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.

Guilty because he had to parent his own kids? Are you kidding? I would have looked at him like WTF if he complained of being hungry! How thoughtless is he? He should have been thinking ‘right Meorhim is busy all afternoon will probably be worn out from sport so let’s get the dinner on! Come on kids let’s get chopping and surprise mum either a nice meal’!

Honestly, OP, your H sounds very controlling , both with his 'high food standards ' and his grumpy/silent moody treatment.

At the very least, he should have made the kids some food around 5pm - pasta would have been fine for them.

Are you SAHM? So you think all of the child care and household tasks are on you?

If he usually makes dinner when you're out, why didn't he this time? Was he 'punishing you' for being out for Sunday afternoon? Is he generally supportive of your sports hobby? Or is he jealous that you're so fit and maybe he isn't...

Yeah I’m not sure he’s a terrible dad but I don’t think he’s amazing.

he’s the type of person that’s just always in his head about his worries. So he misses a lot of what’s actually going on. His work is very demanding and he’s really trying to manage himself out of his work being so demanding. He’s mostly concerned with that and worried about money and stressed out. He’s just stressed out. It’s like he’s not even with us and like we are a burden on him.

he’s just not happy, he hates his job but is stuck in it. So I try my best to give him downtime, time away, breaks etc. he hardly has any time off. It’s tough and taking a toll but we are stuck in it. Mortgage etc to pay. It’s not the kind of job he can just change.

At weekends he mostly just wants to rest and I tend to do stuff with the kids on my own. Sometimes he comes but he just seems annoyed a lot of the time and in his head thinking he’s not being productive or resting. He’s either being productive or resting essentially. He’s not a bad dad in the sense that he doesn’t shout at the kids and he doesn’t shout at me. He’s more quiet, sulks, looks unhappy a lot.

I’ve written on here many times before about him.

Sounds like a dickhead husband who thinks it’s the wife’s job to cook the dinner , and was pissed off he’d had to look after his own kids for a few hours.

Of course you're being very, very unreasonable - how was he supposed to know that his own children need to eat tea every day? (sarcasm, obvs)

if your partner is late back dinner is on you, unless told otherwise. especially if there are children.

feed your children, you shouldn't need special instructions from a woman. the sudden yearn for micro-managing that only ever exists when it comes to domesticity. imagine if you needed this much direction at work, your boss would think you were a dolt.

He's a bad dad and a shit husband. You need to try and stop curing his unhappiness. He needs to help himself!

So what does he do?

He works, which he'd have to do regardless of whether he was married and had children.
He rests.
He takes the bins out once a week.

Try reading the thread or at least the OPs posts.

So your options were to limp around making dinner or to tell him you were injured and it's his job to make dinner, and you chose the first one. You're able to communicate how you feel to the whole internet, but not DH.

You're both as bad as each other.

@marcyhermithe also does all the admin/ mortgage / investment stuff. I do the kids admin but he does all our life admin, as well as sorting out my car insurance and stuff like that. He also does the garden work in summer.

Is it especially difficult to have a conversation so everyone's on the same page if the usual plan changes?

DP is the default cook. He's on top of what's in the freezer and what ingredients we have in. It's his job and I don't have to think about it unless specifically requested. He doesn't have to think about laundry unless I specifically request it. That's how divvying up chores works.

Laundry is not remotely the same as feed your own children while they are in your care over mealtimes.

yeah - that is not fantastic.

Why not take over some of the planning and mental load? how difficult is it to think "hmmm, it's nearly time for dinner, i'd better get something going"?

I don't agree that the person who is at home should know to make dinner without there having been a conversation about it. It's far too easy in couples to assume silently that the person is going to do the jobs you personally have assigned to them without any discussion and then seethe when they don't fulfill the job description they don't know about!

I don’t know a single man who’d have done that. You must live in a very different world.

So literally the only additional thing he brings to your family, that he wouldn't be doing for himself as a single man, is sorts out your car insurance?

If he left tomorrow, you'd have to sort out your own car insurance but you'd be free of a sulky manchild you need to cook special meals for.

I have suggested one way of dealing with this sort of thing going forward (try talking about it in advance, it works for us)
Maybe you're misunderstanding deliberately. They DID talk about it in advance – not as far in advance as you seem to think necessary, and not formally ratified on a calendar, but in plenty of time for him to do something about dinner.
And a conversation that goes essentially 'I'm on my way home'/'OK, yes, there are steaks in the freezer aren't there' is in no way difficult to comprehend.

Child-free so I wouldn't know about that, but surely the basic principle of have a conversation and make a plan in advance is just the best way to handle things regardless.

and you feed everyone every day and do all the cleaning?

I had a really stressfull more-than-fulltime job that i hated for years while the DCs were smaller. I would have LOVED to have sat on my lazy arse all weekend, and contemplate my navel. However families need food, and while my DH is great and we share the load, he worked too and so we put our pressures aside and parented in our non-working hours.

Give him a kick up the backside and tell him to buck up. Or leave.

Feeding children is just something that happens, 3 times a day, and the person physically with the children needs to do it.
It doesn't need a plan, and it isn't something you can opt out of because mummy didn't tell you to do it.

You're having a laugh aren't you? What a piss take to not expect a resident parent to feed their own child unless specifically asked.

You don’t need to plan in advance regarding knowing when a mealtime is or other types of basic care for your children. The OP was out past the time the kids normally eat, she even stated they went to bed late because they had to eat late.
It’s not remotely the same as you saying you would just wait for your DH to come home and cook for you 🤦‍♀️

If she would have dinner ready if he’d been out all day I don’t think it’s an unreasonable assumption at all. Does she need to be asked to make dinner? I’m guessing not. It’s perfectly normal for whoever is at home to think about that kind of domestic arrangement. We don’t need to have a discussion about every domestic task,; some can be assumed to be necessary. For example if the bin is full you don’t need a discussion about whether it needs to be emptied - whoever is around should just do it.

The problem is that a lot of men think they only have to do tasks they’ve been asked to do. It adds another job for women who usually do the bulk of this stuff to have to ask for their partners to do pretty obvious tasks around the house rather than expect they’ll use their initiative like they’ll do for every other area of their lives.

I agree with or without children.

If either of you are going to be out at a meal time isn't it normal to let the other know that you won't be there? A discussion about who will eat what and who will cook?