My partner refuses to adjust our 50/50 split, and I’m burning out—how do I move forward?

[Glo13]

I (28F) and my partner (27M) have a 5 month old baby and I feel completely exhausted. We both work 40 hours over 4 days on broken sleep (5 hours a night at best), then spend 3 days off in rotation caring for our baby. I recently quit my second job because I physically couldn’t do it anymore, but I haven’t told my partner yet because I know he won’t be understanding.

He insists we must do a 50/50 parenting split and finance split, no matter what I need to do to make that happen. When I try to explain that I’m burning out, he says he’s exhausted too and that we both need to “fulfill our duties as a team.” But he did the same thing when I was pregnant—he wouldn’t take on more of the financial load when I needed to work less, even though he made $700 more per week than I did. I was still expected to contribute equally. He also went on a trip and bought a new guitar while I was struggling to keep up.

To make things worse, we work at the same place, and people there seem to be taking his side. My boss even made a comment about how it’s not that hard to “pretend to be happy.” I feel like I have no escape from this pressure, both at work and at home.

When we argue, it goes nowhere. He blames everything on me and calls me a manipulator and gaslighter, even though he himself has narcissistic traits—he lacks empathy and seems more focused on “winning” arguments than actually solving problems. It feels like he projects his own behavior onto me to avoid taking responsibility. He would say the exact thing about me and we’d get nowhere.

I’ve been thinking about whether I should apply for Parenting Payment so I can be with my child more, but I already know I’ll be accused of just wanting to do nothing. That’s not what this is—I just don’t know how much longer I can keep going like this. Is it wrong to want that kind of support so I can be there for my child without completely burning myself out? My mother and friends think he is emotionally abusive and he has threatened to try for full custody if I can’t meet my financial obligations. If we were to seperate and try receive parenting payment, he would likely try to argue for exactly half custody so I wouldn’t be eligible and to continue working as much as I am. He’s also said he will expect half the rent until the lease is up if I leave.

What should I do? Please help! It’s all greatly appreciated🤍

hes probably equally exhausted. You said you are both working equal hours at the same place. If this was a month post birth then yes your body is still recovering, but 5 months down the line I can see where he’s coming from…
you guys need to try and work out a way forward together because you’re both in the same boat. What you’re doing is very self centred as well, you’ve told him you want to work less ( which by extension means he works more) I’m not sure I would take that from my husband if he came back and demanded that of me one day.

If he puts in a smaller percentage income than you do then you aren't 50:50!
By that reckoning if you earned £millions then you could afford to have several husbands and households as you could match the contributions of each simultaneously. :-)
I note that in pregnancy you were also contributing the additional physical labour of growing the baby - what was he putting in to match that, in his "perfectly 50:50 in put" world?

Doesn't sound much like he loves you. This is absolutely not how true partnerships work. They're not this transactional.

How close are you to any family support?

You need to shut down any work comments about your private life - it's not their concern. Just don't discuss/respond
As to your home - are you both on the lease? You'll need to speak to the landlord

Presumably you knew who he was before getting pregnant and having a child with him? I don't understand the desperation of having babies with vile men. On a positive note- leave him and take him to cleaners. That's the only option to survive in this scenario.

He's probably not equally exhausted.

Women are still very commonly recovering from the birth at 5 months postpartum. Several have said as much on this thread, and that's in a society where working multiple jobs at over 40 hours a week 5 months postpartum is rare.

In fact, if he believes everything comes down to money, I’d be sending him an invoice for surrogacy and wet nursing fees. I imagine your hourly rate is pretty high.

If she needs to recover from the birth five months post-partum, this needs to be discussed from a sickness perspective.

Otherwise, I don't see why she should be within her rights to expect him to work more so she can work less outside the home, if they both have equal desire to be with the baby and he is already pulling his weight by working as much as she does, including at home.

There are many debates about women giving up careers for their men, and the automatic assumptions that these women are getting shafted by their men. In reality, as this example might show, many women WANT to work less, rather than getting shafted.

Again, I am not saying I would want to be with a partner with this ungenerous spirit her partner shows. But neither would I want to be with a wife who thinks she can just order me to work more when I am already doing half because she feels life is too hard on her by doing the same as what I am doing. (Again, caveat if it's an actual birt health problem but I didn't clearly read that here at all.)

I have child and I know lots of working women with children and in a lot of countries may leave ends at 1m and you go back to work.
i agree for some people post partum is longer it varies, but making it sound like working 40h is heroic is a joke. It’s normal to work 40h a week and lots of pple have no choice BUT to work 40h a week to makes ends meet 🙄
OP hasn’t said she has a specific medical thing which means she’s more tired than her husband who is doing exactly what she’s doing. Thre only difference is he’s male so let’s bash him and assume it’s ok to dump all the load on him?

I knew, just knew, as soon as there was one single poster who also was completely unable to spot an abuser, that the op would hone in on that post and that post only.

