AIBU To be exhausted by the end of the day and not accepting that kids, cooking, cleaning, etc are my jobs and husband should not treat his share of house work as “help”

[Alison18031]

A family with 2 primary school aged kids and 2m old baby. Husband works 9+ hours a day from home in front of his laptop.

I do:

1. online grocery shopping, meals planning, cooking (I start cooking lunch at 9am, dinner straight after lunch as can only do things in 2 min/5 min intervals in between other things).
2. homeschooling these days (going through what schools are sending, making sure things are done by kids, assisting as needed).
3. cleaning: big clean during weekends, daily tidy ups (no one else is bothered, I hate mess).
4. baby is with me 24/7, not a great sleeper, more like a catnapper. I BF. Baby just lives on me, wouldn’t stay anywhere else for more than 2 min without making a fuss.
5. I manage to get a cup of tea and 5 min to sit down around 10pm and then I crush into bed, every other day I have to get all my remaining energy to have a shower.

Husband:

1. wfh in front of laptop for 9+ hours a day.
2. takes older kids to park twice a day for 1-1.5 hours each time.
3. loads/unloads dishwasher and washing machine if I ask.

I feel like being torn apart every second of my day (running between baby, kitchen, kids), trying to do 5 things at the same time. By lunchtime my back hurts badly from carrying the baby. I’m physically and emotionally exhausted by the end of the day. And here at 10pm comes my husband asking for sex and telling me that I just imagine things and come up with excuses and that he is also extremely tired but he needs sex and if I refuse he would have to find someone else to meet his sex demands. His argument is that he does all he could to help me and I can’t then spend 10 min with him. I tell him that what he does is not help to me but his share of housework and I don’t make up excuses I just genuinely exhausted beyond every limit and it’s unreasonable for him to expect the normal level of service these days.

Am I just a lazy cow and need to get myself together and let my husband do whatever he wants with my body or I can just be tired and can go straight to bed?

He’s abusive about sex, in a healthy relationship sex is not used as a weapon or a threat, it is not pressured and painful. A normal response to one partner saying I’m tired/sore/unwell/not in the mood would be “Go to bed I’ll finish cleaning up/can I get you a cup of tea or something to eat/shall we watch a film”.
You do not have to put up with being treated this way.

Maurah96 The advice you gave is irrelevant to this abused woman-you're either purposely skipping the important parts or you are actually deluded. This woman's husband doesn't help her at all and is a sexually abusive pig.

Maurah96 - your children sleep until 10am? Well that'll work well with school wont it? I hope you're supervising that shower for your 2 year old because a 2 year old showering alone is dangerous and neglectful especially if its only so you can gloat about all the housework you've done. Perhaps you should stop giving housework advice if you're raising lazy children who sleep half the morning away? Also I'm not sure how that's relevant to a very young baby who clearly wont sleep in that long. She needs to simplify her life not include more weird 1950s glaoty standards.

OP "Husband thinks that if he doesn’t have sex at least every other day (better 2x times a day) his devices will fall apart and blames me for this, telling me all the time how many days it was since he had sex and years since he had proper sex;))) and every time he asks if I want to put one of my office dresses on for him before sex. I usually say no as trying it hard to just stay awake at 10pm and lift my head off the bed."

Big. Red. Flags.
Do you love him?

[quote Errorandtrial]@isadoradancing123 really? A 2 month old baby who hangs off you is a full time job in itself![/quote]
It’s really not.

And here at 10pm comes my husband asking for sex and telling me that I just imagine things and come up with excuses and that he is also extremely tired but he needs sex and if I refuse he would have to find someone else to meet his sex demands.

This is the bit where the DH is being completely and utterly unreasonable and creepy.

But the DH taking the older kids out for three hours a day should be a massive help.

I’m also bewildered as to how lunch can take three hours.

In terms of cooking I will probably struggle to stay in good health, breastfeed, be on my feet all day running around on just tinned soup, sandwiches and beans on toast for months.

