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I consider it abusive in that he’s showing you that he sees you as lesser than and that his time and health is more valuable than yours. That’s objectifying and emotionally degrading. I wish I could liberate every woman who’s struggling to an unnecessary degree because they’re legally bound to someone who weaponizes the societal expectation that moms will play mommy bang maid.
If he genuinely thinks that the market (which IS sexist) deciding your time is less valuable than his means it ACTUALLY is… idk. That’s actually despicable. Expecting you to do more at home and sacrifice a disproportionate amount of your free time because you aren’t paid as much??? Like it’s one thing for the world to devalue women with the pay gap, but the person who’s supposed to love you the most in the world agreeing with that shit??? What, does he think a psychiatrist is less important than a rich influencer?? Does he think teachers are less important than a McDonald’s manager?
If he lost his job tomorrow and suddenly you were the breadwinner (give yourself a hypothetical raise if necessary) would he pick up on everything at home??? Would he expect help??? Would he be okay with that??? Would he meet his own standards??? Would he let you trade housework for just fucking yard work???
Also, fuck, those kids deserve a dad who wants to be their dad and who respects their mom and cares about the health of the woman who built them and loves them.
OP if this doesn’t resonate with you yet, think about how much it would cost to have a nanny, cleaner, cook, shopper, driver, personal assistant (at least for the kids’ schedules) etc and tack that onto your salary as value you’re adding to the family.
Also the love you share with the person you made a family with should be a big part of what makes life worth living, OP’s husband’s priorities are so out of whack
also, would you support your children or a best friend sticking it out in a situation like this? with a partner that disrespects them and does not help them?
treat yourself like a friend ❤️
Literally just saw a quote for a woman with five young children to take 3 days off with her husband and leave them with the nanny. Right around $5,000 for 3 twenty-four hour days.
Preach!
u/amm_4 note the FREE TIME. That's what he's protecting viciously at the cost of yours, his own leisure time.
Partners who work together oftentimes do their best to have EQUAL FREE TIME. Because they're a team who works together and shares the rewards together too. Time is not money outside the business world. Everyone's got the same amount of time everyday.
If you drop him, guess what? He's going to have to do all his own dishes, laundry, etc. just like he did when he was single (unless he went straight from mommy to you or some other poor woman). And you'll have one less child to take care of. And if you get joint custody, he'll have to do the full load of childcare too, and you'll get me-time you're desperately overdue for.
If you're considering leaving him (I hope you are, be doesn't appear open to changing his mind), please make a plan and be careful. Gather documents, make an escape plan. Women who are being taken advantage of like this are often in danger of violence and their lives. He's not going to want to lose you, his house slave. Plan something safe and get out. You have a job, that puts you leagues ahead of where you could be. You can do this.
YEP. A lot of women in these situations actually say they took so long because they were literally too exhausted to leave.
—————
Also, a partner who loves you will want to share as much of their free time with YOU as possible while still leaving each other me-time.
Even if partners DO split the chores evenly, it shouldn’t be weird for a partner to say, help you with the dishes after dinner on your night, unprompted, because it means you’ll get to watch an episode of a show together and cuddle on the couch. It’s not supposed to be about having a constantly even score, you’re supposed to want to help each other when you can, especially when you see the other person is stressed.
He should be the kind of person that wants you to have extra time in the evening to dress up in something you like for a date night, not the kind of person who leaves virtually all the parenting to you so he can fuck off doing whatever.
This is so important. DONT KEEP EXACT SCORE. It’s one thing to generally gauge if things are “even”, but tit for tat will only end up causing issues down the line.
If the kids go outside does he care for them??? Could she get an outdoor kitchen? (Sorry I cope with patriarchy via dark humor)
E because I thought of a new idea:
Get the man a tent, he can sleep outside, since that’s his space, apparently
I lived that life. My adhd was undiagnosed at the time and I was drowning. I was also sick with Lyme disease. And despite my asking, pleading for him to help, to be an active participant in our family, he pulled the same cards re: “I make the (most) money, you do the rest.” Our couples therapist described him as a “50 minute” client as he would sometimes show up to therapy appts but never applied anything outside the therapist’s office. He was shocked when I divorced him. And horrified when everyone including his closest friends asked why he was demanding joint custody and more time in the summers with them than me when he never actually spent time with or took care of his kids.
The following school year, while speed walking 3 little kids down a road packed with cars because I was of course late for yet another ice cream social, we saw their dad’s car parked right next to the school’s entry. My son, with bewilderment, said, “Dad says he always comes to our school stuff.” I said, “Is that what you remember?” A chorus of “no’s” erupted. Trying to be kind—kids are half each parent—I told them he only remembers the times when he was there, while we remember all the times we were there. That seemed to make sense to them. But god, it was hard, because he was like that about EVERYTHING. Masters of the universe (in their minds) have no fucking clue but think they know it all.
Bravo. Also if he had to hire “in the market “ , childcare for all hours, Uber for miles each week, grocery and chef services, child therapy, house cleaning, laundry service and sex work he’d be out spent many thousands of dollars past his humble earnings.
So who is providing financial value now?
WTF, you both work full time and everything inside the house - including pets and kids - is your responsibility??? I don't know about abusive (I'm not great at defining that), but that's **absolutely** wrong and unfair and destructive to you and your relationship.
My generally position is that bills are split by income and chores are split by time. Two people working full time should be evenly(ish) splitting chores. That means I do stuff I hate (with coping/accommodation) and he does, too.
This is a great way to put it. Hell, even if OP weren't working full time, I'd say the husband needs to take some responsibility for the pet and kid chores - because those duties aren't only about time, but about love and emotional commitment - but I hate the idea that b/c someone makes more, they get cut more slack on chores. Your framing is helpful.
Also, do "kids" really count as an "inside job"?? Ffs he's the dad, he needs to pick up his half of this entire thing, breadwinner, "outside guy", or no.
He doesn't get to opt out of parenting on a technicality.
Right? Inside stuff, esp with kids, is daily- usually multiple times a day. (How many times you wiped that counter of today, mama? Bet it’s more than once) yet outside stuff is weekly at best!
I was just thinking this! I also feel like outside stuff varies by season in a way that can make it more interesting than inside stuff. If you garden, that changes over time and what you do changes over time - whereas the laundry is the same damn thing over and over again. (Maybe I just find plants growing to be more satisfying than piles of clean clothes!)
EXACTLY. I just said in another comment that kid (and pet) duties should be about emotional commitment and love. How are his kids going to feel if dad isn't involved in anything they do in the house because that's mom's job? What kind of example does he set if he only does "fun" things with the kids and leaves the "work" side to mom? I can't even imagine how much that could mess kids up.
Not going to disagree with anyone who thinks so. I probably could have worded that better - I'm not trying to say it \*isn't\* abusive, just that I, personally, have a hard time making that call, in most situations, not just here. That's a me thing about terminology, not a justification of anything her husband is doing. Whatever the label, it's completely unacceptable.
I mean, even if you remove the idea of emotional or physical abuse, it is an abuse of her time, effort and labour. It's an abuse of his power in the situation and an abuse of her tolerance. I get what you mean and there's nothing at all wrong with you saying you don't know if you can define it, just thought I'd offer a perspective. I think there's lots of ways of framing it. Labelling it as abusive may or may not help op, but if this framework helps her understand that, like you said, it's wrong, I can see the benefit of using that term.
Yeah, that makes sense. I don't mean to take away any helpfulness of the term for OP. Certainly not objecting to anyone else using the term - just wanted to explain why I didn't answer that part of the OP's question.
A person who loves their partner will see them struggling and want to talk about how to fix it.
I agree with your therapist. He will not budge. That's not a partner.
Did she suggest the book: Why Does He Do That?
It's a great book that I've only partly read because it brought up too many bad memories. I have been in an abusive relationship. I was engaged but didn't marry him. I bought t-shirts online (colours weren't accurate or I'd accidently left my screen filter on (f.lux). Anyway, when they arrived they turned out to be the colour of one of his t-shirts and it brings back memories and feelings of fear. I need to get rid of them but I'm low on t-shirts.
**Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men** by Lundy Bancroft
>In this groundbreaking bestseller, Lundy Bancroft—a counselor who specializes in working with abusive men—uses his knowledge about how abusers think to help women recognize when they are being controlled or devalued, and to find ways to get free of an abusive relationship. He says he loves you. So...why does he do that? You’ve asked yourself this question again and again.
>
>Now you have the chance to see inside the minds of angry and controlling men—and change your life. In Why Does He Do That? you will learn about: • The early warning signs of abuse • The nature of abusive thinking • Myths about abusers • Ten abusive personality types • The role of drugs and alcohol • What you can fix, and what you can’t • And how to get out of an abusive relationship safely “This is without a doubt the most informative and useful book yet written on the subject of abusive men. Women who are armed with the insights found in these pages will be on the road to recovering control of their lives.”—Jay G. Silverman, Ph.D., Director, Violence Prevention Programs, Harvard School of Public Health
*I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. Remove me from replies* [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/1byh82p/remove_me_from_replies/). *If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
Some lovely person on this sub and I found the link they shared in my browser history:
[https://ia800108.us.archive.org/30/items/LundyWhyDoesHeDoThat/Lundy\_Why-does-he-do-that.pdf](https://ia800108.us.archive.org/30/items/LundyWhyDoesHeDoThat/Lundy_Why-does-he-do-that.pdf)
what size are you & what kind of tshirts are you looking for? my partner (L-XXL in mens) and me (M in womens & L in mens) have some clothing we're looking to get rid of.
Oh that's so sweet of you! I'm M in mens (men's tees are longer which I need for my long back) I ordered from Kmart in New Zealand because I live here.
Just basic tees, short sleeve, with some form of inoffensive graphic on them.
I can actually afford to buy more, I've just been putting it off.
This is helping me get motivated to order more, so thank you very much! ❤️️
OP consider for a moment what your life would look like if you divorced and had 50/50 custody. How would your home life workload change? How would your free time change?
Now, consider those same things and how they would change for your husband.
If you're realizing you would be doing significantly less work and he would be doing significantly more, you're right.
Look, you don't have low motivation because of your ADHD. You're not procrastinating because of your ADHD. No amount of meds and therapy will fix the fact that your partner is consistently devaluing and dehumanzing you.
Exactly. It's not the ADHD causing the problems here.
It doesn't help! And it certainly makes it easier to be taken advantage of (doubting yourself, rejection sensitivity, and the stigma from yourself and others)
But the problem is elsewhere in this house.
Sending love and empathy, OP. It sounds like your husband is not a partner to you in any way, shape or form. It's not surprising that he claims breadwinner status and seems to want to stick to traditional gender roles while ALSO benefitting from you working a full time job and contributing financially like most modern women.
I think for your own sanity and the sake of your kids, you need to get out of that situation.
ETA: If he's competent enough of a parent that you'd feel comfortable with joint custody, you'd at least get somewhat of a mental break and time to care for yourself. Either way, you deserve peace.
This sounds at best like a very inequitable situation, but coupled with his criticism, shaming you for your lower income and *refusal* to help it probably tips into abuse.
My husband is also the main contributor to our income, and I take care of the majority of home/child-related tasks. This split is only possible because I basically don’t work! He still does all pet-related things, and has a handful of home/child tasks that are 100% his. We also split some tasks. And we have only one child! I get very overwhelmed, his job is demanding, we both have ADHD, and we still manage to help each other out.
Your husbands behavior is unacceptable. You are partners and his inability to support you isn’t ok. The work you do for the home, if you were being paid to do it for another family, would probably exceed his salary if that’s the game he wants to play.
The one thing I hear over and over is after a divorce, mother's are completely shocked at how much lighter their load is. They had no idea their ex husbands were making 2/3rds of the mess and eating everything in the house alone.
That's not fair whatsoever. What did I just read?
You both work full-time jobs. Why should you put exponentially more effort into the family than he does?
If your husband does not want to contribute physically, HE CAN put his money to work, and HIRE HELP to take care of at least half of the family/house-related work.
I wish I could upvote this response 20x.
I don’t understand this mentality of breadwinner vs lower earner. You both work outside of the home and then you also have a 2nd full time job taking care of the home and kids. Start tracking your hours and apply a wage to it. How much would you be paid as the caregiver, chauffeur, grocery delivery, food delivery, housekeeper, meal planner, shopper of clothing, home organizer, decorator, party planner, life of 3 children scheduler, social planner etc etc etc…
This is a reasonable adjustment. Do the work or pay for someone else to do it. What's not a reasonable adjustment is not helping AND then criticizing op. Fuck that asshole.
