Partner wanting me to work more hours so he can do less

[BowieLover]

Been together 15 yrs&have a 14 yr old DD.
Dp is an HGV drivers,who starts work anytime from 2am to 6 am.He has 2 days off a wk,not always the same ones.Can finish &be home anywhere between 10am&3pm,depending on what route he's on. Once he's home he doesn't really do alot.He will take washing out drier if I ask him to beforehand.He puts out all the rubbish& recycling &cuts the grass(we have a big garden so lots of it!) He won't poop scoop,that's my job.He also does the shopping,as he passes a supermarket every day to go to work.
I work pt at our local school,as both a breakfast club supervisor &a lunch time supervisor.Do all the housework& cooking.We share helping DD with homework,mostly.
He will wash up when he's on a day off or on a Sunday,if I cook a roast,but that's not very often as he usually says he doesn't want one if he's working as he doesn't wanna wash up.
He's said a few times now,that I could get a job with more hrs now&do 5 days a wk(which I do now) so he can drop down to 4 days. I don't have a problem with getting more hrs now that dd is older but I do with him wanting me to do it just so he can drop his! I have said to him,well you'll have to do the majority of the housework then if that's gonna happen &he never answered me.
Am I being selfish/unreasonable?
I've spoken to a friend about it&she thinks it's a great idea for me to being changing jobs/do more if I want to but not in the way dp wants me to.She thinks he's taking the mick a bit as she says u already work 5 days a wk same as him&do all the housework&cooking!
I feel like I'm at a bit of a crossroads really.

100% this. My partner was the SAHF and I was working. I write down my daily routine and realized I was doing 7 hours a day of childcare on top of my 8 hour work day (I would break for dinner and bedtime etc and sign on later). It was absolute BS and my saying that it "felt" like I was doing more did nothing because he "felt" like he did a lot. But cold hard numbers don't lie and to be fair since then he's pulled his weight a lot more.

Thanks for all the helpful replies. I'm gonna try&talk to him over the weekend.Making a list sounds like a great idea before I do.
I'm also gonna talk to another friend of mine whos place of work is looking for more people to join at the moment.It sounds good&would be more hrs&more sociable too than I have now.
Just have to see how he reacts now.

Whilst I agree writing a list is a good idea - be aware that this opens yourself up to being challenged on e.g. why do you spent 5 hours a week hoovering when a a quick once over at the weekend is all that's needed. Though it might be useful for you to see if you actually need to do all the things that you do!

100% this.

why aren’t you doing more for the overall quality of family life?

you’re working in low paid, traditionally pin money jobs, one step up from volunteering and he’s carrying the majority of the responsibility for keeping things afloat.

I have a friend who is the main earner and her h earns a lot less. The weight of this responsibility - especially at the moment with the instability and inflation - is almost crushing her.

You need to get a bigger job. If that means he gets more of a break, good for him. Good for all of you. He’s been on this hamster wheel of getting up at 2-6 am for years. As we get older, that stuff starts to hurt!

your dd can pitch in and help out at home, h can do more because you’re not around to do it and there will be a better balance

you DONT want resentment to creep into your relationship. That’s a real danger here. Resentment is terminal and you’re not married, you’d be totally fucked financially.

Have you asked DD if she would like to earn some money doing housework. I paid my oldest DD from about that age £20 a week if she cleaned the bathroom/ toilet and hoovered all the house. She did not do it every week but when she did it was great as they are often asking for money at that age anyway.

I actually think this is a really bad idea. IME teens should understand that doing a share of the basic housework is a given, not something you get paid for (paying also suggests it is optional if you can't be bothered).

What! If he won’t make his own sandwiches he’ll do without and why would that be a problem for you? I can’t imagine driving for a living to be much fun but your whole family dynamic sounds odd. Your DD is 14, is she pulling her weight? It sounds like you’ve all become accustomed to a certain routine but that doesn’t mean it can’t change. You are nobody’s maid. The hoover, washing machine etc have all been extensively tested and there’s nothing in their design that stops teenage or male hands from operating them. As far as I’m concerned there doesn’t need to be a discussion regarding housework, just stop picking up their slack.

@BowieLover shifts are brutal, as above. So I get why he wants to cut down. If he did regular hours I’d see your point more about the lack of housework from him.

Yea this is my thinking.He either needs to help out with housework more,or pay for someone to come in&I can't see him wanting to go for the latter at all to be honest!
Or you up your hours and pay for someone to come in to clean out of fair joint finances. Time to get off the gravy train.

if you work more hours it sounds like you would neeed a cleaner so that needs to get factored in to his calculations!

I think he already does a lot at home for someone who works such demanding hours. You can’t be doing much more than 20 pw so I think he has a point, tbh.

YABU - very U!
You work very part time - I guess 15 hours a week term time only so thats the equivalent of around 75 working days a year. He works an estimated 230 days a year taking into account 2 days off a week plus holidays. So over 3x as many days as you do.

1. get a full time job
2. working unsociable hours is very damaging to health due to the disruption of sleep patterns
3. I think that if you calculated the number of hours extra you don't work compared to him - in term time - thats an extra 20 hours a week he’s working. I’m sure it doesn’t take you 20 hours to do the cooking and cleaning each week! That’s just for your working days!!! In the holidays when he's still working, he already starts off working 35+ hours more than you over 5 days.

