DP typically leaves house at 7am and returns at 8pm.

[Jaycee74]

I currently don’t work - all household management is left to me during the week. I get some help at weekend - but I have to ask. He generally cooks at the weekend. Do I have a right to feel pissed off?

Haunted - that’s a great post. Thank you.

He needs to work his contracted hours
If your a SAHM, then the housework is done to you

Children are a joint enterprise

I think you're being totally unreasonable, yes.

Maybe because you don't feel like he appreciates you or cares @Jaycee74? It sounds like through the week you're not spending anytime together at all. Waking four times through the night, realistically how much sleep are you getting? How often do you get time away from the children?

@Greenkit and quite a few employers will push you out of your job if you do that.

If he's doing it for no extra pay, you need to have a word with him. He's a parent now with two children at home who want to see him!

There's no need to be working 13 hour days - especially when you're doing some of it unpaid!

The truth is you don't feel valued for being the home maker. It's not up to him to make you feel valued, it's up to you! If you don't enjoy full time motherhood, make some changes (get a job and child care or some work you can do from home.)

I don't think he is the problem- the guy is working a 13 hr day so you can stay at home.

Maybe you need to re-think your own life and if you need work outside the home to feel fulfilled and valued?

My sleep patterns are terrible - I haven’t had a block of more than 3/4 hours sleep since last March.

Doesn't sound like much of a marriage.

Not sure I would be happy with it.

What's the point in his being around if he's not participating in any of your lives?

Millions and millions and millions of women work the hours your husband does and also run households.

I'd be pretty pissed off too.

He's being lazy and not taking any responsibility for the organisation of a domestic life which he very clearly benefits from.

@ColaFreezePop if he can, perhaps he is just trying to get out of the childcare

I am out of the house 6am to 7/8pm 3 days a week, then I work a more normal ish day at home and have Fridays off. I’d be pretty annoyed if dh was whinging I didn’t do enough housework with those hours. It’s exhausting and while I do do some things at night after I get home (getting home tonight at 9pm and I need to order the food shop), life would be a lot less gruelling if dh who was home more that day did it (in reality, a lot of it is things for my work lunches and dinners- I eat dinner on the train - so dh can’t do it as he doesn’t know what I need). I wish I could be home more and not work such long hours as it really isn’t a choice.

I think yes it makes sense that you do nearly everything when he is at work because you aren’t working. But he shouldn’t be sitting on his bum when he is home. Dh and I both remember to take out the bins no matter who’s worked longer hours that day. On weekends, he needs to be doing 50-50 and he can just as easily load the dishwasher at 5-6am when he gets up for work.

Can you delegate tasks and then just not do them if he doesn’t? Hoovering at 8pm isn’t realistic but taking the bins out is. If he doesn’t do it, he’ll have to take them to the tip at the weekend...with dc in tow, while you get to relax.

I think you feel annoyed because there is no time for you two to connect and communicate. You are ships passing in the night. Or living like housemates.
You’ve basically said he has DD when he is home and you have DS. So you are both doing childcare in isolation from each other.
He’s gone for at least 12hrs each day.
You both work long hours on jobs that appear to be a never ending slog.

Can he convert his schedule so he’s working 4 days a week those hours and gets a Monday, Wednesday or Friday off? I know people who have gotten compressed schedules. Then that one day off you and he can jointly do all the weekly housecleaning chores while childminding, Leaving weekends open to family fun. Does he do his share on weekends?

He does need to slow down or he will burn out. No one can keep up 60hr weeks for very many years without it affecting their health and marriage drastically for the worse.

It sounds a bit of a miserable life for you both, tbh. He has basically no free time to himself, and neither do you. I'm not sure either of you are being purposefully unreasonable here, but it's just a way of life that doesn't seem to suit either of you and doesn't seem very enjoyable.

Presumably he's earning a decent chunk of money if he's working those hours? If so, is there any way you can pay for someone to do some of the cleaning or other household stuff so that the time you have together can actually be spent together? If he's not earning a decent amount of money, then why is he working such gruelling hours?

You are being incredibly unreasonable. He works those hours yet still does some things around the house. Why is that not enough. When you’re back at work he should be doing a tad more but not now.

