Advice for a husband please!

[Justarandomguy1]

Hi,

I’m not sure if this is the right place to post so apologies if it’s not, I’d be grateful for some different perspectives on this in any event.

I recently found out that my wife has been saying some quite mean and cruel things about me to one of her female friends who she’s known a few years, via sharing what I’d considered to be personal discussions between us.

The comments were mostly about how I think I’m a good father, but I’m not really compared to others (i.e. that I do no more than average or what is expected) and that my wife doesn’t really think I’m a feminist, and that if she left, I likely would only then realise what she does for me and our household. Her friend was talking about someone else’s husband is really supportive and a feminist etc and my wife’s view was that is was the “dream”, suggesting that what we have together is far from what she wants, needs or should have.

In terms of me, I have quite a senior role (C-suite level) in a fairly large company, so there’s a lot of responsibility and work can be quite stressful. Notwithstanding that, I work two days a week from home and do the school run three out of five days (that obviously includes getting everything ready for the kids the night before). At weekends, I spend all of my time with the kids (I have hobbies but don’t really make time for them, I may go for a run once every month/two months).

In my life, being a Dad is really one of the most important things to me and in terms of time, most of what I do is either family or work.

Admittedly, I’m not the tidiest person and often after finishing work and doing bath and bedtime each night, I can be tired and so things like doing the kitchen etc aren’t number one on my to do list, or if they are, I can be too tired to do it. We argued about it and so I said we should get a cleaner to help out more, which we did. I recognised that I need to do more around the house and it was upsetting my wife, so I’ve made a conscious effort to do share of everything around the house, tidying, cleaning up the play room after the kids etc and making sure the main parts of the house are tidy in the evening, especially the kitchen. I’ve started to make sure I help with the kids’ washing more too. I’m not a great cook by any means, but I try to do the dinners at least twice a week, if I can’t, I suggest ordering food or similar.

I totally understand the need to vent to friends about things, everyone needs a sounding board. I don’t have many friends and my view is that I should have my wife’s back no matter what (abusive situations excluded) and so for that reason, I don’t criticise my wife either to friends or family. I also wouldn’t criticise her even if I could, because for me, that’s part of the trust that should be in a marriage.

The things my wife has said and shared with her friend have totally crushed me. As a fundamental part of me, I always thought ‘well I’m not perfect, but I love my kids and thought I was doing an okay job of being a Dad’, and hoped I was an okay husband.

Understanding what my wife really thinks of me has hurt me in a way I wasn’t prepared for. I’m also hurt by the fact she was so cruel about me to someone else, and shared personal information about our relationship I thought was just between us.

I know I’m not perfect and have been trying to improve, but understanding her true thoughts about me has upset me in a way I’m struggling with and I’m not entirely sure what to do. It’s so hard knowing my wife has such a low opinion of me.

My wife has apologised and says she still loves me. I’m struggling with trust and general sadness. I continue to do my best to improve.

My feeling now is that I really don’t want to share any of my thoughts or emotions, because I don’t know who they will ultimately be shared with or how, or if they will be mocked or criticised in a group. This isn’t how I want to be with my wife.

Fundamentally, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to change enough to give her what she wants or needs from a partner, husband and father.

Does this mean anything to anyone else? If you have any thoughts that would be helpful.

This is the way most women talk to good friends. They will also talk to unload/vent/moan about their parents, siblings, other friends, even their own children. I have heard anecdotally that men only talk to other men about sports and the best way to avoid traffic on the A303.

You may be a little naive to think women don’t talk about their own lives and feelings to other women. In fact I have read that men like being in a relationship with women because they are the only ones he can talk to about his emotions.

In a better, brighter world men should be able to talk to other men about their emotions and frustrations to each other.

There are two possible situations. Either your wife underestimates what you do for family life, or you overestimate how much your contribution is.

I think the solution might be for you to keep a list of what you do actually do for a couple of weeks. Ideally your wife does the same. Then you can look and see how equal it is. Or you sit together and compile a splitting of chores list you are both happy with.

As others have pointed out you have failed to mention what your wife does in the house and whether she works or not. I wonder if you are looking at your contribution to family as a stand alone thing. It feels a lot to you so it is a lot. You are not looking at what else needs doing.

Think of this as an opportunity to keep your marriage on the right course. A quick look at mumsnet will show you that a lot of women feel their male partners underperform (and not in the sexy way).

Actually talking of sex, studies have shown that women who live with a ‘man child’ ie she has to tell him what needs doing and has to clear up after him, often lose ‘romantic feelings’ for him. It’s difficult to act like his mum and his wife together.

Just a final aside, my ex thought he did enough in the house and would say, I did the dishwasher the other day. No mate, you did it three weeks ago.

1. It is very common for women to talk to close friends about everything.
2. Nobody likes cleaning the kitchen when they are tired.

I think it depends on how much your wife works and whether hand on heart you don't view the house and kids as "her job that you help with". My exH was unemployed (he would have said a SAHD) whilst I worked full time from home. He still viewed the house and kid and the thinking involved as my job.

