2 years marriage and no kids.
He works 35hrs (7hr days) and I work 48hrs (12hr days). Some weeks I also work 60-72 hours and also alternate between day/night shifts.
Chores has been an issue. At the start he barely did anything. No cooking, dusting, folding clothes etc. Most he did was occasionally wash dishes and only hoovered ONCE in one year.
After lots of back forth, he started to do a little more. But again I’m still lumbered with 80% of chores.
Now I don’t mind doing more than half chores. Nor do I mind if the place is a little messy for a day or two. That’s me comprising. (Before marriage, my place I used to keep it clean as mentally I function better in a tidy home). Now I can’t expect my husband to be exact same as me so I’m happy to compromise in my expectations and doing bit more than half.
Issue is I’ll tidy the place and simply just ask if he would just maintain it at the minimum. As in wipe after eating, wash dishes, hoover every few days. But it just causes issues.
Not only do I work more hours. I also have a side business which I attend to. I also check in with my mother every week, do her chores, take her hospital etc because of her condition.
Recent example:
He was off for two weeks. All he did was dust and hoover once and that was because I kept asking. Even then he only did half so I had to finish it myself. The rest time he just vegetated.
On my only day off in 10 days, I cleaned the whole place up again.
Following day before my 12hr night shift, I cooked. Tidied everything in the kitchen. Put laundry away etc. I text him when he gets back if he could just hoover living room as I ran out of time. He said sure.
I come home and it’s not done. He’s awake, so I simply just ask hey honey how come hoover wasn’t done? He said he felt tired and had a headache. I replied okay. Now this is the excuse he uses pretty much regularly.
I mean we all get tired. I’ve expressed to him in past how often I get tired but stuff needs to be done at some point and can’t keep putting it off. On a side note, there’s been many times where I’ve come back after a night shift and he’s asleep. I go to bed. I wake up and he’s still asleep.
I got woken up by sound of hoovering. The bedroom and living room doors wide open. I said could he stop and I’ll just hoover later one before going to work. His response was no I’ll hoover the time I want to and you’ll kick off if I don’t hoover. I said but I asked you to do it last night. He replied I’ll hoover when I want to. I said but you just disturbed me and now I’ve got a headache.
I feel he did it on purpose. Anyways he start yelling then saying how I didn’t fold a towel. He was trying to do tit for tat.
I told him we are not the same as if I forgot to fold a towel, it’s coz I’m busy doing other chores and working more hours.
He called me lazy. Now I know for a fact I am now. His own family have backed me on this. And he goes I just don’t want to lift a finger and expect him to do it all. Now I know he’s tryna get a reaction as this is him twisting things. How do such people think it’s okay to try to provoke you and not see what the problem is? Or am I the issue here?
Last year, I actually moved out. I was alone for 3 months. He did try his hard to get me to come back but I kept refusing and was thinking about divorcing. Eventually, I did start visiting him after his numerous attempts to try understand me. I noticed the place was looking clean and he was cooking nearly every other day. So he always had it him.
After some time I moved back. Slowly slowly, I noticed he was reverting but overall there was a massive improvement so I focused on the positive. As more time went on, he’s shifting more to his old ways and getting defensive again