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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

How can I help my husband understand the family mental load?

8 replies

unsweetcaroline · 30/08/2026 20:04

Has anyone successfully managed to show their husband/partner what it’s like to carry the mental load? And if so, how did you do it?

Tale as old as time: I do everything for our family and my ungrateful husband just thinks that’s the way things are in marriages. Women are better at that sort of stuff etc. When I try to talk to him he is very dismissive and says it’s just “admin” and it suits me better because I work on a computer (he has a manual job). Pretty fed up of it and want to open his eyes to it all but other than doing a list (which is just another thing to do) I don’t know how.

For what it’s worth I feel like I’ve brought this all on myself. When we first got together ten years ago I was young and stupid and liked being the one who ‘saved’ him and could do it all. I felt invincible. Two kids later I’m broken and resentful. Go figure!

OP posts:
GlitterInMyGin · 30/08/2026 21:27

I’ve been here!
18 months ago, I was so burnt out I could barely get my body to move. I was so forgetful, my joints were painful, I was running off 2 to 3 hrs sleep most nights (with one random night here&there were I passed out). Without going into too much detail… I was doing everything for everyone.

So one day I just stopped doing it all. I did what I could without pushing myself but nothing more.
OH would come and moan about something not being done and I’d say ‘if it’s annoying you enough to moan about it, it’s annoying you enough to do something about it without coming to me.’
i made him responsible for his own contribution (or lack of).

Washing didn’t get done. Food was low. The house was a mess. Things were forgotten. It was inconvenient but I was sick of being my OH’s mother.
things still aren’t 100% between us but I actually got an apology a few months ago.

Since OH’s ’been Helping me’, I’ve had better rest, my joints are less painful, I’ve lost weight, I’m eating healthier and I actually manage to spend time with my kids outside of errands when he’s not around. (He would always use the excuse of ‘I’m looking after the kids’ when I asked for help, but when he thought I wasn’t looking would be on his phone or watching TV.)

Not sure if any of this helps but if had so many conversations over the years with OH asking for help but none of them seemed to make a bit of difference and this was my last resort. What made it worse was when we had people over or visit my in-laws/his childhood friends e would go out of his way to do everything so jay ‘I can rest’ which infuriated me because whenever I spoke to anyone about what he was really like they couldn’t see it- and I think he knew that and knew that what he was doing (or not) wasn’t right. But this solution seemed to be the only thing that got through to him?
Hope things get better x

ruddygreattiger · 30/08/2026 22:50

Unfortunately I had this conversation repeatedly with my exh, sometimes he'd step up and pull his weight but it was always short lived and then he'd go back to 'forgetting ' even when we put chore rotas on the fridge with an equal split of all household tasks.
I thought maybe he's not that bad, maybe he's a bit stupid, maybe he doesn't realise how his laziness affects others?
But no, he understood perfectly well - I learned that he simply didn't want to do his fair share.

The old mumsnet quote - 'if he wanted to, he would', nails it.
So I stopped being an unpaid skivvy and mother to a grown ass man.
His deliberate laziness killed any love I had for him and I divorced him.
The sheer relief and loss of resentment vanished the day he left, life was instantly easier.

Amiable · 30/08/2026 23:16

Sit down with him (insist you do it together!) write a list of everything in detail ( so not “school admin” but for example, make and pack lunchboxes, pay swimming money, show and tell on a Friday etc - all listed individually). Then divide the list between you. It’s the only thing that worked for me and my ex.

OneRedFinch · 30/08/2026 23:18

Stop doing it.
Run out of food? "Oh you'll have to go to the shops then dear"
Bill doesn't get paid? "I'm sure it'll tell you how to pay it on the back"

Plra · 30/08/2026 23:36

I'd have chat gpt explain it to him.
It's just another part of mental load, to get an idiot to understand it.

Finallysaidit · 30/08/2026 23:50

GlitterInMyGin · 30/08/2026 21:27

I’ve been here!
18 months ago, I was so burnt out I could barely get my body to move. I was so forgetful, my joints were painful, I was running off 2 to 3 hrs sleep most nights (with one random night here&there were I passed out). Without going into too much detail… I was doing everything for everyone.

So one day I just stopped doing it all. I did what I could without pushing myself but nothing more.
OH would come and moan about something not being done and I’d say ‘if it’s annoying you enough to moan about it, it’s annoying you enough to do something about it without coming to me.’
i made him responsible for his own contribution (or lack of).

Washing didn’t get done. Food was low. The house was a mess. Things were forgotten. It was inconvenient but I was sick of being my OH’s mother.
things still aren’t 100% between us but I actually got an apology a few months ago.

Since OH’s ’been Helping me’, I’ve had better rest, my joints are less painful, I’ve lost weight, I’m eating healthier and I actually manage to spend time with my kids outside of errands when he’s not around. (He would always use the excuse of ‘I’m looking after the kids’ when I asked for help, but when he thought I wasn’t looking would be on his phone or watching TV.)

Not sure if any of this helps but if had so many conversations over the years with OH asking for help but none of them seemed to make a bit of difference and this was my last resort. What made it worse was when we had people over or visit my in-laws/his childhood friends e would go out of his way to do everything so jay ‘I can rest’ which infuriated me because whenever I spoke to anyone about what he was really like they couldn’t see it- and I think he knew that and knew that what he was doing (or not) wasn’t right. But this solution seemed to be the only thing that got through to him?
Hope things get better x

Edited

This sounds very familiar especially the part about going out of his way to do everything in front of other people.
We are going to separate and I'm going to have to say...'Oh we fell out of love'
When really I want to say, I put up with the lazy fucker for so long that I couldn't stand it any more.
I'm sorry OP. I gave up trying to get mine to do anything. It frustratiled me so much I just gave up and waited until a few weeks ago to tell him that we are separating. There's about 15 years of irritation stored up in an angry buried ball.

Original poster
unsweetcaroline · 31/08/2026 08:42

I guess part of the problem is he isn’t entirely useless. He does the cooking (but I do the food shop), he does school drop-off/pick-up (when I’m at work), and if the washing basket was over flowing he would eventually put a load on and hang it out (but he’d never ever fold it and put it away). So in his mind he is pretty hands on compared to his friends. But it’s still not enough.

And I’ve enabled it from the beginning because ten years ago I don’t think there was this mental load conversation that there is now. Or if there was I wasn’t aware of it. I wish someone had told me…

OP posts:
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