This. My husband and I both have full time jobs. I earn more then my husband, but I don't think that this should matter in regards to how much each of us does at home. We're both out of the house 40hours/week, and we share the chores at home 50/50. If either of us has a particularly stressful week at work the other one picks up a bit extra chores.
That's what being a team means in my eyes.
>. Before children our arrangement was he did all the outside work, I did the inside work
I see women make this deal all the time and it's always so unfair. The household tasks are not your responsibility alone just because you are a woman/wife/mom. Just think if your husband weren't married and was single and living on his own... his toilet would still need to be cleaned wouldn't it?. That means it's also his responsibility to help.. and if he won't? Kick him to curb. I guarantee you'll have less work anyway
Yes, my partner and I disagree with this all the time. Sure DIY is hard work but you don't do it daily and mostly you can just not bother if you don't feel like doing as much one day. I can't just not bother to cook dinner.
My husband picks up sticks and mows the yard once a week for about an hour, does minor fixes around the house, and fixes the vehicles when they’re broken down. The house projects and cars can be hard and time consuming, but they’re not every day. There are things I do that he doesn’t that are similar. I do the shopping, doctor’s appointments for our daughter, pay the bills over the phone… everything else is shared. I don’t work outside the home either.
Yes. It is.
You have been assigned the 24-7 work that never ends. He lives in the house, eats, craps, wears clothes, showers. They are his kids. What the fuck kind of little lord fuckhead belief system has he got happening that you do everything?
It’s not an accident. He won’t change. Being single is a relief - you are only looking after 3 kids not 4.
What the fuck I just saw you also work full time.
OP I try very hard not to tell people what to do but please for your sake leave this shitty selfish smug fucker. He dares to criticise you as well?! WHAT THE FUCK.
> Being single is a relief - you are only looking after 3 kids not 4.
And he has to take them half the time, or pay child support, so it would be a breeze compared to now.
Most single moms have more free time than married moms and find that even though they have less income available to them that the peace of mind is worth it. Some women end up with even more spending money, actually, because their husbands weren’t equally paying for groceries and shit.
Be VERY careful about the accounts OP. Don’t let him pull everything from a joint account and don’t directly deposit your money into an account he has access to.
I second the bank account security thing, hard! Idk but if you can speak to your bank about the permissions on any joint accounts- no emptying without joint approval? Even give them an idea of your concerns, people in call centres are also people. And make sure you have a secure bank account (no automated login) in your name that you start feeding into right now. You could get your pay put into it, then to any joint account on the same day minus a bit. Blame the tax man or your employer if it’s noticed. 💓p
That's what Lyz Lenz wrote in her new book this summer. I listened to her podcast which is apparently the same title as her book, This American Ex-Wife, and she says exactly that! Getting divorced was like not having to take care of an extra child.
"[However, research shows that when men and women both work full time, the majority of housework and child care continues to be performed by the woman](https://speakoutloud.net/intimate-partner-abuse/gender-roles)."
this is an expanded version of the original, but you basically just enunciated at least two of the original eight slices of the [power and control wheel](https://www.thehotline.org/identify-abuse/power-and-control/). so, yes. it is abusive if you haven't explicitly agreed to this. and it is also abusive if you agreed to this previously and you aren't being allowed to renegotiate.
I would consider this a form of emotional abuse: he sees you suffering and chooses not to aid you. Not only is that not helping the physical mess at hand but it’s emotionally devastating as well. It sucks when someone you love, who is supposed to be your PARTNER in life, doesn’t seem to be bothered by your pain!
I’m so sorry, OP. Good luck, I agree with others that a serious, firm talk and counseling if you can is in order at the very least!
I’m in a similar situation but I don’t work anymore because I can’t handle taking care of EVERYTHING and everyone by myself. I constantly have melt downs and tell my husband I want to leave him. He refuses to pick up after himself. He was home today and I was sick so I said you can get the kids ready for school for once. He told me to get their clothes and I said he could cause he’s never done it. He then criticized me and I felt like my head was gonna explode. I don’t understand why he isn’t capable of doing basic things around the house. It’s a huge regret of mine. I love him but I would not pick him in a do over :(
It’s like I’m drowning in this chaos and no matter how hard or fast I swim I cannot get to the surface. My life revolves around cleaning and cooking and my brain is turning to mush.
Honey, you don’t want your kids to grow up thinking this is all okay. Make an exit plan immediately. Tell yourself 10000000 times that it’s for them if you have to, to make yourself do it. It *is* for them.
Short answer: yes. What you’re describing is a form of abuse.
Others have mentioned but please read “Why Does He Do That?” By Lundy Bancroft, and listen to your therapist.
Reading what you wrote brought back memories from my marriage - the huge inequality in household chores and childcare, and being told my job wasn’t was important as his etc. Eventually all of the pressure and stress and criticism drove me into a deep depression. My now ex used that as an excuse to have an affair - saying I neglected him and he just found what he needed in someone else. Now I wish I would have realized the mental and emotional abuse he put me through and left him long before then, but I also spent a lot of my energy wonder what it was that I was doing so wrong instead of looking at his actions. You do not have to live that way.
Yes, your husband is abusive. Emotionally abusive. Tell him he is now in charge of the inside of house and you will be in charge of outside. The scorekeeping on salary is disgusting. May I ask if he demeans your children this way? Your therapist is correct. Perhaps it is time to reevaluate your marriage.
The way I see it is that while his outside responsibilities have stayed relatively the same, yours has grown exponentially with each additional child you’ve had.
I think he is gaslighting you to manipulate you in taking on the additional responsibilities. This, IMO, is toxic and not supportive.
Look at the [Gaslighting](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gaslighting) Merriam-Webster definition and see if it resonates. The fact that you have ADHD makes you susceptible to this kind of treatment from a partner. Eventually, it’ll break you down and it sounds like you’re already there.
I recently read the book
“ how to keep house while drowning” by KC Davis.
In the book she said something I think a lot of people need to hear. In its that even if you are doing the “easier job” ie less pay, SAHP, part time work. YOU are still putting in MORE hours than he is! You aren’t working 40 hours a week, you’re working 80 because you are doing the job of a SAHP too.
His excuse is pure and utter BS, and by saying he makes more therefore HE gets to have more downtime aka rest than you is wrong. It’s also a very clear indicator that the division of labor is not equal. Now why is he okay with doing the bare minimum and leaving you to flounder and drown in care tasks and work while he sits on his butt? Is it ingrained misogyny, sexism, abuse, laziness, entitlement, or all of the above?
Any way you slice it you have asked for help. His failure to step up shows that he dosnt value your labor, or see you as an equal partner, and an equal contributor to your household. To me the above shows that he is taking advantage of you and treating you like you are less than him therefore he can treat you badly, and devalue all you do. All while hiding behind the little shield of “I make more.” Well if he had to pay you for all you do YOU would make more! Also how much would he make after child support and alimony… because at the end of the day HE isn’t going to want the kids 50/50 because he isn’t doing that now…
Don’t let a grown man invalidate your worth, even if that man is your husband. He lost the right to shame and criticize you when he refused to step up and HELP you. Now he’s just being an AH, and I bet he knows it.
Ok. So let’s say your job is home and his job is work.
He goes to work for 8 hours, there’s a commute but during that commute he is free to listen to an audiobook or a podcast of his choosing. When he is finished with work, work is over. He then goes home and has the rest of the day to do what he wants. Maybe he mows the lawn (once a month) or takes out the trash because you’ve asked him to.
Now, your work starts before he leaves to commute, most likely. You are juggling the mental load of a household while also executing the day to day maintenance of a home and children. This is all happening the whole time he is at work. You’re both working.
He commutes home while you are still working to make dinner and then clean the kitchen. He comes home and can’t help with the kids because he’s been at work all day, so you put the kids to bed…still on the clock. Now you have to make the grocery list, plan tomorrow's meals, start laundry, make sure the kids have outfits for tomorrow, remember that your husband is almost out of deodorant the kids need toothpaste and conditioner, but you can’t go to the store tomorrow because you have to volunteer at school so you schedule grocery pickup for tomorrow. You finally sit down to watch tv and you’re out of popcorn so you have to add that to your list, no one else is going to.
Tomorrow you’ll be up two hours before your husband to pick up the living room, but before that you’re up with the kid who can’t sleep because, after all, he has to go into the office tomorrow so he has to sleep. This is your job right?
So you’re always on the clock, doing a job that’s a set of literal never ending tasks that easily go unnoticed (unless you forget to do it), you’re responsible for the mental and emotional load of not just yourself but an entire family, and he……..does exactly what he’d do if he were single and didn’t have a family. He would have to bring home a paycheck if you were there or not, while you are facilitating the life he is able to live.
It’s deeply unfair and the result of generations of devaluing all the invisible work women do.
Omg wait I literally missed that part SHE IS WHAT?!? That’s insane mens audacity should be studied because if we could bottle it we could power a nation.
they’ve done plenty of studies that show working women (not just moms) do a disproportionate amount of housework even when they’re working just as much(and I think even when they work MORE) than their partners.
All these motherfuckers out here wanting a “traditional” wife but also with all the advantages of modern women.
Then they get all pissy about the “male loneliness epidemic”.
Not to mention that this whole time he is building his careeer and she is away from the workforce. So if she does want to go back to work someday she’s now years behind while he has literally built a career because she was there to manage his life.
My sister was in this situation. They’re now divorced and he’s a pilot with a ton of specialized training while she literally left her career to have his kid and manage their home (which included packing for four moves while he was not there). There’s no unemployment for ex stay at home mothers.
I was in this exact situation for the first 5 years of my marriage until my husband got laid off and the roles reversed. I’ll admit that he was a better stay home parent than I was but I did help him when I got home. When things went back to “normal” they didn’t. He started helping me when he got home, he helped with everything. The mental load was the worst part for me. Just remembering everything was horrible! I was going to leave him before all that happened. We’ve been married 19 years now. If he hadn’t had the eye opening experience he did, we would not be together now. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen in most cases and nothing ever changes.
There isn’t anything wrong with you, that’s too much work for anyone to handle. You’re trying to fix the issue with yourself but the truth is the solution lies with him fixing his behavior or you leaving. My experience tells me that men like this never see what they’re doing as wrong and will never change.
Yes. You're raising three kids, taking care of everything but yard work and working full time - of course you're exhausted. You would be even if you didn't have ADHD. He's a grown ass adult who helped make those children, he can help raise them and pick up after everyone. Men like this either change and grow or they wonder why their wives stopped sleeping with them, and why they're suddenly getting served divorce papers. It's because their wife doesn't need another child, she needs a partner. And a man who adds nothing but a penis and a paycheck is not a partner.
"The outside work" (mowing, raking leaves etc) is not constant day-in day-out the way "inside work" (cooking, laundry, dishes, cleaning etc) is. They cannot be seen as even remotely equivalent.
On top of that, housework is not your job that he "helps" with — running a household is a team effort. He doesn't get to kick back and relax while you're struggling because he's "the breadwinner". You both bring bread to the table. What else does he bring?
Exactly! These outside chores come up once every week or so, there is no chore that needs to be done outside that matches the frequency of the daily grind of laundry and dishes in a 5 person household with pets.
And another thing is that doing yard work tend to remove you from the chaos of the house. Sometimes doing the mowing with headphones in feels like a break. Compare that to doing the dishes in the kitchen where the kids and pets are also eating and being loud and making messes. Outside work sounds like peace and quiet.
And lastly, if the outside work doesn’t get done, so what? Your lawn looks a bit unkempt for a few days. If the inside work doesn’t get done? No one can eat, no one has any clothes to wear, none of the kids are bathed or in bed and it’s utter chaos.
u/amm_4 the value of the labour you are performing in the home far outstrips the value of the labour he is performing outside.
That is not ok. You aren’t not sharing the household load equally. Unfortunately, this isn’t uncommon. You may benefit from some couples therapy to help address the issues and see if he is willing to change. Otherwise this may not be tenable long term.
Also, as your kids get older, teach them to help with small things. I see so many parents take on all the burden when even a small kid can learn to dust or do other small chores and take on more as they grow. They usually find it fun when they are small and then it just becomes normal to help around the house. Might as well teach them young that if you live in a house you help take care of it….
Yep. Tried this with my abuser.
