How to leave DP when I’m a SAHM.

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SAHM. Two children under the age of 5.

My partner does nothing other than work and pay for everything.

I do 100% of the childcare and housework, even at weekends. Anytime I ask for help with anything around the house, it’s met with huffing and puffing and although it’s never been said out loud, I know he expects that this is my job as he goes to work. I genuinely mean that I do 100% of everything house and child related.

I am completely fed up of this.

I had our first DC right after finishing university (there is an 19 year age gap between us). Unfortunately I am no longer qualified to go back into what I trained as, and would need to start back from the beginning with a new career. However I have no time to train in anything as I do 100% of the childcare. DP will not pay for any childcare nor would he reduce his house to help with this.

I would like to make a plan to leave but I’m stuck. We are not married. Looking for ideas and advice on my next steps.

There is a lot more housework if you have small children. It's not the same as cooking and cleaning for yourself. You realise that, right?

She wants to leave. That's why she is looking for advice on here.

You have deliberately avoided mentioning the large age gap between them. A forty year old man got a 20 year old student pregnant. There is normally a power imbalance in relationships like this. He is old enough to be her father.

If she has no access to any money, this is an financially abusive relationship. He won't pay for child care so that she can work or re-train.

No she isn't.

Thread title: "How to leave DP when I’m a SAHM"

Last part of her OP
"I would like to make a plan to leave but I’m stuck. We are not married. Looking for ideas and advice on my next steps"

At no point did she ask for advice on how to get him to do more around the house.

How can anyone do a job and provide full time childcare? OP trained in pharmacy, what’s she to do take the 2 year old with her?

She can pay for childcare herself if she goes to work? He is paying for every penny she spends right now so she could use every penny she earns on childcare.

Being a SAHM doesn't or shouldn't involve being a house slave so the poor little man doesn't need to lift a finger when he gets home. He isn't paying her anyway as she has no access to money

Put it in childcare like every other working parent?

Why should she pay for all the childcare. They are his children too.

How if he refuses to pay for her to retrain? And if she got a job whose paying for the childcare upfront, whose paying for wrap around school care?

She doesn't have it made. I was in a very similar situation with a misogynistic (and abusive) man who treated me as a live in slave. I'm now a single working mum. My life now is a million times easier. Going to work is not an excuse to do nothing at home. I wouldn't dream of refusing to do anything at home or watch someone else do it all just because I pay the bills.

If she's not getting paid, who is putting a roof over head, food on the table, clothing her, taking her on holiday, paying for her phone, electric, gas, council tax etc. He is paying her an absolute fortune, it just goes direct to the respective companies.

I hear the law is likely to be changing to recognise 'common law marriages'. Personally I would read up about this and bide my time.

Really?

If a friend of mine told me that the father kf her 2 children who hasn't worked since he graduated expected her to come home from her 40-50 hour a week job and do housework, I would tell her she had a cocklodger on her hands and she should leave. Wouldn't you?

He won’t pay childcare for her to retrain, bear in mind he’s a high earner. Most childcare asks for payment upfront, who’s paying what? Even going on a waitlist costs money, if she had some money of her own I imagine she would use it for this but it doesn’t sound like she has any

Huh???

She says she's naver had a full time job.

I'm sure she has a bank account bearing in mind she did post grad education.

But she has no money because she's never earned anything significant bar a bit as a teenager.

There's no financial abuse here. She's got it made for someone who never even got out of the career starting blocks... She doesn't even seem suitably qualified to start a career yet?

Jesus, she's just sore that she..

A) wants to leave him... BUT

B) she still wants his money and the lifestyle she's grown accustomed to..

C) Its dawning on her that she's at the bottom of the heap in terms of employment prospects as she's barely worked, if at all.

OH WELL, NEVERMIND! as they say :)

It is his house. He hasn't given it to her. Providing board and lodging is not the same as paying someone money. Any job that provides board and lodging also pays a salary.

They don't and it is work.

If she walked away from the children it would cost him huge amounts of money to cover the work she does, which is proof of the work it is.

He earns 14K a month

He's paying all of this but it doesn't count because she wants to leave him... But wants more money and the same lifestyle once she's left...

God, they've only been together 5 years. This is the kind of woman who will expect him to 'pay' 3 decades from now still...

If I were the man I'd give her everything she's entitled to, not much, just CMA, then watch as the penny drops with a small smile from a distance...
She's got a lot to learn about life.

I wouldn't have a friend in the first place who had went for someone fresh out of college when they were 40.

But if I had a friend whose partner was a SAHP doing ALL of the childcare and ALL of the housework and my friend complained he had the audacity to ask her to do some of it then I'd tell her obviously she should be doing some of it, why would she think that she shouldn't.

Presumably when you're telling her to leave you'd be telling your friend to leave her children behind with this cocklodger too seeing as he's the only one who's ever done any parenting!

That isn't relevant in any way to the post of mine that you have quoted saying that housework and childcare is not work.

She hasn't had a full time job because she was a student. She has actually got a good degree though. If she had finished qualifying as a pharmacist (it would have only taken another year) she would have a well paid job by now. Being a SAHM has certainly not been a good deal for her.

Well he should have no issue paying towards some sort of childcare and housekeeping costs instead of expecting it all for the equivalent of his girlfriend’s living expenses. He’s may be rich but he’s a leech.

All the rich SAHMs i know have DH’s who will pay towards household support because otherwise it’s a 24:7 job of non stop hard work and drudgery for their wives and quite frankly none of them would put up with it, because they have options.

OP just needs to figure out what her options are.

Obviously every relationship is different. I do think there bulk of the house work will fall on you as a SAHM. That doesn't entitled dad not too cook, clean or load the washer though because most single people would work 40/50 hours a week. OP or any SAHP are not a slave!

This is a big reason why I wouldn't want that role.

Yawn raising 2 children and doing housework and “life admin” really isn’t that hard. Lots of lone parents do it day in day out and also manage full time careers. It’s all about what that person wants and what effort that person is prepared to put into life. she saw an opportunity not to work in her late teens when she got together with the poor sap who would already have had an established career and enjoy a lifestyle she’d never be able to afford in her own right and took it. I wonder why he’s never asked her to marry him……. 🤔