Hello everyone. I would appreciate a little advice please, even from the male perspective too if possible.
Apologies it is rather long to read.
A little background to give context.
My husband and I have been having discussions recently about the inequality in our relationship. I am a stay at home Mum that also runs a business 4 days a week. I have done every single day with the children for the last 9 years. The only night away had been into hospital overnight to have my second child. Every single night feed/waking etc has been me. My husband has had some illnesses/work trips/ family health support that he has needed to spend some time away from home for short trips ( anywhere from 2-8 days)
I do all the cooking cleaning household chores, grocery shopping, holiday planning, etc etc you get the gist. He feels like his contribution is providing for the family, which I am grateful for, but feel that that doesn’t then give him a get out of parental responsibility card.
He gets every morning lie in, even on weekends, and even when we go on holiday, I’m still getting up early with the kids.
So on to my query, I recently unexpectedly had to leave him at home with our children ( aged 9 and 4) for 36 hours. He wasn’t totally alone, some friends came to help with the kids. He had help for approx 5 hours out of the 36. I had planned and prepared meals and left them ready to go, as well as moved over the car seats and packed all activities for the things they needed to do whilst I was gone. The reason for my sudden trip was stressful and emotionally draining and included around 20 hours of travelling, getting home around 10pm at night. Whereupon I then moved the car seats back to my car and tidied up a few things around the house getting to bed around 11pm.
Today I was back at work, he had taken the day off to do a few jobs around the house and help me with the kids. He went for a nap after lunch, for over 2 hours.
When he woke, a while after I commented that “now you have seen what it’s like to be me, it’s tiring isn’t it?” Meaning that it’s not as easy as it looks to be a full time stay at home Mum ( that also works 4 days a week) I don’t get to just go for a nap when I’m tired.
He didn’t like this passing comment from me, got very defensive and annoyed with me for “making him feel inadequate, and that I wouldn’t be able to do his job either, and I don’t have a chronic illness like he does (chronic fatigue), that I’ve never had to have a stressful job and feel pressures like he does”
(I should point out I did have a stressful career before being a Mum, and I reminded him of this, but it’s not the same apparently?)
All I was merely trying to point out was to get him to think back to our many previous discussions about making our family workload more equal, now that he had seen for himself what it was like for me on a daily basis. This was the first time he had ever been a solo parent for more than 5 hours. I have previously asked him to look at the Fair Play cards with me, so we could split our workload more fairly, that suggestion also prompted a heated response from him.
Can anyone enlighten me as to why he was so annoyed, did I really say something awful to offend him? Please can you gently explain to me what I said wrong and I will apologise to him if so.
Thank you for any advice.