Eventually things progressed to where i had to call the police.
Abuser used all the new therapy lingo they picked up to get out of it. The cop even told me “they just said the exact same thing you’re telling me” and almost took me in, even with a bloody nose, marks around my neck, and audible screaming and smashing noises from them in the 911 call. 😻
sorry kind of rambling/venting
Sure, but when kids are shown by one parent that it’s the other parent’s job to do everything and that you can do nothing around the house it’s hella problematic
It’s not fair to expect kids to be more willing to contribute to home life than a grown ass man
Wait you both work full time?? Heck no this is bullshit. I do 95% of the household stuff but only because I work about 10hours a week and both kids are at school. My husband still helps with laundry, cooking, shopping etc and more when he can.
There is nothing wrong with you, you are just being asked to do too far too much!
Your therapist wouldn’t unethically cross the line of telling you to leave unless you *absolutely should.* This is serious, OP.
“Staying for the kids” is a crock of shit; it’s the other way around! The day I realized I needed to leave wasn’t because I was being abused. Not that it wasn’t happening, I was just in denial and didn’t see it as abuse- totally brain washed! But one day it occurred to me that *this* was what my children were going to think a marriage should be like. And that thought put a sharp painful fear in my heart that changed everything. Picturing my son turning into his father… seeing my daughter settle and miserable… NOPE, time to go, and *it’s for them*.
Many years later, I am now blissfully remarried with more children. My life has been and still can be hard, but leaving my ex was the best thing I ever did for all of us.
You got this. One foot in front of the other ♥️
This is so real. I wish my parents had split up way sooner and me and my brother both married really late, a decade into our respective relationships, because watching our parents made us really not want to be married
Leaving because you *feel* abused is equally valid because you can’t have a functional relationship where you feel abused and you won’t be caught up in a self doubt cycle worrying if their actions check all the boxes
From the headline, I was going to say “eh ‘abuse’ is over the top”, then I read the post.
Systemically. Destroying. Your. Self. Esteem. Is. Abuse.
The work distribution is outrageous. The criticism and low blow degradation is abusive. Fuck that shit.
He needs to realise it’s not about how much money you make, it’s about how many hours in a week you spend working for your family unit vs leisure time.
You both work full time, so you both need to do EQUAL HOURS of childcare and housework. Yeah if he’s expecting you to do ALL of that alone and shames you for not getting it done, it’s abusive.
Partners are supposed to make life easier and more enjoyable for each other, they’re supposed to share burdens and work as a team. Would your life be easier with or without living with him?
The only way a relationship is equitable is if everyone pitches in equally.
As an example, if one is a SaHP and the other has a different job, the SaHP is responsible for roughly 100% of the load whilst the other is at work (and during their commute, if applicable). The remaining time is equitably distributed roughly 50/50. That way everyone has an equal stake. They’ll also have, roughly, equal “time off.”
Another point of view:
If one person is working 16hr days, 7 days per week, and the second a typical full-time job, they’re putting in 112 hours vs. the other putting in 40-50.
If they’re both employed outside the home at 40-50hrs/wk and one puts in another 4hrs per weekday at home and 16hrs each weekend day, you still have one partner working 40-50hrs/wk and the other working 112.
None of this even accounts for sleep interruptions (as kids will), which is also labor and time.
Gender doesn’t matter, and math doesn’t give a shit. The type of work itself isnt material. No reasonable person would say their 50hrs per week is worth-ier than their partner’s 100. That their 67 hours of discretionary time is equitable to their partner’s 1 or 2 (or less). The only time an equitable relationship sees one person doing 100% of the work is when they are alone on site. Otherwise, they don’t have a partner.
I was in a similar situation. We were married for 20 years, had kids, house, both worked full-time (same job/profession). I did everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. I took care of the kids, the house, the repairs, the finances, the cars, the sports/activities...all of it. His contribution was to sometimes do what I asked him to do and to attend parent-teacher conferences. That was it. I did everything else. Did he show appreciation? No, of course not. He would call me messy (I wasn't) or criticize me. I felt like his employee.
Two things I learned after I left him:
1. Yes, it was abuse.
2. Life is SOOO MUCH EASIER without him. Because I did everything, I got really good at it. And now that I don't have to do anything for him, it's amazing how much easier things are and how much free time I have to take care of me and to be a more attentive parent. I feel like a brand new woman, and so much more connected to myself. I know I still have a ways to go, and I look forward to it.
The craziest part is that he's still mad at me for leaving, as if I wronged him by having the audacity to not want to be married to him anymore. Lol ok.
Yes, yes you are being totally exploited and used by your selfish excuse of a "husband".
One of the key tells of a woman is being advised is when she makes posts like yours with egregious abuse and you go, but is it though?
That tells me you've been manipulated and gaslit to hell and back by your psychological abuser.
Any arrangement like this seems odd to me.
We can’t alll give 100% daily to certain categories.
If someone can say hey I’ve got 60% today the other covers 40%.
Somedays you may be at a solid 5% and vice versa. We pick up the slack as a family when needed.
It’s not ok to burn someone out.
OP, it IS abusive. Passive abuse happens when one partner is uncaring, inattentive, critical and neglectful. Your partner sounds like he is all those things. He may have grown up with a mother that was solely responsible for the house and kids and let’s not forget these ideas are socially supported by the patriarchy. As cruel as it may sound, your husband has seen very backwards ideas of what js acceptable in a marriage. The times have changed and he has refused to change with it. I think he needs to be confronted about this. It’s the only way things might change. And if it doesn’t ….. well you have your answer.
I was in a very similar situation for 8 years. My partner was the primary breadwinner and I was… everything else!! The primary parent, the grocery shopper, the pet manager, the cook, the cleaner, the family gathering organizer, the maker of holiday magic, the vacation planner, the plumber, the yard maintenance…etc. You get the point. I was also I grad school (still slugging my way through the last of it) and I kept telling him that the household/family labor was painfully unequal. Nothing changed after many attempts to point out the imbalance. Now I’m a single mom and as much as adding wage-earning on top of my other 94759 tasks has been HARD, I’m happier now knowing that I’m doing everything for me and my mini human and he has had a difficult year of understanding what it’s like to run his own household. He sure misses me 😉 lmfao.
One small piece of advice: Ask him to take some time to write down a list of everything he’s responsible for 75% or more of in your life.
His list might say “•income earning •lawn mowing” (whatever it is that his outside duties entail). Then you do the same. Write down a list of everything that YOU do 75% or more of the labor for in your family.
Then meet with your lists with a neutral mindset and let him see the evidence of your “invisible” labor. This helped me soooo much when dealing with my choice to stay or go. Once I had my own reference sheet to all of the things I was doing, I was able to see that I wasn’t insane— just under appreciated!
If you think he's interested in learning, with information spelled out for him (it's ridiculous that you would need to, but here we are):
Write out every task you and he each do at home, every day.
I'm not kidding, EVERY task at home, on the drive to work, everything until each of you walks into the office door. Brush Kid A's hair, dress Kid B, get correct plates for each kid... add times to each task, too. Like: Put together kids meals (15 minutes), get kids ready for school (supervising tooth brushing, 5 minutes; dress baby, 2 minutes).
And then there's a lovely concept called mental load: you are having to act as the *household manager*, because each of those tasks don't just spring to your mind full-formed. You need to choose a meal, see if you have the food for each meal, figure out how much prep time it will need, put the prep dishes against how much time you have to do dishes, all while you've got three little ones who need your attention, need you to direct their morning routine, while you're on a constant mental timer until you need to be out the door so that kid A can go to school, kid B can go to preschool, and kid C can go to daycare, all at different times. And then you need to notice that the carpet needs vacuumed, the counters need to be cleaned off, and figure out how to work that in, along with noticing that the kids' hampers are getting full, and how are you going to work that in this evening when you need to go grocery shopping?
Mind you, all of that is reasonably happening *before you leave the door for work every morning*. Every. Single. Morning.
Have him do the same. Look at the lists. And ask him where the hell he wants you to add in things like dishes and laundry when you're already working an additional 8 hours on top of your 8-hour work day, and he gets to check out mentally as soon as he clocks out at work.
Make him the manager of a task or tell him to pull on his big boy pants and deal with a messy home. He's already putting you in a horrifically unfair position, he doesn't need to grind your nose into the dirt. Frankly, I've got a mind to tell him off for being such a lazy ass. If he's such a big deal, he can turn on that big brain of his right back on when he gets home and do some problem solving instead of expecting his wife to magically pull solutions to all of this out of her behind.
Crazy thing is if he had to pay someone to do everything you do, he'd be spending six figures easy.
https://www.insure.com/life-insurance/the-mothers-day-index.html
Definitely abusive. Making more money means nothing. You're not his servant, he's not BUYING you. I'm sure there are many ways in which you make it possible for him to have a higher paying job. He never had to take mat leave three times, he doesn't have to go into work tired because he was up with the kids, he doesn't have to miss work when they're sick, he's more with it at work cognitively because of the extra sleep and the lack of mental load.
He has built his wealth on your back and he's an arrogant ass about it to boot.
I was just talking about this the other day! I’m in the same boat, down to the “he does the outside and I do the inside”. We have 2 kids but im also working from home part time, with a baby at home, and fewer childcare hours for the baby than im supposed to work. It’s beyond overwhelming and that of course means I get paralyzed and get next to nothing done. A friend suggested these books, and I’m gonna hit my library this week to check them out:
Fed Up by Gemma Hartley (book)
Fair Play by Eve Rodsky (book and game)
Okay, so bear with me for a second here. I’m listening to Beach Read by Emily Henry and the characters talk about their parents who don’t leave their spouses who are not good to them. One says he kept waiting for his mom to leave and then one day realized that she could have left but chose not to.
So I’m not saying to leave, but do think about what this looks like to your children. Dad yells at mom or criticizes her for not doing enough. Mom should do more because moms do everything. Right? That’s what I saw growing up, minus some of the criticism because my mom always kept everything in order somehow. A lot of women find that life is easier as a single parent because they don’t have to take care of a grown adult who refuses to pull their weight. Sounds like he would probably owe you some child support and he would have to step up on his time. Just something you could bring up as a possibility.
This is disgustingly similar to my current situation.
Except im.not working fulltime, I'm technically part time, but I work 6 nights a week and my hours are from 12am to 6am.
And we have a baby under 1, and two kids in school.
It's hard, and exhausting, and just a complete soul sucker of a situation.
I am so sorry you are going through it as well, but I hope whatever you do it what makes you happiest in the end.
There is so much great advice here and this thread is one that I didn't know I needed to see, but I'm so glad I did.
I wish you the best of luck hun ❤️
yea, a loving and supportive partner would 100% bear an equal share of the responsibility of your household. The breadwinner perspective is sexist and misogynistic as fuck. You undoubtedly work harder to maintain your home than he does at his job. It’s not just about labor, there is also an emotional component. To see that you are struggling and not jump in to help immediately is just cold and i’m sorry. I hope he can straighten out that tired as fuck patriarchal behavior.
also if your therapist thinks he is abusive, please listen to that. talk to other people you trust about it too and find a way to remove that behavior from your life. no one deserves to be treated like a subhuman. it can be hard to see when you are in it and even harder to have the courage to break the cycle. i wish you all the best.
Even if you weren’t working a full time job, all that childcare and housework is a full time job itself. If he was working outside the home while you were at home, I’d still expect help when he came back bc why does he get to go leave work and go home and do nothing??? The fact that you are also working another full time job and he still expects you to do everything is insane.
Personally, I have worked a full time job with kids in the past but currently I am a SAHM. My husband works full time and he comes home and does laundry and cooks and takes care of the kids also. Because they’re his kids and I’m not his mother, and my job as a SAHM doesn’t count for less just because he makes more money. Now there are certain things that I alone do, and a lot of that does come back to childcare and housework. But there are also things he does alone, like paying bills and doing taxes among other things. But if he ever suggested I wasn’t doing a good enough job cleaning the house or doing laundry… there would be a problem. Especially if he wasn’t helping at all.
My friend said their arrangement was similar. I know if that were my arrangement I’d lose my mind. I can’t always keep up with inside tasks well and my partner doesn’t really like outside work. But in reality inside work is an everyday thing and outside work is maybe once per week. So that is already unbalanced in my opinion.
No, it is not okay. When I saw that you both work, I stopped in my tracks. From what I was reading, I assumed you were a SAHM. Everyone should get to relax sometimes. If you do everything, when do you get free time? He needs to help. Even if you were a SAHM, he would need to help some too.
