Upset husband

[Questionmarkone]

Hi all, I want some unbiased advice as I don’t know if I’m in the wrong. I have name changed for this post. My husband works a manual job and gets up at 5am. Got in at 7pm today and has a long commute to/from work. I am SAHM to three children. I do all the housework/child responsibilities etc and he helps with cooking/cleaning when home at weekends. Today i was very busy, school drop off, dog walk, collecting Christmas tree from garden centre, taking outside lights down from attic and online Christmas shopping. I had my child’s Christmas Nativity at 2pm -3pm and my older daughter’s school parents evening which first appointment at 3.40pm. I got home from Nativity at 3.30pm, put some chicken in the oven and rushed out to parents evening. I got home at 5.10pm and spoke on phone with husband. He was upset I had not made dinner, said I should be thinking about him as he does not get to eat well in day duty to work. I was planning to have a chicken supper with children, chicken, salad, pitta bread but husband does not think this is dinner. He was very upset about dinner and made a big deal out of it and sent a long text berating me. I offered to put some potatoes on for him but he said no and has come in with fish and chips and said it’s my fault he is eating badly. Am I in the wrong? He also questioned what I have been doing all day and said making dinner should be my priority

This! Plenty of single men have to make their own food!

I think you are being a bit unreasonable personally, although I don't think he should have berated you or sent a nasty message. I'm a SAHM to 4 children, 2 at school and 2 younger and while my husband is an equal parent when he's home, since I'm the one home to make dinner I make it- like you said you make dinner every day so it's not like he was unreasonable to expect dinner. My husband sometimes works between 14-16 hours and he might just grab something to eat on the drive home because he might not have had time to stop in the day, but I can't really blame him for being a bit disappointed to have chicken and salad after doing a physical job all day - sounds like he was just starving and exhausted and it's a busy time of year so I don't think it's worth a big fall out.

@Questionmarkone I confess to not having read past the first page. Someone else may have suggested prepping a substantial pack-up lunch for him?

Some posters underestimate what it's like to do outdoor manual labour for long hours, and how it needs to be fuelled.

[Social history: My father, a farmer, had a workng diet of a breakfast of porridge, bacon and eggs and fried bread after milking; 'ten o'clocks' around ten am of a cup of tea and two or three bits of home baking that "needed eating up': scone, cake, flapjack) either in the fields or the kitchen; 12.30 dinner of meat, veg and pudding - rice, sago, apple pie. (In harvest and haytime '3 o'clocks' were carried to the fields - v similar to 10
o'clocks). Tea around 5pm ; a knife and fork course followed by cake, scones, fruit pies. Then after evening duties he'd have cocoa with cheese and biscuits before bed.]

May I gently suggest you try to find time at the weekends to look through the week ahead and plan? Together. So that he stays in touch. He obviously wasn't able to go to the parents' evening or the Nativity. You are the support that allows him to provide for his family. Ignore posters who ask what he'd do if he were single. He isn't. He is a paterfamilias: an old-fashioned but not dishonourable concept.

I am old-school (well, actually, probably just old). If your husband is working long and physically demanding days so that, between you, you can bring up a happy, healthy family, make his time at home satisfying. Feed him well, with food he likes and nourish his body and his soul

Yanbu, you had a busy day and got in late. You picked something handy to make. Your husband can not be fussed and buy fish and chips but not berate you about it. He sounds ungrateful. Maybe he just had a bad day but if he regularly demands/expects things done a certain way to his liking then that's a problem.

He gets what he's given or he sorts himself out

You are not his chef

The 1950s are thataway<<<<<<

The OP does a pretty good job. Sometimes other stuff gets in the way and he just has to cope.

A 14 hour day with, what, 10 hours of manual work is undoubtedly a great deal tougher than your day. I'd say it also requires a more substantial meal than you described. However, that's somewhat by the by given you clearly have an agreement that he does what he does and you do what you do, and you offered to bulk out his meal. So all that's a bit of smoke and mirrors around the real issue, which is the very unequal power dynamic in your relationship, where he appears to treat you as staff and tell you off like he's your boss. Meanwhile, you seem prepared to accept his appraisal of your performance and that you need to be more organised. That sort of dynamic with a partner wouldn't sit right with me and if that was the price of SAH I'd be looking for a job that paid me.

