Easier without DH, I'm livid

[SuperMonkey889]

First time mum to an extremely active 12 month old. No family nearby at all, just me and DH. He had to take a 2 week work trip recently, I cannot tell you how much I was dreading it. I was genuinely scared how I'd cope alone with DS, on top of working full time.

Well....DH is back and....I've just realised it was easier without him. Not physically, physically it was harder (especially as DS was teething for half the time so was waking 5x night for a few days).

Mentally, so much easier. No negotiations, no having to give instructions, no expectations unmet, no moaning from DS because DH is meant to watch him but he's looking at his phone, wasn't stuck in the house because DH NEVER wants to go out in the morning.

On paper, DH does a lot. But it's all under my "supervision" (I can't find a better word, management maybe?). It's fucking exhausting.

Anyway, I can barely look at DH now. I'm so angry with him. It's like a mask has fallen off or something and I've realized just how much I do and how useless he is. Where do I go from here?

This is my OH. Once I realised what was happening we had a huge conversation, I detailed the mental load and how I felt etc etc. Since then she says all I ever do is nag her 🙄 I feel like I have 2 small DC and then a giant teenager. We've discussed divorce if things don't improve I can't keep living like this. Its sooo much easier when she isn't here its appalling. Hand hold x

This is so common. Dh has always been very willing and involved, but even he slipped into the habit of asking me everything and wanting instructions, while thinking he was doing an equal share. One day when I was feeling particularly drained I just shouted I AM NOT YOUR MANAGER, OR YOUR MOTHER.

He was quite shocked. I told him he had to make some decisions himself. Be a parent. He improved slightly, and then I stumbled upon a jokey and brilliant piece of writing on FB about the Mental Load, and showed it to him. It was a revelation for both of us and he finally, properly, got it.

After that it was so much better. Even when he slipped into old habits, all I had to do was give him a tired look and say “I don’t know, what do you think?”.

So it is possible to turn this around, but they have to be willing to see it and make changes.

OP how often do you leave him for a reasonable chunk of time to solo parent? It’s so hard when one of you is the default parent so force the issue.

I think you need a girls long weekend away OP.

Best thing I did for my marriage and the DC was to get a Saturday job.
Otherwise I am sure dh would never have taken them anywhere without me organising it.
We also chatted about it and he had stuff to do in the house that was just down to him. Otherwise he would have washed a few dishes and been proud of himself.

I think all single parents have had this realisation. It's so much easier on your own. Resentment is exhausting.

Ask him If he does this at work.

I've been divorced three times OP becsuse they have all been bloody useless.
Men have zero interest in housework maintaining their own environment or kids. They are bloody hard work and personally I can't be bothered. My two cats give me more pleasure.
I have my own home, career and social life and there is no room for a man in that. I simply don't have the energy. They are such hard work.
Sadly I know an awful lot of women who feel like this. I don't know where we are heading as a society but it's not looking good for men.

What would a better parental leave system consist of?

Because we've had the option to split/share parental leave for years but very very few people take advantage of it.

On the face of it that would be the idea way to sort issues like this at an earlier stage- dad gets sole time with baby. So why don't more people go for it?

Just giving men additional leave wouldn't make any difference, women would have to physically not be there for the man to have to step up and properly understand the full parenting load. Yet a lot of women (understandably) are not willing to give up "their" maternity leave and go back early. Even if society changed to make it more common and accepted for men to take a long paternity break women would have to be willing to lose out too.

You can bet that if the government decided that all fathers could claim an extra 3 months of paternity after a woman had returned to work there would be outrage on here with mothers complaining "why does he get the fun stage now baby is up and walking and has a personality while I got the first year of crying and sleeping?"

Welcome to most partnered women's world.......kudos to the parents who have raised genuinely lovely, helpful, supportive men, but they seem to be a vanishingly rare breed.

I found that DH was capable of more than I gave him credit for. For ages I thought only I could get DC to sleep (I was breastfeeding to sleep). But then I had to go away and it turned out that wasn't true. DH has a totally different bedtime routine, but it works for him. I didn't need to leave instructions.

He does ask me stuff but I'm the sahm so I'm aware of what needs doing in the house more than him. We do have some clearly delineated tasks - I shop and cook, but he does all the washing up and kitchen cleaning for example. He's also in charge of one of DC's activities.

