Larry
It is 'a job' but, literally, probably takes 10 seconds, no longer or harder than instructing her husband to put it in the oven.
And no longer or harder than telling your wife, essentially, not to tell you what to do, which is what he was really doing when he could have easily done a 10 second job she asked him to do but refused to.
Are you, perchance, a rather literal minded lawyer? Agreeing to cook together is a friendly thing, not a contract!
Are you, perchance, a person who doesn't cook much, and therefore doesn't understand that when you anticipate having four hands on the job the meal you plan will be a good deal different from one you plan when you know you are going to be the only one cooking?
What if the OP decided that agreeing to cook together was 'a friendly thing, not a contract', and went out into the garden to sit on her arse and enjoy the nice evening stretch instead of cooking? Then when her H went out to ask her about the cooking she could fold her arms and say, 'No, you do it. I can't be bothered. Actually, I have something more important to do.'
He may have known that his children were there but he had no idea one of them would need to be settled exactly when his wife chose to do dinner. Living with someone who enforces this type of 'agreement' regardless of changing circumstances is a nightmare.
The children are there on Fridays. They both agreed to do dinner at a certain time, 7.30, which was the usual time when the children were able to occupy themselves. If he couldn't fulfill his part of the agreement because of something related to the children that came up then he could easily tell the OP that respectfully - 'Sorry, sounds as if they're knocking the living daylights out of each other up there, if I'm not back in ten minutes, send a search party,' is a lot better than, 'No, you do it'. You have no reason to suspect she wouldn't understand. She has spoken well of the children and hasn't expressed any impatience about their presence or his relationship with them. He pulled the childcare reason for not taking time out of his busy life to open the oven door, put a pan of salmon in, and shut the oven, straight out of his arse after first point blank refusing to do it. It was his trump card.
Living with someone who reneges on commitments at the last minute and leaves you with all the work is a nightmare.
More broadly, if you are sharing the care of one child with a partner and he is, simultaneously, looking after 2 more children, do you not think he should be cut some slack? What became of equity of free time within a relationship? Or is looking after a 5 and 8 year old now a 'non job' in your eyes?
In the first place, you have no idea who did the majority of care for the six month old. Since the OP is presumably on mat leave it may well be her.
Looking after the 5 and 8 yo wasn't a necessary thing at the time they had agreed to make dinner together, or they wouldn't have agreed on that time. You are calling the husband an eejit here, unable to make a realistic commitment because he can't tell the time. When there are children in a home of course things can go wrong, but you still plan, or nothing gets done.
"Equity of free time"? What free time? When there is dinner to be prepared and put on the table and both parties have agreed to share that prep, then both parties should either do that or respectfully ask to be excused and offer a reason, not an afterthought.
Playing along with the very strange notion that dinner prep time is also, by some weird warping of the time-space continuum, 'free time', do both parties have the right to help themselves to a drink and simply walk out of the kitchen when the oven is warming up and there is actually nothing else happening that requires your attention? Or is that a privilege reserved just for the husband?
Your 'laundry' list of household jobs are a mixture of 'jobs' and 'non jobs'. Some actually take significant periods of time and some don't.
LOL.
That's the point, Larry. All of the jobs that take a significant amount of time involve lots of little one minute items, one after the other. Maybe you don't do much housework? Maybe you don't notice all the little details?
(And who, over the age of 5, leaves clothes by a laundry basket, anyway?)
It's a problem so common it's a cliche. It's a surprise to find someone so au fait with modern domestic equality has never heard of this phenomenon.
Haworthia posted this earlier:
www.huffpost.com/entry/she-divorced-me-i-left-dishes-by-the-sink_b_9055288
I urge you to read it. It could be entitled 'Little drops of water wear away a stone'.
I always find this 'mental load' thing hilarious. It is just normal life , which most people do in addition to a job...It only becomes a 'mental load' if you resent it.
LOL, I am sure you do find it hilarious.
Maybe you think the problem (again a very well known one) that can be put in quotation marks when you have no idea what it is like to have to carry it all yourself or your household will stop functioning? Does your wife pull her weight around the house?
Yes, occasionally, there are people on their third failed marriage, and all for the same reason. Far more often, though, two people get divorced and BOTH go on to find happiness with someone more compatible.
The H here is well on his way to his second divorce, after his second very quick marriage. He hasn't gone on to happiness with another person, at least not yet. It doesn't look as if it's going to happen in his second marriage. His wife is quietly weighing up her options.
Maybe read the thread?
Her husband sounds equally obstinate in that he would prefer the above to just doing a non job himself and having a peaceful evening.
He could have had a peaceful evening if he had invested ten seconds in his relationship, and his dinner. But then he would have been nursing a bruised ego after doing something his wife asked him to do, and maybe that would have spoiled his evening. Maybe his ego needed the boost that putting his wife in her place offers?
Again, if it's a 'non-job', why was it so important to him not to do it?
Is doing 'non-jobs' something he 'resents', do you think?
Shouldn't he get over himself and realise that 'non-jobs' are part of 'normal life'?