@Questionmarkone I keep packets of potato croquettes in the freezer and find them really handy for sprucing up a lighter dinner with a pile of freshly cooked croquettes

Now I want chicken, salad and pita. A perfect dinner 👌 adding to my meal plan for next week

Love that he’s blaming you for his poor diet when you made chicken salad and he had to get a fish supper!

Maybe on a normal day but on this day op needed to go to school FOUR times. Drop off, school play, pick up, parents evening.

Cooked chicken is not a picky dinner. Which of the children’s things should have been dropped so that his lordship could get a more extravagant dinner? No parent at child’s play? Or no parent at parents evening? Or no Christmas tree for whole family? Or no presents sorted?

Being a SAHM is not the same as being a doormat.

can't decide whether the Stepford wives on this thread are for real or bots like the ones in the film.......

You made chicken and that's what you're having. He made nothing, so he can have that. Tell him to sod right off. You're his wife not his bloody housekeeper / personal chef.

I am not a parent but my sister is. Her husband “prefers” her to be home, although she has had several jobs over the years. Parenting whether as a SAHM is NOT appreciated as the Hard work it is. Why don’t you make a list of what it would cost for a nanny, chef, “lady-of-the-night”, cleaner, washerwoman et al & present to him so he can pay you your going rate?! Maybe he might get some appreciation or go away for a w/end & leave him to look after the kids with a Firm say that He cleans up etc, until you come home! Even when my sister worked my five nephews were cared for, clean & well brought up! And Yes she was knackered!

Unless you're missing some things out or it's a really long commute to the school/s I wouldn't think of that as a "very busy" day at all, it would be a day off in my world because there's barely anything there.

Also you had 2 hours from when you got home to when he got in if I'm reading that correctly, it would have been plenty of time to do some rice and vegetables so he could have a proper hot meal.

When I worked those kinds of hours my partner (male) who worked from home did things like prepare and cook dinner and so on. It's just a basic courtesy, it doesn't matter whether it's m or f out of the house all day, the one that's in does the house stuff because that's where they are.

He needs to grow up

Who made him your boss? Nip this in the bud.
Yes, as a SAHM you do most of the household tasks but that does not give him the right to order you about like a member of staff.

He's a bullying cunt.

Sure, he works in a physical job and does long hours and it's fair enough that you're the one who cooks, but it's not fair enough that he 'berates' you if he doesn't fancy whatever you're cooking and he shouldn't be getting 'annoyed' because some rice has come out of a fucking packet. He's awful, and you know that full well.

He’s being an arse and doesn’t seem to completely appreciate what you do. I am with you on this one. But I probably would have probably made life a bit easier if I knew I had a busy day and made something like lasagne the day before that I could shove in oven or put a slow cooker on, so he could literally help himself when he got in.
he does expect you to be his mother by the sound of it. Exactly the reason I chose to go back to work (albeit part time)

This is why I'm not married! Your DH thinks he's in the right because he works all day, and you're at home twiddling your thumbs - he thinks. Has it not occurred to him that many of us also work a full day, and have to cook our own dinner because we don't have a handy housewife at home? He should think himself lucky. I suggest keeping a diary for a week with activities and times written down - & then ask which of those he'd be happy for you to drop. Maybe your daughter's nativity can fall by the wayside, or not bother to liaise with the school about her academic progress.

I'd be very happy if someone cooked me chicken! Turned his nose up? Pfft! Then he can eat takeaways more often!

Doing a manual job doesn't make him a god. OP says she does a 'proper' dinner 99% of the time and she was behind with things because his mum stayed at the weekend. It sounds so patriarchal and old-fashioned for a man to berate a woman (in person and in writing) about not providing a meat and two veg dinner when she's had a busy day too.

He what? I would be furious if my husband treated me this way, I accept he probably works very hard, but that is no excuse to speak to you like that!! What are you his skivvy or something! Next time love tell him to make his own bloody dinner! As you are doing the bulk share of everything else..

Well I take your claims that you could have done everything that OP did that day, plus do your full time job and make a proper dinner, with a pinch of salt too.

Okay lazy bones x