I think some men are useless and lazy, but others are scared to "get it wrong" if the woman has a rigid idea of how to do things, or the woman trains the man to not do much/expect to be managed because of the dynamic they fall in to when the woman is on maternity leave. I know someone who complained their DH was useless, but wouldn't actually let the man do anything because she didn't trust him to do it the same way as her.

I think you're right that doing it alone has lots of challenges. And you're right about different standards or different things they care about.

But I think you're also hugely downplaying this sort of situation. I dont' get the sense from OP's post that she's talking about the house being how she likes it.

Examples I remember from when my DC were small and where I had to really make DH see that he was being a dick included:

Assuming while we were at home that I was in charge. if I asked him to do something, he would. But I was on baby duty... unless I asked him. I was on dinner duty... unless I asked him. I was putting baby down for a nap.... unless I asked him.

Bedtime. I wasn't hugely strict on routine but we had learnt that if we didn't get kids to bed by a certain time, things went badly.... I was the one constantly pushing bed time along.

All cleaning tasks - yes, he'd do it, but I had to ASK. And even then, if he was busy or tired he'd then get resentful or he'd put it off until eventually I had to do it because we had no clean underwear.

Organising. Anything. "Let's take at rip to the beach"... great. But all he would do was agree and then it was all on me. "Let's invite Pete and Mary for a BBQ"... and back to me.

Most of these things are better now and/or we've made compromises. But it was bloody hard work and it was a lot more than the fact that if he's at home the bed isn't made the way I prefer it.

Sounds like a conversation is in order.

Be somewhat careful though in how objectively you are assessing the situation.

My husband and I BOTH find parenting much easier when the other one isn't around (we have three kids plus pets).

And I remember a thread here where this was discussed (ages ago) and we weren't the only ones with that experience, far from it. Some couples don't "gel" well together working in team. My husband and I are both opinionated but care about different things. Other couples have a dynamic where one is bossy and the other withdraws. Also often mentally dividing the work and keeping score is more tiring than just getting on with it.

So I would definitely use this as an impetus to change, but I wouldn't presume this is you having discovered he is doing it all wrong.

@latetothefisting lots of countries have systems where one parent is the SAHP and the other work, it's not about being off at the same time.

Obviously the mother needs time to heal from the birth so in a way the default is that the mother stays home first, at least for the time where the pay reflects that it is more a sick leave.

Look at Scandinavian countries, they often have dads at home when the baby becomes a toddler. I definitley found that DH found DD more interesting when she was a toddler. He would happily do things with her on his own. When she was a baby he would take her shopping, read to her, played with her but mentally the toddler years were more engaging.

Unfortunately it's still a culture thing in the UK that a dad taking parental leave means the employer sees it as negative. Looking income as parental pay is ridiculous also affects this.

Omfg. Hope you got away !!!

Yes op, manh of us have been there. The moment of enlightenment! Mine was 2017
When I was making dinner and doing lifts to football, he was at the pub. Make steps to leave. He won't change. Or get him to pay for home help, and you will see then, there is no point to him. Good luck x

Oh OP, I get it. I've been free of my ex for 6 years now, and life is just simple (hard, in that I have to do everything, but simple, in that I set up a routine and we just follow it)

I remember being so frustrated that I spent so much time getting the kids trained to go to bed easily, then when I was trying to carve out more time to work, I asked to split some childcare with ex - mornings/bedtimes each do one, or we each do a mix on a schedule (bare in mind, like I said, I had them trained, and it wasn't a complicated routine - brush teeth, read a book when they were a toddler, tuck in, come downstairs - 15-30 mins max, they were very easy by the time I made this suggestion). He took bedtimes (because who wants to be getting up at 5am with my early riser, but I accepted it, because it was at least something)

I had to remind him every evening that it was bedtime for the kids. If I didn't, he'd let them stay up until 10pm, and they'd be awful the next day (plus it lost the routine, so you had to re-instate it if you changed their habits)

Doing it myself once he was gone was actually less effort as I didn't have to remind, and then re-remind, then help him find pyjamas/a book/stop the toddler coming down for a drink or whatever nonsense they decided they could get away with when it was him doing bedtime because he was too lazy to stick to a routine.

I think sadly many men still have that socialisation that the house/kids is primarily the women’s responsibility, therefore as a minimum she will be bearing all the mental load and manage the household tasks even if he is “executing”’some of them. Men who don’t want to have to step up and take on the stress will fall back on this stereotype and do the strategic incompetence thing to avoid extra work.
suddenly when they are divorced they mange to take it all on because they can’t get away with this anymore .