As an example (one of many): I was the one who noticed the kid's clothes were getting too small and scheduled in taking her shopping. I helped her choose the clothes, determined how many new trousers we needed, bought them, brought them home and then cleared out the too small stuff. exH said "oh, I had thought her ankles has started to stick out of her trousers". So basically he knew but thought it wasn't his job to fix.

Another example was loo roll. Loo roll runs out all the time but he NEVER put a new roll on. He just left it. It wasn't something he even noticed, it just got magically changed by the loo roll fairy. The same fairy who emptied bathroom bins and meal planned for the week and don't get me started on scheduling and keeping track of kid Dr, dentist, etc.. appointments.

She may be unreasonably moaning about you and being a total bitch or you maybe overestimating what you do to "help".....

You're hurt because you think you're doing a great job and she doesn't. You can admit that. You don't need to sell yourself to us for affirmation, or include all the stuff about trying to improve yourself, because if you genuinely believed there was room for improvement I doubt you'd be so bothered.
If you're honest you think she's ungrateful and unreasonable. And perhaps she is. In which case, make your argument. Tell her why you think you were undeserving of her criticism and see where that takes you.
At the moment you seem to be playing the wounded hero a bit tbh, 'I'm so sorry that despite how brilliant I am you still felt you had to be so nasty about me. All I can do is try even harder...,' which might lead to her backtracking but does nothing to address the lack of shared understanding that led to her saying those things.

If you were a Woman we'd be telling you to leave the bastard because he's fucked your self esteem and your trust has been destroyed. But you're not so you're being told to suck it up, do more than half and be grateful that she's slagging you off and not telling you to your face.
Everyone reading this has sacked off cleaning the kitchen at some point cause they're tired, if they haven't that's sad as fuck. No-one cares about your kitchen that much. Most couples are able to appreciate when one half is tired and not have a meltdown over a kitchen needing to be cleaned.

Mumsnet eh? Where double standards come to be paraded..

So you do just over half of the school runs, only cook two nights a week, can’t be arsed to clean up after yourself but think you’re doing 50%? Who found schools, does the food shopping, books holidays, pays bills, buys birthday presents, etc etc? Is it that you only noticed parenting was more than a couple of nights cooking, school run and bath time, when you heard your wife telling friend that you didn’t do beyond that?
The grade of your job is irrelevant. Unless you’ve agreed she does the majority of cleaning, organising and childcare in which case you could suggest revisiting that.

Apologies for quote I meant to delete before I posted

wow the double standards on here.
If this was a woman writing this, a wife whos husband was radioing to his friend how she lacked x y z I think MN would be all over this thread with support, call it out and so forth.

OP your feelings matter. They do. You have every right to them.
We are always trying out best in our relationship. Things like this do happen, something will be said, you find out and boom you are experiencing feelings and doubt and all of the above. You start questioning if things are ok between you and the ball starts rolling into a direction you thought you would not find yourself in ever. But here you are.

You clearly love your wife otherwise you would not risk being scalded on MN with your post. She may have wanted a man with the feminist cape, the man who does it all, but a good relationship takes effort, takes good listening, aka not the kind you were potentially doing, and it takes huge amount of compassion and empathy to carry on a marriage.

Seeing this was a shock to you to find out what your DW was thinking and feeling, are you able to tap in on it, see it from a perspective, a whole new one where you take the ego, we all have it, out of it and just look at what is being said?

Please dont think your feelings towards this revelation are not valid, they are.

See if this potentially can open up a new door for both of you were you both feel safe discussing what you expect from one another, its never too late, then see if you can build on that. Dont be hesitant to say what your needs are and that you felt uneasy and hurt, if you have not already done so, but do this in a good quiet space where its only the two of you, not the family dog jumping about and kids running through the room, see what it brings.

@Maddy70 no, I don't slag off my husband to anyone and I don't want to!

I’d like to know how much she works. If she’s not full time then tbh yes I think she should do more. Regardless of sex of each party on paper if one person works less and has more time at home then they should do more of the ‘home’ work.
if you’re both full time then obviously she doesn’t feel the split is fair and yes as a pp said it might be the mental load stuff you’re not fully aware of so why not sit down with her and talk about it.

It’s normal to get carried away and sound off to a friend/family. She did apologise when you pulled her up about it though so that needs to be taken into consideration.

Basically she is saying you don’t go above and beyond really. Is that a reasonable request from her though? Some may say it is not.

Does your wife work full time?

The victim-shaming is strong here.

How did you find out about this conversation OP?

I never on any occasion made negative comments about my late OH to anyone at all - I may have thought these things, but did not say them. I would have seen that as a betrayal of trust and I can understand how the OP is feeling.

I do know that general dissing of one's spouse is seen as OK and par for the course by many people - I do not share that view.

OP - I think you need to take this trend for dissing spouses in your stride - I am sure that you could think of things you could say about your wife in the company of your friends. I am assuming you do not do this. But it seems to be what groups of female friends do at the moment - I am not sure why.

