age again and they and you deserve his time too. If he does not make that decision now he will set a pattern of working all the time at his career and lose his family. You did not marry him so that you could be a single mom with a career and all of the childcare. His priorities should be You, then his children and then his career.

He should be finding respite in being with his family on days off. It should refresh him and he should get joy in planning to do things with his family or just be at home with them. He’s a parent now. Not a confirmed bachelor who needs alone time every minute he’s home. You’re doing everything.

This is a great post. Good advice, op.

I had an unsupportive husband like yours. He then changed jobs and had 3 weeks where in his new job it was just afternoons so he was free in the mornings to look after 2 year old DC. I was at work so it saved on childcare at the time.

After just one week he said he now realised how relentless it is looking after a 2 year old for just a morning but for 5 days a week and he now understood why I got the bare minimum done during the day (had dropped nap by this point) and the house was a mess and dinner wasn't on the table when he got home.

Could you arrange a similar 'immersive' experience so he sees how relentless parenting is when done properly?

He is a spectacularly unsupportive husband. When he's home your leisure time should be split 50:50 and he needs to step up more on the childcare front as he sees the kids so little the rest of the time. If his business is doing so well he needs to outsource/ delegate. You only get one go at your children's childhood's/a marriage. It sounds though like he has taken your insuperiority in the partnership for granted for so long that you will struggle to call him out/ set boundaries on this. The Bridging the Gap FB group/ Zawn Villaines are good resources to follow

Everyone here is telling you how unreasonable he is.

Do you genuinely think a bunch of strangers are lying to you?

Many start ups fail. Just because he’s working hard now it doesn’t mean he’s guaranteed to achieve ‘being more flexible in a few years’.

Much more likely is that even if his does reasonably well, he’ll still be telling you in 5 or 10 years time that he can’t pull back now, it’s precarious, he HAS to keep working these hours and you need to carry on sacrificing all your own needs to support him.

When we were kids my Dad worked d away a lot, he couldnt drink while away so when he first got home he had a drink the first night after that he did the child care, the cooking, the cleaning etc etc to give my Mum a break. Yer partner is an asshole, he should be coming home and being a father and husband, stop being a door mat

@Lampzade You may be right about that. But also do think there’s a lot of denial that goes on in the mind of a man child. They are often illogical.

you’re right to point out that he thought it was massively hard work looking after his own kids, but I reckon he’ll have rationalised that it’s women’s work and he should never have had to do it in the first place. He was doing his wife a favour.

He’ll be thinking his ‘work’ is more important, so it’s more than half the effort.

That’s my theory, but I’m probably giving him too much credit thinking that he isn’t consciously doing this!

What @Mycathatesmecuddling said>>>

What's confusing? He thinks he shouldn't have to do any of the boring bits of being an adult because he has a penis and you have a vagina.

He openly treats you as less than him. It's not confusing, he's a sexist mysoginistic twat

Your career is just as important as his OP. Please please do not put yours on the back step, burning yourself out to do all the parenting and basic adulting to facilitate making his life easier

Over 50% of marriages end in divorce. Protect yourself by making sure you are able to support yourself and kids if this happened.

So he wants to work every waking hour and build his business? Then why did he want children?

How does he envisage it working when you're back at work too? Does he concede that your career will take some time too because you can't both be working 7 days a week to build careers and look after 2 young children?

Seriously, he's being unrealistic in his expectations. It's admirable he has a work ethic like he seems but he needs to take it a little and actually see some of his children's childhood