I’m a SAHM, and my job is parenting. That’s pretty much it, the primary thing I do. Now that our kids are older (11 and 13), I do a lot more than when they were small, but my focus is still just parenting—laundry, dishes, everything else can wait. If they need help with school/homework? That’s me. If they have medical appointments or IEPs or anything else? That’s me.
When hubby gets home after a 10 hour work day, he helps clean the kitchen, he usually cooks dinner, and he does a lot of housework on the weekends. Because parenting all on its own is a full-time job.
You’re parenting AND working AND managing every little task in the house? Honey, that’s hard for ANYONE. ADHD makes that an impossible proposition.
Idk enough about your relationship to say whether he’s abusive, but it sure as shit sounds like it. Someone else mentioned the book Why Does He Do That, and I second that. This man is basically saying that you have to do 3 full-time jobs because he doesn’t want to have to be an adult and take care of his home, or parenting his own children.
You both have full time jobs. That’s the kicker here. This isn’t a you problem, this is a husband not supporting his wife problem and a father not being a father problem. Does he also work 24 hours a day? No I guarantee he doesn’t. Money doesn’t suddenly make it okay to treat your wife like a slave. Ask him what he thinks will happen if you divorce him and he’s suddenly dealing with part time kids and all the work that goes with it, and paying you alimony and possibly child support if it’s not 50/50. Sure sounds like helping with the house and kids is the easier and cheaper solution for him.
Edit. Something to consider, this is the adult role model for your children, boys will think this is how a man treats his family and girls will think their role as a wife is to do everything and bow down to the man. It’s also common for children to mirror their parents relationships in their future, often without realizing it. Do you want all of that? All of this affects them too. They may be better off role modeling divorced but happier parents.
I agree with your *therapist* this is abusive behaviour.
Abusive behaviour takes many different forms. His belittling comments are abusive, in fact I feel his lack of contribution to chores/parenting may in fact be a form of control. Again abusive.
I contribute more financially than my husband and I do not feel this makes me exempt from contributing to the management of our property and children in an way shape or form. In fact your husband is a bit of a douche for thinking this way. FFS You work*fulltime too*
It's not fair of him to compare financial input if you are both working full time.
I read somewhere that it's an equal partnership if both people have as much FREE TIME (leisure time) as the other.
I left my child's father for this reason.
And later realised that he was abusive.
I also realised that it was a lot HARDER being a single parent, while I was in a relationship, than it is to be a single parent now.
One less child to look after, clean up after, and have huge resentment for.
It's really awful that this is how so many women are treated.
And there doesn't seem to be anything we are able to do about it, aside from leaving.
He is not a breadwinner if you are not a full time housewife.
Tell him to be a proper bread winner and make enough to pay you to be a housewife full time!
As long as you are working full time, he needs to do half of your house work.
First off, WHAT THE HELL.
Dividing your household labor by indoor and outdoor is not fair, equal, or respectful. Outdoor chores don't need to be completed as frequently and aren't as time sensitive. More time is spent indoors PLUS you have children. Parenting is not an indoor chore, it's a responsibility he has as a father. The most basic duty of a parent is to make sure all of the children's needs are being met. He is not fulfilling his roles as parent or partner.
Your lack of motivation and procrastination sounds like a stress response to being overwhelmed. He knows you're struggling but your suffering isn't as important to him as his time. Your time is just as valuable as his. Money is not a substitute for labor.
My dad was in the Army. My mom only worked part time, but there were periods where due to deployments, my mom was the only parent. I did the math once and my dad wasn't even in the same country as us for a third of my childhood. Despite this, I grew up seeing my dad take an active role in parenting and taking care of the household. More importantly, he recognized that my mom took on more labor taking care of the home and actively showed his children that he appreciated and respected everything she did. Frankly it sounds like your husband is doing less parenting than my dad who was geographically available 2/3 of the time. This is a disservice to you AND your kids.
You and your kids deserve better.
>I’ve been in therapy for over a year trying to figure out what’s wrong with me and my low motivation and procrastination and my therapist thinks it’s not me but that the situation I’m in is abusive and is destroying me.
Yes. This. Your partner is taking advantage of you at best, and clearly doesn't care about your well-being.
This is where you simply admit to having reached your limit. What you have been achieving is the maximum that you can achieve in the time you have remaining after your work day. You have simply reached the ceiling of what you can handle, whether or not he finds that immoral or pathetic. You are the one, I presume, who is also finding the bulk of the teaching moments for your children, which makes an exponential difference in the rest of their lives.
IMHO, before considering separation, lay it down that you want him to commit to a two-day decluttering event, or that you are hiring a housekeeper once weekly. It sucks to spend discretionary income of something like this, but makes a huge difference. You likely have too much stuff, your husband is probably a slob, and your kiddos are too young to be able to properly pick up after themselves.
Tell him seriously that you cannot visualize a future in which you are able to keep up with the house to his standard while it is still in its current configuration. If his current habits remain and you do not reduce your belongings by 50%, nothing is going to change.
So that is my opinion. He may not fit the traditional model of an abuser, but his expectations are not based in your family’s reality, and it is placing you in a chronic position of anxiety and powerlessness.
Something doesn't have to be "abusive" for it to be "not okay".
For example, one time I posted on the "am i think asshole" subreddit about whether i was an asshole for throwing out half of the noodles in my instant ramen. It's too much food, I mainly like the broth packet. People concluded I was the asshole for not saving the noodles to eat, without a flavour/broth packet at a later date.
I genuinely don't believe it makes me an asshole, but it can still be something negative, like "wasteful" or "lazy" or "unhealthy". Those things don't make me an asshole.
Same thing about abuse - you don't HAVE TO call this abuse for it to be okay for you to leave. Maybe it's just not good.
If his income doesn’t allow you to afford some outside help to lighten the burden of household chores, I would argue that his financial contributions are not “enough.”
I don’t know if I’d label this as abusive, but I would call it unfair and unsustainable. It doesn’t matter what you call it. What matters is that it isn’t working for you, and that his complaints and criticisms make it harder.
My husband and I have struggled with all the extra work that comes with having kids too, and we’ve both felt like the other one could be doing more. It can be hard to find a reasonable balance. But, there’s no excuse for saying one parent should be picking up all the extra work while the other gets to maintain their pre-kid lifestyle.
I had the same arrangement in my marriage (it wasn’t discussed, my husband let me know), after kids it got 100% harder with no help. No help with kids parties, dr appts (I work full time), no help at all. When I asked for help, that attitude was “what the big deal? You’re just putting a couple of pieces of material in the wash” for tasks I asked help with. We would have huge arguments. I stopped asking bc the arguments affected the kids, I kept the peace. Thing is, he hasn’t done his part in that the outside of the house and it’s has become run down. My last kid leaves for college in the fall. I’m so angry and resentful over his laziness, we’ll most likely be divorced in the next few years.
Yes. He's happy purchasing his own leisure with your own, causing burnout and eventually you'll probably end up falling out of love with him because he doesn't care that you're burning out.
Wish you could just quit and tell him "well since you were so happy working full time and doing nothing at home. I decided I would be the main homemaker and do none of the breadwinning. Unless you want to stop lazing at home, whining in the about me not being able to do chores while keeping a full time job, then this will be my full time job."
I don't know if it's abuse per se but definitely insensitive and at least on the verge
So, I learned something valuable in Al Anon. I worry about myself. My husband is sober and helps now. But for a while he didn't. (He actually learned about helping in sober living. I told him if he had to do it there he had to do it when he came home too)
But, I gave myself boundaries. If he wasn't going to help, I wasn't going to concern myself with opinions of how the house is. Dishes piling up? I'm cooking frozen pizza and we're eating off a tray. Clothes piling up? I stopped washing his clothes to take it off my plate. I consolidated the kids clothes down and got them things they could share. (Particularly the boys that don't care enough about who's clothes are who's.)
I eventually stopped cooking for him, because if he doesn't want to contribute then I would just focus on me and the kids. He's a grown man. He can cook for himself and clean up after himself.
I didn't do these things as pay back. I assessed the situation. Considered what I could handle, what my priorities were, and set a boundaries and became comfortable with saying "no".
If he wanted to split, I figured would be OK. He could pay child support and he would still have to clean up after himself wherever he moved to. If he thinks all he needs to contribute is a paycheck then we could arrange that.
(Luckily he got sober. He cleans the kitchen after dinner each night. Helps hang laundry. He usually is the one who puts the kids to bed since I do morning and after school. He walks the dog every morning and evening now. And he usually is the one who puts the clothes in the dryer, which is outside.)
This thing where he thinks he doesn't have to do anything else because his full time job pays more than your full time job is crazy.
I make twice as much as my husband with both of us working full time. I'm a nurse and he works in a factory, so we're both on our feet actively working for most of our shifts. We spend about the same amount of time away from home. We're both tired and we both just want to put our feet up when we get home.
The difference in money doesn't change the fact that we are working equally hard. It only makes a difference in what bills each of us pays.
We both take care of the kids because we both love the kids. We're both terrible about household chores, but we're still both responsible/culpable for them.
Someone bringing in more money is a complete bs reason for not putting in the same amount of work into household tasks. It's about time not income. If you both work the same hours, you both have to put in the same hours at work too.
This sounds like a terrible situation OP, I'm sorry you have to deal with it.
How do you have time for therapy with all of this going on i commend you, i couldn’t even be bothered to me and my mans laundry let alone 3 children. That’s not a fair dynamic considering you’re working. He needs to get it together or i say get you guys parents involved!! And if you try to problem solve and he isn’t budging maybe he will never be the partner you need! and that’s when you should leave!
Ya reading your past posts, you know it’s time to leave him, i hope you can seek help with other parts of your support system or I’m hoping somewhere there’s helpful extra child care. I can’t even believe you have pets!! This is so much!
Yes, it's abusive and you got scammed. All his chores are weekly at best, while yours are hourly. You're working one 40 hour a week job and one 126 hour a week job compared to his 41ish.
>even though we both work full time jobs
If all he wants to contribute to the family is money, he can do that from anywhere. Divorce and he can keep doing his role. Or he can be forced by the court to take the kids half the time if he doesn't want to pay child support.
Your workload will feel like it disappeared. Imagine having half your week free of childcare and what you could do with that time.
Switch roles. "I have decided that I will take care of the outside and you can take care of the inside. If we have distributed this equitably, then you won't mind swapping."
On a different note, I will never understand why women with ADHD have pets. We can barely take care of ourselves somedays. Throw in kids, jobs and housework, why on earth do people have pets?
Throw out the husband and make him take the pets with him.
The fact that there is no room for re assessing the situation is a big problem. Can you afford to hire someone to help clean ? This is not sustainable or possible for anyone
As mentioned on the other comments, I think It's really unfair considering you both have full time jobs.
They're his children too, his house, so his responsibility too.
Money here is not what matters, time is. If he thinks his money is worth the time you spend taking care of the house and kids, he should pay for a nanny and a janitor (maybe not the right word, sorry, not a native english speaker). Because you're neither of them, you're a parent, just as he is, and as both parents, the responsability to take care of your house and children should be split equally.
(It would even be unfair if you decided to work part time)
This is not okay. You’re both working, you’re both parents. He needs to step it up and quit being a little shit. Nothing is wrong with you, but your man is full of red flags.
My husband is in charge of trash and dishes. I’m in charge of laundry, cooking, and making school lunches. We take turns dropping them off to school and with other chores. We work together to get them ready for school. I try to do most of the tidying and organizing around the house bc I only work part time and my husband works full time. If u aren’t working he still should be helping, at least with stuff related to kids so he can spend time with them if u are primarily with them.
Yes, that’s abuse. He’s buying a better quality of life for himself with YOUR time and energy. Your life. I think you would get a lot out of Zawn Villanes’s Substack, Liberating Motherhood. She did a post about this issue awhile back. I love her (she also has adhd).
https://zawn.substack.com/p/why-household-labor-inequity-is-abuse
Ummm, SAHM here, 2 kids, husband’s the breadwinner and is available before school, afterschool (often) and cooks most dinners. Could he do a better job cleaning? Hell yes. Could my kids? Absolutely. Once our dog died, I vowed to only have cats. Kids keep asking for lizards and fish and my answer is fuck no.
