This is just going to be a big ole vent. I don't even know why i wrote this but it felt so good to actually get this out.
I'm mum to a one year old and I genuinely am finding being with my partner harder than mum-ing. I just do not know what to do at this point, I've tried everything. He goes out whenever he wants, and stays out overnight at his mums a lot. But he still complains that he doesn't get to see his friends enough. All his friends are out every weekend drinking. (late twenties age). Basically, he is not here in the evenings much or the weekends much but when he is here he's on his phone constantly. This weekend is just a massive breaking point for me and I'm just at the end of my tether. He went out Sat day and night and was too hungover to move from bed sun.
We split bills 50/50 but he says that he doesn't have time to help with cleaning or really with baby stuff. I've not had one lie in since she was born, and I mean that seriously, not one. I nurse baby exclusively so I've always done all the night times. Happily. He has never once bathed her, except helping out with the first one or two when she was born. If I want to do something, he will just open the doors and let her crawl to me (she's a big mummys girl). I will make dinner, make tea, clean up while holding her and he is sat there on his phone. He has no problem letting her cry. I won't let his mum babysit because she has no respect for me and has made that very clear and isn't afraid to show it. His mum has actually threatened me about three times and made my post partum and pregnancy a nightmare. To the point of starting an argument while i was in hospital with pre eclampsia, one day post c section, that led to my partner calling me up shouting at me down the phone for "disrespecting his mum". I hate her beyond words and to be honest i probably resent him a lot too. He has literally said to me that he will let me have a break when i let his mum have her a day a week(and by break i mean all the break i wanted is 1 hour an evening occasionally to just do something for me). I have a family member who was sexually assaulted as a toddler by a family member whilst being babysat so i will never let her be babysat by even my parents until she is old enough to speak. Other people don't have that rule and that's their choice but this is my choice. We are very close and i don't want her babysat a whole day. But i accepted when she was about 4 months old that he's not going to give that little break or lie ins to me so i do stuff when she's in bed for the night and i make this work. Baby and me are in a routine together and it works.
But when I ask him to help me he huffs and puffs and even the smallest asks. "Can you take the rubbish out?" HUFF. "Can you change her bum please?" Huff AND EYEROLL. Also, if she does a poo or i ask him to change a nappy (on average he does 0-1 nappies a day), he will tell me he'll do it in his own time and not on my timing. When i explain that she has a pooey nappy he'll say yeah i'll do it in one minute. This happens when i ask him for anything, grab her water beaker, feed her dinner etc. He will tell me I'm trying to nag him into doing things on my timing, he doesn't understand it's the baby's. And anything i ask i'm demanding. He and his mum recently badmouthed me for being "demanding" because i asked him to bring me nappies because the local shop was out. But she's not demanding when he does errands for her. His mum did everything for him until he moved in with me. He lived with her up until he was 25 and i once overheard her asking him to move out of his bed so she could change his bedsheets.
Just this morning, I've had to walk around and pick up his wet towel from the bed, clean the nappy up that he changed this morning from the sofa, pick up oven cleaner that he left on the floor when he was grabbing something from the cupboard, pick up his pajamas from the floor, take a glass coke bottle and sweet packets from the floor where he snacks at night. We have an agreement recently that he goes out with his friends when he wants but he has to mop once a week, take the rubbish out and wash up a couple times a week and do the last living room reset when baby is in bed. Do you know how long he stuck to this? One day. He just sits in bed napping or on his phone and anytime i say anything to him I'm a nag, I'm demanding, I'm trying to control him, i need to accept he's a lazier person than me he says or he'll do it in a minute. He blames it on his ADHD all the time and now he's claiming to be depressed, but wouldn't seek help and told me he "can't be bothered to speak to gp". When he stays out I have the most peaceful weekends, the vibe is so much nicer and my home stays clean. I don't mind doing 99% of all things baby because it just makes me happy, but all the cooking and cleaning and but he makes my home messier and then i am bad talked at his mums all the time. This morning I've got so much to do, I don't like feeling overwhelmed, irritable and fed up.
Normally i can just get on with it but i can't anymore. I'm starting to feel awful about myself, like if i had more self respect i would leave him, then i just feel like rubbish. I tried to speaking to him gently about it and he either agrees for one day or brushes me off. Couples therapy was good for the two months he would go. I know i should leave him, I don't want this role modelled for my baby and i know i would be happier, it's just he hasn't always been like this. You may have read this and thought what is wrong with this woman for staying? But he has only treated me this way since i was late on in my pregnancy and to be honest, ever since i put down boundaries with his mum it has got worse. His nan raised him a lot, even nursed him and his mum is very angry she hasn't got to have her (she even kicked off when i was 9 months pregnant because she kept bugging about having her on her own one day a week. She wasn't even born! I said no, and it was just tantrums. She takes it out on him- emotional blackmail, triangulation with him and his other family members, guilt trips- and then he lays all that on me, while she is, in his eyes, faultless. And it's constant, so he's constantly telling me i ruined their new baby time and he said because of this he will always "resent me a little bit" and i genuinely believe this is why he is so mean to me all the time. His mum made me sit outside her house one day while he went in with the baby, and after that i said i would never be put in that situation again, if I'm not welcome, baby doesn't go. I won't be excluded from my own family. His mum is allowed to visit my home when she's respectful to me but this apparently is me being a controlling and his mum claims to him that I'm bullying her and abusing her and that he is enabling me and letting me do it and so then he gets worse with me. And i genuinely believe this is a big part of why he changed so much, He never used to be anything but lovely to me and he used to help out, he used to do about 40% of the household stuff. All i want is him to help out with the housework again and stick up for me to his mum. Is that unreasonable?