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?

Solidarity @SENSummer exact same position here.

Construction? Dh has done this for donkeys years and is in at 5 latest

This is what I thought. That they work timings like 7-3 and get home at a decent time? And make good money.

Are you sure he’s actually working all that time?

Edit- I clearly must be wrong and they must all be doing a second shift after whatever they’ve come here for!

Do you work, OP?

First of all they is no point in comparing yourself to "all the other Mums", everyone's situation is different. And what does he do in construction until that time of night?

What sort of construction OP and do you work?

Out of interest was he working this late before children? I believe it’s common for men to pretend they need to work late to get out of kids dinner, bath & bed time. They also start needing to work away more often so they can stay over in a hotel.

Majority of construction staff I see start around 7.45/8 & finish around 4/4.30pm with a slightly earlier Friday finish. It’s physically demanding so that’s fair enough.

Do you work or are you home? He might be expecting you to do all the kids stuff before he gets home.

Yeah, that seems like another possibility - he does a second shift but the money's going somewhere else.

He’s opted out of family life

doesn’t want to be there for kids bedtime etc

i Would be asking myself what it is he’s actually up to

Every tradesman I’ve ever had in my house finishes at 3:30pm latest…

I don’t want to be horrible but presuming he is not a sub-contractor or the owner/site-manager he might “down tools” typically around 4/4:30. But construction does not always happen close to home - so there’s travel involved. Possibly (and I expect OP will know) pub time (which if the case her DH could avoid). Or maybe he eats before coming home…
It isn’t necessarily nefarious to not be home earlier than you absolutely could be but he probably IS avoiding children related tasks (ask me how I know (sigh)) which is no good for the family and a conversation needs to happen if that’s the case

is it his own business? If not does he get overtime?

I genuinely don’t understand why you would be short of money all the time if he is working a lot of overtime and I suspect something else is going on.

It doesn't make sense that a family are struggling to survive on a single income in the current climate? Erm, yes it does.

My DH is a site manager / carpenter he’s onsite from 6.45am until 7pm Mon-Thurs and Fri 6.45am until 2pm. He also works away as the contracts they have are over the UK. So he actually leaves the house at 4/5am on a Monday and home 4/5pm on a Friday.
It’s bloody hard work as I work and we have 3 children xx

But she says he's working 12 or more hours a day. And he's a builder. 1.5 x full-time hours, in a job where they charge a high hourly rate.

Oh lordy, exdh was the master of this! And, to add insult to injury, would then moan on about 'having' to fly to US cities and 'having' to stay in hotels/get taken to dinner/get taken to baseball games/go for a run in peace etc. etc. Give me strength.

Is he self employed doing a fixer upper or something? Construction tends to stop at tea time as you can be using noisy power tools and thumping and banging. I’d be down spying on him to see where he is of an evening. I suspect the pub.

I mean I have no idea as I don’t work in construction but it does sound rough for the OP.

Yes, unbeknownst to myself I was innocently responsible for ‘outing’ a colleague to his wife. I met her for the first time, and noticed that, after a while, she went quiet and then started asking quite detailed questions about my schedule, contact hours (her DH and I were both academics of the same seniority in the same department), childcare arrangements etc, given that my DH travelled a lot for work. We essentially had the same job, but I did it in three days on campus during termtime, and two research/admin days, usually spent working at home, and was out of the house by eight and home by six on campus days.

Turns out he was leaving the house at 7 am and wasn’t arriving home till eight or nine pm on weekdays, and that he routinely went in to campus at weekends, pleading paperwork or marking or open days. He spent his time smoking and scrolling on the internet in his office. He had just opted out of parenting their two children, general household stuff — his wife worked FT too, but did all the household stuff and parenting.

I moved countries and have lost touch either way him, but I gather he’s now divorced.

Yes, I have a friend whose husband “had to be in by 7.30” so was always out of the house before the morning mayhem with 2 small kids. Except then she went away for a week with the kids and noticed on the ring doorbell that he left at 9 every day.

Thank you all for replies mums I don’t how to use this site to reply to individual msgs but I will put it all in one

So I’m self employed atm so I work whenever I can get childcare and my agency whenever there’s demand so that can be a few times a months and my youngest is 2 an we both agreed we don’t want to put her in nursery until at least 3. I know I shouldn’t compare my self to others.

my parents also are perplexed about our financial circumstances and asked me if I’m sure he’s at work in the evening and not somewhere else but I’m not getting any clues that anything abnormal is happening…. I might be wrong I don’t know…

To be honest I’m not saying that I’m physically exhausted is just that I’m mentally drained and it would be nice to have just the normality to have dinners as a family and nice conversation around dinner table with the kids and just and a little connection before bed as I think is important for the children.

neither am I expecting him to do anything when he gets home the house is clean is tidy dinner is cooked children have done their homework have taken their baths have brushed their teeth stories have been read music practice has been done etc…

and that’s what I mean about the hours in construction the norm that I hear about is finish at latest 5 but he seems to always get this jobs where they don’t mind what time he finishes I’m so fed up and it doesn’t add up is all the sacrifice an no glory..

don’t know if I made sense

@realsavagelike it seems you’re not the only one judging by the replies on here. It’s depressing isn’t it? Then they wonder why the wife is grumpy/exhausted/not up for sex.

Yes. Clearly exdh was getting the raw end of the deal compared to me (35 weeks pregnant with threatened preterm labour, parenting my toddler and older child and working a physically demanding job from home). Can't think why I was not up for sex. However, poor old exdh had the sniffles on that trip and gave me the cold shoulder when he got home because I had not shown sufficient sympathy for his suffering. One more nail in the coffin of the relationship!

Brilliant - well done, even if unintentional! Shocking but also, sadly, not at all shocking.

Nah. Sorry . You have absolutely no clue what happens here .
Depending on the role and the situation you have no idea .

My husband is high up in the TV industry. He works away, abroad, for 9 months of the year. We have children. I suffer from ill health.
What do you do?
Unless you understand please don’t presume that you know.