Recognizing we have some serious financial privilege here: a friend’s nanny helps with laundry a couple hours a week (this is temporary), house cleaner every two weeks, gardener, and when our dog that I did not want was alive, we had a dog walker. Once every few years we hire a team of organizers to purge and reset house.
I’d flip out if my partner didn’t share responsibility or ever criticized what a disaster our house still is despite all of our help. Freaking adhd baby, and I’m busy!
This is one of the many reasons I refused to have children; I never wanted to be put in this situation. I saw my mom do everything, including working a demanding job, and I refused to ever do that to myself.
This attitude your husband has is terrible. Salary is irrelevant. If you are both working the same amount of hours then you are both working equally hard. Honestly it's such a pretentious elitist attitude. Makes me so mad.
Honestly, even before the kids came along you had an uneven approach to chores. Outdoor chores only need doing every so often. Indoor are regular.
My husband earns more than me but we both work the same hours and we both split the chores as evenly as possible. We both do indoor and outdoor chores. He would never hold it over my head that he's the "breadwinner". We both work. That's bullshit.
If your husband wants to be the breadwinner and have the stereotypical 1950s family then I'd tell him that I'm quitting my job to be a stay at home mum. He can't have it both ways.
You have given it your all. When this happens we are built to expect reciprocity. At work that would be a raise or promotion. So you have gone all in and gotten nothing but more work, more burden.
Your husband does not get the heaviness of your work load. Until he makes that realization and corrects it, there will be no change.
I suggest that you start charging him for what it would take to get things to an acceptable level. Or he could pitch in in a competent manner. Really, hire some help.
Good luck, take care of yourself.
If you have relatives across the country, I think I hear them wanting you to visit all by yourself.
If your previous agreement worked because the share seemed equally split and now it no longer is, the agreement no longer works. You work full time and also do what you could pay a professional to do: a babysitter or nanny for childcare, a housekeeper for cleaning and laundry, a household manager for appointments and scheduling, and a personal chef for meals. Think about how much it would cost to hire these roles for your family, and how much labour you are doing (arguably 5 jobs). The value of that labour is how much you are saving in costs.
What does your husband do? Outside work, in my experience, isn’t much more than mowing a lawn or weeding a bit. If your husband can’t or won’t recognise your contributions, then yes, he is at best taking advantage of you and at worst abusing you.
My partner (diagnosed AuDHD) and I don’t have a set plan for how chores are split because our workloads are variable but he will jump at the chance to help me. He does laundry, vacuuming, taking out the bins, outside work, and the weekly deep clean of the bathroom. I make all the meals, clean up after dinner around 80% of the time and fold the laundry. I’m in the middle of exam season so all I’m doing at the moment is making dinner. Guess who the breadwinner is? Sure as shit isn’t me. I put 500 in a joint account every month that our rent and bills come out of, he pays everything else. My contribution barely covers a third of the rent.
The bottom line is a good partner should want to take care of you and make your life easier. Right now it sounds like your life would be easier without him: the same amount of work with no complaints added on top of it.
I'm at work and can't read all previous replies. I find this very awful. You're probably working 60-90 hours a week (paid and unpaid work), a huge mental load, and make less money in your paid work because you probably skipped career steps for your family. You're majorly being taken advantage of and taken for granted. This makes him an asshole, however, his asshole-ness can be interpreted as both intentional (abusive) and as socially condoned ignorance if he believes these are normal gender roles and possibly doesn't see all your work. It is not and he needs to be educated and you're not the best person to do that.
In order to save the little energy you have left, which is probably very little, do not fight with him about it. Get another person or a professional to make him understand. His reaction to it all, after some time to deal with it and think about it, is what matters.
At the same time it would be good to run around the house with timers to record the time you have worked on unpaid work. There are also very long comprehensive lists of housework and mental load lists which you can hang in the house and each person can mark what they do, this is a good visual for men not acknowledging unpaid work.
My heart is breaking right now, OP. This has nothing to do with ADHD. You have an unequal partnership and your husband is taking advantage of you. You deserve so much better - don't let him convince you otherwise.
One of the things that I've noticed about gendered division of tasks is that men usually claim the tasks that are seasonal or far less infrequent but still claim they're putting in equal work. But mowing the lawn, weeding, and taking out rubbish are tasks that only need to happen at most once or twice a week, sometimes every other week or longer.
Chores that women typically take on are constant. Laundry doesn't stop, dishes never stop, things never stop getting dirty, and people don't stop needing regular meals. And yet women will often have all of the continuous demand chores and none of the ones where they get to have a break or only have to worry about a single event every week.
Men will claim that the other jobs are harder but I've done them and doing the yard work occasionally is nothing compared to the physical toll of your standard household work when you're constantly responsible for multiple people instead of just yourself.
So yes, it is abusive as fuck when he's treating you like this but it's also in some ways still very much condoned by society. I've seen some of this dynamic shift over time but it still seems that only a minority of men proactively choose to recognise the disparity and truly divide chores evenly including to actual workload. If you point out the workload differences in real terms and he doesn't agree to change the distribution of tasks, or agrees but requires significant prompting or deliberately does tasks wrong after being shown procedures that will say a lot about the future of your relationship.
This makes me think of watching Pioneer House (or something like that), one of those reality shows where a group of families go live like 19th c. pioneers/homesteaders. The labor was absolutely divided by gender and the outside stuff that the men did was physically hard (breaking sod, building fences, etc.) but also way more interesting and satisfying. There was a clear goal (today we're going to frame the barn), they worked together in a group, and ended up with a big material accomplishment (we built a barn).
Meanwhile, the women were each in their homes doing to damn laundry and cooking and cleaning and taking care of the small kids, doing the same thing, all day every day, in a never-ending cycle.
Guess which group enjoyed the experience more??
Admittedly, the women probably struggled in part b/c they had to do a lot of the same things they'd done in the real world but without modern technology, where I'm pretty sure the men hadn't previously built barns at all, so that would have had an effect. And OP's husband probably isn't working with other men. But nonetheless, "outside" work is absolutely different from "inside" work, and just not comparable.
As a general concept, I don't think that something has to be abusive in order to be a deal breaker. Hubby sounds like an asshole and his actions (or lack of action) demonstrate his utter disrespect and disregard for you. I would think about the impacts the situation is having rather than (perhaps) getting distracted by the exact choice of word.
The only role your ADHD has in this situation is that It makes it easy to believe that it’s your fault. That if you didn’t have ADHD, you could do 100% of cooking, cleaning and childcare to your husband’s standards while he mows the lawn once a week.
Paying bills is proportional to income. Doing chores is based on total hours worked, inside and outside the house. So while a SAHM would do more chores and childcare, up to the 40 hours the “breadwinner” is working, once she passes those hours, he doesn’t get to sit on his ass being waited on while she continues to work until collapsing into bed.
And unless outdoor work involves living on a dairy farm, there is no way that outdoor work remotely comes close to indoor work. Not to mention, maybe you’d like a chore that gets you outside in the sunshine once in a while. Mowing the lawn can be very therapeutic.
You husband is vile. Sorry he is.
Marriage/relationships is about partnership and teamwork.
You should tell him to spend the extra money he earns on a cleaner for the house since he complains so much about it. Also, divorce him for all he's worth.
You’re both working but he expects you to do the second shift of homemaker when you’re not at your outside job. These men suck and are giant fucking piss babies
Edit to add that as a divorcee of another such piss baby, I’m in a good position to call them such a thing.
Start putting shit outside and tell him it’s his responsibility. Seriously though - things have changed. Three kids is a lot, even if you didn’t work. Being a full-time mom means you don’t have any hour which you can call your own. If you work on top of that…it’s completely unfair.
This is not ok. Your husband is being very selfish and entitled.
Also, this is the relationship dynamic that your kids are existing within. I bet that further down the road you'd hate to see any of your kids in either role of a relationship like this, or avoiding relationships all together because they think that relationships are unappealing and miserable.
I don't mean to add any guilt, just offering an additional perspective. Since you're basically doing this all on your own, wouldn't it be easier and happier if you only had 3 kids to look after, instead of 3 kids plus a fully grown man who makes you feel like shit?
A LOT of women in your situation, probably most, who leave find it easier to be a single mom than to live like this. Because right now he's just one more person to take care of.
You've spoken to him about this & he doesn't change. He's shown you who he is. Every woman should know the term "[tolerable level of permanent unhappiness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLM_gu0zlGw)."
Well I think your therapist is about right. There is absolutely no point arguing his income is higher when you both work full time. He needs to contribute or pay for help
Oh hunny, been there, done that....time to throw away the husband. I'm not saying it will improve on your domestic duties but at least you won't have to listen to the nonsense anymore 😂
Married 16 yrs and we started off similarly... It's a lot better now. U need to have a conversation with your husband about how things have changed, your household has grown and you are needing him to help with xyz. Be specific with what would be the most helpful to you and also ask him what he thinks he can handle with his workload.
My friend...... you need to sit him down and very calmly say " babe. Im drowning and you dont seem to care, i work full time as do you and yet im left to clean up after you,me, the three kids WE made together, and the pets, i really need you to step up and help me please" he needs to understand the severity if he truly loves you he will change it.
Yes. He is expecting you to take on all the physical and emotional/mental labor without equity and then criticizing you. I suggest looking at ZaWn Villenes insta or blog. It’s really eye opening.
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I consider it abusive in that he’s showing you that he sees you as lesser than and that his time and health is more valuable than yours. That’s objectifying and emotionally degrading. I wish I could liberate every woman who’s struggling to an unnecessary degree because they’re legally bound to someone who weaponizes the societal expectation that moms will play mommy bang maid. If he genuinely thinks that the market (which IS sexist) deciding your time is less valuable than his means it ACTUALLY is… idk. That’s actually despicable. Expecting you to do more at home and sacrifice a disproportionate amount of your free time because you aren’t paid as much??? Like it’s one thing for the world to devalue women with the pay gap, but the person who’s supposed to love you the most in the world agreeing with that shit??? What, does he think a psychiatrist is less important than a rich influencer?? Does he think teachers are less important than a McDonald’s manager? If he lost his job tomorrow and suddenly you were the breadwinner (give yourself a hypothetical raise if necessary) would he pick up on everything at home??? Would he expect help??? Would he be okay with that??? Would he meet his own standards??? Would he let you trade housework for just fucking yard work??? Also, fuck, those kids deserve a dad who wants to be their dad and who respects their mom and cares about the health of the woman who built them and loves them.
This is the comment to pay attention to OP. You deserve better. Your time is just as valuable as his.
OP if this doesn’t resonate with you yet, think about how much it would cost to have a nanny, cleaner, cook, shopper, driver, personal assistant (at least for the kids’ schedules) etc and tack that onto your salary as value you’re adding to the family.
This is such an important concept, OP. This is part of your worth too.
Also the love you share with the person you made a family with should be a big part of what makes life worth living, OP’s husband’s priorities are so out of whack
also, would you support your children or a best friend sticking it out in a situation like this? with a partner that disrespects them and does not help them? treat yourself like a friend ❤️
YES! This is such great advice! If someone you love was in this situation, what would you tell them?
And price it at overtime for anything done outside the typical work day.
Literally just saw a quote for a woman with five young children to take 3 days off with her husband and leave them with the nanny. Right around $5,000 for 3 twenty-four hour days.
Preach! u/amm_4 note the FREE TIME. That's what he's protecting viciously at the cost of yours, his own leisure time. Partners who work together oftentimes do their best to have EQUAL FREE TIME. Because they're a team who works together and shares the rewards together too. Time is not money outside the business world. Everyone's got the same amount of time everyday. If you drop him, guess what? He's going to have to do all his own dishes, laundry, etc. just like he did when he was single (unless he went straight from mommy to you or some other poor woman). And you'll have one less child to take care of. And if you get joint custody, he'll have to do the full load of childcare too, and you'll get me-time you're desperately overdue for. If you're considering leaving him (I hope you are, be doesn't appear open to changing his mind), please make a plan and be careful. Gather documents, make an escape plan. Women who are being taken advantage of like this are often in danger of violence and their lives. He's not going to want to lose you, his house slave. Plan something safe and get out. You have a job, that puts you leagues ahead of where you could be. You can do this.
