Bad feeling about my earnings in marriage

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Can anyone help me think about this. When I met my husband I was on an average/low salary. He is a decade older and earnt more. I then had two kids and had a year of leave with each, then went back part time. Meanwhile his earnings have skyrocketed. Now, post pandemic I am left in a very uncertain position on a contract that soon ends while he is at his peak. The pandemic was hard for me: childcare, bereavement and serious illness. I am applying for jobs.

There’s a mood in the marriage that I’ve seriously let the side down with my career/earnings. That I am earning too little, that I’ve made us poor.

What do you think? I did choose to look after the kids part time (this has paid off massively in terms of how they are) and I am also just younger, less ambitious, less capable of stress and endurance jobs….

I’m trying to work out of my husband is being unfair making me feel like this. Thanks.

Strikes me, OP reading all your posts, that there is a fair bit of confusion and lack of honesty from both of you, from the time you had children.

You are clear you always wanted them, and wanted to stop work, or pull back significantly from making a career. You say in one post that your DH agreed to this, but you say other things that undermine this, although they don't outright contradict this.

But I get the strong impression that you were set on having children and pulling back from paid work, whatever your DH wanted or agreed to.

You say your DH loves what he does & is a workaholic, but I wonder ... he may be looking to the future and may even be worried about his health etc. But not talking to you about it so it comes out through his resentment.

From what you say, ad from the outside, there's a lot between you that is muddled - you could do with some relationship counselling maybe to untangle the years of being not-quite-honest with each other?

Before we got married my husband never wanted me to be a housewife and I never did either.

With all respect to all SAHMs this life would be simply boring for me and I would want to earn my own money too to take 100% financial pressure from my husband so we both work as a team, not just him providing for all of us for years or decades.

I wanted to achieve in my career too. I can finally start trying to do it now when our son is 14.

But I understand everyone is different and wants a different lifestyle.

I've noticed SAHM's job is rarely 100% appreciated by her husband.

There are minorities of men like that but most don't appreciate it much.

@Lana07

I've noticed SAHM's job is rarely 100% appreciated by her husband.

There are minorities of men like that but most don't appreciate it much.

In my experience the sahm choice is rarely fully that of the spouse.

@choli

Before people create a family they usually discuss what roles they would expect from each other and for how long when/if they have a child/children and a husband's opinion matters as much as a wife's.

@Lana07

Before we got married my husband never wanted me to be a housewife and I never did either.

With all respect to all SAHMs this life would be simply boring for me and I would want to earn my own money too to take 100% financial pressure from my husband so we both work as a team, not just him providing for all of us for years or decades.

I wanted to achieve in my career too. I can finally start trying to do it now when our son is 14.

You are not just taking financial pressure of your husband though, the money you both earn will go towards paying strangers to look after your child, I say strangers because effectively when a baby/child starts nursery they are strangers.

@ancientgran

Clearly both wouldn’t stay home at the same time, if both wanted to be SAHP’s, one would work part of the week, whilst the other worked the rest.

Clearly some couples do decide to both stop working. I knew a couple who had 12 kids and in the 20 years I knew them neither of them ever had a job.

FFS I’m not talking about the minority, I’m talking about the majority 🙄 Of all the SAHM’s I know, both parents never chose to stay at home.

[quote Lana07]@choli

Before people create a family they usually discuss what roles they would expect from each other and for how long when/if they have a child/children and a husband's opinion matters as much as a wife's.[/quote]
If Mumsnet is anything to judge by that discussion rarely takes place.

Recently (and especially as his career reaches astronomical levels) he’s started to say I have ‘taken him for a ride’ with reference to my staying at home with the kids/working pt

That's really, REALLY bad OP... what sort of a man says that to the mother of his children? I hate that the work that goes into looking after children has no value in people's eyes as it doesn't pay. It's a disgusting indictment of society that children's well-being and development is seen as worthless.

I didn't work at all when my children were preschool aged, even though I had a masters in a field with significant earning potential. I would have seriously considered divorce if my husband such a disdainful attitude towards me. Never ever would he even dream of making me feel I wasn't contributing because the benefits to the children and family life were obvious to him. He's a workaholic too so it suited him to have someone at home holding the fort.. How can your husband not see that? It's different if you actually need the money and have no choice, but you don't so he should be happy you're both able to provide a good quality of life for the children. And you do actually work as well so you're hardly sitting idle watching loose women all day! Arsehole.

“ a husband's opinion matters as much as a wife's.”

Are you new here?…

We didn’t have a lot of time to plan, we had the first one in quite a rush

Wonderful as our DCs are, perhaps that was a shame? You said you were only young at the time, and parenthood can chuck a grenade into even the strongest relationships, never mind one where your aims just aren't aligned

Unfortunately it sounds as if you've grown apart rather than together, and unless he's truly committed to bringing things back I'd be making plans for how you'll handle things if he's not there