Why would she need a cleaner? She works term time only, and theres only 3 people in the house. between them they could keep a house clean!

Your kid is 14?! Its unreasonable to not get a full time job.
Get your Dh and your teenager to both pull their weight with the chores and up your hours

Liore if you'd read the thread you'd realise I was answering that as to when I up my hrs.
As I said I'm gonna try talking to him this weekend &will see what his reaction is as,also as I said,he isn't the easiest person to talk to about anything.

Unless he's willing to pick up the slack at home, not a chance.

My youngest child has just started school and my DH wants me to increase my hours to full time so that he can take a pay cut and do a job which pays less so that he can sit on his arse and work from home as his mates have all told him it's a blast.

I'd be willing if I thought he would then do 50% of the domestic stuff but he won't- he'll just add to the mess by being at home so I'm digging my heels in.

He’s not easy to talk to because you’ve got the life of Riley with a non-job and he’s getting up at 2am

if he fucks off, you’ll be fucked financially

hes carried this for your entire relationship and you need to up your game to take on more responsibility for contributing to family finances

your kid is 14. In 4 years time if he leaves he won’t have to pay you anything. carry on like this, let resentment kill your relationship and then what? How are you planning to retire?

youre being super unreasonable, he’s reached the end of his tether. You need to look for a proper job that pays more and then make sure dd does her own lunches/washing etc and rubs hoover round. Him doing the shopping and the bits and pieces he is doing might increase when he’s got more time

you need a frank conversation about how much money him taking more time off would cost and you need to look for jobs asap that mean that he can do that AND there’s benefit from doing that

Just upping your dinner lady hours won’t cut it. What training could you do to continue with a more rewarding career in the school? Or are there cafes etc that you could apply to. Everywhere I know is looking for staff.

He's never been an easy person to talk to about anything remotely wrong in our relationship,even before I started working in the school. Every time I bring anything up,he either gets defensive&throws it bk at me or says I don't wanna talk about it!
He will then give me the silent treatment for however long. Usually til I start speaking about something banal then it'll be straight bk to normal like nothing happened.No apologies,nothing!
Then we'll go along for another couple of months &I will try&talk to him again &off we go again! That's how we seem to go!
Nothing ever gets resolved.Ive suggested couple counselling in the past but he's not interested.
Nobody said anything about upping my lunch time hrs!
As I've already said,I've spoken to another friend who's place of work is looking for people.

OP your poor daughter has been soaking up this relationship dynamic and will now think it's normal and that it's what she should expect for herself in her relationships.

Please don't do what lots of our parents did and force her to continue to live in toxicity and learn more and more negative lessons, then split when she's 18.

It's so unfair on the children who then get a 'we stayed together for the kids' narrative projected onto the reality that their parents often stayed together unhappily for convenience for long enough to leave their kids in need of future therapy around relationships / in prime position for a series of rubbish relationships in their adult life.

I wasn't aware that women should not only sacrifice the best years of their career to raise children and see it as a privilege, but then are somehow obligated to increase their hours to work more days than their partner in the only menial roles they can now access when children no longer need them, in gratitude for the years when they were able to do 'less' hours. Apparently it's only fair that he should get to do less now as this is commensurate given children are teenagers and no longer need their bottoms wiped.

It is the natural time in life for a man to work fewer hours but of course the work is just beginning for a woman given that she hasn't been doing much of anything and is now fit for the work force of those with a CV last updated in the noughties. Doubtless her husband will enjoy a hobby appropriate to the level of seniority she has supported him to reach at work while she gets busy with the duster in a public setting. After all, he's been so busy for years and she does nothing - it's time she did nothing for some extra cash as she's been thoroughly milked for child beating bearing and child care.

If she is lucky, she can apparently look forward to something approaching a split in household work going forward, which will apparently happen naturally because life works like that for women. It's a good job teenagers involve no child care or someone other than her might actually have to do something but as things stand, she will probably manage to cram most of her child care and house work into the hours remaining to her. Her husband would do it when he got round to it or if he noticed it needed doing but since neither of those things will come to pass, she still Just Have To Manage. After all, it would be harder as a single parent! There won't be a day for golf but then she hasn't earned it.

I missed a couple of your posts.

regardless of if your DP wants to talk about it, you need to get a better job - for you. For your own security.

What he wants to do with his hours is then a subject HE needs to bring to you, so he’ll want to talk.

if the relationship is one where you can’t talk, can’t communicate, he punishes you with silent treatment then it probably has run it’s course, in which case you MUST be able to be totally self sufficient. Anything he contributes won’t be for long and it will need to be a bonus while it lasts. You absolutely must get yourself into a fully independent financial status

Thanks for yr replies.

You don't see the problem? Little kids are a LOT of work compared to teenagers. He won't do more housework will he?

No I don’t see the problem. It’s been a long time since her 14 year old was a little kid, part time work is one thing when kids are little bit quite another when they’re older and your partner is doing a full time, physically, mentally demanding job. They could both work similar hours each week and share the burden home and work.