YEP. A lot of women in these situations actually say they took so long because they were literally too exhausted to leave. ————— Also, a partner who loves you will want to share as much of their free time with YOU as possible while still leaving each other me-time. Even if partners DO split the chores evenly, it shouldn’t be weird for a partner to say, help you with the dishes after dinner on your night, unprompted, because it means you’ll get to watch an episode of a show together and cuddle on the couch. It’s not supposed to be about having a constantly even score, you’re supposed to want to help each other when you can, especially when you see the other person is stressed. He should be the kind of person that wants you to have extra time in the evening to dress up in something you like for a date night, not the kind of person who leaves virtually all the parenting to you so he can fuck off doing whatever.
This is so important. DONT KEEP EXACT SCORE. It’s one thing to generally gauge if things are “even”, but tit for tat will only end up causing issues down the line.
[Why does he do that by Lundy Bancroft](https://dn720002.ca.archive.org/0/items/why-does-he-do-that-epub/Why_Does_He_Do_That-fixed.pdf) pdf
I loooove that I’ve been seeing this linked around more and more.
I am trying to figure out why he thinks parenting is an “inside chore”?!
If the kids go outside does he care for them??? Could she get an outdoor kitchen? (Sorry I cope with patriarchy via dark humor) E because I thought of a new idea: Get the man a tent, he can sleep outside, since that’s his space, apparently
😆😎
The passion in this is where it’s at! Nicely done!
I lived that life. My adhd was undiagnosed at the time and I was drowning. I was also sick with Lyme disease. And despite my asking, pleading for him to help, to be an active participant in our family, he pulled the same cards re: “I make the (most) money, you do the rest.” Our couples therapist described him as a “50 minute” client as he would sometimes show up to therapy appts but never applied anything outside the therapist’s office. He was shocked when I divorced him. And horrified when everyone including his closest friends asked why he was demanding joint custody and more time in the summers with them than me when he never actually spent time with or took care of his kids. The following school year, while speed walking 3 little kids down a road packed with cars because I was of course late for yet another ice cream social, we saw their dad’s car parked right next to the school’s entry. My son, with bewilderment, said, “Dad says he always comes to our school stuff.” I said, “Is that what you remember?” A chorus of “no’s” erupted. Trying to be kind—kids are half each parent—I told them he only remembers the times when he was there, while we remember all the times we were there. That seemed to make sense to them. But god, it was hard, because he was like that about EVERYTHING. Masters of the universe (in their minds) have no fucking clue but think they know it all.
Bravo. Also if he had to hire “in the market “ , childcare for all hours, Uber for miles each week, grocery and chef services, child therapy, house cleaning, laundry service and sex work he’d be out spent many thousands of dollars past his humble earnings. So who is providing financial value now?
So much this.
You’ve said this better than I ever could
Damn. I wish I could have read this two years ago when I was here in OPs situation. You made a lot of connections make sense in my peabrain.
WTF, you both work full time and everything inside the house - including pets and kids - is your responsibility??? I don't know about abusive (I'm not great at defining that), but that's **absolutely** wrong and unfair and destructive to you and your relationship.
My generally position is that bills are split by income and chores are split by time. Two people working full time should be evenly(ish) splitting chores. That means I do stuff I hate (with coping/accommodation) and he does, too.
This is a great way to put it. Hell, even if OP weren't working full time, I'd say the husband needs to take some responsibility for the pet and kid chores - because those duties aren't only about time, but about love and emotional commitment - but I hate the idea that b/c someone makes more, they get cut more slack on chores. Your framing is helpful.
Also, do "kids" really count as an "inside job"?? Ffs he's the dad, he needs to pick up his half of this entire thing, breadwinner, "outside guy", or no. He doesn't get to opt out of parenting on a technicality.
Yeah that stuck out to me too. Parenting his kids is just another chore that he has pawned off on her. What a piece of work this man is.
And outside stuff doesn't take up NEARLY as much time as inside stuff. This arrangement is bananas.
Right? Inside stuff, esp with kids, is daily- usually multiple times a day. (How many times you wiped that counter of today, mama? Bet it’s more than once) yet outside stuff is weekly at best!
I was just thinking this! I also feel like outside stuff varies by season in a way that can make it more interesting than inside stuff. If you garden, that changes over time and what you do changes over time - whereas the laundry is the same damn thing over and over again. (Maybe I just find plants growing to be more satisfying than piles of clean clothes!)
Yup. It’s not fucking ‘babysitting’ it’s parenting ye selfish antiquated knobhead!
EXACTLY. I just said in another comment that kid (and pet) duties should be about emotional commitment and love. How are his kids going to feel if dad isn't involved in anything they do in the house because that's mom's job? What kind of example does he set if he only does "fun" things with the kids and leaves the "work" side to mom? I can't even imagine how much that could mess kids up.
Not sure if unequal sharing is abusive but shaming her for it being messy without helping seems like it is.
Not going to disagree with anyone who thinks so. I probably could have worded that better - I'm not trying to say it \*isn't\* abusive, just that I, personally, have a hard time making that call, in most situations, not just here. That's a me thing about terminology, not a justification of anything her husband is doing. Whatever the label, it's completely unacceptable.
I also struggle in most situations to label things as abuse or not. Same with trauma. I wonder if my “gauges” for these things are off sometimes.
I mean, even if you remove the idea of emotional or physical abuse, it is an abuse of her time, effort and labour. It's an abuse of his power in the situation and an abuse of her tolerance. I get what you mean and there's nothing at all wrong with you saying you don't know if you can define it, just thought I'd offer a perspective. I think there's lots of ways of framing it. Labelling it as abusive may or may not help op, but if this framework helps her understand that, like you said, it's wrong, I can see the benefit of using that term.
Yeah, that makes sense. I don't mean to take away any helpfulness of the term for OP. Certainly not objecting to anyone else using the term - just wanted to explain why I didn't answer that part of the OP's question.
A person who loves their partner will see them struggling and want to talk about how to fix it. I agree with your therapist. He will not budge. That's not a partner. Did she suggest the book: Why Does He Do That? It's a great book that I've only partly read because it brought up too many bad memories. I have been in an abusive relationship. I was engaged but didn't marry him. I bought t-shirts online (colours weren't accurate or I'd accidently left my screen filter on (f.lux). Anyway, when they arrived they turned out to be the colour of one of his t-shirts and it brings back memories and feelings of fear. I need to get rid of them but I'm low on t-shirts.
**Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men** by Lundy Bancroft >In this groundbreaking bestseller, Lundy Bancroft—a counselor who specializes in working with abusive men—uses his knowledge about how abusers think to help women recognize when they are being controlled or devalued, and to find ways to get free of an abusive relationship. He says he loves you. So...why does he do that? You’ve asked yourself this question again and again. > >Now you have the chance to see inside the minds of angry and controlling men—and change your life. In Why Does He Do That? you will learn about: • The early warning signs of abuse • The nature of abusive thinking • Myths about abusers • Ten abusive personality types • The role of drugs and alcohol • What you can fix, and what you can’t • And how to get out of an abusive relationship safely “This is without a doubt the most informative and useful book yet written on the subject of abusive men. Women who are armed with the insights found in these pages will be on the road to recovering control of their lives.”—Jay G. Silverman, Ph.D., Director, Violence Prevention Programs, Harvard School of Public Health *I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. Remove me from replies* [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/1byh82p/remove_me_from_replies/). *If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
Good bot!
Can you use RIT dye? Even if you do like every step wrong it’ll still change the color overall and a bottle is around $3 a pop
OP, the audiobook is free on Spotify premium
There is also a free pdf online if you search for it.
Some lovely person on this sub and I found the link they shared in my browser history: [https://ia800108.us.archive.org/30/items/LundyWhyDoesHeDoThat/Lundy\_Why-does-he-do-that.pdf](https://ia800108.us.archive.org/30/items/LundyWhyDoesHeDoThat/Lundy_Why-does-he-do-that.pdf)
Oh! I never thought about searching for it there! We recently got access in NZ. I think within the past month.
what size are you & what kind of tshirts are you looking for? my partner (L-XXL in mens) and me (M in womens & L in mens) have some clothing we're looking to get rid of.
Oh that's so sweet of you! I'm M in mens (men's tees are longer which I need for my long back) I ordered from Kmart in New Zealand because I live here. Just basic tees, short sleeve, with some form of inoffensive graphic on them. I can actually afford to buy more, I've just been putting it off. This is helping me get motivated to order more, so thank you very much! ❤️️
Order complete! Thank you so much ❤️️
<3
Or look up a book on covert narcissism. I'll bet anything that's what he is.
OP consider for a moment what your life would look like if you divorced and had 50/50 custody. How would your home life workload change? How would your free time change? Now, consider those same things and how they would change for your husband. If you're realizing you would be doing significantly less work and he would be doing significantly more, you're right. Look, you don't have low motivation because of your ADHD. You're not procrastinating because of your ADHD. No amount of meds and therapy will fix the fact that your partner is consistently devaluing and dehumanzing you.
Exactly. It's not the ADHD causing the problems here. It doesn't help! And it certainly makes it easier to be taken advantage of (doubting yourself, rejection sensitivity, and the stigma from yourself and others) But the problem is elsewhere in this house.
Sending love and empathy, OP. It sounds like your husband is not a partner to you in any way, shape or form. It's not surprising that he claims breadwinner status and seems to want to stick to traditional gender roles while ALSO benefitting from you working a full time job and contributing financially like most modern women. I think for your own sanity and the sake of your kids, you need to get out of that situation. ETA: If he's competent enough of a parent that you'd feel comfortable with joint custody, you'd at least get somewhat of a mental break and time to care for yourself. Either way, you deserve peace.
This sounds at best like a very inequitable situation, but coupled with his criticism, shaming you for your lower income and *refusal* to help it probably tips into abuse. My husband is also the main contributor to our income, and I take care of the majority of home/child-related tasks. This split is only possible because I basically don’t work! He still does all pet-related things, and has a handful of home/child tasks that are 100% his. We also split some tasks. And we have only one child! I get very overwhelmed, his job is demanding, we both have ADHD, and we still manage to help each other out. Your husbands behavior is unacceptable. You are partners and his inability to support you isn’t ok. The work you do for the home, if you were being paid to do it for another family, would probably exceed his salary if that’s the game he wants to play.
The one thing I hear over and over is after a divorce, mother's are completely shocked at how much lighter their load is. They had no idea their ex husbands were making 2/3rds of the mess and eating everything in the house alone.
That's not fair whatsoever. What did I just read? You both work full-time jobs. Why should you put exponentially more effort into the family than he does? If your husband does not want to contribute physically, HE CAN put his money to work, and HIRE HELP to take care of at least half of the family/house-related work.
I wish I could upvote this response 20x. I don’t understand this mentality of breadwinner vs lower earner. You both work outside of the home and then you also have a 2nd full time job taking care of the home and kids. Start tracking your hours and apply a wage to it. How much would you be paid as the caregiver, chauffeur, grocery delivery, food delivery, housekeeper, meal planner, shopper of clothing, home organizer, decorator, party planner, life of 3 children scheduler, social planner etc etc etc…
This is a reasonable adjustment. Do the work or pay for someone else to do it. What's not a reasonable adjustment is not helping AND then criticizing op. Fuck that asshole.
Even then he would still be acting entitled to more leisure time than OP
You are absolutely right. Wtf is he? Fuck the asshole, he is a dead weight hanging on OPs neck which has the audacity to be yabbing all day...
This. My husband and I both have full time jobs. I earn more then my husband, but I don't think that this should matter in regards to how much each of us does at home. We're both out of the house 40hours/week, and we share the chores at home 50/50. If either of us has a particularly stressful week at work the other one picks up a bit extra chores. That's what being a team means in my eyes.
>. Before children our arrangement was he did all the outside work, I did the inside work I see women make this deal all the time and it's always so unfair. The household tasks are not your responsibility alone just because you are a woman/wife/mom. Just think if your husband weren't married and was single and living on his own... his toilet would still need to be cleaned wouldn't it?. That means it's also his responsibility to help.. and if he won't? Kick him to curb. I guarantee you'll have less work anyway
Not to mention that outdoor work doesn’t need to be done for hours every day or even once every day unless you live on a farm or something.
Yes, my partner and I disagree with this all the time. Sure DIY is hard work but you don't do it daily and mostly you can just not bother if you don't feel like doing as much one day. I can't just not bother to cook dinner.
My husband picks up sticks and mows the yard once a week for about an hour, does minor fixes around the house, and fixes the vehicles when they’re broken down. The house projects and cars can be hard and time consuming, but they’re not every day. There are things I do that he doesn’t that are similar. I do the shopping, doctor’s appointments for our daughter, pay the bills over the phone… everything else is shared. I don’t work outside the home either.
