DH wants me to get a job but not too big a job…

[Ducksrowing]

DH earns six figures inc bonus. I usually earn a bit under half this when working as contractor or in other roles. I have not worked for 4 months as my contract ended (couldn’t continue longer without massive pay cut by about half to become permanent). New roles were thin on the ground at my level in late summer due to market conditions and election etc. We have 2 DC and it was agreed if worst came to worst, I would look for new roles by January after 11+ exams.

DH has become increasingly belligerent about me not working and trying to control my spending. I do nearly all cooking, school runs, life admin and laundry but am not v tidy or consistent with cleaning…. (ADHD and perimenopause have also not helped). I know I need to work for my own sanity if nothing else.

He is now suggesting maybe we should have separate accounts to stop me spending so much money… For the record, the things I ‘spend’ on family bills which are run up on a credit card to earn air miles as well as subscriptions inc Netflix, Audible etc which I should rationalise.

He has now said that whatever job I take, it can’t be ‘too big a job’ as his ‘has to take priority’ as this a crucial year for him due to some project. He has pointed out he will always earn more than me so whatever job I take has to have some flex for school runs etc.

I have pointed out a lower paid job can be as stressful as a high paid job so I’m not taking that from.

I don’t expect any sympathy from anyone as on paper we are a high earning household - top 5/10%. We are in London and after tax, this is chopped in half. After school fees, it is almost evaporated. To move house to a decent state catchment would cost us more than paying for school so that’s not an option.

Before DC and up to them starting school, I used to have an interesting and stimulating job but it’s not one I can return to (too competitive now and I would be too old - really). I have struggled to replicate this sense of achievement and feel I have lost myself.

My priority is to get DC through school otherwise I would be tempted to try and get my ducks in a row as I feel disrespected. I know he feels like life is a slog on one wage too though.

My AIBU is:

Should DH’s job always be a priority as it is much higher earning than mine and I am unlikely to ever earn the same as him? YES

Should I activrely go for the BIG job with more days in the office even if it means I earn less than him and he has to start doing more around the house and life admin in an important year for him? NO

Find a job that fulfils you and also find a cleaner! Whoever gets home from work first cooks that evening.

This.
pin him to the mast of the boat he wants to sail and see if he is still keen.

If you got the “big job” and a housekeeper would it work financially? If so, do that. If not, point out the cost of what you do as current “housekeeper” maybe? It sounds like your marriage is at risk if you keep with the status quo.

Hmm I’m torn, on the one hand I don’t like his attitude but also practically I can see his point. My DH out earns me and always will given the industries we’re in (me in healthcare and him business) so while I work part time I pick up a bit more slack at home (although he absolutely pulls his weight) and he respects my work and career if push came to shove my career would have to take a backseat to his if we wanted to maintain the lifestyle we have. I’m fine with this but not particularly ambitious myself although I love my job.

Most men can’t afford a 1950s wife.

What 'content' is he watching OP? You say he is being radicalised?

He sounds very unpleasant for sure.

I agree with @gamerchick - pursue your career, stabilise your income and buy in help. I couldn't do SAHM indefinitely.

I couldn't have those comments about spending on the DC, particularly not where they can hear. He may be having a general moan and trying to make a point to you. Kids may interpret that as there being financial pressures in the home and that's not their burden to share so I'd be doing a financial check in immediately to get back on the same hymn sheet.

This is about his attitude towards money not your job..
He thinks you should be doing all the childcare and household stuff and working full time AND he still gets to control all the money?
I'd be livid honestly.
It's not like you aren't looking for work and it sounds like you don't struggle financially.. why on earth is he lecturing you about money? It doesn't sound like you are frivolous.
Get a decent job that has scope for earning well.. get your ducks in a row.. leave him and have him pay child support.
Honestly life is too short to put up with this nonsense from men.
He can't have his cake and eat it.
You'd be better off alone and at least you'd have no one treating you like a child and negating the work you do for everyone.

Of course you fucking earn less when you have to continuously defer to his job (according to him).

