DH not making dinner when I was out until 6 pm..

[meorhimU]

yesterday I had a sports event to attend that ran from 1 pm until 6ish. My DH knew about it and was at home with our kids, 4 and 6.

the kids ate at around 12-12:30, I made lunch before I left.

when I got back, he’d made no dinner and complained about being hungry and @ what are we going to eat. I hurt myself doing sports and was limping quite badly.

I defrosted some steaks and made dinner, limping around in pain. While he did some admin on his laptop. He then complained I hadn’t take the bins out all week ( not true, they’d just filled up again over the weekend ).

I said, I thought it was really not great that he didn’t even think to make dinner- waited for me to get home and knew I was in pain, limiting, yet still didn’t help me or offer to make dinner. He said he didn’t realise I was in so much pain..

my DD who is 6 perked up and heard me and later called him lazy for not helping mummy when he knew I was in pain. All I wanted to do is just sit down and put my feet up, my body was sore wrecked after all the exercise and the injury. He could see I wasn’t walking well at all.

he was annoyed that my daughter pulled him up on it too and essentially blamed me for telling him off about it. It’s just common decency he should have made dinner and also even if he hadn’t made it yet by the time I got home, he should have taken care of it- seeing I was in pain.

I didn’t tell him to do it because I felt guilty that I left him alone with the kids all afternoon and felt like I had to do it. But I also know if I had asked him to do it, he would have been annoyed.

Your daughter is correct, your husband is lazy. Knowing your activity didn't finish until 6 pm, he should have taken the initiative to start dinner, at the very least. A grown adult, shouldn't need another adult to tell them to cook/start dinner. As for the bins, is he incapable of putting them out himself??? He has two arms and two legs, exactly the same as you, so it's no more your responsibility than it is his. He can see himself it needed doing, you weren't there, so why didn't he get off his arse and do it??? No, it's far easier to sit on his arse and do bugger all.

You need a firm conversation with him, about his thoughtlessness/ineptitude. None of these domestic duties should solely be your responsibility. The house is just as much his, as it is yours, so therefore he's 50% responsible for the running of it.

Let him be annoyed!

actions (or lack of them) have consequences

show him this over and over.

dont let this stuff slide

I didn’t tell him to do it because I felt guilty that I left him alone with the kids all afternoon and felt like I had to do it. But I also know if I had asked him to do it, he would have been annoyed.

Why did you feel guilty? Had he done a lot more than his half of the childcare on his own over the course of the week already?

Anyway, what's generally happening is counterproductive: you're angry that he takes advantage of you, but you don't want to confront him about it because he should know not to take advantage and to do his share of the shared household/family responsibilities. So you don't confront him, and consequently you let him take advantage of you and you do his work for him. And you avoid pushing back because he treats you even more poorly when you do. Where's the sense in any of that?

If her DH knew OP was going to be out until six he shouldn’t have needed prompting to realise that he needed to sort dinner.

Even if you were not "in pain" he could have started preparing something before you arrived back.

I’m not scared as such, but it just affects me a lot because he’s just not fun to be around a lot of the time and seems unhappy a lot. It affects my day to day when he’s grumpy and annoyed. But he doesn’t shout or get angry. He’s just quiet and looks pissed off or is annoyed.

How is she 'making a show'? That's what was for dinner. He should have done it. They'd even talked about it in advance.
I said in my earlier post that the OP’s problem is her DH’s behaviour. I don't agree that she's part of the problem, though, except in as much as she seems to walk on eggshells around his 'moods' and him being 'annoyed' all the time, which is all on him.

Exactly this. It’s weaponised incompetence and it’s astounding how many women try to excuse it.

Would he have felt guilty if you had been the one left home with the kids while he was out? Would he return home after a day out and then do the cooking for everyone? I very much doubt it.

Sorry but neither of you has covered yourself in glory here. It would have been easily solved by a bit of forward planning, for example putting on a slow cooker meal in the morning, buying a ready meal or buying in some fresh ingredients in advance. Your fridge sounded pretty empty!