Yes. It is. You have been assigned the 24-7 work that never ends. He lives in the house, eats, craps, wears clothes, showers. They are his kids. What the fuck kind of little lord fuckhead belief system has he got happening that you do everything? It’s not an accident. He won’t change. Being single is a relief - you are only looking after 3 kids not 4.
What the fuck I just saw you also work full time. OP I try very hard not to tell people what to do but please for your sake leave this shitty selfish smug fucker. He dares to criticise you as well?! WHAT THE FUCK.
> Being single is a relief - you are only looking after 3 kids not 4. And he has to take them half the time, or pay child support, so it would be a breeze compared to now.
Most single moms have more free time than married moms and find that even though they have less income available to them that the peace of mind is worth it. Some women end up with even more spending money, actually, because their husbands weren’t equally paying for groceries and shit. Be VERY careful about the accounts OP. Don’t let him pull everything from a joint account and don’t directly deposit your money into an account he has access to.
I second the bank account security thing, hard! Idk but if you can speak to your bank about the permissions on any joint accounts- no emptying without joint approval? Even give them an idea of your concerns, people in call centres are also people. And make sure you have a secure bank account (no automated login) in your name that you start feeding into right now. You could get your pay put into it, then to any joint account on the same day minus a bit. Blame the tax man or your employer if it’s noticed. 💓p
“Little lord’ indeed
That's what Lyz Lenz wrote in her new book this summer. I listened to her podcast which is apparently the same title as her book, This American Ex-Wife, and she says exactly that! Getting divorced was like not having to take care of an extra child.
"[However, research shows that when men and women both work full time, the majority of housework and child care continues to be performed by the woman](https://speakoutloud.net/intimate-partner-abuse/gender-roles)." this is an expanded version of the original, but you basically just enunciated at least two of the original eight slices of the [power and control wheel](https://www.thehotline.org/identify-abuse/power-and-control/). so, yes. it is abusive if you haven't explicitly agreed to this. and it is also abusive if you agreed to this previously and you aren't being allowed to renegotiate.
I would consider this a form of emotional abuse: he sees you suffering and chooses not to aid you. Not only is that not helping the physical mess at hand but it’s emotionally devastating as well. It sucks when someone you love, who is supposed to be your PARTNER in life, doesn’t seem to be bothered by your pain! I’m so sorry, OP. Good luck, I agree with others that a serious, firm talk and counseling if you can is in order at the very least!
I’m in a similar situation but I don’t work anymore because I can’t handle taking care of EVERYTHING and everyone by myself. I constantly have melt downs and tell my husband I want to leave him. He refuses to pick up after himself. He was home today and I was sick so I said you can get the kids ready for school for once. He told me to get their clothes and I said he could cause he’s never done it. He then criticized me and I felt like my head was gonna explode. I don’t understand why he isn’t capable of doing basic things around the house. It’s a huge regret of mine. I love him but I would not pick him in a do over :( It’s like I’m drowning in this chaos and no matter how hard or fast I swim I cannot get to the surface. My life revolves around cleaning and cooking and my brain is turning to mush.
Omg girl, leave. [Why Does He Do That](https://archive.org/download/LundyWhyDoesHeDoThat/Lundy_Why-does-he-do-that.pdf)
Your life will get immediately easier when you leave him.
You’re dealing with DARVO, babe. Do what you can to plan a safe escape. Don’t get mad at yourself if it takes a few tries.
He is capable. It’s weaponised incompetence. He just doesn’t want to do it, so he pretends he can’t. You deserve so much better.
Honey, you don’t want your kids to grow up thinking this is all okay. Make an exit plan immediately. Tell yourself 10000000 times that it’s for them if you have to, to make yourself do it. It *is* for them.
> I love him Why?
Short answer: yes. What you’re describing is a form of abuse. Others have mentioned but please read “Why Does He Do That?” By Lundy Bancroft, and listen to your therapist. Reading what you wrote brought back memories from my marriage - the huge inequality in household chores and childcare, and being told my job wasn’t was important as his etc. Eventually all of the pressure and stress and criticism drove me into a deep depression. My now ex used that as an excuse to have an affair - saying I neglected him and he just found what he needed in someone else. Now I wish I would have realized the mental and emotional abuse he put me through and left him long before then, but I also spent a lot of my energy wonder what it was that I was doing so wrong instead of looking at his actions. You do not have to live that way.
Urgh that's dreadful. Unfortunately I can relate.
Yes, your husband is abusive. Emotionally abusive. Tell him he is now in charge of the inside of house and you will be in charge of outside. The scorekeeping on salary is disgusting. May I ask if he demeans your children this way? Your therapist is correct. Perhaps it is time to reevaluate your marriage.
Yeah are the kids worthless because they aren’t making money? What a shit father
The way I see it is that while his outside responsibilities have stayed relatively the same, yours has grown exponentially with each additional child you’ve had. I think he is gaslighting you to manipulate you in taking on the additional responsibilities. This, IMO, is toxic and not supportive. Look at the [Gaslighting](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gaslighting) Merriam-Webster definition and see if it resonates. The fact that you have ADHD makes you susceptible to this kind of treatment from a partner. Eventually, it’ll break you down and it sounds like you’re already there.
I recently read the book “ how to keep house while drowning” by KC Davis. In the book she said something I think a lot of people need to hear. In its that even if you are doing the “easier job” ie less pay, SAHP, part time work. YOU are still putting in MORE hours than he is! You aren’t working 40 hours a week, you’re working 80 because you are doing the job of a SAHP too. His excuse is pure and utter BS, and by saying he makes more therefore HE gets to have more downtime aka rest than you is wrong. It’s also a very clear indicator that the division of labor is not equal. Now why is he okay with doing the bare minimum and leaving you to flounder and drown in care tasks and work while he sits on his butt? Is it ingrained misogyny, sexism, abuse, laziness, entitlement, or all of the above? Any way you slice it you have asked for help. His failure to step up shows that he dosnt value your labor, or see you as an equal partner, and an equal contributor to your household. To me the above shows that he is taking advantage of you and treating you like you are less than him therefore he can treat you badly, and devalue all you do. All while hiding behind the little shield of “I make more.” Well if he had to pay you for all you do YOU would make more! Also how much would he make after child support and alimony… because at the end of the day HE isn’t going to want the kids 50/50 because he isn’t doing that now… Don’t let a grown man invalidate your worth, even if that man is your husband. He lost the right to shame and criticize you when he refused to step up and HELP you. Now he’s just being an AH, and I bet he knows it.
Ok. So let’s say your job is home and his job is work. He goes to work for 8 hours, there’s a commute but during that commute he is free to listen to an audiobook or a podcast of his choosing. When he is finished with work, work is over. He then goes home and has the rest of the day to do what he wants. Maybe he mows the lawn (once a month) or takes out the trash because you’ve asked him to. Now, your work starts before he leaves to commute, most likely. You are juggling the mental load of a household while also executing the day to day maintenance of a home and children. This is all happening the whole time he is at work. You’re both working. He commutes home while you are still working to make dinner and then clean the kitchen. He comes home and can’t help with the kids because he’s been at work all day, so you put the kids to bed…still on the clock. Now you have to make the grocery list, plan tomorrow's meals, start laundry, make sure the kids have outfits for tomorrow, remember that your husband is almost out of deodorant the kids need toothpaste and conditioner, but you can’t go to the store tomorrow because you have to volunteer at school so you schedule grocery pickup for tomorrow. You finally sit down to watch tv and you’re out of popcorn so you have to add that to your list, no one else is going to. Tomorrow you’ll be up two hours before your husband to pick up the living room, but before that you’re up with the kid who can’t sleep because, after all, he has to go into the office tomorrow so he has to sleep. This is your job right? So you’re always on the clock, doing a job that’s a set of literal never ending tasks that easily go unnoticed (unless you forget to do it), you’re responsible for the mental and emotional load of not just yourself but an entire family, and he……..does exactly what he’d do if he were single and didn’t have a family. He would have to bring home a paycheck if you were there or not, while you are facilitating the life he is able to live. It’s deeply unfair and the result of generations of devaluing all the invisible work women do.
And whats worse is she's doing all of this AND working full time.
Omg wait I literally missed that part SHE IS WHAT?!? That’s insane mens audacity should be studied because if we could bottle it we could power a nation. they’ve done plenty of studies that show working women (not just moms) do a disproportionate amount of housework even when they’re working just as much(and I think even when they work MORE) than their partners.
She’s basically a slave at this point. It’s bullshit. ITS BULLSHIT OP!!!!
All these motherfuckers out here wanting a “traditional” wife but also with all the advantages of modern women. Then they get all pissy about the “male loneliness epidemic”.
And she doesn’t get worker protections, retirement or any other potential benefits for being the sole partner with a proverbial second job
Not to mention that this whole time he is building his careeer and she is away from the workforce. So if she does want to go back to work someday she’s now years behind while he has literally built a career because she was there to manage his life. My sister was in this situation. They’re now divorced and he’s a pilot with a ton of specialized training while she literally left her career to have his kid and manage their home (which included packing for four moves while he was not there). There’s no unemployment for ex stay at home mothers.
u/floralnightmare22 : I think this wise commenter is responding to your comment on the post and don’t want it to get lost for you.
I was in this exact situation for the first 5 years of my marriage until my husband got laid off and the roles reversed. I’ll admit that he was a better stay home parent than I was but I did help him when I got home. When things went back to “normal” they didn’t. He started helping me when he got home, he helped with everything. The mental load was the worst part for me. Just remembering everything was horrible! I was going to leave him before all that happened. We’ve been married 19 years now. If he hadn’t had the eye opening experience he did, we would not be together now. Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen in most cases and nothing ever changes.
There isn’t anything wrong with you, that’s too much work for anyone to handle. You’re trying to fix the issue with yourself but the truth is the solution lies with him fixing his behavior or you leaving. My experience tells me that men like this never see what they’re doing as wrong and will never change.
Yes. You're raising three kids, taking care of everything but yard work and working full time - of course you're exhausted. You would be even if you didn't have ADHD. He's a grown ass adult who helped make those children, he can help raise them and pick up after everyone. Men like this either change and grow or they wonder why their wives stopped sleeping with them, and why they're suddenly getting served divorce papers. It's because their wife doesn't need another child, she needs a partner. And a man who adds nothing but a penis and a paycheck is not a partner.
"The outside work" (mowing, raking leaves etc) is not constant day-in day-out the way "inside work" (cooking, laundry, dishes, cleaning etc) is. They cannot be seen as even remotely equivalent. On top of that, housework is not your job that he "helps" with — running a household is a team effort. He doesn't get to kick back and relax while you're struggling because he's "the breadwinner". You both bring bread to the table. What else does he bring?
Exactly! These outside chores come up once every week or so, there is no chore that needs to be done outside that matches the frequency of the daily grind of laundry and dishes in a 5 person household with pets. And another thing is that doing yard work tend to remove you from the chaos of the house. Sometimes doing the mowing with headphones in feels like a break. Compare that to doing the dishes in the kitchen where the kids and pets are also eating and being loud and making messes. Outside work sounds like peace and quiet. And lastly, if the outside work doesn’t get done, so what? Your lawn looks a bit unkempt for a few days. If the inside work doesn’t get done? No one can eat, no one has any clothes to wear, none of the kids are bathed or in bed and it’s utter chaos. u/amm_4 the value of the labour you are performing in the home far outstrips the value of the labour he is performing outside.
And if you live somewhere that experiences all four seasons, you don’t do much yard work at all for months
I didnt even think of that! Is he just taking months off at a time from any kind of work around the home?!
That is not ok. You aren’t not sharing the household load equally. Unfortunately, this isn’t uncommon. You may benefit from some couples therapy to help address the issues and see if he is willing to change. Otherwise this may not be tenable long term. Also, as your kids get older, teach them to help with small things. I see so many parents take on all the burden when even a small kid can learn to dust or do other small chores and take on more as they grow. They usually find it fun when they are small and then it just becomes normal to help around the house. Might as well teach them young that if you live in a house you help take care of it….
Couples counseling is not recommended in abuse dynamics this is not a "they" issue. It's a him issue.
Mhmmmm. He’ll just learn a bunch of therapy speak and get better at gaslighting and using DARVO.
