Help me not be a seething ball of resentment at DH about chores

[yourfamousblueraincoat]

Can you help sort out how on earth to fix the fact I’m drowning after having gone back to work? It’s easy to say get my DH to do more but he is a workaholic and works even harder than I do. I just don’t know what to do. How on earth do people cope with high pressure jobs and more than one child?

This is our schedule:
DH leaves for work at 7.30am and returns at 7pm - spends 20 minutes getting DS aged 15 months to sleep (already in PJs and bathed by nanny). Then he returns to work until about 10pm when we have dinner.
At weekends, he works at least one day out of two and can barely concentrate when having family time. He always makes time for church and watching one sporting event.
In the house, he irons his shirts and takes the bins out about half the time when asked.

I am up with DS anywhere between 5.45 and 7am and get him ready for the day, sometimes skipping a shower as he won’t be left alone. I leave for work (also high pressure job) at 9am, handing DS to the nanny, and return at about 9pm. Then I cook dinner, do dishwasher, clean high chair, do laundry, do admin, tidy toys and go to bed around midnight.
I am also off on Fridays and try to preserve this as time spent with DS without too many chores except in nap time.
We have a cleaner but it doesn’t feel like enough.

I do all bills, DIY, household shopping, negotiating with tradespeople for repairs, organising and tidying for cleaner, all laundry, changing bed sheets, booking holidays, birthday cards, most Christmas presents for both families, all child related research and shopping, booking and attending child medical appointments, random household chores like changing lightbulbs, controlling the heating, setting burglar alarm, liaising with nanny/other childcare, organising our limited social life, preparing beds and meals for when his relatives randomly descend with no warning, sorting garden.

How can I make our lives easier without giving up work? I am a massive seething ball of resentment and just end up sniping at DH on the rare occasions I do get to spend time with him. I have zero time to myself.

Mumsnet is also full of people who work demanding professions and see many senior people insist on flexibility. I can’t do x I have my children’s show. I’m leaving at 4. Etc etc. Im a consultant and there weren’t that many partners in over Easter because they have children who were on school holidays. We see it in our clients too.

elspeth had a point. You and your DH resolve this before your dc starts school. You might be able to wing it badly for a while longer but someone's mental / physical health or your marriage will go down the pan. And it's 50% your DH's responsibility to sort out, he can do more admin, hire extra help and cut back his working hours.

What do your weekends look like?

What on earth does you DH do that requires 15 hours a day work?

It strikes me that the issues here is control and choice.

The choice is whether you want to continue as you are, in which case you will have to relinquish control of the house to a housekeeper and just have "quality time" with your DC.

You're at that tipping point where you can't do everything but haven't quite delegated the house stuff.

Is your DH the same with his job? Is he doing work that could be done by others?

If your DC is clingy, is he missing time with you?

What's the point of such a presumably well paid job if you are more miserable than someone earning less than half that?

Does your husband just expect you to carry the "family" load and then one day when you are both 68 you can actually sit down together and spend some time together?

I really hope the responses from all these posters have started to make you wonder what really positive changes you could make to your life and more importantly to your child's.

When I was working crazy hours I would see the support staff leaving at 5.30 and wonder who exactly the smart ones really were

You work full time and somehow manage
to be a skivvy for you husband, cleaner and nanny.
Stop all essential jobs.
Stop cleaning up for the cleaner.
Look hard at what the nanny is doing and give her a list of jobs. Cleaning the high chair is ridiculous.
Do not accommodate any drop in visitors. End of.
OP you sound like a martyr who's going to burn out.

Take action or fall apart.

Best of luck.

Oh and your husband sounds like a selfish twat.

"I do all bills, DIY, household shopping, negotiating with tradespeople for repairs, organising and tidying for cleaner, all laundry, changing bed sheets, booking holidays, birthday cards, most Christmas presents for both families, all child related research and shopping, booking and attending child medical appointments, random household chores like changing lightbulbs, controlling the heating, setting burglar alarm, liaising with nanny/other childcare, organising our limited social life, preparing beds and meals for when his relatives randomly descend with no warning, sorting garden."

How do men just switch off from family responsibilities like that?

Is it selfishness, entitlement, ignorance or what?

Just so irritating to see it over and over again.

There's more to life than work and cleaning op.
Some things that helped me were;

Having a DH that pulls his weight as much as he can

Reducing my hours - only slightly, it means I can be home and take over childcare

Lowering my standards by quite a bit.

You will never lay on your death bed wishing you had cleaned or worked more.

I missed the people drop in to stay thing, fuck that off for a start...

