Husbands never home for dinner

[Chichi444]

AIBU for being mad at the fact that my partner works all day from early morning till after 7.30 sometimes 8 he’s in construction and so hes never home for dinner or help out with the youngest of children with dinner and bedtime routines.

and to be fair I wouldn’t mind if he was making all the extra money so we could afford extra luxuries in life like a car fancy dinners day trips nice presents etc… But we barely get by to the point where I’m constantly borrowing from my parents…

it just doesn’t make sense anymore
because out of all the other mums I know I swear their husband are always home for dinner and it seems that I’m always struggling on my own 😫😫 doing it all alone.

anyone relates?

Do all the other mums have husband's with the same job?

If he's really genuinely working those hours, then yes, YABU. Can you go back to work? Take some of the financial pressure off. How old are your kids?

Are you working full-time as well, OP?

What exactly does he do in construction? I'm in the middle of a house renovation with my second set of builders (great, efficient, reputable company), and while they sometimes arrive early to beat the traffic (I'm on an awkward rat run), they start work at eight and finish by four or four thirty at latest, as did the last company. Only a couple of individual occasions did either set work later to finish something.

I appreciate that if it's your business, you might then have paperwork etc to manage, calls to make etc, but, by the sound of it, it isn't his business -- so where is he between the end of the construction working day and 7.30 or 8 pm?

A lot depends on the circumstances, if he’s working long hours to provide a roof over everyone’s heads then yes yabu if he’s swanning off to the pub not actually working then that’s different. I’m presuming he’s always worked in this industry so you knew this before committing to marriage & children?

If you're barely getting by and he's working all the hours, presumably you'd be even worse off if he worked fewer hours. That's not what you'd want, surely? I mean he's presumably not choosing to be working all these hours, and I'm not sure it's fair to expect help with bedtime on top of all that.

We had a building site next door to us for a year or so (building a small block of flats) and the workers tended to arrive at 8am and be done by 4pm. The site foreman would maybe stay until 5pm.

I assume he's working all those hours to keep a roof over your head, while you're doing the equally important job of caring for your children but not bringing in a salary?
It's almost impossible to support a family on one wage these days. I know because I'm also working 12 hour days to do it, and we're barely scraping by either.

It’s not quite clear from your op - do you need the extra money he’s bringing in to survive as a family?
or are you not seeing it?
did he work these hours before he had children, or is this to get out of parenting?

My husband is in construction and he also works those hours, sometimes even longer. He’s rarely able to help out during the week but does his best on the weekend. He also takes over during holidays. Every free minute he has is spent with his family so I don’t begrudge him the hours he works to provide for his kids. I also work full time. We make it work.

Construction wife here too. It’s crap isn’t it. The problem with the job is you can just keep going and especially when the weathers bad they have to make sure house is protected from rain etc, you can’t just put tools down. But it’s hard when you work and have the kids by yourself all the time.

Personally it’s taken for me to say I’m leaving after 24 years for things to change.

Most planning permission sets the time building work can he carried out. I have building work going on near me and they are allowed to work 8am - 5pm.

Are you sure he's actually working and not going elsewhere before he comes home?

it just doesn’t make sense anymore

It might if you tried doing his job for a week...

IME builders start early but they finish early too. And they make pretty good money. So it doesn't seem to make sense that you're struggling to make ends meet. Are you sure he's really working all those evenings?

Why isn’t he getting home until that time, unless he’s travelling further? Assume he’ll be home earlier soon now the nights are drawing in?

Big house construction site near me, I walk through it least twice a day. It's deserted by 5pm Mon-Thu and by 3pm on a Friday.

You need to find out where he is from 4/5 pm until 8 pm, because if you’re not seeing a corresponding increase in pay then he’s certainly not working. If he’s doing residential work they wouldn’t be allowed to carry on past that anyway.

Are you working full time too? If not I’d suggest starting there. Being a Construction jobbie is never going to be highly paid & you might make more money yourself by taking on office work.

But they're probably agency workers. OP is your DH self-employed? If so, be glad he ever comes home at all in that line of work 😬

I don't imagine working 12 hour days within construction in order to support his family is a barrel of laughs for him, either.

Well he's not off having fun, he's working! My DH worked away all week so I did dinner/homework/bath/bedtime with 5 kids during the week. I didn't resent it because he was working and keeping a roof over our heads and food on the table.

I really hate this ‘you should just be grateful you’re being provided for’ attitude that’s all over MN. It’s completely absolved m3n of responsibility to engage as parents and partners as long as they are ‘working’ as though ‘work’ is some sort of blanket excuse for not showing up for family life. It also always seems to assume that the other partner agreed to that trade off!

So I have a DH who is a high earner. We have two small kids, one disabled. He wanted the kids arguably more than I did. I was very VERY clear with him about my concerns regarding his working and that I didn’t want to be a SAHM…etc he talked a big talk about cutting down hours and being around more. So we had them and guess what… never happened. He's been out of the house 70 hours a week for years whilst I was forced out of work just compensating for it and caring for our disabled child. Meanwhile everyone and their dog acts like I should be incredibly grateful I’m being provided for.

also let’s just take a minute to imagine if this was a mum ‘never home for bedtime’ ‘never home for dinner’ and not really engaging in family life. No one would be saying ‘oh well she’s working to keep a roof over their heads’ she would be getting ‘you need to find a job that’s realistic with a young family’

Does his money match his working hours or do you think he's clocked off long before he actually comes home?

Are you asking whether it's reasonable to be sick of being solo most evenings and frustrated that your DH is working so much and you're still struggling to get by as a family? Of course not, that's an exhausting situation to be in. Vent away at how tough this can be for working-class parents.

But if you're asking whether it's reasonable to be mad at your husband, that's a completely different question and you haven't given any info suggesting it's warranted. Your DH can't magic up money and in many families this sort of schedule is simply a necessary thing to make ends meet. Is there a specific, practical change that you are wanting to make for your family that you think would help?

Is he going down the pub ?