Husband no longer prepared to help me out

[Mbirdie]

For context we aren’t English but from Asia.

My parents are old and although my father is fairly fit, my mother isn’t. I don’t work so am able to visit her regularly during the week. To enable this DH has a flexible working agreement and can finish working early to pick up and look after the children. He will then log on in the evening to complete his work.

I have one brother. Earlier this year, he went back ‘home’ for 6 weeks bit wasnt able to visit my in laws. He intended to but was too busy. In our culture, this is a black mark, I fully accept that my DB should have visited them because my DH’s working pattern allows me to visit our parents. DH also doesn’t a lot for my parents, including large DIY jobs. He is livid that my DB didn’t visit his parents.

DH plans to back to his standard working arrangement, it will means I won’t be able to visit parents as much. He has been complaining about this arrangement as it means he frequently works late. I feel upset that he is doing this, it will cause additional stress to my parents. He’s refused to reconsider and has become very shouty and nasty.

Your brother and your father are not carrying out their responsibilities and it is all falling on your husband's shoulders. They are being very unfair, and it has to stop.

You describe your father as fairly fit, so he needs to step up and help his wife, the mother of his children. He needs to take on the shopping, the cooking, the laundry and the cleaning; and stop robbing his grandchildren of their mother's time. If he is not willing to do it himself then he needs to arrange and pay for someone else to do it. Not keep expecting his daughter to do it.

Your brother also needs to step up and help his parents, not just leave it all to you. If he doesn't want to honour his commitments as per Asian norms then he's going to have to honour them via UK norms and that means helping his parents!

And you have a part to play here too. You need to leave your father and brother to get on with it and not step in. You dial it back to one visit per week. You have children to care for - they are your priority.

Of course your husband shouldn't have to work in the evening so that you can visit your parents.

You are fortunate as a family that one of you can be a stay at home parent but surely that should be for the benefit of your immediate family and helping wider family should work around that.

So when does your husband get few hours to go out and about??

I suspect the Op used her thread to vent and that nothing anyone says will result in any changes being put in place. She’s in a very difficult situation and will never be able to do right for doing wrong.

It’s not sustainable for your DH to finish work early, be with the kids and then work late into the evening every day to make up the time. For a period of weeks when there’s a recent event or illness sure but as a long term thing it’s not workable or fair.

I'm not surprised that your husband is annoyed, you don't work and all of the pressure is on him.