The vast majority of people eat simple foods like soup and sandwiches for lunch. They absolutely don’t have to be unhealthy, that’s a choice. Starting to cook lunch at 9am is the kind of luxury most people don’t have the time for.

Apart from that, yes the sex pestering is the biggest problem here. I’d suggest counselling.

Also 2 year olds that sleep until 10am and shower/change themselves. Really?

Maurah, here's the thing. I know it's bloody hard for you to deal with, but not everyone lives their lives by one particular book of sky fairies.

Sex is not a 'marital obligation'. Coercing or forcing someone to have sex, inside marriage or out of it is, wait for it, this could be a little bit hard for you to hear, rape.

You didn't breastfeed your 'blessings'. Fair enough. However, if someone is breastfeeding their child, this is physically demanding in a way that not breastfeeding a child simply is not.

I hope to hell that you don't have daughters. Or sons. Bugger. I guess you did.

I don't think you can put the sex issue aside.

In those three hours, she is still looking after a 2 month old infant, providing sustenance and comfort.

@SkyscraperStreets

Putting the sex issue aside here, the OP is a SAHM. The whole point of a SAHM is to take care of the DC and the home- cooking and cleaning etc.

The DH is already being very generous IMO by effectively doing the OP’s job for her for 3 hours every day. I don’t see what more he can do alongside working a 9 hour day!

Being a SAHM is not rocket science- all it takes is being organised and having a routine that works.

If I were your DH working a full day, taking the DC out for 3 hours a day and then being asked to do more, I’d be thinking about whether your role in the home could really be justified and if it might not well be time to send you back to work full time!

That may be the case once kids are older and you are all sleeping. When you have a brand new baby and are still physically recovering from giving birth and establishing breastfeeding, during a global pandemic and lockdown meaning schools are closed so you also have school aged kids round the clock and are supposed to homeschool them on top of everything else...well in that case it’s all hands on deck.

Oh and I don’t think it’s appropriate AT ALL to put the sexual abuse aside, like it’s some kind of minor irritation.

Not a particularly helpful contribution overall

Putting the sex issue aside here, the OP is a SAHM. The whole point of a SAHM is to take care of the DC and the home- cooking and cleaning etc.
You can't put the sex issue aside. And she's not a SAHM, she's on maternity leave, the point of which is physical recovery and to look after and bond with a tiny baby, not suddenly take on 100% of the housework and mental load and childcare for the older children.

Not to mention the kids aren't in school because we're in a pandemic. The OP is working by homeschooling.

Current situation is a bit different to just being a normal SAHM where you drop kids to school/nursery, pick them up, take them to the park, socialise with other mums. I do what is supposed to be my maternity leave as a full time job, do the job of kids teachers/school caterers/husbands take away shop/school cleaners/afterschool nanny/domestic cleaner. If there was no baby in the mix I would have to do my full time job and husband would struggle with 50% childcare and other work, now he has the luxury of my maternity leave, but doesn’t acknowledge it.

It would be different if I was genuinely a SAHM with 2 school aged kids, then yes, me looking after kids and doing all housework while husband works would be a fair split. As things are now standing I had to take all the burden of lockdown for the sake of his career, job security.

With schools being closed all this extra work falls on me, not on my husband, he works as he would normally do and takes kids to the park instead of 2+ hours daily commute. He doesn’t multitask every second of his day. My maternity leave is not such a dream as I imagined it, I’m stuck indoors pretty much all day apart from an odd 20 min walk up and down the street with the baby on me.

Regardless of whether DH "helps" with the dishwasher or (his) children, that doesn't mean he is entitled to do things to you that you don't want. He could tidy the house from top to bottom, make you breakfast in bed, massage your bad back, rub your sore feet, cook all the meals and bring you a bar of chocolate bigger than the baby, it still doesn't mean he gets a free pass or that his needs trump yours. Please take notice of the advice saying seek help with understanding healthy relationships and boundaries rather than advice on what to make for lunch!