You give them too much credit. My ex immediately got a new girlfriend to do the domestic stuff, barely sees the kids, and, if he's doing some kind of outing with them (rare - generally they just hang at his house/go for lunch/shopping - for him) then I get a message asking for whatever gear they'd need.

Actually I'm being too generous. The ONE time he took them out swimming, he asked me to pack swimming gear for them. He's never taken them swimming again, or to any other activity... The rest of the time it's been to ask that they remember their Switch/DS/some other piece of gaming gear.

How much time has he spent being fully responsible? Unless u let go of that role he wont step into it ..its hard to let go but its also impossible for men unless they have sole repsonibility over days at time, to learn what women learn through maternity leave.
Tell him and try work it out so that you can truly share the load

It was easier because you weren't thinking about what you needed to give him instructions about, you just got on and did it. When you're the person who has fallen into the role of chief cook and bottle washer, and I say this as someone who is in a same sex relationship but whose partner can be exactly like your husband in terms of needing to be managed and supervised etc, it's jolly hard work doing the mental lifting and having all the cognitive load.
Two options - either ignore the learned helplessness and accept that this is your life - or you give it 6 months, decide what you can actually train him into doing, give it a go, and if you don't get an improvement, send him back.
I found that having a strategic weekend away and just leaving her to it made a difference. Maybe see if you can organise a weekend away with a couple of friends?

This is exactly what happened when my DH went on holiday I realised how lovely it was without him. Then he had an affair so problem solved. I’m so much happier on my own.

Another advocate for shared parental leave - OP if you are higher earner or earn similar (or even if he earns more as long as you can afford it then go for it), I would be 100% pushing for him to request a decent chunk of parental leave - invite him to 'have some time off' and 'bond with DC' . I'd say ideally 3+months but even a couple of weeks would help as long as you genuinely step away and don't micromanage everything.

My DH took 6 months off and then ended up quitting to take another year off to be SAHD until DC started nursery when DH had set up his own business & worked around that PT. It was the making of our relationship both with each other and as equal parents. The first couple of weeks were hell when I'd come home to wet damp washing in the machine, kitchen mess, snack type dinners or takeaways (but did soon put a stop to that!) but eventually he did step up and really embrace being a SAHD and we then found a good balance of shared responsibility.

If this isn't an option, you need to talk to him about this, implement some ground rules or accept your relationship is over. He needs to understand you are serious and the only choices are: step up now work together or, divorce and he will be shared parenting and doing everything on his own.

He needs to have time alone with your DC whether that's through requesting flexible working and being around more or evenings & weekends and you need to draw up a rota of household roles - no negotiation or nagging he just needs to man the fuck up and get them done. I'd suggest things that he can't ignore like the washing, weekly bins, dinner on XX nights, book a regular weekend morning class or activity that he takes DC to whilst you get a lie-in (& he has the other), responsibility for certain admin jobs like car servicing & MOT, holidays, family cards & gifts (first year DH's family got nothing I told them why & now he sorts it after his mum and sisters' rightly slammed him😆) . He is doing nothing because you are doing everything. Time to take a stand and either see him step up or kick him out.

You need to stop the supervising and instructions and let him figure out parenting for himself. I used to do similar to you have everything planned out and organised so it was easier for my husband but I had to stop when I had to care for my sick parent. My husband became very stressed and told me about how difficult it was trying to do everything and I told him he was just doing what I do every single day. He finally got it and has stepped up hugely and is a brilliant parent and well able to manage when I'm working or away with friends.

I'm sorry to hear you've realised this OP. I found this out when my DD was about 5 months. By the time she was 2 we had split up and now she is 15, he is still crap! His mum and new gf do it all for him! My DD is well aware he is beyond useless although ive made a point of never badmouthing him. I have no words of wisdom of how to make your DH do stuff more equitably, but I hope you find a way to make it work.

So, now that you know how good it is when you can make some decisions without opposition, keep making more of the decisions and live your live your way.
Expect and plan that sometimes you will all go out in the morning.

Ask DH to dress baby and get him breakfast. You sort your self and minimise hearing whining or objection.
Smile and be happy going out early with DH. Thank him and say how great it is that he is being less selfish.

Hear DH less; see positives all around you.