He sounds very inept and prone to moaning. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the parent who has gone out to resume parenting as soon as they get home, to give the other parent a break.

I am at the other end of all this and you do come to the perspective that sometimes it’s better to make things easier (eg. buying a meal in advance even if it’s not really your ‘job’ to do so) rather than being ‘right’ all the time.

You need to communicate this to him OP. It won’t improve on its’ own. He needs to realise that his behaviour has a knock on effect in the household. Ask if anything’s bothering him and if not, tell him he needs a kick up the arse - it’s not acceptable to knowingly make your partner miserable as a matter of course.

Thereby further weaponising the incompetence. These are his kids too - if you’re together then you parent together, and at times you parent alone, then you take on board everything that entails.

He doesn't cook, he doesn't ensure his children are fed, he doesn't take the bin out...
I hope he earns very well and is materially generous; as he sounds a waste of space otherwise 😞.

yes the steaks aren’t ideal but it’s all I really had to make a meal with. My H has high standards when it comes to food and wouldn’t have been happy with just beans on toast either. Pasta is out of the question as I’m low carb and also, again, he wouldn’t have been happy with that either - as the sauce needs to cook a long time and I guess I could have made a carbonara but I am not sure we had all the ingredients. I just put the steak in hot water and it defrosted quite quickly. But yes it was an effort and I couldn’t be bothered at all.

The responses here are wild and are why women burn out from carrying the “mental load” - why on earth should OP have to spell out/plan that the children and family will need dinner?? Surely her DH can tell the time, take initiative and cook something using what is in the fridge?

The other day my own DH text to ask “I haven’t looked in the fridge yet, is there a plan for lunch?” (For our baby). I was like, “well first step would be to look in the fridge and make a plan, which is what I would do if I were there!!”

Additionally, even if you were an old school family where you always cook @meorhimU , in this set up your DH should DEFINITELY be in charge of the “blue jobs”, one of which is well known to be the bins.

He can’t not lift a finger for cooking AND complain about the bins! If he doesn’t cook then he damn well better be a bin ninja, at the very least!!

If he has such high standards then he should have cooked himself. OP, it sounds as though you’re enabling him to behave like this to a certain extent. If he was in charge of the household for the afternoon then he should have taken on everything that would have been done had you been the one at home.

no point in making a stand though
if the norm is for you to cook you do need to tell him, i wont be cooking, please cook

Haha I love the bin job described as description.

he does it every Sunday. But I also empty them during the week of course. Sometimes he accuses me of leaving them full for him. But I don’t.

High standards 😂 you couldn’t make it up.

And once again, why does he need to be told ? If they eat at a certain time and OP is going to be out until close to or after that time, then at some point it should dawn on him that he needs to get his arse in gear and organise something. Not making a stand is enabling it to continue.

He sounds very childish OP. Not sure I could cope with that and grumpy/moody.

@DotAndCarryOne2
because he is not a mind reader and presumably the op normally cooks, perhaps she had plans to bring back a meal?
communication solves most problems
the op ended up cooking and is complaining

do you live with a mind reader?

Sounds like another crap husband who doesn't pull his weight. Stop cooking for these men

Oh, more things he wouldn't have been happy with!
'high standards' is it? Has he asked you if you're interested in buying a bridge too?
I don't mean to be cruel, OP, but I think you need a shake. Do you not see what he's doing and how much negative influence he has on you?

How often does he cook? Because I agree with a pp, if.you are doing alp the cooking then yes, he can bloody well do the bins.

I do all meal planning and cooking and 90% of the shopping. Dh does other things. One of those is bins. Hr did, once, suggest that perhaps I could NOT just leave the bins for him to do as soon as he came home. I asked him if he was enjoying the sandwich he was eating, with the coffee he was drinking and planned to enjoy the dinner I was preparing for later.... none of which had required any thought from.him whatsoever in terms of thinking or planning.

He went back to doing bins, even if very full, as soon as he walks through the door.