Am I being unreasonable about our division of labour?

[nostability]

I’m 37F, work full-time from home and my husband is 44M. We don't have kids. He does a couple of late shifts a week alongside consultancy work.

Financially, he pays the rent, council tax, water and around 70% of our basic groceries. I pay rent for my office room, the remaining groceries, for any premium groceries for my personal use/health products/supplements, luxury toiletries, household purchases including appliances and furniture, and I usually cover most of our holidays apart from his fuel/driving costs. We keep our finances separate.

Household-wise, I do pretty much everything. I clean the house, including deep cleans and cleaning on the go, cook his dinners every day, do all the laundry and bedding and generally keep everything running. His regular household job is taking the bins out and that's about it. If he ever uses the kitchen, I have to clean up after him. Water splashes in the sink, table wipes, dusting etc - basically all cleaning on the go is my task.

The issue is that he thinks I should be doing more. He expects

• breakfast made and served to him every day, including days while I’m working and on shift, wouldn't even make a cup of tea for himself without resenting me if I didn't do it for him
• his clean clothes folded and put away
• ideally his meals brought to wherever he is in the house
• hosting his friends and family a couple of times a month which I can't, as it eats into my time to recharge for work

He also wants more say over what I cook, would like me to host his friends and family more often and is unhappy that I don’t spend much time with some of his family because of a difficult history between us. He wants me to be the bigger person and forgive - I can not after repeated and ongoing attempts by his mother to break my home. He wants me to increase my capacity to face toxic behaviour even though he knows my mental health is messed up because of this.

He gets annoyed when I ask him to do basic things for himself. His response when I say I don’t have the bandwidth is that I should increase my capacity to do more around the house. At the same time, he feels I should contribute towards rent and household bills. My position is that if I’m expected to contribute significantly more financially, then the domestic workload also needs to become much more equal. He doesn’t agree and has actually said that

"Doing household chores makes me feel more like a housemate than a husband" - which I think was quite telling.

The immediate argument is that I’ve told him I’m not going to interrupt my workday to make and serve him breakfast when he is capable of making it himself.

Am I being unreasonable? And from the outside, does our current split of finances + household labour seem fair?

Nope. ‘He doesn’t feel like a husband when he does chores’ is unfixable. Sit him down, say real men can make their own breakfasts, he’s confusing husbands with toddlers, who are not expected to do their own chores, and you feel unloved and like a second class citizen when he expects you to wait on him and his family so this is unfixable and the only discussion left is how to separate.
wxpect him to be unkind, angry and possibly dangerous and destructive. These wait on me men are high risk when women challenge him. Everything his mum has done, I suspect he’s capable of. I think he’s a lot more like his mum than you’ve realised.

Why are you still with this sexist fuckwit?

I voted YABU because there is no way you're still with this man. Leave. Immediately

wtf? Did you import this guy from Yesteryear?

If he wants a traditional wife, he needs to be a traditional husband. You become the domestic slave, he becomes the wage slave. Somehow, I don't think this is what either of you envisage. It should start from 50:50 domestic split - you live together so the responsibility should be shared, and then financially, the split should be proportionate to earnings.

Until this is sorted out, do not even think about children. Although you would be wise to talk to him about childcare division of labour too before you go down that route. He is likely to be one of those men who thinks childcare is women's work and moans about 'babysitting' his own kids.

I've just given myself the ick typing that! I'm not sure how you can respect or remain with someone like this.

Pass your driving test.
Buy a car.
See a divorce Lawyer
Leave him
Live happily ever after

Seriously, you won’t have a happy life wit this man who basically thinks your his space.

Never have children with him.

Slave not space obviously! 🙄

Oh dear. What has happened in your life that you are ok living like this?

Serve him breakfast?

Look. There is so much better out there. There is a life where you are an equal partner. Where there is joy. Where your partner brings you a cuppa.

Go and find and make a life like that while you can.

Serve him breakfast ?! Cook all his meals ?!! This cannot be real ? If indeed it is real and there is a man so misogynistic as this in existence, then you must make a plan to leave. You are some sort of house slave.
Do not have a baby with him as you know you’ll be left doing 100% of the work involved on top of everything that you do already. He’ll probably expect you to be cooking hot dinners and providing sex the day you come home from the maternity hospital, or he’d “feel like a housemate”

Am I reading Mumsnet from 1950?

