I’m stuck!

[Tetheresend25]

Ladies/Gents- who work part time and are stay at home parents.
To a long story a bit shorter I work part-time (5am-7am) mon to fri and then stay home during the day to ease childcare costs till my son gets her free hours next year. Im also currently expecting our second child. We have a house together.
My boyfriend works full time and studies at uni 1 evening a week to be a teacher. He pays the bulk of the bills and I'm responsible for food shops and gas/electric.

Now I know it’s not uncommon but we have a reoccurring argument in our house over responsibility of job sharing. My partner believes he has no responsibility to help me other than to bath our son and put him to bed. My partner believes I don’t get any free time as I sacrificed all of that to have a child so its my ‘loss’. I spend probably 99% of my days cleaning, cooking, doing laundry, putting toys away. Cleaning the house down. Cleaning up the mess my partner leaves behind whenever he makes breakfast for himself usually a greasy egg pan and his plate and grease splattered stove top to wash up, plus whatever else he’s gotten out to make his dinner/breakfast etc. he rarely ever washes up after tea.

He refuses to help clean the bathroom, or help me clean the house and will only come running the stand and observe when I’ve finally had enough of asking and resort to doing it myself whilst doing god knows what else. My partner believes his spare time is for him and him alone, but when I do ask for help he’s never too busy to go our drinking with friends, going to the gym, going for haircuts, going out to gigs regular with his friends or football matches every other weekend with his family. Iv allowed the football as he pays for a season ticket never would I stop him doing it, nor would I say uni work and lesson planning is not priority those both are important.

But there is zero give and take on the rest and in his own words.

’ITS MY JOB TO DO THE HOUSE WORK NOT HIS. ITS NOT MY FAULT YOUR LIFES MISERABLE’

Please help :’( my mental health is suffering big time.

How old is your son? Can you increase your hours very slightly so you are eligible for the 15 free hours of childcare for children over 9 months and you would at least have some free time during the day? If you worked more, would he see you more of an equal in the relationship?

I’m honestly not sure what I would do, but I would definitely try to make it work though, managing 2 small children as a single parent with a job that is from 5-7am would be almost impossible.

I think you need to explain that he works 40 hours (at a guess), you work 12 hours, you then do 40 hours of childcare whilst he works and he presumably has your son whilst you work for 12 hours. If he is expecting you to do housework whilst he works, can he put a load of washing on and do the dishes from the night before whilst he has the children in the morning? He might then see how it would be hard to do tasks whilst looking after kids. I would also stop picking up after him, if stuff is in the wash basket then wash it with the household laundry, but anything that is left on the floor doesn’t get washed! When he runs out of tops/pants you’ll either find he washes his own, he starts putting it in the basket or he complains to you that you haven’t cleaned up after him where you can say you’ve washed the stuff in the basket but you don’t have time to pick up after him.

With armchair psychologist hat on, maybe he didn't have enough time/space to process and move on from his previous relationship before you got together? He sounds like he has a lot of issues stemming from it. Maybe if he would agree to go to therapy to explore that there would be some growth there. It's difficult though because once these patterns are worn in a relationship it can be hard to get out of that groove.

I must admit at times he can often compare me to his ex and its MEGA hurtful as I categorically make a point never to use me ex or bring him up.
when we got together she loitered around a lot and took it upon herself to try invite herself out on one of our dates, secretly ordered myself a taxi and I went oh just off the loo, and got in me taxi home. I just wasn’t prepared to sit in the middle like that. Few minutes later he rang asking where I’d gone and I said I can’t do this, it’s weird and he told his ex to leave him be. She did for a bit then started pecking at him again, wanting to talk, just doing her best to divert his attention and i was ok with them being civil until that point and i finally said right this isn’t working anymore. What will it be, do you want to go back to your ex? Or do you want to pursue a relationship.

He told her to back off and that was it she went for good. Fell pregnant with our son she appeared again, saying my partner was heartless he knew she wanted kids with him. How dare we move out and have children not thinking of her feelings and we FINALLY got rid of her of her for. My ex just said cya and we never crossed paths again thank god!