I absolutely get that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but there is definitely more than one woman who is unable to spot abuse and as such, on these threads only, I wish people who can't weren't allowed to comment. It's so damaging, and keeps yet another woman, and her children, living a miserable life.

not necessarily. Its been shown countless times that abuse often starts in pregnancy/after birth

You've not done half though. If the money and childcare have been equal throughout, you as the non gestating partner are being subsidised because you have contributed no reproductive labour. This would be the case regardless of how long the mother took to recover from the birth.

Have you invoiced him for the pregnancy and the birth yet@Glo13? If not I suggest you do ASAP because he owes you big £££ for that.

Equally exhausted? He didn’t create or birth the child, other than by having sex. He’s not producing breast milk.

Do you think it only takes a month to recover from pregnancy and birth? Do you know how tiring breastfeeding is? Have you heard of PND?

Good grief, some people have lost all respect for motherhood.

I would point out his unequal contribution in making the baby. He gave a microscopic sperm and you made the child from your own body at significant personal sacrifice. He is repugnant to me, what a disrespectful selfish brat.

@Glo13 - maternity rights in the States are so poor! If you were in the UK, you would almost certainly still be on mat leave and recovering from pregnancy and the birth.

Your partner is a bad partner for you. It doesn’t sound like he loves you. More to the point, he doesn’t see you as a team. My DH has out earned me for much of our life together and has unquestioningly picked up the greater costs. There was a period when I out earned him and I did the same. We’re a team and that’s how a good team works. A dear friend of mine ended her marriage after about a decade of her husband, who out-earned her, insisting on a 50/50 split and being very happy to go off and engage in expensive activities at the weekend leaving her struggling to do anything with their shared daughter because of the risk of going into debt. (She works in an extremely valuable but underpaid public sector role).

I don’t know whether your baby was planned but in any case it sounds like you’re both committed parents but you can still be committed parents living separately.

Nobody cares how many women you know. Not being recovered from birth 5 months postpartum is mainstream, and you had no basis to say he's probably as tired as she is when you've not factored in the pregnancy and birth. Those are relevant factors, like it or not. The specific medical thing is that she's GROWN AND HAD A BABY.

This would also be equally true if OPs partner were a woman.

No it’s not . Lots of women go back to work by 5m post birth 😂
unless you had a specific medical issue or a particularly traumatic birth and that’s not what was mentioned anywhere here. So you can project all you want but it’s just you making up rubbish
i find attitudes like yours really set women back. We can’t do things we’re so weak . We can’t work blah blah blah

I agree. OP had a baby 5 months ago, not 5 days ago. The vast majority of women are physically capable of working at that point unless they had major complications which would be a different story.

They might not want to work at that point which is very different to not physically being able to.

equally, across the world, many women dont work after having children, and in many cultures that whole first month they are supported and looked after by the women of their community/family as the only thing they need to do for that month is recover from birth, rest in bed, be fed and feed their baby.
That was the norm for the most of humanity.

the need to get out there earning is a modern invention, driven by the huge rise in the cost of living.

Not being recovered from childbirth after five months is not normal.
Not being the same as before is, obviously. Not being okay is really not. And we do women a disservice by pretending it is.

Yes it is. You also don't know whether OP had a specific medical issue or particularly traumatic birth, and she mentioned having to work less during her pregnancy which means you should at minimum be alert to the possibility. You saying he's probably equally exhausted was literally you projecting.

Women who aren't capable of understanding reproductive labour and the impact pregnancy and birth have on many women really fuck us over as a cohort.

He sounds like selfish bully .
Find a new job and ditch him , i would rather struggle alone than have this vile man on my back all the time.
Life with your baby will get easier regardless .
I agree with your mother , do you really think he'll go for custody when he's happy for you to do what you are doing , i doubt it very much.

On a other thread you said how your husband and doesnt cook and is lazy, how funny that you're willing to accept such a weak and incapable man whilst holding post partum women to such a high standard. Dont you think your husbands attitude really sets men back? Or is it that you find 'We can't cook blah, blah, blah' from men, perfectly acceptable?

This isn't 50/50 though. Pregnancy isn't 50/50 - it depletes a woman's body while his body is exactly the same. Childbirth also isn't 50/50 - he has done nothing. Early days with the baby also isn't usually 50/50 - you will likely have done way more with feeds, postpartum recovery etc.

If he truly wants this to be 50/50 you've done over a year of the equivalent of full-time work compared to him.

So he needs to do the equivalent to make up his shortfall. How is he proposing he makes up the shortfall? If we're being purely logical here, I'd say he owes you about a year and a half of extra FT work to even come close to the contribution you've made so far towards the family ahead of him.

Why isn't he taking any of your contributions into account? Growing a baby literally shrinks your bones and is the equivalent to your body of running a marathon every day for nine months. He let you do ALL of that work and has done nothing by comparison.

His 50/50 logic makes no sense as he's just disregarded your HUGE contribution at the moment

Ouch.