What was his relationship with his mum? Did his parents have a traditional breadwinner/ housewife set up? That’s fine, but in that scenario, the wife usually didn’t work, or a few hours at most.

If your dh was 85, I would understand the traditional model more. However, he’s 40, so used to a generation of more equality. Also, you work full time. How many hours does he actually do? Sometimes, I think housework should be split according to hours worked, so if you 40 hours, and he dies 20 hours, then he does twice as much and maybe when he says he feels like a housemate, you should reply that you feel like a slave, and slavery was abolished years ago.

Unkess he’s willing to compromise, it’s not going to change. Do you want this pattern to continue for ever?

He doesn't do chores because it makes him feel like a housemate and not a husband? Have you told him that doing all the chores makes you feel like a housekeeper and not a wife?

I just couldn't be with someone who thinks this dynamic is fair. You deserve better is all I'll say.

If he doesn't want go 50:50 on the housework how about 50:50 for household expenses including a cleaner? One that will also do the laundry, fold it and put it away. Then you can use the free time to learn how to drive 🚗

This is deeply unattractive and abusive. He isnt gonna change so you have to like it or lump it. I would have to leave. You cant give him what he wants. He cant give you what you need. It feels over.

Yanbu, he sees you as a housekeeper, not as his equal or his wife and life partner. I may be wide of the mark but I don't feel there is any respect for you from him, I would be making plans to leave unless anything drastically changes.

What an incredibly peculiar set up.

To feel like a husband, he needs you to cook him breakfast, make him tea in request, do all the household labour and cook for his family.

What does he think you need to "feel like a wife"? Does he think wives should be fulfilled by serving their husbands?

It's a leave the bastard from me. He has no self awareness and is not going to change. Move on and don't waste any more of your life

I’m sorry but your relationship sounds unhinged,
even his ‘good points’ are actually not that great?! Waiting for you sounds massively controlling, not sweet, as does following you around whilst you shop (which you seem to say you hardly do anyway?) You were so desperate for change that you stopped contributing as much financially and he’s complaining about that anyway? Do you truly believe that’s healthy on either side?

if he does not respect you or your joint home enough to do the bare minimum then he does not truly love you, not in a way that is worth having.

take the money you are saving by not controbuting and put it towards escaping this pathetic, controlling man. In the meantime, massively reduce what you do for him and see how ‘good’ he is to you…

He sounds awful and very unreasonable.

It sounds like a 1950s marriage.

If he wants a trad wife he should marry one.

He sounds like a misogynistic pig. How can you bear him?

Sorry OP, you must be out of your mind to be with such a man child.
Do not inflict him on a child.
Huge mistake marrying him.

No assets?
Get out of this asap.

Tell him to F off. He’s taking the absolute piss. He’s a grown man who can sort his own laundry, host his own friends and get off his arse and sort himself food. That would be bare minimum. Don’t stay with this tw@t.

LTB
There is nothing to save here this is his character and mindset there's no changing it

My partner currently pays around 99% of all our costs as I'm not working much. He pays for hols too. He will clean the kitchen, make me hot drinks, walk our dog when I don't feel well(and when I do!), cook tho he doesn't like to, clean the house, buy groceries, make his own breakfast and lunch etc etx.
I also do all of thr above. Apart from paying for stuff unless I have some cash. It's a partnership and we look after each other...
This should be normal. If the tables turned and I could pay all our costs I would no quibbles and he could take time out.
Hope this helps x

He would do anything you say…

And yet he doesn’t. He doesn’t meet you halfway. He doesn’t help out. He expects you to back down and put his family before your own feelings.

And wtf is this: doing household chores makes him feel like less of a husband?

Does treating his wife this way make him feel more of a man?

I do not say this lightly:

L.T.B.

If he doesn’t want to do his week he can pay for a weekly or twice a week clean from his money. Cleaning the toilets after hi and washing his skivvies isn’t wife job either