I did.
Until we had dc, our partnership felt equal in every respect. I hadn’t even been sure I wanted to have dc, but dh was so keen. His nieces and nephews adored him. He was lovely to our rescue kitten. I thought he’d be an amazing dad.
Neither of us anticipated the incredible amount of work and energy a baby brings. I’d admired dh’s work ethic, but we’d never been pushed beyond our capacity. We reacted in different ways. My maternal instinct was to dig deep and keep going, going, going until I ran myself ragged. Dh has an instinct for self preservation - when he gets tired, he sleeps; when he gets hungry he eats; when he’s low on energy he withdraws. He knows his limits and sticks to them.
I thought he should do more, he thought I should do less. Both of us had a point. Maybe he didn’t even appreciate how much I was doing because he assumed I’d stop when my battery ran low like he did, I don’t know, It wasn’t how I thought parenthood would be, and I was angry about it, and angry with him. I felt like my life had been changed irrevocably while the baby and I were just additions to his. I couldn’t understand how he could supposedly care for me and leave me struggling.
What complicated matters was that my employer folded while I was on maternity leave, and there was a hiring freeze in my industry. I (we) decided to have a second dc, thinking that we may as well take advantage of the timing. I didn’t make that decision lightly, because I knew the load would fall to me. I gave serious consideration to leaving but I didn’t.
The sahm/sole earner arrangement worked better for us. We split responsibilities along fairly traditional lines and it was easier than fighting about it. Dh, to his credit, was a hard worker and saw himself as the reliable wage earner from the point I lost my job. He’s been quite single minded about that, and became a high earner. But my career never got back on track. Every time the dc were sick, or had a half day, or their school holidays, it’s been my job to sort. While he benefitted from being able to work late, fly to meetings with no notice. And the more this translated into earning power, the harder it was to justify why it should be any other way.
With money, he’s unstintingly generous - he has no concept of “his money”, it’s all “ours”. He’s very kind, and family minded. He likes to spend all his time away from work with us, and is very proud of our family, supports the dc’s interests, in so far as they fall on weekends, and wants to give them every opportunity he never had. He’s proved much better with older dc, and teens although he still leaves the deeper emotional, nurturing to me. I leave all the house maintenance, car servicing, chasing utility providers, insurance, holiday organisation, to him.
He’s absolutely not a bad person. I wouldn't even say that he’s selfish exactly, it’s more that he operates from a principle of looking after himself so he can look after us. And he has looked after us materially.
I regret letting my career slip away and I feel embarrassed that I’ve so little to show for myself at 50. But I do have a lovely life now. I think that if he’d been less successful, and I’d had to work ft, it just couldn’t have worked. I didn’t expect, leaving college with 1H in the 90s that I was going to end up living in the 1950s like this. But when all is said and done, my career never had the potential to earn anything to close to what he does, so it’s really only me that’s missed out.
I don’t have advice op. I don’t think that there’s a right or wrong answer. It worked out okay-ish for us, but it could also have gone other ways.