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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Am I being unreasonable about our division of labour?

85 replies

nostability · Yesterday 21:38

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?

OP posts:
JayJayj · Today 21:54

So he wants a mummy he can have sex with??

Do not under any circumstances have a child with this man baby.

I went part time, then after 18 months was made redundant. So I’ve been a SAHM fully since the end of July. I still haven’t washed my husband’s clothes. He eats what I make or he fends for himself. He is an adult, he should act like it.

I know it’s easier said than done, and of course you will come up with all these “amazing” things he does. But I wouldn’t want to stay.

WhereYouLeftIt · Today 22:12

nostability · Yesterday 23:07

I was contributing towards bills and groceries until a year ago. I stopped because he wasn't meeting me halfway and helping with anything in the house and it felt too much for me to be doing everything in the house + contributing financially. I did propose aa 50/50 model - he won't do it. He says he won't do anything in the house, he doesn't feel like a husband if he does and feels like he is a housemate. There was no other solution to this other than me stepping away from financially contributing and also doing less frequent cooking, cleaning etc or otherwise I'd never find time for myself outside of my job.

He can be nice and caring. He would do anything I say i.e. go out and do grocery runs, go to the other part of town for something etc. He waits for me outside my one hour weekly dance class in the parking. He happily drives me around if I needed him to as I don't have a licence as of yet. He would spend a whole day out and about with me doing nothing but giving me company if I wanted to shop around (with my own money). But all those things that he does for me - I hardly ever go out. Maybe once in a couple of months. He would give me a pick and drop max once a week. So it doesn't feel fair when he expects me to do his meals twice a day, household chores etc - all that requires a lot frequent cadence and therefore time and energy as compared to what he does for me.

Show quote history

"He can be nice and caring."
Well, no abuser is abusive 100% of the time. But being "nice and caring" part of the time is actually part of the cycle of abuse. It keeps you off-balance, and makes you think there is something you can do that would mean he would be "nice and caring" all of the time. There isn't. Nothing you can do will make one jot of difference to this man.

"He waits for me outside my one hour weekly dance class in the parking. He happily drives me around if I needed him to as I don't have a licence as of yet. He would spend a whole day out and about with me doing nothing but giving me company if I wanted to shop around (with my own money)"
That gave me the creeps. I don't see it as him being helpful, I see it as him making sure you can't run away. He's not company, he's surveillance.

This man will not change. His attitudes are baked in, and he's got his whole family reinforcing that this is how it's supposed to be.

But we all know that's bullshit. This is not how life is meant to be.

This man does not want a wife, he wants a skivvy, a slave. A slave he can fuck and extract money out of. This marriage is abusive, and has no hope of being anything other than abusive. Get out ASAP.

Kimmielee · Today 22:18

LEAVE this abusive man. He’s sounds fucking awful.
I work FT, we have 2 kids, a dog - DW works FT and earns 4 x times my salary.
We spilt all the household tasks, cleaning, kids, dog walking , cooking etc 50/50.

a world where I wait hand in foot on DW because she out earns me, do all domestic chores would never exist

Get yourself an actual partner, one who doesn’t treat you like an unpaid servant.

OakleyAnnie · Today 22:35

You wipe up water splashes in the sink? (Entirely missing the point of the thread, I know)

newbie202020 · Today 22:41

I've been on Mumsnet for years and I cannot believe what I'm reading on here more and more frequently. This set up is insane (& will only get worse - imagine if you have children with him....).

I (genuinely kindly) suggest that you read your post back - and all the comments - and then make a plan to leave.

GreenCandleWax · Today 22:42

Is this post a joke? No one would live like that in real life.
On the remote off chance that you are genuine, OP, I vote YABU because nobody in their right mind would put up with this. Why do you pander to his selfish and unreasonable demands. Stop it right now😧!

Snugglemonkey · Today 23:16

nostability · Today 20:17

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.

He is abusive. You are not in the wrong. If you cannot leave this man now, please contact women's aid and consider therapy to help you gather the resources to do so. He is harming you.

DuckbilledSplatterPuff · Today 23:17

missymousey · Yesterday 21:51

Wtf?! Even if you weren't working and contributing financially, this would be unreasonable! When does he make and serve you breakfast?!

If you're married, you're a team. You take pleasure in doing things for each other. This is madness, he wants a servant not a spouse!

That summed it up. He wants a servant not a spouse.

The lack of helping in the house, the sudden demands you should increase paying for things, when you are already making sufficient contributions. All of that is daily background noise that you dont notice but slowly grinds you down.. but that pales beside

"He wants me to increase my capacity to face toxic behaviour even though he knows my mental health is messed up because of this."

What the hell?

He's basically given you a long long list of what he wants.. whilst doing very little himself and contributing what sounds like the minimum and even that's too much for him.

What is good about him?

How will you feel in five years time when you are still putting up with this and have no spare wages left for your own savings or pension or doing what you want with the DC.

gardenflowergirl · Today 23:27

This man is not going to change. If this is not the life you want you need to sort yourself out so you can leave and get a divorce.

OfficerChurlish · Today 23:46

I'd split the shared household tasks equally and then adjust based on how much time each of you is committed to obligations outside the home - work, commute, school, extended family obligations, etc. For example if you WFH full time you might pick up a little bit more as you save the commute time. You also may be better placed to do some tasks during the day, like putting on load of washing while working or making something in a slow cooker while he might take on routine errands as he's out every work day anyway. In the end, you should each have roughly the same amount of leisure/recharge/rest time. Salaries wouldn't come into it but I would separately assess and discuss together what's fair for each of you to pay.

Things that one of you would specifically do FOR the other, like you making his breakfast when you'd not otherwise make it for yourself or putting his clothes away unless it's along with your own have to be voluntary not demanded, and should roughly even out (he does as much for you as you for him). Unfortunately, his getting angry and pouting when he doesn't get his way is likely to be a warning sign of worse to come.

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