WIBU about paid work responsibilities?

[stripytigerz]

I’m not quite sure what the answer is to this as I think probably neither of us are being that unreasonable.

I am early 40s and DH is early 50s. We have one DC, aged 5. I work in a stressful professional job 3 days a week. I do all the mental load of DC, and the majority of school runs etc. DH works FT hours also in a stressful environment. In addition, he picks up additional paid overtime. This means that he is rarely around in the evenings, leaving house and DC to me.

This did cause some resentment earlier on as I felt unsupported at home and I felt my career was suffering further as I couldn’t commit to out of hours BD etc, which is important in my profession. Equally, DH felt resentful as he felt he was shouldering the financial responsibility of the family. Just to note, I earn about 40% of our household income. If DH dropped the overtime, it would be more like 50/50.

The overtime money is definitely helpful but I do think we would manage day to day without it. We have not debt and decent savings. Some months we don’t save if we have particularly high outgoings but most months we can save £500 upwards. So, DH overtime is basically funding this. It then pays for holidays etc.

So I think that’s the context in a nutshell.

The issue is DH has been putting me under pressure to increase my working days for some time now, but fundamentally I don’t think I would cope with it. I have the usual struggle of high pressured, stressful job, mental load, peri etc. I genuinely feel constantly on the brink of burnout. It’s day to day keeping me head above water. I don’t believe that ultimately DH would share the mental load in a way that it would reset the balance. Also, there has to be a business need for me to increase my hours and I don’t believe my firm would agree to it at the moment anyway. DH dismisses this. It would also make things so much harder in school holidays etc.

Ultimately I am sure DH is tired too and would like to reduce his hours. However overtime has always been his choice and he gets antsy if he thinks it’s not available. He makes out I’m overworking him by refusing to increase my hours.

Discussions around this always seem to end in an argument and I’m not sure where to go from here.

I think you need to get into a better place mentally if you feel you are burning out working three days a week. Do you have a massive commute, any opportunities to WFH? Really when your child is at full time school you will have two days for you. Well take one off for cleaning and groceries but that would leave you free for you on one day and your husband doesn’t get that. So I can see his point, but I can see your point that you are nearly matching his wages only working three days a week. Are you and your husband happy. I genuinely could not imagine my husband wanting me to work more if we had enough money in the first place.

Thanks @Thingcanonlygetbetter

I take your point about getting in a better place mentally, but honestly I don’t really know where to start.

I acknowledge I have these “2 days” a week but in reality it’s 9am to 3pm, and those hours just fly by. By the time I get a shop and some chores done, it’s time to think about doing the school run. The rest of the time I am absolutely “on”. DC doesn’t much like sleep so bedtime can be really late. As I say, pretty much all childcare is down to me the rest of the time, including weekends.

I also to a bit of catch up work on one of those days off. This is another point of dispute because DH says I “may as well get paid” for this extra work. But it’s not how my industry works. I have my own workload and I just have to get it done. If I increase my hours, it won’t just pay me for this additional time that I’m already doing. My workload will increase, which means it will eat into my one day off which will then have a knock on effect on chores etc. when I was FT, I worked late and weekends. DH forgets this.

As I say, I don’t think it’s likely he’ll take enough off my plate to help me manage the increased workload.

There are problems between us but I don’t see a resolution to that either. I think we’re both feeling hard done by.

I am also seeing the GP about my peri symptoms but obviously there’s no quick or magic cure for this. My sleep has been terrible and my anxiety is through the roof, so not helping with my resilience