DH changing our life pattern and I am not happy.

[Cutiecat]

i am due to give birth to dc3 next week and over the last few months i feel that DH is increasingly changing our life pattern. What i mean by this is that he keeps taking days off work or working from home without telling me. We have been having a lot of building work going on which is drawing to a close and i have been managing it single handedly. He is not interested in it at all but does want the work done. DS is at school full time and DD is at nursery every morning.

Our situation since having children has been one of me staying at home and him going to work. He would not want it any other way, i.e he would not want me to go back to work yet and i am very happy being at home raising our family. But recently it seems that he is not doing his side of the bargain. I think he is bored at work, he as a global job and for the past 4 years has been travelling a lot but this seems to have changed with the economic situation and change of management at his work.

I am finding that on average he is not going into work two days a week due to illness, 'working from home' or holiday. None of this is discussed prior to him doing it. Last week I returned home from the school/nursery run and supermaket shop to find him in his cycling gear about to go off for a cycle ride. I had asked him at breakfast what he was doing that day, he didn't mention staying at home.

He has been talking of changing jobs within his firm and one of the positions will require him to work from home twice a week. I feel this will be too much for me with a new baby. I will have to make him lunch and will be over crowding me as we don't have a study or anything he works from the kitchen table. So he is sitting in the centre of the home where my friends come for tea etc. Also when the children are home they have to be quite as he is often on conference calls.

I don't know how to handle this but I feel I want a traditional life where he gets up and goes to work everyday. He puts in 100% at work and i take care of the home. He is changing the routine of our lives and i am not happy. I can see this could cause real problems in our relationship. I have tried speaking to him and his response is to say he understands but actually he is ignoring me and carrying on doing what he wants.

What can i do to make him understand?

It is a complete non-starter to have your DH using the kitchen table as a home office - he is in the way of the whole of your family. And it is unreasonable for him to expect you to make him lunch.

I do appreciate that loads of people work from home on the odd occasion and do so from the sofa (my DH does). But increasingly in many places a 'regular' home worker would be subject to audited workspace etc, especially if working from home was at the request of the employer.

I pointed this out to the OP in response to "He has been talking of changing jobs within his firm and one of the positions will require him to work from home twice a week."

OP, ask your DH to check out whether an audited workspace will be required before he changes jobs. The downside is that you'll have to create such a space but the upside is that he won't be in the kitchen / living room under your feet and moaning about the noise from the children. If you are unable to create a quiet space for him then it is possible that he would be considered unsuitable for a position at work which requires home working.

I think the first thing to establish is that he will actually be working from home as opposed to having his days cut, or being required to be a mobile worker some of the time.

I agree with others- he cannot work from the kitchen and expect silence in the house, and expect the family to stay out of his way. If he is going to be working from home then he needs a dedicated space for this, even if it's a table in a sectioned-off corner of your bedroom.

I work in the dining room. Not used that often (well other than mealtimes) so peaceful and not in anyone's way. However I am usually alone in the house so easier anyway.

The thing is, this is a bigger problem than just whether he works at the kitchen table isn't it?

You mention having had a pretty high powered job, and driving yourself hard in it, before having children, and I get the feeling that even if he works in a shed in the garden, the underlying problem is that you will be watching to see how many hours he's clocked up, whether in your opinion he's slacking etc. You are judging him against how you perceive you used to function at work- but you're overlooking the fact that he is not you, your lives have moved on etc

I think you need to have a frank discussion. You need to give him the opportunity to be totally honest- which is hard, because there is the risk that he might tell you the idyll you planned quite a few years ago isn't doing it for him any more. He might be seriously fed up with work, or struggling with management changes, or any number of things. The one really bad sign in a relationship is when one partner just blindly ignores the others feeling, wishes, dreams etc. You need to stop judging and start listening, and be prepared to shift YOUR life pattern if needs be. Life doesn't stand still. For example, I dropped to working 3 days a week when we had children, but if my dh had felt seriously pressurised by having to provide most of our income, we would have talked about rme returning to 5 days or stepping up to 4. If he had felt a serious urge to spend more time at home, we would have looked at him going part time. As it happens, now our youngest is 4, I am looking for a full time job and the plan is for dh to rearrange his work hours and pick up from school twice a week. He feels that having been the main provider, he would now like to spend More time with the boys, and this is entirely reasonable. None of us stand still, life changes!

The thing is, this is a bigger problem than just whether he works at the kitchen table isn't it?

You mention having had a pretty high powered job, and driving yourself hard in it, before having children, and I get the feeling that even if he works in a shed in the garden, the underlying problem is that you will be watching to see how many hours he's clocked up, whether in your opinion he's slacking etc. You are judging him against how you perceive you used to function at work- but you're overlooking the fact that he is not you, your lives have moved on etc

I think you need to have a frank discussion. You need to give him the opportunity to be totally honest- which is hard, because there is the risk that he might tell you the idyll you planned quite a few years ago isn't doing it for him any more. He might be seriously fed up with work, or struggling with management changes, or any number of things. The one really bad sign in a relationship is when one partner just blindly ignores the others feeling, wishes, dreams etc. You need to stop judging and start listening, and be prepared to shift YOUR life pattern if needs be. Life doesn't stand still. For example, I dropped to working 3 days a week when we had children, but if my dh had felt seriously pressurised by having to provide most of our income, we would have talked about rme returning to 5 days or stepping up to 4. If he had felt a serious urge to spend more time at home, we would have looked at him going part time. As it happens, now our youngest is 4, I am looking for a full time job and the plan is for dh to rearrange his work hours and pick up from school twice a week. He feels that having been the main provider, he would now like to spend More time with the boys, and this is entirely reasonable. None of us stand still, life changes!