The argument we had at the weekend stemmed from our proposed building work. We had 3 emails to send. These will be done unless I sit at the computer to write them. I wrote one - I asked him to check - but he sat next to me and criticised or amended everything I had written. I had to sit away as I was irritated. He then got cross as we weren’t writing them together. I then wrote the next two and called out the wording to him ( he was in the kitchen) - and he either didn’t reply (he couldn’t hear me) - or mumbled an a see which I couldn’t hear.

My opinion would be greatly influenced by what he does for a living. Sometimes the hours required for a job seem to spend on the sex of the person doing it.

For example, I am a teacher. I arrive at 8:30 and leave school at 4:30, because that's what I need to do to fit around childcare drop off and pick up. I do an awful lot of work at home in the evenings after dd2 is in bed, having done all the "mummy stuff" like making dinner, helping with homework and doing bedtime, etc from 5-9 ish. I have male colleagues with younger children than mine (and female colleagues without children) who insist they couldn't possibly leave school before 6, so their wives simply have to do the childcare runs because it's just the nature of the job, can't be helped. It conveniently gets them out of doing any parenting during the week though.

So if he's someone who has the choice to work to a slightly different schedule but chooses not to, you are right to be annoyed. If, on the other hand, he's working all hours because you are desperate for the money and he is taking as much overtime he can get, then you should try hard not to get annoyed with him.

It's very, very difficult when you are sleep deprived (which you sound like you are) not to get annoyed with someone who doesn't seem to have had to change their life at all since having children. After all, your life has been turned completely on its head!!!

Sorry - won’t be done unless I start writing them.

Why can't he take the dc at the weekend so you can get one uninterrupted night a week?

I don’t think you can expect someone to work 7am - 8pm and then come home and clean the house. Who has the energy for that?

I do think he should split childcare 50/50 with you. Your day doesn’t end when he gets in from work so neither should his.

He is a software engineer - and is supposed to work set hours/flexitime.

You probably feel so annoyed because you're sleep deprived, unappreciated, and he's actually creating more mess for you. Such as leaving his dirty plates out. Which is ridiculously lazy in a grown adult, unless there's a good reason.

I've had similar. Was doing everything for house, kids, family, pets etc, while he went to work and came back. Then played on the computer. After the first few weeks of getting up a few times in the night, all nighttime waking issues were left to me. At one point, I'd been slacking off on his laundry to protest, and he got really pissed off and asked when he was supposed to ne able to do his laundry himself, as he was at work all day. It showed just how bad he'd got - how about evenings and weekends like all those ppl who work and don't have a domestic servant at home? Just like I did while still working after maternity leave! It's an ingrained attitude which is very hard to change.
Fairest thing is to get what you can done during his working hours, then share evening and weekend stuff. As you get up in the night (fairly, as you don't work) he should tidy up from dinner etc when you go to bed early. No one has much free time with little kids in the house, apart from ppl who aren't pulling their weight. That's life!

He tends to have a long morning sleep at the weekend - he very rarely gets up to DS in the night.

Mine leaves the house at 6.30 and arrives back at 7. I'm a teacher so out by 7.45 and back by 2.30.
I wouldn't dream of expecting him to do the same amount of house stuff as I do and when I was a sahm for the first 3 years I didn't expect him to do anything.

I could have written your post, OP. My DH leaves the house at 6am and gets back home anytime between 9-11pm. It’s shit!! He has a 3-hour round trip commute, but works a minimum of 12 hour days in a senior Director role.

I hate it! We’ve got young DC and after a few years being a SAHM, I actually went back to work full-time (but normal 40-hour weeks, bot his 60+ hour weeks).

This means I still do everything to run the house and get the kids ready in the morning and to bed in the evening. I then do laundry and cook all evening when they’re asleep. It’s awful and lonely, but actually I find going to work is less awful and lonely than being a SAHM! At least I’m less bored.

Sorry, I know that’s not helpful, but I just wanted to say that I understand how frustrating it is to have a partner who is like this!

My DH earns a lot of money, but it doesn’t make up for the fact he misses out on seeing his DC Monday-Friday, nor for the fact that I do everything.

I’m having a bit of a think at the moment, as I have started thinking that my life would be easier as a solo parent. At least I could have EOW “off” 🍷