Does anyone else struggle with their Husband’s working hours?

[helloRed]

My Husband works really hard and he is doing very well in his Job. He is high up and makes a very good wage, but the hours are becoming ridiculous and i’m starting to feel quite lonely. I am currently a stay at home Mum to our 2 children. We also have 2 dogs (crazy house). I manage all of the household and childcare responsibilities while my Husband is at work.
He works from home in his office 3 times a week and goes into his actual office twice a week. His hours are meant to be 9-6, with an earlier finish on Fridays.

The problem is 90% of the time now he is finishing late. When he is at home, he can be working until 10pm, sometimes it’s even been as late as 1am! And when he is in the actual office, he comes home around 6.30- 7pm, but he hops back onto his laptop because he has more work to do, and proceeds to work for the majority of the evening. He also occasionally starts work early and has work to do on the weekends!

I am starting to become really frustrated, as not only is that extra support not there for the kids and house (the kids are in bed or just about to go to bed, by the time he gets home - meaning no help with dinner, bath time and bed time routines, which I find manic! And don’t forget fitting in a dog walk too!) but our evenings as a couple are becoming affected as well. Most nights I am sitting watching tv by myself (with him next to me, but he’s on his laptop working, so he’s not really watching it with me). Or pointlessly scrolling through my phone. Or I become so bored, that I take myself to bed early.

I am feeling really deflated by it and I have tried to explain to him how I am feeling, but he can never see where I am coming from and just sees it as an attack on him. He is also massively in denial about the amount of hours he is putting in. I have always said to him, that I would rather him make less money and actually be home with the family, than have this brilliant job that brings in lots of money, but he is never properly around.

I don’t know what to do! I feel really isolated and stressed because all of the household and childcare responsibilities fall down to me and I feel so distant from him, because we aren’t getting that time together as a couple, and when we do, I feel grumpy and resentful. It’s affecting our sex life as well, as I’m just not in the mood most of the time, because I feel so distant from him. I love him to pieces and I want us to have a happy and healthy marriage, but I am really worried that if this carries on, we will just grow more distant from each other. Help please?

Go back to work. Being a SAHP suits very few people longterm, and your life sounds quite grim. If he has to pick up a child from a crèche before it closes, he’ll have to work much more effectively within fewer hours.

My dh is out of the country 10mo of the year. We have a dc, pets, fair sized home and plot. I was a sahm. Bizarrely, going back to work pt made me feel so much better. It's been like this for a few years now. You just get on with it!

I honestly don’t think me going back to work would change things. It would be me having to do my hours around Nursery (which my ds doesn’t start for another year, as the waiting lists are huge!) me that has to pick them up and still me that does the dinner, bath and bedtime routine. Evenings would also not change as my husband would still be working. The only thing that would change, would be me having more of a social life during the day, which is good…..but doesn’t help with my Husband.

Yep, you need a job.

Or a divorce. Frankly, he's not going to change. He's living the life of a single man as you're doing 100% of everything outside of his work life.

He has no motivation to change as it currently suits him.

If you divorced, he'd have to parent some of the time and you'd get maintenance commensurate with his Big Job.

I'm not being deliberately arsey, these are your realistic options.

This is a good idea and what I did. My husband works from home and I thought I would be fine and he would work 830 till five and then come and help. In reality he was in his office from 8 am till 6:30 pm or later and I was on my own with a toddler and a dog all of that time. Lonely, exhausted , resentful.
Going back to work meant he had to be there for the nursery runs, and it really did sort everything out.

Is he stressed about money….supporting a family of 4 on his own. I always find it a bit rich of STAHP who complain about the other parent working all hours when they’ve never known the stress and anxiety of being the one carrying the whole family financially

Having some extra income might take the pressure off him feeling like he has to earn enough to enable you to stay at home though? Is his work flexible enough for him to be able to work from home in the evenings instead of an office?

We both made the decision to try and split things fairly when we had children, we both had similar jobs and tried to make sure that work/childcare was even. This might not be possible for you, but if there is a chance it was the best decision we have ever made. We both get to further our careers, spend quality time with the family and have time for each other. We don’t feel any resentment and we appreciate what each other do.

He wanted me to be at home, so I gave up my job after i had finished maternity. My son is 1 years old and my daughter is in primary school. I have never pressured him to fund all of us.

