Thank God for the chorus here, which is making me feel less mad... Thank you all so much... Apologies if this is long and rambling and not phrased in the best way, just want to blurt all my thoughts out, while I have a chance. Hope this won't be a thread-killer: feel free to skim over this and return to the real posts, which are all so interesting.
I have got used to seeing women around me slave away without much support from their DH/DP- it saddens and outrages me and shocks me, too, that so few people seem to mourn that this still goes on... I guess I have sort of thought that it must be their choice and that, because my choices were different, it would be different for me. Ha!
What is REALLY doing my head in is that my psychologist seems to think that I am using all this resentment as a cover not to address other issues in my life. What I can't seem to get her to understand is that this situation is wrong, unfair and a huge stumbling block in me having a good relationship with DH (sex anyone, when you are so angry you want to bludgen him with a steam steriliser?). That I need to try to explain and justify this shocks me, to be honest - I never felt that I was so alone in wanting some equality on the home front - Thank God, I am clearly not....
DH has actually always been fab in terms of cooking and housework. The reality is that I was always crap, thanks to a mum that was much more interested in me getting through school with good marks than learning all the housewifely arts that she had felt so oppressed by as a child/teen in the 50s/60s. I realise that being so useless is not ideal (this work has to be done and I must take my part), and so in the time I have been with DH, I have put in lots of effort getting better at all this and learning to pull my weight (perhaps too much as he is, to my mind, way too particular, but there you go). But, somehow, somewhere, the balance has really shifted, with DH doing very little of this work and me doing the lions share (and him really quite liking that). I think it is that that makes me resent all this so much - if I had just set out from the beginning with "don't do it, don't want to" I would now be better off. Now, having been respectful of his wants and needs, I find my own have been utterly sidelined...
I love that word dadtasticness, DuchessofRubbish - because I was utterly a victim of that delusion, too. Because DH was domesticated and very family oriented, I always assumed he would be brilliant - it was a core belief I had about him and one of the reasons I was with him. I looked at friends/family with unsupportive, unhelpful partners and believed that would never be me. And there was no sign of that not being the case until I was pregnant (though, Lazycow, you are right - I think I was more indulgent of him when I didn't have a little being who needed me so much, so often). Now, I feel like I have been kind of conned into being someone's unpaid skivvy. That might be too harsh, but I do feel a bit tricked - somehow the balance shifted when I got pregnant and somehow less powerful or able to just bugger off, and I find that disturbing ... and these feelings swimming around are making me resent maternity leave and breastfeeding (which I have loved and felt good about) because they are two key practical reasons that I think contributed to me ending up in this situation...
It's true, I have been on maternity leave, and DH has been working, in a job that often has long hours. And I think that is the reason I have tolerated this so long, but what I have discovered, I think, is that there is a dangerous momentum that creeps up on you - the less involved he is, the less involved he can be because he doesn't know how and I do. By default, it all becomes my job. And, he does have a terrible tendency to feel, come the weekend, that he needs to recuperate - so if there is a sleep in, he'll take it, or time lounging on the sofa, or any other rest and relaxation, without it ever occuring to him that after six months of five hours of very interrupted sleep, I need rest, too (His words: "But it's like that for all mothers.") . So, even when he is here, I am still doing all the work and any attempt to get him more involved has him muttering about how he works so hard. I hate to resent his relaxation, but as I get closer to going to work (in a few weeks), I have suddenly realised that this won't magically change because I am working full time, too. Probably, like most women I know, I will come home form work to do a long domestic night shift - just the thing he is now avoiding because I am on leave...
MinaLoy, absolutely right - his mum is an amazing mum, but does absolutely everything for her boys - to the point of fetching and carrying things and hovering to remove empty plates. Only briefly worked outside the home and didn't like it. Is utterly undemanding. DH, luckily, knows that most women are not like this but - and this is really hard to put a finger on - I still sense that he does not 100 per cent understand the extent to which I, or other women, might have other interests or desires or roles outside the home... He doesn't quite get it, doesn't quite engage with it, doesn't quite believe it somehow... The thing is, his mother has had a dreadful life, but because all the women around his friends and family are pretty much the same, I don't think he has had a chance to see that a dreadful life can be the price you pay for no money of your own, independence or role outside the home... I assume/hope that other men have more empathy than that?
RubySlippers, I have tried to talk with DH but my attempts haven't gone well - I seem to end up doing what Slubberdegullion warns against - being shrill and finger pointy with mad sticking out hair and wild roving eyes. Somehow, I always end up feeling much, much worse afterwards because I end up saying increasingly extreme things in an attempt to get him to understand, which never seems to happen in any case. For instance, I have told him I resent DD1 - this is at times true, it is a small part of my feelings about her, it always relates to a lack of support, I believe this to be understandable. He just sees a big headline "DW resents DD" and seems to think that makes me a crap mother and that he, in my shoes, would never be the same...
Miaonline, I agree with you about being annoyed about prevailing attitudes. I guess as more and more of my friends have children, I see how many are being suckered in to doing it all by partners who don't pull their weight and yet it seems so few people are shocked by this, or mourn for the fact that these women are being worked to the bone... I really struggle wth this sense that most people think that is just the way it should be. I often muse that if I were DH's business partner, he would not/could not treat me with so little regard - how sad is THAT!?.
Dizietsma, you don't happen to have some blogs you can recommend? I guess one reason this is annoying me so much is that, there was a certain amount i could tolerate when it was just DH and me, but now there is a little human sponge in the house I am aware that we are also role models and right now we are very bad ones in regard to the role of women and men, I think.