Family advice please

[adviceonchildplease]

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.

You Have enabled him far too long. Why have you allowed him to opt out of parenting? You work a full time job too!

'Morepositivemum', can I just ask why you're so convinced that this woman you work with actually has chronic fatigue, as unless you've suffered from it, you honestly don't have a clue how bad it really is? I actually think that a lot of people who claim to suffer from it, are just looking for an excuse to be lazy, as if you actually have it, from my personal experience, you just don't have the energy to do anything, let alone go to work, as it feels like you have lead weights attached to your limbs, and everything is an incredible effort. Also, if the OP said that she had chronic fatigue, but was also working full time, I wouldn't believe her either.

The problem is that you have been doing it all for so long so why would he think it’s a problem? I think you should have brought this up years ago. After all, he’s not going to suddenly change is he?

And why would you prep all meals, pack the bags for activities etc when you went away? I would have maybe left instructions at best and let him get on with Meal making.

I mean he didn’t really experience total childcare did he, because you still largely assisted. But why?

Somebody with chronic fatigue who is able to work full time is unlikely to have a lot of capacity for activities outside of work (and I mean any activities: parenting, housework etc not just fun ones).;

But he did choose to have children.

A more equal division of household work may not be possible unless he does his share by paying for a cleaner or similar or reduces his days at work.

I think your conversation starting point needs to be around his available hours in the day, bearing in mind he should have some leisure time as well as housework time. But he shouldn't have so much leisure time when you're so short of it.

Also worth thinking about the children as they are now not how they were when they were babies. He might well be able to supervise the children watching telly/ talk them through how to make lunch and supervise them doing that / supervise them bathing / showering - he might need to sit rather than stand.

May also be worth him seeing a GP - there might have been medical advances since his teens such that it'd be worth him having new tests to see if there's anything easily treatable.

It was absolute fear disguised as anger, he is terrified that any discussion may show where he's lacking, and he may end up having to help around the house and be involved in family life. Far easier to be angry so that you'll give up talking to him and leave him alone

I can appreciate that this is your experience, but that won’t be everyone’s.

A close friend at school had ME. Some days she’d seem to be fine, and would manage the whole day whilst engaging etc. other days she’d really struggle and have to go home early or not come in at all. In fact at one point she had to effectively drop out of mainstream school and homeschool a couple of GCSEs as it was all she could manage. She’s now a very successful woman, with two children. She still has bad and run down days, but overall she functions so much better and can tolerate the bad days much easier. OPs husband could be similar.

OP, I think your division of labour sounds unfair. I do also feel that you need to cut him a certain level of slack for having a chronic illness (even if it isnt as bad as other peoples!). It’s good that he’s able to hold down a full time job if he’s having a flare up. Having said that, he presumably agreed to have children and said he was up to this task, therefore there is an element of having to push through regardless. I think it’s fair you perhaps to slightly more if he’s unwell, but you shouldn’t do everything.

All that said, your comment wasn’t helpful and was probably quite inflammatory to him. It’s a bit like when your mum used to say to you as a teen “have you stopped being in a mood then?” and it would put you straight back in one! Especially if he just woke up and was probably still tired. I think a conversation is needed but it should be open and full of listening, not made by sarky comments.

Good luck OP, I hope you can come to some kind of conclusion that works for you both

You are doing everything for your family plus also providing for them as much as he is. Childminding is a job. I’m sorry but I couldn’t be with someone like this. It is absolute weaponised incompetence.

GrantMyWishes

because she used to talk about the hell she went through getting diagnosed, and how many people thought she was ‘just lazy’. She goes off sick from time to time and I think they try and help her out where they can but says she has to work to keep her house. She’s on my lottery list of people to help if I ever won because she has it rough. I wasn’t trying to attack you x

I don't understand the nasty comments about your DH, if he has chronic fatigue he probably needs the rest to be able to function/work, only you should know if it's genuine, and if it's, then he is not lazy, he's unwell and has probably good and bad days; on good days he could try to help out a little more.

A mum with a full time job. 30 plus hours a week is full time.

This is really subjective, but I have gone into this, and chronic fatigue is very difficult to diagnose. It simply is diagnosed by ruling out each and every other medical condition, and then determining it is or might be chronic fatigue.

There are assumed to be mainly 2 types, mild and full blown,
Your DH definitely does not have full blown because work would be impossible.
Mild is very subjective, and could be, and note that I said could be an excuse for inert laziness.
You know your DH better then us, but from what I am gleaning from your post, I would plump for the latter. Especially from how I have interpreted your post.

He acted annoyed because he wanted to shut you up, and stop you asking him to pull his weight again in future. Because he doesn't want to do his fair share, and he wants to train you into not expecting it. It's crap, but it's not complicated or difficult to understand.