Ask your wife what specifically she needs you to be doing. And it is worth telling her what you would like her to be doing too! - sauce for the goose and all that!

wow the double standards on here.
If this was a woman writing this, a wife whose husband was radioing to his friend how she lacked x y z I think MN would be all over this thread with support, call it out and so forth.

But the point is it's not the same. If a woman came on here and said, "I don't clean up because I'm too tired and I cook twice a week and now I'm hurt because my husband had a rant to a friend" she would get the same responses. If OP was a SAHD and doing it all and his wife was bitching, he MIGHT have a case - which is usually how it goes when it's the other way round. Instead, by his own admission, he's not doing all that much, and, to make matters worse, it sounds like he's been snooping and is therefore hearing things out of context and is now using that as a stick to beat his wife with. He talks about all he does but doesn't seem to have any sense of what she does or how she might feel.

And let's not forget that there is actual research and statistics to prove that men routinely overestimate how much they do by a significant margin.

OP, if you feel so strongly that she's betrayed your trust and you are absolutely doing your fair share, then sure, consider this relationship over and move on. Otherwise, either accept your role in things and suck it up. OR, if it turns out that your wife genuinely is being awful, sit down and discuss it with her so you can both move on.

he's not a victim. His wife vented to a friend. He has somehow got hold of this information.

Completely agree, it's sad that it's so acceptable to the point that you're seen as strange if you DON'T badmouth your husband.

Hard to believe you made your wife apologise for venting to a friend - and how on earth did you get hold of this information in the first place - snooping, eavesdropping?

OP tough love here:

A baseline for most marriages is that most women feel resentful to a greater or lesser degree about the amount of domestic they do comparison with what their partners do. There are a few exceptions but not many. Women do a huge proportion of the domestic work in most marriages and most of us are to some degree pissed off with it because increasingly we're also working so the old model of man = breadwinner and woman = domestic worker has broken down but we feel the shift in terms of the domestic load hasn't equalised and many men use "breadwinning" as a get out of jail free card. Doing a bit of housework and childcare here and there isn't going to cut it. Women want to feel that their partners aren't just doing a bit to get them off their backs but that they properly take ownership of it.

If that's a surprise to you, it's a fact and you need to get comfortable with it if you want to move past it.

It's not nice to hear a spouse bitching about you and it sounds like she's been quite harsh and not handled it kindly, so I can see why you are upset. But I promise you her views are not particularly extreme.

There are several factors which could influence the way your wife feels about this. If she is also working she may feel she's doing a "double load" (because she's inevitably doing more at home than you are). If she's not she might feel financially insecure or bored or undervalued.

It's not clear from your post how much you've taken this on board and how much you've engaged with your wife's needs and desires. You do seem to be trying to pull your weight at some level so credit where that's due but your wife clearly doesn't feel she's being met half way. It's not enough to simply sit down and tick a box and say "I did the ironing Thursday last". And by your own admission sometimes you're just not doing things that need to be done because you're tired. If you're not doing it, someone else has to and someone will inevitably be her.

I would sit her down and say you want to have a frank discussion about whether she feels her needs are being met and what you can do to meet her half way. And don't say "but what else can I do?" You need to show that you know what needs to be done and you'll do it before being asked.

Missing info is how you found out

How you heard this is key too. When women talk to their friends there is a lot of matching and mirroring involved. She may for all we know have been sympathetically inflating her feelings of inequality to support a friend in more real distress. Both female participants would understand this.

@Thepeopleversuswork lays it out really well OP and I would definitely take that on board.

I want to add that I do bitch about DH sometimes. I ALSO regularly tell my friends when he's been great or stepped up. So it's entirely possible that if you're getting this information in a slightly odd way, you're not getting the full scope of it. If you heard me bitching to my friend a few weeks ago you'd think I hated the man. But last week I was talking to the same friend about how he'd been amazing at taking on some things that were really overwhelming me.

Yes, that's right. Encourage the OP to consider himself a 'victim' because that's exactly how he needs to present himself to his wife to improve this situation, isn't it? She already doubts his commitment to feminism. Coming over all MRA about how poor men are 'victims' because nasty women say things about them is hardly going to make her review his credentials in that direction, is it? The OP appears to wants advice on how to improve his marriage, not on how to make himself look a complete limp lettuce who thinks his spouse moaning to her friend is victimisation.

My first question is how did you find all this out? My ex 'overheard' a very personal conversation I was having with my best friend, which involved discussing him. He was so angry... I later discovered he'd hidden a camera in my flat! But apparently that was insignificant to him compared to what I'd said about him in a personal conversation.

I guess we all bitch at times but how would you honestly feel if you could hear your partner say the same things about you...whether they are true or not? If the OP's DW is a SAHM then I think he is doing well above average, if she works full time then his complaints of being tired don't work!
When I was at home, I did everything....now I work full time everything is 50/50.