All women I know are in my situation

[growli]

Pretty useless DH. They're left to look after the kids. Called nags if they complain.

It mostly falls on them. The marriages are pretty rubbish.

I've posted here so many times about my issues with my H and my lifestyle with small kids.

I always get told I need to divorce. I get told that there are other men out there who aren't as useless with their children.

In real life, every woman I know, faces something similar. Mainly responsible for everything to do with kids and house, works full time most of the time too.

Husband works hard, but doesn't contribute to looking after the kids or household. Complains of not enough sex.

The women I know are highly educated and in successful careers. We all feel stitched up. We were told if we study hard and are in successful careers, we wouldn't end up being slaves to our husbands and children.

What happened to the men our parents raised ? For them to expect women to still be like their mothers ? Doing everything for kids and family.

Mothers and mothers in law in general ( even though they raised us to be successful career women with choices ) don't have a whole lot of sympathy as it seems a raise to the bottom and ' how much harder ' it was for them.

I realise I'm generalising

At least four of my friends have husbands who think like that, @ILikeToSleepALot. I know that because my friends told me so. None of them stopped after their first baby, which kind of made me less sympathetic to the endless complaining about how useless their husbands were.

It’s a generalisation but I think there are far more women who desperately want kids than there are men who do. And many women who prioritise having kids over choosing the right father for them.

I never comment on these threads. But today, after a weekend of me parenting on my own, my husband has come back from two nights at Ascot and immediately went for a lie down on the sofa because he’s knackered. I’ve left the house because I can’t bare to look at him. Tell me I’m not unreasonable for feeling pure unadulterated hatred….

trueee x

Interesting that someone describes their partners as lazy fuckarses- thing is my H is the opposite of lazy- he's a workaholic, but is totally lazy domestically- he doesn't nag or moan - he just doesn't ever think to just do something . He wasn't for quite a few years- it kind of 'crept in' as his career got more and more senior. He would be quite happy for me to do bugger all too domestically if we could afford a housekeeper.

My dad would be nearly 100 if he were alive today, and he always did household chores, cooking, cleaning, etc. - he was probably even neater than my mother, and that's saying something. I can recall as a small child him braiding my and my sisters' hair, doing laundry, etc.

It's not "men" who are the problem, it's the fact that the entire subset of men who are lazy, disinterested, etc., still can always find a woman willing to stoop low enough to partner with, have sex with and bear children with them. So where is their incentive to change?

Women have control, if only they would exercise it.

Raised my sons different from this and they all do as much for and with the family as their wives/ girlfriends. So sorry you and your friends have had such a bad experience.

I have zero doubt that there are millions upon millions of men who feel this way.

I don't know any women or men like that.

I certainly wouldn't stand for that.

This is not what I experience - my DH is very hands on and actually likes loading the dishwasher. We’re not clean freaks but if there is cleaning to be done we split it - I do bathrooms and you vacuum etc. I do laundry and he does all bine and sorting recycling.

my dear old dad who is nearly 80 and unwell is the first to say ‘what can I do’ and grab a tea towel for drying up.

The porn thing is so worrisome.
Just weeding out misogynists - men who watch porn/pay strippers, or anything else, leaves a very slim pickings.
Suorised to here that just on this thread alone, there are so many women who have found a ’good man’.

This! I feel the same. I can’t imagine someone managing all that for me like we do for them! Mental load is awful 😩

So playing devils advocate… you, and ALL your highly educated friends either are horrible at making decisions on life partners.

Or, your view of what your partner brings doesn’t actually match the reality.

Or, your expectations are not reasonable.

You and all your friends options are binary. Leave (and either flourish, or realise the grass isn’t greener), or quit complaining. The very WORST thing you can do is try and change someone, unless you want them to do the leaving.

Yep! Got asked what time he needed to pick up something he booked in, whilst I'd arranged everything for a trip. He had 1 thing and needed to put the bags (I packed) in the car. Apparently I'm a PA and some sort of filofax.

I saw an interview from Michelle Obama which made me feel better about these years. Our eldest was more self sufficient before we had our youngest and I saw us heading out of the other side.

Also a good theory on why women resent it (because it's shit but the latest generation 20-40s saw our mothers buckle with working and home life) and why men think it's ok ('my mum did it', totally blind to it all).

This is me for the bulk of the women I know including me and my sister. I've been at breaking point. Tears everything. Exhausted.

I leave it now. I've stopped doing stuff for him and it's very tiny small baby steps. I have to coax and praise like a mother. I'm actually resentful of this parents at times.

Also resentful with my mum. Surely she wanted a better life for me than this.

Anyway my baby I won't let this happen. Gold luck x

Not my experience at all, despite my DH being the main breadwinner.
I am not blaming the women who have useless husbands/partners, but on MN, frequently men's efforts in organising life admin. is scoffed at.
A classic comment is that when the father is in charge, they go round to their Mothers to take over childcare. How many Mothers spend time with their parent, but that is seemingly fine.
Father in charge of supper 'beige food'. Father buying presents 'just asked me what to get'. Etc.

Compared to every women I know, my ex did far more than their partners/husband do. I know I have always done far less housework than any of my female friends and everybody who knows me says I have never been one to put up with lazy men.

Anyhow, as convinced as I was that my husband was a good supportive husband because he loved to cook, was great at DIY and woke me up every single morning with a cup of coffee, at some point I realised that I had been doing everything on my own for YEARS as he was too busy to help or didn’t know where to start, or he forgot, with exception of the morning cup of coffee which fooled me into thinking we still had an equalitarian relationship. We only did for the first few years of the marriage.

