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?

Did you tell him how it makes you feel like a maid and not a wife? Then just stop doing his stuff.
what does he add to your life???

Learn to drive and get a divorce

I really hope this post is just rage bait because if not that is outrageous. Please don't let your life be ruled by this egocentric, overgrown teenager. All the things you listed he 'does for you' just sounds like extra ways of keeping tabs on you to me to be honest.

Run.
He wants an obedient wife who will do whatever he wants whenever he wants. They start small then grind you down. They start with little comments but ramp it up if you don't comply. Sometimes it escalates to violence to keep the woman in place.

So his expectation of a wife/partner is completely different to most of us. Unless one of a partnership is at home doing nothing, of course chores should be split. So you asking more of him makes him feel like a flat mate? Err, same applies to you doing everything doesn’t it? Bin him off @nostability

Is this the way you want to spend the rest of your life? Throw him out.

I posted this because I genuinely wanted to check if I was in the wrong in any way because I feel like I have well and truly tried everything to make the division of labour work and it’s really hard. To be honest I don’t feel like I have much stability when it comes to any of this. He keeps telling me to leave the house and him if I won't have any kids with him - something I've put my foot down about because I am terrified of the amount of labour an infant would add on to me and what that would do to this marriage. I would resent him to no end for not helping, and for me not being able to earn during that period. I don't want to rely on him financially if I was to take a break because of pregnancy because in my experience any dependency on him = bargaining chips for more power on his end. I get told to leave the house at least once a week and he doesn't care what that does to me because I have no stability.

The most recent argument we had was because he asked me to make something specific for him and I said no because we already had leftovers from something I’d made the previous evening. His response was that he’s lucky if he gets one meal out of me let alone two or three meals a day. That really frustrated me because I keep asking him to make his own breakfast because I can not get up in the middle of my shift and he doesn’t. Then he’ll tell his friends in front of me that I don’t make him breakfast or that I don’t do this or that for him. There is a cultural element here. We’re both South Asian and the setup he grew up with was very different. His dad was rarely around and didn’t take much financial or practical responsibility for the children. His mum did everything for them as a stay at home mum while her own father financially supported the family. My husband was a teenager when he had to start working and earning money. He also has two brothers who are now in their late thirties and mid forties and he has spent most of his life financially supporting them. It’s only fairly recently that one of them has become more stable and stopped relying on him as much.

I don’t know how relevant any of that is anymore because reading through the comments has made me think that if he was capable of taking care of his family for so many years then there really isn’t a reason he couldn’t take care of me too. He just doesn’t seem to want to unless I’m bending over backwards in return. There seems to be this expectation that if he financially contributes then I should be toiling around the house all day to make up for it when he isn’t working around the clock himself. He does a couple of shifts a week at most. If he finds out that something I made was very easy - say a stir fry - he gets put off by that knowledge. He'd otherwise be enjoying his meal had he not known it took me 20 minutes to make for example.

I genuinely find it difficult to rest when he’s around if it’s anywhere near a meal time because I know he’ll resent me if I’m sitting down while he wants food. He has never washed a plate or spoon as far as I’ve seen. I don't want him to see me leaning on a sofa whilst on shift either (I work from home) because then he starts saying your job is too easy and you should do more around the house. My job is mentally and creatively challenging and takes a lot out of me regardless of me working from a desk or a sofa. We’ve had so many arguments over me asking him to help with dishes that I eventually gave up and started relying on the dishwasher. When we had to find a new rental last year it actually became part of what I had to look for because I knew I couldn’t move somewhere without a dishwasher. Finding somewhere affordable with no carpets and a dishwasher was really difficult.

It’s the smaller things too. Only last week I was in the middle of my work shift when he came in because there was an issue with the boiler. I said that because we have HomeCare we should contact British Gas. He immediately asked me to do it and get on chat support to arrange the appointment for him. I was frustrated but I did it because I didn’t want another argument. It took around half an hour because I had to leave the chat to speak to the landlord and then go back to British Gas. That half hour then came out of my own evening because I had to stay online and work later to make up the time. He wasn’t working that day and had nothing lined up but he still came to me while I was working and expected me to sort it out.

This is an horrific set-up. OP your husband is a misogynistic prick. You really need to leave him. Why on earth does he think you have to do all the household chores (plus work!!) because sharing them makes him like a roommate? I’ve never met any man who thinks this. Are you in the UK?

Oh my god. This man is lazy, manipulative and abusive. He does not respect you and I don’t believe you can live someone without respecting them

Yep, leave. And well done for sticking to your guns and not bringing children into this awful situation. You are worth far more than this.

What is wrong with you that you are putting up with this shit. Give your head a wobble and ditch this arse.

This man doesn't love you. You deserve love.

Please, please, please leave this man. You do not have to have such a miserable life, this much pressure, these feelings of resentment, this fear. You can have a life either on your own, living on your terms and finding fulfilment in hobbies and friends and passions, or with someone who respects you and wants a proper partnership. There is so much more out there, you are right to not have a child with this man, now follow that thought through and I think you know, deep down, that you would be right to leave him too.

Hahaha good one. He must be having a laugh, surely?

Couldn't agree more. This doesn't seem to just be a traditional marriage set up based on culture. He is mean. Good luck x

I can’t believe what I’ve just read.

I can’t believe what I’m reading, please do not have kids with this man, you will be doing everything. Just silently get your ducks in a row and leave him without saying a word. Leave a print out of this thread on his misogynistic arm chair, never look back and live happily ever after.

Posts like this remind me how lucky I am to be single :-)
If you are happy, then put up with the arguments, stay with him and do more household chores to keep him happy :-) we accept the love we think we deserve. Everyone is different and only you can make that decision my love.
Its easier as an outsider to provide you with unbiased home truths.
in my opinion, he sounds like another misogynistic man who is looking for a mother and a “traditional” wife.
Reality check - those days are gone now and women are waking the hell up.
This life is what you make it. If you want to spend the rest of your life being a maid, incubator, therapist etc to this man, you do you! But please remember this - a man doing the bare minimum is not an excuse to stay with him (Let’s stop as a society celebrating men for doing the basics). What does HE bring to your table. And no, I don’t mean that he spends time with you, gives you a lift now and again or picks up a few groceries or takes the bins out. What does HE contribute to YOUR happiness?

One of the easiest ‘leave’ I have ever posted.

Apart from anything else don't you find this deeply unattractive?! what a big man baby.

Remember that you are in charge of what you do, not him. No-one would put up with this crap and you don’t have to.

Make a plan for how to leave. Any close friends or family that can help? You can do this and it will be so much better afterwards.

Is this an arranged marriage because it doesn't sound like a love match? You do understand that there is more to life than the man child who calls himself your husband?

ltb

Omg. It’s one thing to do all the cleaning but for how to expect breakfast served to him, his meals brought to him, dictating what to cook, or expecting you to other things for him. Why do you stay with him, he sounds awful and abusive.

Did you actually actively sign up to some kind of domestic servitude arrangement? Was it part of what you discussed re marriage? Our has it just gradually come to light that that's his assumption?
Could you get anywhere with discussing where his assumptions come from. Could he reflect on that, think on whether it works for you both?
If you didn't sign up to this and he can't reflect and shift i don't see how this continues.
I was particularly staggered by "he’s lucky if he gets one meal out of me let alone two or three meals a day" like you're since sort of malfunctioning machine.
Culture/background aside i couldn't be with someone who couldn't see me as an autonomous human, who had reduced me to a 'thing' that completed domestic tasks.