I've decided to be a mediocre wife

[Malara]

I've given up trying to get my partner to do better with sharing the mental load. He has improved a bit but I'm exhausted from having to be the family safety net when it comes to making sure everyone's needs are met.

So I decided this morning that I'm going to be a mediocre wife. I'm not going to anticipate other people's needs, I'll do things when asked - maybe even reminded a few times. I might not do them very well but that's ok, right? I'm deleting all my to do lists.

Is this a reasonable reaction to reaching the end of the line? ( I'm aware divorce is somewhere in our future).

Watch out lasses, there's a gammon lord among us.

‘Self-entitled’ because we refuse to do all of the heavy lifting for the entire marriage 😂 the audacity

So your children will be the losers?

And now DP is washing up and I am back on the sofa 🤣

😂😂😂 I work full time, as does he. Why should I pick up all the other stuff because I have breasts? Not entitled to expect equality. We’re not saying we don’t play our part, we’re just saying we play our part and no more than that.

Yes, I’d say a normal reaction BUT if OH doesn’t “get it” anyway they won’t now and you will just become more angry and resentful.
Be yourself and take pride in that, spend your energy moving forward and dealing with the future without him rather than this course of action.

What have I just read?

Women are not sex machines, and men are not entitled to sex.

What an appallingly ugly concept of relationships you have.

No, others suffer because men decide they can sit on the couch and play with their phones instead of being true fathers and spouses.

In fact, let's face it, they decide its OK for them not to behave like adults. They want the privileges and the status of marriage, parenthood, and adulthood but none of the responsibility of family life.

And before you blather back about 'paying for the roof over everyone's head', mothers and wives these days work too, and the waste of space husbands and fathers would be earning a living even if they didn't have a wife or children.

But they're the ones cheerfully taking advantage of it, right? They're the ones sitting on the couch playing on their phones while someone else takes care of their lives.

Men really seem to be a very fragile species these days.

Odd that you'd call men fragile on a post where you're condoning a woman crying about how she's ready to be an actively mediocre wife because she's feeling unloved. I trust you don't see the irony here 😅

Also - if your man would rather sit on the phone vs engaging in life with you, perhaps you're already more mediocre than you thought you were.

How very amusing. You should also take responsibility for having a child with the kind of man you'd later resent or find lazy to the point of whining on a forum as you commit to basically ending your marriage/relationship with. Less victim card, more big girl pants.

Ex and I (many years ago) went to his brothers wedding. We knew his wife to be only superficially as she lived some distance away and we only saw them fleetingly as exes bro was moving to be with her.

From the off, she refused to do anything for him unless he pulled his weight, to the point she made her own side of the bed but not his.

He came from a home where women did all the cooking cleaning ironing etc etc etc ( his sister was in fact a germophobe to the extreme so she cleaned everything twice to satisfy her own ott needs.

They had a very rocky early marriage but she stuck to her guns. Still together and happy. They split everything and when she was ill he was great.

Ex and I obviously didn't make it but that was more about his willingness to jump into bed with other women than doing the dishes! 😂

Your description of a mediocre wife is similar to that of a "brilliant" husband on some threads on here, the kind of husband who deserves applause for doing things as you plan to. 😒

@arcticpandas

My DCs' schools were a lot more organised than yours seems to be.

In elementary school (pre widespread internet) we had the Thursday folder which contained all weekly paper communications. This changed to the Thursday email roundup as time progressed. Initially, all permission slips were paper, and cash or cheques were sent to pay for trips. It migrated to online forms and payment apps. But it was always done only on a Thursday. The Folder was sent home with the oldest or only child in each family.

If someone was running a raffle or a fundraiser or a teacher wanted something specific to be brought from home, the deadline to get your page in the Folder was Tuesday.

A list of school supplies was sent by post to all families during the summer. It was a work of art, arranged in a grid, with all possible supplies on the vertical axis and all grades on the horizontal, with numbers in each square indicating how many were needed. All I had to do when heading to Walmart was use a highlighter for each year.

And the calendar was sent home in the first week.

In high school, a package of first week/ parents' night paperwork plus a printed out calendar was originally sent by post to registered families, but that all moved online. All electronic HS communication was done via students, with reminders to parents only if students themselves dropped the ball (meal plan payment late, students in danger of failing a course), summonses to meetings with a dean, etc.

