You're not the only mum who works full time...

[doyoulikeflowers]

Said my lovely, supportive husband today.

When I approached him about the fact that I feel like he makes me feel like I don't do enough housework / good enough housework.

I said in his tone, when he complains about the state of the house- I sense that he feels I'm the one who's falling short.

He didn't agree or disagree but told me I was once again nagging. I wasn't. I was just saying that I find it hard to keep up with everything.

I've barely slept an entire night for probably 3 - 4 weeks. My children have been unwell on and off for that time.

I've not been able to send them to nursery much either. This week, they were at home with me for 3 days whilst I tried to juggle work. Last week they were at home for 4 days. And on it goes.

My work is suffering hugely. I can't meet deadlines and I'm constantly under pressure.

Thankfully I work from home, but I'm not able to keep up.

I go to bed at 8 pm every night, as it's all so exhausting.

My H works in a demanding high pressure role and has no time off, no working from home time either. He leaves at 5:30 and comes back at 8:30 every day. He can't do much more to help around the house, because he's just not here.

However, I expect him to understand and not continuously complain about laundry not being done or not being able to find his clothes etc. or the general mess that children bring.

I loathe the weekends as we always end up having discussions and it's really getting me down. Unless I'm constantly clearing up and basically just shut up about it, he's not happy.

He's really upset me today by saying what he said. He always upsets me and then he says it's not a big deal and he didn't mean it. I feel like I spend a lot of time thinking of ways to make his life easier, but it doesn't work the other way. I think he thinks I'm just a bit rubbish.

Our kids are under 5. They go to nursery full time and I work full time from home. My job is pretty intense. It's all a lot. I'm a shell of former self.

Ignore people who say it should be all family money and in one pot. That is not how you as a family unit do it, you are not the only family until that has a different arrangement to that and so that advice is irrelevant to you.

You said before you struggle with budgeting.

Can you try baby steps?

Are you able to see how much on average do you spend a month on all the extras? Hopefully you should be able to tell easily a rough number;

I.e.
Base Salary
£10,000

less

Your Proportion of Fixed Bills (utilities, mortgage etc..
-£4000

=

£6000

money actually left at the end of the month

£1000

= -£5000 additional cash spend in the month

less

savings if any at all, money spent on things for you only - not needed to run the house/ kids (say -£1000)

=

£4000 spend to run the house / kids costs

Can you gauge the figure roughly looking at past 5 to 7 months? Do an average (roughly)

Once you have that figure share with your H (tell/show him how you arrived at that) and ask him for half of that each month. I.e. he pays you £2000 each month (on top of anything that might already be going into some joint pot)

If he disagrees tell him he needs to step up and do some of the house organisation / planning and cooking as this is what you currently need to keep the place going; he either contributes financially or through actual labour. He needs to choose one of the two. If he doesn’t want to he needs to explain why. You already have a full time job as well as him. He needs to share the responsibility for the household with you, through cash or through labour. At the moment he is getting it for free.

Don’t ask him to do the math. You control this one.

After he starts paying he still has two choices.

1. He either continues paying the £2000 indefinitely (note definition of the word indefinitely - it doesn’t mean forever) and any savings you manage to make organising yourself better he will not benefit from
2. Or he will also actively work with you trying to organise the household better (helping looking for the housekeeper, ideas how else to outsource things and helping putting that in place) which should lead to savings. Once that new infrastructure is in place you look at the new spend and he can adjust that £2000 payment made to you.

So the message is. He either pays in cash for the additional work you are doing indefinitely or he does some of that work himself.

Your retort should be that he isn’t the only person who works long hours. Stop acting like you are responsible for the domestic front, you aren’t. If he dislikes the set up so much ask him what he’s going to do about it, psst bitching to you isn’t one of his options. His ‘big job’ isn’t code to do fuck all and treat you like a subordinate.

Get angry!

@doyoulikeflowers look at my other posts.

Time to go business like.

