So cross with DH - actually more upset than cross

[Ormirian]

Last night DH repeated something he has been saying with alarming regularity recently. That there are fundamental differences between men and women and that one of them is that women want to stay at home and look after children more than the fathers of those children do. I can't really take serious issue with that as I have no idea what 'most women' want I did point out however that there might be many men who would like to stay at home - and plenty of women who don't! So far so harmless even if i find his pontificating on 'what women want' a bit bloody annoying....

I mentioned that it's hard either way - damned if you do, damned if you don't. He responded with a comment along the lines of 'oh come on! It was OK for you. You wanted to go back to work and you did. You didn't let it bother you what people thought'

And I was speechless.

I didn't want to go back to work. I had to. I had to largely because he decided, after 4 years of my supporting him through university, that in fact teaching wasn't for him after all and went to work for social services as a care worker earing peanuts. I had to go back full-time. I got severe PND after my second child was born because by then I knew just how much I didn't want to leave my kids and go back to work. He also seems to conveniently forget the nasty comments from our neighbour 'another baby for someone else to bring up' when I told her I was expecting again. And the comments from both our mothers about how women shouldn't really work when they had children. Added to which I had the worry of being the main earner by a huge margin so I was constantly stressed about being made redundant or getting the sack. While DH swanned through a variety of crappy jobs trying to find one that made him happy .

I went through low-level aching sadness for years. I was tired, stressed and constantly regretful. Now I am reaping the benefits because I still have a career and fantastic T&C in my current post. But that doesn't alter the fact that I had a shitty time.

And now he appears to be air-brushing history to suit him.

I am so hurt. I know there's no point in it but is it wrong to want acknowledgment that it was hard?

That's great Jackie, but the difference is, your ex listened to you and you to him, and you heard what each other wanted/needed. It seems op's man only started listening to women recently, strangers, colleagues, never his wife.

I am actually crosser now than I was when I started this. I need to go and calm down and think of puppies and flowers and nice things...

I tackled him last night. When I asked him why he said it he said he meant I had done OK out of it in the end. Which is true but doesn't mean I enjoyed it then. He apologised. Still a bit confused though.

Where has this mantra about what men and women want, come from Orm? Did he always have these beliefs - or have you changed yours in recent times and you're only now noticing the difference?

It is tricky- i was always adamant that I wanted to work post baby and DP did question whether I would feel this when it happened - I was sure it wouldn't.
Fast forward post baby - and I didn't want to go back- unfortunately I had to go back so whether i wanted to or not is irrelevant. DP does manage to make himself feel better about the situation by telling me how much I like work/how much i want to go back/how I'd have hated to stay home- this in the face of tears and me point blank saying that I was hating it.
It is not his fault that I need to work - but he contributes to it and I think he needs/wants to feel that in some way it is my choice/what I want so that he can feel better about it. I can imagine a few years down the line that he will forget entirely how I felt and just be able to say well you always wanted to go back - like OPs husband

wwifn - lord alone know! No, he used to be fairly neutral about the subject, or at least guarded because he knew I felt quite strongly about the way women had to fit into boxes. I think what he was trying to say was that he felt sorry that women, iho, were being encouraged to go back to work when they didn't neccessarily want to. Which is all well and good as long as the end result is women feeling equally pressurised about staying at home. And it is none of this business anyway.

His mother is an old-fashioned sort with very dubious anti-feminist views - maybe he's inherited some of them

onlyliving - yes that's it.

I guess it doesn't matter - the past is the past. But I still think he was behaving like a twat.

He was behaving like a bit of a twat, but it sounds like it comes from a good place, and he's clarified his position, accepted yours and apologised for upsetting you.

So it'll be back in the past before long :)