I think there’s value in what others are saying. He’s making a choice and although you’re frustrated, your support is actually enabling his choice. He has no imperative to stop doing what he’s doing and he’s reaping the benefits whilst you pick up the pieces. It sounds really hard.

Also, side note, I’m yet to meet a woman in a big job earning the big money who has this set up.

Bluntly, so what, OP? What do you want? Your current life isn’t working for you, so change it. You appear to have no power in the status quo. Take yourself out as the default parent. If you decide to go back to the workforce, you need to have a conversation about how you share drop offs and pick ups, how you share out sick days, or childcare hiccups. He will need to learn to work smarter, and be more disciplined about his hours, and to share in all household and parenting work out of work hours.

Of the women I know (a few v high up in ads and financial services earning big cash) ALL have SAHDs. It’s v hard have two big jobs and still have a relationship.
op, you need to find some interests or a job or course so you have something that’s yours.

Whereas I know a lot of two-big-career couples. Having a lot of money coming in makes childcare much easier, usually a live-in nanny, or an au pair or mother’s help who does before and after school care..

Is he actually working? The amount of men in my office that boast about having to "work late" but are actually chilling out in their home office so they don't have to help with the kids is astounding!

I saw my friends husband sitting in his car in a layby vaping when he had messaged to say he had to work late (this happened regularly). He conveniently arrived home soon after the kids were asleep 9/10. Arsehole. She also worked FT.

VAPING (sorry, will ask MN to amend)

You might want to spell check your post 😬

I’m hoping that’s a typo!

What did you do for work before? Would it be easy to go back and did you enjoy it?
or could you suggest getting a nanny one or two days a week so you can get some time off?

I get you OP.
I was a SAHM for 8 years with my first two children.
It can be very lonely.
You wait all day for your husband to come home to have an actual adult conversation amd some down time, but he doesn't get in in time to help with anything and he's distant and distracted with work.
It put a lot of pressure on our marriage because I did disconnect from him.
It came to a head when I basically told him I'd be leaving because this wasn't the type of relationship i wanted.
There was no way getting a job at that point would have helped.. it would have made things even worse as I'd be doing all the childcare plus a job ..

Things did change but it's hard. It's hard to get through to someone. Marriages don't last if there's no emotional connection. At least it wouldn't have for me. I didn't get married just to be in some kind of work team where we occasionally have sex.

I do have a job now which has helped but it's meant he has had to massively overhaul his working hours to provide childcare. Which he couldn't do initially as he was studying for a masters.. he needed me to be a SAHM during that time.
But I certainly wasn't going to do that for someone who was never emotionally present.
I do think it can be hard to see each other's points of view though... weber I would try and talk to him about how I felt he would just get defensive. He would just list his own woes and how much pressure was on him.. instead of listening to me. It did take me actually leaving for a week for him to really start talking to me about how I felt.
Since then he has tried harder to be emotionally present and now he does more childcare so I have gone back to work.

Literally sounds like my life! How are things with you both now after all of that? Do you feel less distant from him and more like a couple again?

I never did anything special. I was a manager at a restaurant. I did enjoy it sometimes, but most of the time people were so rude, I ended up hating it. So I was happy to quit and stay home. Plus the hours were ridiculous! Evenings, weekends, bank holidays….all the times you don’t have child care! Plus I ended up missing out on big occasions because I had to work. So I definitely don’t want to go back to that! I want to do something else. Study something that I can do for myself from home.

Watching

I’m in this position and have been for bloody years. Hours have improved somewhat but DH still isn’t around enough for us to have a proper relationship (IMO).

Those saying go back to work so he “has to” do some childcare - clearly you’ve not experienced a man who says he simply cannot get home earlier.

I don’t think this has anything to do if the OP works or not - her DH has decided to check out of family life. He doesn’t care about either his children or his wife.

So, @helloRed, you need to decide if you want to carry on like that or leave. You have no guarantee that he will step up and pull his weight if you get a job.

Two questions - do you love him? And how is money shared?

That’s exactly it. Me going back to work wouldn’t change a thing. It would just be another added stress, as I would still be doing all the other bits. The times he does finish on time, I ask him to do something and he just says to me ‘i just want to do my own thing, I’ve just finished work, I want to relax’!!! Makes me so annoyed.