I had the exact same argument with my ex - especially after I was offered 3 different jobs, and he refused to use his flex time to even do drop-offs (the easy one - all at the same, reliable time, outside of rush hour - unlike pickups).

I now earn plenty (top 5% or higher) - meanwhile he earns top 1% - but I have 95% care of the kids, so I'm actually still enabling him.

You have to decide if you like him enough to let him get away with this and live with this attitude even into old age, or if you've had enough (and if you're lucky, he'd go full 50/50 - but likely not)

I would get myself a big job in 2025 and divorce the wanker in 2026 (or 2025 and a half).

He is spending too much time on X and YouTube. He is acting like a Reform supporter. I can understand the marginalised in society turning to more radical parties. But this is a man who works in financial services earning over 200k a year. Perhaps he feels he’s lost out to those on 400k a year?!

To be fair, he comes from a poor background (though it hasn’t turned at least one of his siblings into a dickhead though it is a woman I guess). Didn’t complete his degree, which was in a practical subject rather than humanities so may be missing some ability to analyse and interrogate sources.

We are having more rows about immigration etc and the resurgence of the child rape scandal has set him over the edge…

I wonder whether his obsession with spending and school fees is also resentment towards sacrificing so much for DC when his own father was a deadbeat dad who never paid a penny of maintenance and only sent him one birthday card throughout his childhood? No parental responsibility from his DF at all and his single mother had to work fulltime and carry the load. Maybe he’s projecting a bit though we are the other end of the income scale?

Kids are full time. They can't sit in a corner as daddy has a big project.

None of what he said would matter if he hadn't started trying to control you.

Good respondes on here -

He wants to have his cake and eat it - all the benefits of a housewife doing everything at home to enable him to work in his “big job”, but also expects you to work - except you can’t be as busy as important as him @Mnetcurious

So he wants to limit your access to the money he earns, whilst at the same time imposing limitations on what you earn yourself? Jog on, mate @orangewasp

I would like to know the answer to -

'So husband. Which part of child care are you willing to pick up to enable me to have this job'.

His response will either be poor or non-existent, I expect.

I'm concerned that you will end up quitting or signing yourself off sick because of the stress of trying to manage everything, and he'll make you feel like a failure when the cracks appear.

It doesn't sound like he respects what you do, and either he has good reasons for that, or he thinks he's a Very Important Man (VIM).

VIMs fancy themselves as the CEO of your house, and such, they think it's their job to make you feel like you're underperforming so you'll go over & above. The threat of the separate bank accounts is him putting you on a Performance Development Plan and sending you to the naughty corner.

To those saying get a big F off job so I can afford to live alone, isn’t the opposite advice offered to men? Cut down your hours so you don’t have to pay child maintenance?! Not that I’m considering this too seriously though if his views continue down this path I can’t see myself relaxing into old age with a bigot (which is what he will become if he goes much further). I do wonder if this new attempt to control me is part of that or just his fear about money based on childhood poverty playing out. Argh it’s complex.

@EarthSight He did actually say that as his job is higher earning and that job alone can pay the school fees, then his job always has to take priority… He emphasised that this year in particular is important but he’s been worrying about redundancy for the last 20’years. Weirdly, his company went belly up before him anyway.

Well yes he's scarred as is mine for different reasons. His mother never worked but inherited money which she frittered away, she was a lousy mother.

The right wing stance my lovely liberal father once told me increases as a man accumulates wealth and is afraid to lose it.

The difference is my husband self employed couldn't be around for school runs so was happy for me to work part time. He frets about one son whose wife puts career high on the list so the children go to after school clubs.

It is different because you aren't going to be paying child maintenance but receiving less of it if you are working vs not working.

So it depends how much your salary would be in a big job? Child maintenance would only cover the cost of children and only until 18 while taking a big job would give you the income and pension for after children leave

It sounds like you don't have loads of assets as a family so are high income family but not mega wealthy? So it won't be that you get a huge spousal support settlement. You'd get some of his pension and some of of the house value but if you want to maintain a certain lifestyle into old age, you'd probably be better off taking a career job then being a SAHM.