As an aside, my DS1 sounds like your 2mo. Constantly awake, constantly feeding, couldn't settle. I think I worked out I spent 35 hours a week breastfeeding, and that wasn't including the time spent winding him afterwards and rocking him to sleep. It is so physically exhausting, but it will get better. No advice on that front, just to say I understand.

DS2 is 2mo and I don't want a willy anywhere near me right now! I don't think it's unusual to want sleep more than sex 2 months post partum and your "D"H should stop focussing on what he wants and start thinking about what you need.

Things have always been like that, ie me doing a very similar job as DH, earning on par or in some years more than him (apart from my maternity leaves), doing same hours + commute 2 hours x 5 days a week. On top of that I manage our afterschool nanny/cleaner, 2 schools where most mums are SAHM and schools do their best to keep parents busy by lots of activities for parents/events all parents are invited to, loads of homework, etc. Plus all the shopping, holidays, doctor appointments for kids, refurbishment, list just goes on and on. Managed to get DH in some sort of routine with laundry/dishwasher/bins but he would often ‘forget, sorry, will do tomorrow, at weekends, next week’ or if asked to do something outside of this routine (to do something schools related) I would have to remind him a few times and then check that it’s done, find it easier to do things myself usually.

I have never thought my husband is an abuser, always thought sex was a basic need for all men. Does this behaviour sound abusive and is not like it is in many other families? Maybe I’ve just being naive

Basic need my arse. Sex is supposed to be a part of a loving, respectful relationship. Not demanded, coerced or forced.

Your husband is an abusive prick.

As you earn so well, how easy would it be for you to divorce him?

Coerced sex is not only abusive, it's illegal, even in marriage. Speak to your health visitor about it, see what she says.

I could never forgive his attitude to sex, it's abusive. You defend him but it's not ok OP. Your partner should be loving & respectful.

You're clearly just making work for yourself if lunch prep is taking 3 hours.
How is that even possible?

Homeschooling and working from home is the norm for many of us now therefore I find it hard to be sympathetic as we are all in the same boat it's not exclusive to you.

We are all the "caterers/husbands take away shop/school cleaners/afterschool nanny/domestic cleaner" this isnt just you!!! Try working full time and also being all of these.

You're husband works 9 hours plus takes the children out for 3 hours which is a lot.

Have been thinking about all that and after some research I now realise that DH is just a classic manchild, who I have inevitably lost any sexual attraction to ages ago. A mix of his mum raising him as a prince and me coming from a family where I had to grow up quickly and was left on my own from early age contributed to this mix.

With lockdown and third child all these issues that I have been trying to hide under the carpet by hiring nanny/cooker/cleaner just became obvious. I’m really exhausted from all the burden non carrying and just so unhappy, completely different person to who I used to be at uni. We’ve had multiple conversations in the past and he would get better for a week or two but then it’s back to his normal low effort routine and he just jokes that he tries around the house as hard as I do in sex.

This is really sad to read OP.

In terms of the workload etc, you sound incredibly frazzled and imo your DH could definitely be doing more, although it does sound like you’re putting too much pressure on yourself to cook perfect meals and keep the house constantly tidy. Given the very unusual circumstances we’re all in at the moment I think you may have to relax your domestic standards a bit for your own sanity. It does sound like your MIL has instilled a very unhelpful and 50s era attitude in him towards ‘women’s work’ - but that doesn’t mean he’s incapable of learning and realising that it is not all down to you. Would it help to draw up some kind of schedule of who does what so he can see all the things you do, and discuss what other tasks he can take on?

In terms of the sex, that’s a completely different ballgame. You are 100% NBU and your husband’s attitude is despicable. He has no ‘right’ to sex and sounds incredibly insensitive, selfish and bullying. Threatening to get sex elsewhere is unforgivable and to be honest would be a deal breaker for
Me. I don’t think I could come back from that. It is NOT normal or acceptable - please don’t tell yourself that.