Facts:
Husband = full time job
Wife = full time job

Household = needs managing

Options
Wife take full responsibility and needs £4000 a month to do so (H and W pay equal amount)

Husband takes full responsibility; i.e. all shopping, cooking, cleaning, kids are done or organised by him. He needs £2000 a month to do so. Good on him, he is more efficient. (H and W pay equal amount)

Organise the household together, share out the chores, still need £1500 to do it (H and W pay equal amount).

Tell him and the family this is the deal. They did things the way they did and that’s fine. Your situation is slightly different to theirs and you are showing them how it needs to be done for your circumstance.

Put your foot down.

At the moment he is trying to become wealthy by being Poundland. Selling as much as possible at low cost being possible by cutting running and operational costs. Tell him that is only possible with a SAHP. So long you are working full time as well these costs are always going to be higher. I don’t know what he does but assume it’s a big job and he should be able to understand this concept. Tell him that. Tell him that you expect him to be able to understand that concept.

He'd say that his wife always cooks the same meals and that the house is disorganised and that he wishes he could just come home to a calm and peaceful environment, with a hot plate of nice food waiting for him on the table. Table all set up, with his drink ready- so he wouldn't need to do a single thing, after his long hard day at work.

If he posted that here, I'd tell him to fuck off back to the 1950s.

You don’t need a housekeeper you need a divorce. It’s very clear that neither of you are at all happy. It’s going to end at some point so, for your own sake, do it sooner than later.

OP reading your posts is exhausting. Just get a divorce.

There's always going to be someone who doesn't like what you are doing. If you are struggling like you do atm, a domestic helper is a good / cheap way to save your sanity and marriage. Don't get involve in that type of "who can do more with less" competition. Unless your MIL is prepared to offer practice help, she has no place in this conversation . After all, what is money for if not to improve your live and afford you a bit of comfort? Some people think themselves wealthy because there's a few extra zeros on their asset statement but live like a pauper if not downright a slave. Honestly!

@BardRelic my dh said to me at some point in the small kid years - let’s face it, we’d all want a 1950s style wife if we could have one. But we can’t, because it made very few of those women happy. @doyoulikeflowers otoh has a dh who both wants a 1950s style domestic superwoman, and a modern day very high earner.

I’d definitely leave him too if he didn’t really change on a number of dimensions.

@doyoulikeflowers I know it's hard when other people are doing it, but try not to compare your "level of achievement" to your MIL when:

• She was NOT working full-time

• She had far, far more flexible working conditions than you do, because she was working for family - it is not "slightly different" but totally different

• She had far more job security than you do (and than most people, honestly)

• It was a different era and women's priorities were considered in a different way - she was helping out, rather than being expected to be an equal partner in "building the empire" financially

• even if the family was wealthy, they likely had fewer clothes to launder, fewer toys to pick up, fewer expectations of variety in their meals... because it was a different time.

It is not wasteful to outsource what you can't do with your limited time and energy. You have really young children who are going to be pretty intensive even when they are well, and who need your love and attention. If, ten years down the line, you decided you no longer needed some of the outside help, well, woohoo. But you do need it now.

Like others, I'm worried that your husband is only being nicer because you are at breaking point. And I too note that he hasn't offered to do anything that contributes to the family as a whole - only "his own tasks". I have been trying to get my 12-year-old to concede that we all live in our home and that his duty to help out doesn't end at his bedroom door - but... he's 12 and a work in progress. I'd hate to hand him on to a future partner still thinking like that.

Have you considered just having joint finances OP? You're married anyway, so in law really you do.

It sounds as though your dynamic is not dissimilar to mine (incl the inlaws). We just have completely joint finances. I'm a bit like you in that when I get busy I just throw money at it and often end up feeling it's v expensive. Joint finances actually makes me less like that, but we have an agreed amount of help which is obviously jointly paid for. The down side for me is I do get a bollocking for frittering! But at the same time, at least we both have equal access to everything and things that I do that help his career benefit me too.

