close to a breakdown

[Enni2S]

I'm sitting on the toilet at work and I just feel so drained and sad. Bit of backstory. I've been (mostly) happily married to my Dh for 2 and a half years. We are both in our mid-twenties, have good jobs and are about to move into our own home. We have no children.

My Dh is generally lovely, but I feel like he is not pulling his weight when it comes to the day to day management of our household. We both work a lot, but he lives 3 miles away from work. Meanwhile I live 60 miles away from work and commute for up to 4 hours a day. It means that I come home at 7:30, whilst he's home just before five. Despite this, the guy still goes 'what's for dinner?' 'have you ordered the shopping?' and 'could you sort x y z out?'. I just find this increasingly unfair, but he simply doesn't seem to understand how much this is bothering me.

I feel stressed with commuting, trying to sort out our house sale and having to think about the cooking during the week. I end up with no free time, and then when it's the weekend and the cleaner is due to come (neither of us have the time to do full scale cleaning atm) he wants me to do at least half of the tidying that hasn't been done during the week!

The trouble is that he doesn't do it on purpose, it's more like he just doesn't see my situation properly, no matter how well we normally communicate. He is otherwise a great person who will seriously move the earth for me, so that is why this is even more upsetting. When I ask him for help he will sometimes do something, but most of the time it seems a pointless venture (e.g. he'll do 3 washes, put it through the dryer and dump it on the bed for me to put away). I just feel like I'm increasingly taking annual leave just to deal with my stress, and I'd just like him to help me out. What should I do?

It will only get worse unless you tackle it now - you'll end up feeling like his mother and you will resent it. It will be even worse when/if you have children as you'll be running round after them AND him. Trust me, he's taking the proverbial....

Likewise with me lunagirl. I have better things to do than skivvy after a man all my life.

My ex was exactly like this. I worked longer hours, longer commute, more stressful job etc and I had to do literally everything at home and he was too tight fisted to pay for a cleaner. He was utterly bone idle. I used to get in from work and he, having been home at least 1-2 hours would ask me what was for tea. This was the same during his numerous days off when I'd come home and the bed wouldn't even be made when he'd been off all day. He wouldn't even put his washing in the basket but leave it in piles down his side of the bed. A pile of white and a pile of dark washing, so as to help me!!! In the end I was drained by complaining about it. Of course when I was leaving I had alsorts of promises to change. I'd heard it all before. One of the various reasons I LTB. Never looked back. Now I live alone, do my own washing, ironing, cleaning. I'm far less exhausted.

So can I just check OP? Your H doesn't expect you to do it because you are a woman. He expects you to do it because

1. You have always done it

1. When he worked, in his opinion, " longer and harder" , he thought you should do most domestic tasks. Except now you work longer and harder and he still thinks you should do it. Funny that.

1. Because you work in an office and he does a manual job. he thinks you should do more housework AND more domestic management than him. Because.

1. He wants you to take all resppnsibility for project management and delegation and if you don't do that ON TOP OF your share of tasks, he won't do his share.

I'm afraid that from where I'm sitting , that looks awfully like traditional gender roles.

Op is so far down that river she is outta sight