My ex definitely used the 'precarious job' thing as a stick to beat me. He didn't have any education past a-levels (and poor ones even there) and used to pretend to be worried about what he'd do if his job fell through, how hard he'd find it to get another job like this, how he should make hay while the sun shone, whereas me with my degree would always be able to find another job, so I should be the one sacrificing my career so he could make the most of what he had now.

Then of course, I was just 'the little woman at home' (who should do some freelancing for his company for free - or worse, they'd give him stock for my work) - and then he started playing away, leaving me with the kids freelancing so no stable job, and the choice of turning a blind eye and losing all self-respect, or ending it and struggling.

Fucker didn't really expect me to take option b - he severely underestimated how stubborn I am :)

I don't regret it. Sure, I'd be retired on his money by now if I'd stayed, but I'd have had to sleep next to him, have sex with him, deal with him, for all those years knowing what he was getting up to while he was away - worth every penny of solicitor/barrister money to get it settled so i don't have to speak to him ever again.

He's walking a fine line thinking he's got you trapped and can be such twat to you.
He's taking the chance that you could take that full time job, make him do more, even divorce him and take half his kick arse pension with you and a big chunk of child maintenance each month.
Take the job, the older we get the harder it is to find good jobs.

I have a DH with a similar big job, he earns over 6 figures but we live in East Anglia so it goes a long way. We have 2 DS’s, one is 19 and the other 14. When the oldest was small he had to travel a huge amount for work and would literally get home from work then get told to go for a week or so. He got the chance to take a year secondment abroad (in the Middle East) and he took as we thought it would less disruptive than suddenly having to disappear every other week. We stayed in U.K. Anyway a year became nearly 5 years.
I started work as a TA in my youngest son’s school, it was a perfect job as worked round holidays so we could all see each other and I obviously could do all drop offs and pick ups.
He is now back in the U.K. and works in London. I take home about £1200 a month. He now randomly wants me to get a “proper job”…obviously both DS don’t need me so much now but I can’t just walk into the sort of job he wants me to do at 47 just like that. DS2 also plays football to a high level and trains 3 nights a week 30 miles from where we live and I need to be able to take him.
No advice but just wanted to share my frustrations!!

You put together those meal kits, you are not a chef. Nor does doing the school run make you a taxi driver or helping kids with homework make you a tutor. You are trying ro make a big deal out of the basic bits of parenting everyone does, especially as a SAHM to kids in full-time education. You should at least be doing the housework, you have enough time. If you don't like it then get a job, any job.

Net flix is about £12 a month.

£1k a month is nothing for your total household income

On £250k you can well afford a cleaner and more housekeeping help

Focus on improving your own earnings. When you come to get divorced he will all of a sudden be very much about how he earns more and you didn't contribute to that at all

Tbh I'd leave - he can have the kids some of the time so you get a break and focus on your career.

He sounds unpleasant but you also seem lazy if you can’t keep the house vaguely tidy during the day. How can he be better at folding laundry than you? It’s hardly a skill.

You probably could streamline things financially too- do you need meal boxes every day. We have never had them and seem to cope.

i would get a job in your position. Any job!

'Every parent does' - did you read the OP? He doesn't do those bits. My ex didn't - in the kids's entire life I could count on 2 hands the number of school runs he's done. The number of nights he's had them alone. The number of meals he's cooked them is in the 100s (they're teens), and the number of different meals is probably not even in double digits (he was king of spaghetti bolognese).

In lockdown, he took the youngest, and I took the eldest for schoolwork - so they youngest did nothing. He's never listened to their reading, let alone helped with homework.

I think people look at their lives, and think that what they have is what everyone has, but for some of us, that's just not the case, and you can say we're stupid, but these men are very persuasive, it seems reasonable, and it creeps up on you (and you don't want the kids to suffer of course) - until something jogs you out of it and you realise you've been being taken for a ride for years.