So I suggest anyone in a relationship to do periodical checks of the chores’ divide as your old memories may be hiding what is now your reality.

There was a radio 4 programme about this quite recently. It was looking at rising divorce rates driven by women and the conclusion was that in the main it is career women who rather than having it all are doing it all.

i know some decent blokes (not many and all taken) and then an awful lot of shits. These men are shits because they cheat- instead they are happy for their wife to work equal hours to them and still come home and do it all. When pushed they turn to weaponised incompetence or say that these things don’t matter to them so the person they matter to should do them.

the sad thing is that rather than telling these men to buck up society try’s to make excuses for them. They are chancers and cocklodgers and there is a hell of a lot of them about

Find a large plastic bag or even a new laundry bag , chuck it in wardrobe and his laundry goes in there for him to go. If he persists in putting it in the former bag/basket, move it into his. And ignore.
When he eventually gets round to doing it, leave it in the machine until you need to use it. Then drag it out and dump it in a bag and use the machine. I’d start there. No way would I do any of DH’s laundry if he did not cook every night.

I think in general men are inately more selfish than women; they tend to put themselves first, while most women put others first, especially their children. Throw in a much lower bar for the behaviour of males vs females, in society as well as at home, and girls still being socialised to please others. There is still a hangover imo, even now, from the days when men were the bread winners and always considered a catch, and women pretty much had to put up with whatever life and their marriage threw at them.
Nag is such a nasty, misogynistic term, my dh would be dead if he ever called me that.

Why are you not single?

No partner will ever be perfect but you have a choice of what you put up with and what you don’t.

I’m single and there’s no way I’d put up with this.
I choose to be single over being in a relationship with a selfish arse.

The only issue is the finances.
A 2 parent family is going to be way better off financially than a 1 parent family.

So if my DP was a bit annoying (talked too much, left his shoes on the stairs etc) then I’d suck it up knowing the rest of him was great and that financially I’d be a lot worse off.

But if my DP was a selfish twat and I was miserable being with him then I would take a hit on my finances and be single.

I am truly so happy in life and a big part of that is because I’m single and no other adults actions affect me.

So I’ve got to know why you would prefer to stay in this relationship over being single?

In the nicest way you either need to do something about it or stop complaining as nothing is going to change unless you do.

I think you're partly right, especially about the mental load stuff, at least my DH is quite good with housework. But, I decided early on I just couldn't be the planner of everything, and the rememberer of everything. So I'm not, my DH has things which he needs to plan, and which he needs to remember. These are mostly to do with his family, and our kid's sporting activities. If he wants to maintain relationships with his family, to see them, remember their birthdays etc, it's all on him. I have a great relationship with his family, his mum in particular, but they know I don't get involved in getting them cards/presents on their birthdays etc at all, and any planning of visits etc is to be done through DH. I completely get the argument that if the woman doesn't do it, it doesn't get done. So some stuff doesn't get done, my in-laws almost never get cards on their birthdays, and their gifts are often weeks late. But that's OK, the world keeps turning, his family still speak to him! I organise most school related stuff for the kids, but I don't organise their out of school sports. That's important to DH, so he does it. We plan one family holiday a year together, and we plan our kid's birthdays and Christmas gifts and celebrations, together. We're not one for big family days out, except for dog walks, so they happen rarely. We'll organise to see our respective friends and families individually, so that events itself out, we tend to be reasonably sociable that way! I guess it helps that my DH has quite a big family and quite a lot of friends, who we see with their wives and children, so I'm certainly not the one organising most of our social activities, as my family and group of friends are smaller. Do the men who don't organise this kind of stuff, have fewer friends than their wives, or do they only want to socialise with their friends on their own, without their wives and children? My OH is not like that at least.

Yup. I hear you.

I would have been better off using a sperm bank.

I don’t think blaming their mothers helps either. That’s still holding a woman accountable for his failings.

And, actually, I think their fathers’ behaviour and attitude has a lot to do with it. I fear for my toddler DS because he will grow up seeing me do everything and his father being utterly selfish and just doing some ‘fun’ stuff when it suits him.

He will at least know that I divorced his father - and left before he was 1 - because I was not willing to put up with this shit. (And, yes, it did only become obvious there was a problem when I was pregnant because that’s so common to almost be a cliche). But I can’t really see DS having many decent male role models as he grows up. Certainly, I will never be having another relationship with any man.

Not really. There are mums mornings too where you meet other parents, have a coffee, watch now your kids have settled. The setting can’t facilitate all parents at once so splitting it by mum/ dad is an easy way. Not sure what part of that is ironic to you.

Stop telling women it's fear, when sometimes it's just pragmatism. Not tolerating stuff is easy to type, especially when it's not your reality, but it's very very hard to do - women come on to MN trying to work their way out. But the last person we should be blaming is them

Very well said Naghag 👏👏👏 (and please preface your nn with “shouldn’t have to”!)

My husband contributes a lot to the household despite working long hours so I shouldn’t complain but it’s more the cooking he does which the dc applaud him for, and no one notices that I have cleaned the lav and scrubbed floors and decluttered every drawer and cupboard and done all the laundry and diy and tidied up everyone’s crap for 30 years! Largely bc it was all done by the time they got home and they witnessed their dad cooking nightly! C’est la vie!

But to be fair he also (very visibly) does bins, recycling (mostly?) and cars. And will gladly run any errands which is really helpful.

His mother always worked though so he contributed from an early age.

I’d be interested to know if we can establish from this thread if it’s the male children of dc whose mothers were sahms who subconsciously or consciously expect their wives to do it all?