Kids all headed off to university well practiced in the art of checking their own notifications.

Aren't you his family?

@AnotherSunnyDay7

How much of 'feeling unloved' do you imagine this woman has put up with, hun? Two days? Two weeks? The best years of her life?
She's a married single mother.

Also, the ad hominem attack on me as a woman isn't a good look for someone trying to look smart, wise, or insightful. If you're just trying to be toxic, otoh, by all means fill your boots.

But you should know that the world has moved on considerably from the sad days when women considered the suggestion they couldn't get or keep a man to be an insult.

It's your choice whether to keep up or wallow in bitterness and type what you believe to be spiteful remarks at people who challenge you online.

That’s right - why don’t you MANSPLAIN it to us!

Agree. The list of things I don't do is longer than those I do. He washes and irons his own clothes and irons mine. Cleans very other weekend. Does he DIY. I don't do his family stuff at all. I read a book called ' Dance with Anger' about over functioning in relationships. Opened my eyes to women's work and emotional labour. Goes beyond housework to how the relationship is maintained and the ways they interact. Once I stopped he stepped up but equally could've shipped out. Either would've been fine at that stage.

Didn't take long before the "omg stop the toxic masculinity 😭😭😭" posts to roll in 😅

When you can't defend your position with reason or logic, why not pull out the victim card, eh? Give us peace and stop embarassing yourself.

(P.s. Google the definition of the word 'mansplain' before you use it. Otherwise you'll use it out of context like you have here where it doesn't make any sense. How's that for mansplaining?).

I'm not interested in how often you feel unloved. If you feel unloved, communicate & fix it or leave. To sit there walking your family into the grave and being miserable is as silly as it gets, hun.

The fact that you don't understand that is as mind-boggling as it is unsurprising.

A couple of other points:

• Your gender has nothing to do with me finding your position utterly ridiculous.
• Finding your position utter ridiculous isn't toxic - agreeing to put zero effort into your relationship and sleepwalk into divorce or a breakup while a child is in the house is toxic.
• I don't think you know what an ad-hom attack is.
• I'm far from bitter 😅 I'm in a happy, loving marriage where my wife could ironically be described as one of those lazy guys you want to hate (I think it's only fair she gets a break, despite me working full time while she's on 12 months maternity pay because she gave birth and witnessing that & the 9 months before it wow'd me)
• If you can't see my point is reasonable, you're utterly deluded (p.s. this doesn't qualify as ad-hom).
• I never suggested anyone was unable to keep a man - poor reading comprehension on your part (again, this doesn't qualify as ad-hom).

Thanks for the laughs.

I would say it is a good strategy and avoids one partner (usually the woman but not always) carrying all the load and the other just coasting along. It also means less resentment and hopefully the lazy partner will eventually take on part of the mental load.

Same, it's still a lot though isn't it? We just went on holiday and it was great but so much to think about with the kids.

Dont know if Im mediocre , I just do what I feel like doing

DH came into where I was eating my breakfast and drinking my one cup of coffee today going on that a payment he had maid hadn't gone through - I told him go away - sort it - else I will find time later in the week. Only this was something important to him - guess what? He sorted it

Actually I know dam well Im not a mediocre wife , Im a great wife.

What I have learned is, Im not his mother and when it comes to his kids - I have put reminders on his phone - down to him to send a card

If my DH decides to spend the day in the garage doing his stuff, I decide Im watching a box set , Im certainly not spending the day cleaning on my own when we both made the mess

Resentment of a partner is just a step before separation.

I think there's a balance to be had, for example this week I got an email telling me my daughter (15, in year 11 at school) was being put in extra maths classes which would be done instead of RE, PE or PSHE once a week for the next 6 weeks, it said she had been told which lesson she would be missing each week, I checked in with her about it and she said she had been told but had forgotten. I won't be emailing the school to ask for her but I did encourage her to see her maths teacher the morning after and make sure to write down the dates/times so she doesn't forget. I wouldn't have just shrugged and allowed her to miss the lessons but I wasn't going to do the leg work for her. If I didn't bother reading emails I wouldn't have had a clue it was even happening.

Even if a husband works and a wife doesn't, that still doesn't make it her "job" to sort out cards or gifts for his family. Does any really imagine that if the roles were reversed he'd be doing that for her family?