What do you want out of your life? You really are doing all the skivvying as well as high power shit.

Why seeth at the DH? Have a bloody good row.

I agree that you should be pissed off at your husband!

You are already compromising on your career. He needs to as well.

Also, I was given a family high chair and felt obliged to use it. It was shit to clean. Looking back I should have got a better one. So my practical advice is get a better highchair...

Haven't read the whole thread, sorry.

But, I've been there.

I became so burnt out that I couldn't even lift my hairdryer to dry my hair, my muscles ached badly from being so tense all the time and I became ill constantly with colds, ear infections and chest infections.

In the end, no amount of "moaning" at DH changed anything. So I left my job as it was clearly going to be my role to do all the house admin which was hugely taking its toll.

I still work- 2 days a week, school hours. DH now makes digs about out lack of money but he can't have it all ways. I kept the cleaner though- how I clean whilst having a 1 year old running around is beyond me and he uses weekends for his hobbies so doesn't give me chance to do it then either.

He still doesn't respect my role or position in our family, but atleast I'm not ill.

You can't outsource everything OP. And even if you go more part-time, you still wont be able to do all those jobs when looking after DC. You don't expect your nany to pay bills and tun errands when taking care of DC do you? It's considered a job in itself. And it is.

If he won't work less, can you work less and get family to take care of DC for a fee hours at weekends so you can do all your house admin?

But why should the OP give up her career?! That's ridiculous.

I'm not sure whether OP has actually asked him to work less or not. It sounds as if he was hoping this 'new' job wasn't going to be so time-consuming.

OP- does he want to carry on working at this pace? If not, could your family survive him changing roles again to a less-intensive position? Would he be open to that?

I really think it's his role that needs to be down-sized. Although the OP's is intensive, it's only 5- days a week, not 6. If DH could stop working on that 6th day, I imagine that would make a massive difference.

How awful. Another one asking why you had a child. Both your careers come first. You have no balance. What little time you have with your child is spent getting ready for the day. Your dh has one day off a week. Do you have any family time at all? You both need to find a way that gives you all family time, otherwise what's the point?

Working less or not at all is taking a massive personal financial risk. In the event of divorce, the man whose working life was facilitated keeps his earning power.

Absolutely - the husband here will take advantage of any reduction in OP's working hours to keep his own the same (I'd say do more but I'm not sure that's possible) and continue to be a disengaged partner and father. That is what needs to change, not OP picking up ever more of the slack at her personal and professional expense.

I came to the realisation that my DH would not work less so I reduced my hours. I've had a few working patterns. My favourite was working 8 - 1 for 5 days a week. (I had a 15 minute commute) but I also liked 3 long days.

I know this is terrible on MN and I let women kind down but I couldn't change another person - all I could change was myself and I was unhappy and over tired. I had a choice of doing all the stuff and working long hours, or working shorter hours and giving myself time to do all the stuff.

Before you do something drastic like that, make sure he really wont change. and change everything you can first. So all these ideas about increasing cleaners hours to include laundry, getting a work from home day, making sure nanny does all childcare stuff are really good, reducing commute.

I also think that 5 days would be a better balance than 4 long ones in as much as you must enjoy the day with your child. It depends how much of the 12 hour day is commute time.

If you stay together, the model you have Grasspigeons can work great, I know lots of people with that set up. But in the event of a breakup you would be the one taking the financial hit. Hope you’ve mitigated against this as much as possible with a pension etc.

Loopytiles - yes, my parents divorced so keeping a track of how i would manage formed a major part of my decision making process and it always should be.

Fuck the financial risk, OP is burning out.

"Why should the OP give up her career?"

Because it's burning her out.

She's out of the house for more than 12 hours each day. That is not a sustainable career with young children and a man child.

Read Liberating Women.

Having a career as a woman isn't all cracked up to be, if it was, so many women wouldn't be writing threads like these. Economic value is not the only value at stake here.

I agree with what ElspethFlashman said on page 3 of the thread.

I'll summarise a key moment of Michelle Obama's Becoming, because you haven't got time to read it.

She decided that nobody else could do the key bits of parenting, being with their children, so she did that. Nobody else could do being a wife to her husband, so she found ways to do bits of that.

Everything else someone else can do, or nobody needs to do. They had a lot of money to outsource, which you may not have. But cut corners where you can and outsource where you can.

They are little for such a short time... so don't give up your work.

If church is a good family time, a time to pay attention to each other, then fine. if not, then I'd suggest he goes to one of the numerous weekday lunchtime services churches put on for people like him.