Absolutely this

Well that didn't take long did it. You talk to him and he is contrite and amenable to helping more. You feel listened to and start to relax a bit. He then sticks in the whammy that a housekeeper is not happening - that you don't need it. I mean WTF. It's a total mind fuck on his part and it is cruel.
This man does not care for you OP. Please carry on with a plan to help yourself and get you & your children out of this toxic situation.
I suspect that it was a ploy to see exactly what he can do to soften you up. This has two objectives: to give him clues on how to wrest back full control with as little trouble to himself as possible but to also get you in to the mindset of softening up, feeling a bit loved and then hopefully he can get his leg over.
So now it either worked and he can reinforce his control or it didn't work and he's now angry so will not agree to your need for proper help from a housekeeper.

Yeah he was like, that person doesn't exist. No one is going to help you meal plan.

Funnily enough I talked to a nice lady today who said she can help me with exactly that, and also budgeting etc.

He then said that they'd probably not iron his shirts properly.

I know the next thing is that he doesn't want strangers in his house and is worried they'd steal. He doesn't want people to know where we live and it's a safety issue.

In any case. I'm going ahead regardless and I'm interviewing some housekeepers and getting some trials done with them and I don't care what he says.

When I suggested a housekeeper he just put his hands in his head and stopped looking at me and kind of smirked. Infuriating.

What are you actually getting out of this relationship?

He's a knob!

This is like the poster "Della" all over again an utter abusive knob. All about money.

You’re a very high earner, you need to look at these measures as protecting your income and your health, please stop taking his reactions on board, he’s driven his family into despair and sickness.

tbh he does sound like a selfish 12 year old - he might do his own laundry? Form an orderly queues ladies for this prince.

I do know many successful people and I’ve yet to come across one as deluded as your dh. He can change, he can see other people’s povs or he wouldn’t be a success. he’s his own worst enemy in his family though.

Get the housekeeper, get the support to get yourself in a stronger frame of mind, then decide whether to keep DH or not.

OP he is playing the long run to annoy you and to make you give up on having a housekeeper etc. Don't let him. What he is doing is very manipulative.

He had put you in charge of household matters. You are the default. You can organise it how you want because he’s not paying you. He’s not your boss. If you were equal partners and he was doing his fair share, he’d get a 50% say in how it’s done. If he were doing it all the he gets to choose how.

You both work full time. Add in commuting time and nursery drop off time and then see what difference there is. Include any time out of your working day that you do house hold or child related tasks. If you have 10 hours to extra time a week than him, then you do 10 hours of household and child care tasks a week and the rest should be split evenly because the children are both of yours and you both live and eat in the house.

Your DH isn't even going to see the house keeper with him leaving at the crack of dawn and returning well after the house keeper would have gone home. He's just a bit intimidated by the idea (something only rich people do, according to poor little him), didn't know how to react so resorted to smirking. Ignore the man and go for what feels right to you.

I think many other women are in the same boat, struggling to do it all.
I only worked part time when mine were young and l found that hard enough.
I must say since l have lived on my own with my now older children l have happily let standards slip when it comes to housework. If I'm too tired, it doesn't get done. l don't feel under pressure like before. l won't ever live with another man again, the benefits of living alone far outweigh the disadvantages. Lovely to have no one moaning.

I have been part time, full time and sometimes a SAHM since having children (over the last 10 years).
I dont "feel vulnerable" because I have a supportive husband who pays a proper proportion of his salary into my bank account each month and who is paying into my pension.
We decided to have children as a joint decision but something had to give. My responsibilities for elderly parents alongside children was the final straw.
I dont regret my decision for a moment.
Life is short and time is too precious to be stressed and unhappy (pluss it usnt good for you). Only you know whatcwill suit your family. You need to work out with your husband what that is: cleaner more often/him working less/you going part-time etc.

I don't know how it ever became your job to wash his clothes, keep the children out of his way and have his dinner ready after work? Why does he think you should do those things? Why do you?

I've been keeping an eye on this and at first I thought you just needed your household to be more organised.

Looking at some of your answers... the man's a prick, tell him to sort his shit out or you are divorcing him. Book in a couples therapist regardless of him saying he will go , because he is not listening to you and evidently never will (unless forced, hence divorce threat and a booked councillor)

I am a man. I've been divorced. I have a high level consultant job and two kids.