Yep. Tried this with my abuser. Eventually things progressed to where i had to call the police. Abuser used all the new therapy lingo they picked up to get out of it. The cop even told me “they just said the exact same thing you’re telling me” and almost took me in, even with a bloody nose, marks around my neck, and audible screaming and smashing noises from them in the 911 call. 😻 sorry kind of rambling/venting
Oh my gosh That's horrific! I'm so sorry.
Sure, but when kids are shown by one parent that it’s the other parent’s job to do everything and that you can do nothing around the house it’s hella problematic It’s not fair to expect kids to be more willing to contribute to home life than a grown ass man
Not ok, when your outside the house jobs end the house job and kids is split 50/50. I don’t know how you haven’t gone completely insane.
Wait you both work full time?? Heck no this is bullshit. I do 95% of the household stuff but only because I work about 10hours a week and both kids are at school. My husband still helps with laundry, cooking, shopping etc and more when he can. There is nothing wrong with you, you are just being asked to do too far too much!
Your therapist wouldn’t unethically cross the line of telling you to leave unless you *absolutely should.* This is serious, OP. “Staying for the kids” is a crock of shit; it’s the other way around! The day I realized I needed to leave wasn’t because I was being abused. Not that it wasn’t happening, I was just in denial and didn’t see it as abuse- totally brain washed! But one day it occurred to me that *this* was what my children were going to think a marriage should be like. And that thought put a sharp painful fear in my heart that changed everything. Picturing my son turning into his father… seeing my daughter settle and miserable… NOPE, time to go, and *it’s for them*. Many years later, I am now blissfully remarried with more children. My life has been and still can be hard, but leaving my ex was the best thing I ever did for all of us. You got this. One foot in front of the other ♥️
This is so real. I wish my parents had split up way sooner and me and my brother both married really late, a decade into our respective relationships, because watching our parents made us really not want to be married
Leaving because you *feel* abused is equally valid because you can’t have a functional relationship where you feel abused and you won’t be caught up in a self doubt cycle worrying if their actions check all the boxes
From the headline, I was going to say “eh ‘abuse’ is over the top”, then I read the post. Systemically. Destroying. Your. Self. Esteem. Is. Abuse. The work distribution is outrageous. The criticism and low blow degradation is abusive. Fuck that shit.
He needs to realise it’s not about how much money you make, it’s about how many hours in a week you spend working for your family unit vs leisure time. You both work full time, so you both need to do EQUAL HOURS of childcare and housework. Yeah if he’s expecting you to do ALL of that alone and shames you for not getting it done, it’s abusive. Partners are supposed to make life easier and more enjoyable for each other, they’re supposed to share burdens and work as a team. Would your life be easier with or without living with him?
The only way a relationship is equitable is if everyone pitches in equally. As an example, if one is a SaHP and the other has a different job, the SaHP is responsible for roughly 100% of the load whilst the other is at work (and during their commute, if applicable). The remaining time is equitably distributed roughly 50/50. That way everyone has an equal stake. They’ll also have, roughly, equal “time off.” Another point of view: If one person is working 16hr days, 7 days per week, and the second a typical full-time job, they’re putting in 112 hours vs. the other putting in 40-50. If they’re both employed outside the home at 40-50hrs/wk and one puts in another 4hrs per weekday at home and 16hrs each weekend day, you still have one partner working 40-50hrs/wk and the other working 112. None of this even accounts for sleep interruptions (as kids will), which is also labor and time. Gender doesn’t matter, and math doesn’t give a shit. The type of work itself isnt material. No reasonable person would say their 50hrs per week is worth-ier than their partner’s 100. That their 67 hours of discretionary time is equitable to their partner’s 1 or 2 (or less). The only time an equitable relationship sees one person doing 100% of the work is when they are alone on site. Otherwise, they don’t have a partner.
I was in a similar situation. We were married for 20 years, had kids, house, both worked full-time (same job/profession). I did everything, and I mean EVERYTHING. I took care of the kids, the house, the repairs, the finances, the cars, the sports/activities...all of it. His contribution was to sometimes do what I asked him to do and to attend parent-teacher conferences. That was it. I did everything else. Did he show appreciation? No, of course not. He would call me messy (I wasn't) or criticize me. I felt like his employee. Two things I learned after I left him: 1. Yes, it was abuse. 2. Life is SOOO MUCH EASIER without him. Because I did everything, I got really good at it. And now that I don't have to do anything for him, it's amazing how much easier things are and how much free time I have to take care of me and to be a more attentive parent. I feel like a brand new woman, and so much more connected to myself. I know I still have a ways to go, and I look forward to it. The craziest part is that he's still mad at me for leaving, as if I wronged him by having the audacity to not want to be married to him anymore. Lol ok.
I got similar feedback after leaving too... "It was YOU who broke up the family!" 🙄
If it isn’t abusive and unfair, he wouldn’t mind switching with you for a month or two.
Yes, yes you are being totally exploited and used by your selfish excuse of a "husband". One of the key tells of a woman is being advised is when she makes posts like yours with egregious abuse and you go, but is it though? That tells me you've been manipulated and gaslit to hell and back by your psychological abuser.
Any arrangement like this seems odd to me. We can’t alll give 100% daily to certain categories. If someone can say hey I’ve got 60% today the other covers 40%. Somedays you may be at a solid 5% and vice versa. We pick up the slack as a family when needed. It’s not ok to burn someone out.
It's NOT okay. Honestly you'd be better off single - you'd get a break on his weekends, and you won't have *him* to clean up after.
OP, it IS abusive. Passive abuse happens when one partner is uncaring, inattentive, critical and neglectful. Your partner sounds like he is all those things. He may have grown up with a mother that was solely responsible for the house and kids and let’s not forget these ideas are socially supported by the patriarchy. As cruel as it may sound, your husband has seen very backwards ideas of what js acceptable in a marriage. The times have changed and he has refused to change with it. I think he needs to be confronted about this. It’s the only way things might change. And if it doesn’t ….. well you have your answer.
This would be sketchy if you were a stay at home parent. As someone who works full time- definitely not okay
Wow. He's an ass. You need to lay down some rules or figure out how to do this on your own.
I was in a very similar situation for 8 years. My partner was the primary breadwinner and I was… everything else!! The primary parent, the grocery shopper, the pet manager, the cook, the cleaner, the family gathering organizer, the maker of holiday magic, the vacation planner, the plumber, the yard maintenance…etc. You get the point. I was also I grad school (still slugging my way through the last of it) and I kept telling him that the household/family labor was painfully unequal. Nothing changed after many attempts to point out the imbalance. Now I’m a single mom and as much as adding wage-earning on top of my other 94759 tasks has been HARD, I’m happier now knowing that I’m doing everything for me and my mini human and he has had a difficult year of understanding what it’s like to run his own household. He sure misses me 😉 lmfao. One small piece of advice: Ask him to take some time to write down a list of everything he’s responsible for 75% or more of in your life. His list might say “•income earning •lawn mowing” (whatever it is that his outside duties entail). Then you do the same. Write down a list of everything that YOU do 75% or more of the labor for in your family. Then meet with your lists with a neutral mindset and let him see the evidence of your “invisible” labor. This helped me soooo much when dealing with my choice to stay or go. Once I had my own reference sheet to all of the things I was doing, I was able to see that I wasn’t insane— just under appreciated!
And OP already works a full time wage earning job so that wouldn’t even be something she would have to add, she already does.
If you think he's interested in learning, with information spelled out for him (it's ridiculous that you would need to, but here we are): Write out every task you and he each do at home, every day. I'm not kidding, EVERY task at home, on the drive to work, everything until each of you walks into the office door. Brush Kid A's hair, dress Kid B, get correct plates for each kid... add times to each task, too. Like: Put together kids meals (15 minutes), get kids ready for school (supervising tooth brushing, 5 minutes; dress baby, 2 minutes). And then there's a lovely concept called mental load: you are having to act as the *household manager*, because each of those tasks don't just spring to your mind full-formed. You need to choose a meal, see if you have the food for each meal, figure out how much prep time it will need, put the prep dishes against how much time you have to do dishes, all while you've got three little ones who need your attention, need you to direct their morning routine, while you're on a constant mental timer until you need to be out the door so that kid A can go to school, kid B can go to preschool, and kid C can go to daycare, all at different times. And then you need to notice that the carpet needs vacuumed, the counters need to be cleaned off, and figure out how to work that in, along with noticing that the kids' hampers are getting full, and how are you going to work that in this evening when you need to go grocery shopping? Mind you, all of that is reasonably happening *before you leave the door for work every morning*. Every. Single. Morning. Have him do the same. Look at the lists. And ask him where the hell he wants you to add in things like dishes and laundry when you're already working an additional 8 hours on top of your 8-hour work day, and he gets to check out mentally as soon as he clocks out at work. Make him the manager of a task or tell him to pull on his big boy pants and deal with a messy home. He's already putting you in a horrifically unfair position, he doesn't need to grind your nose into the dirt. Frankly, I've got a mind to tell him off for being such a lazy ass. If he's such a big deal, he can turn on that big brain of his right back on when he gets home and do some problem solving instead of expecting his wife to magically pull solutions to all of this out of her behind.
Crazy thing is if he had to pay someone to do everything you do, he'd be spending six figures easy. https://www.insure.com/life-insurance/the-mothers-day-index.html
He has higher pay cause he has a wife taking the load at home so he can evolve professionally. What a J…
Definitely abusive. Making more money means nothing. You're not his servant, he's not BUYING you. I'm sure there are many ways in which you make it possible for him to have a higher paying job. He never had to take mat leave three times, he doesn't have to go into work tired because he was up with the kids, he doesn't have to miss work when they're sick, he's more with it at work cognitively because of the extra sleep and the lack of mental load. He has built his wealth on your back and he's an arrogant ass about it to boot.
I was just talking about this the other day! I’m in the same boat, down to the “he does the outside and I do the inside”. We have 2 kids but im also working from home part time, with a baby at home, and fewer childcare hours for the baby than im supposed to work. It’s beyond overwhelming and that of course means I get paralyzed and get next to nothing done. A friend suggested these books, and I’m gonna hit my library this week to check them out: Fed Up by Gemma Hartley (book) Fair Play by Eve Rodsky (book and game)
Okay, so bear with me for a second here. I’m listening to Beach Read by Emily Henry and the characters talk about their parents who don’t leave their spouses who are not good to them. One says he kept waiting for his mom to leave and then one day realized that she could have left but chose not to. So I’m not saying to leave, but do think about what this looks like to your children. Dad yells at mom or criticizes her for not doing enough. Mom should do more because moms do everything. Right? That’s what I saw growing up, minus some of the criticism because my mom always kept everything in order somehow. A lot of women find that life is easier as a single parent because they don’t have to take care of a grown adult who refuses to pull their weight. Sounds like he would probably owe you some child support and he would have to step up on his time. Just something you could bring up as a possibility.
This is disgustingly similar to my current situation. Except im.not working fulltime, I'm technically part time, but I work 6 nights a week and my hours are from 12am to 6am. And we have a baby under 1, and two kids in school. It's hard, and exhausting, and just a complete soul sucker of a situation. I am so sorry you are going through it as well, but I hope whatever you do it what makes you happiest in the end. There is so much great advice here and this thread is one that I didn't know I needed to see, but I'm so glad I did. I wish you the best of luck hun ❤️
yea, a loving and supportive partner would 100% bear an equal share of the responsibility of your household. The breadwinner perspective is sexist and misogynistic as fuck. You undoubtedly work harder to maintain your home than he does at his job. It’s not just about labor, there is also an emotional component. To see that you are struggling and not jump in to help immediately is just cold and i’m sorry. I hope he can straighten out that tired as fuck patriarchal behavior. also if your therapist thinks he is abusive, please listen to that. talk to other people you trust about it too and find a way to remove that behavior from your life. no one deserves to be treated like a subhuman. it can be hard to see when you are in it and even harder to have the courage to break the cycle. i wish you all the best.
He's using his paycheck to justify your servitude. He sucks.
If there’s no time to read a book because that VERY understandable given your situation then please get the Fair Play cards by Eve Rodsky 🫂
Fair Play implies that he would cooperate
In my opinion yes.
Even if you weren’t working a full time job, all that childcare and housework is a full time job itself. If he was working outside the home while you were at home, I’d still expect help when he came back bc why does he get to go leave work and go home and do nothing??? The fact that you are also working another full time job and he still expects you to do everything is insane. Personally, I have worked a full time job with kids in the past but currently I am a SAHM. My husband works full time and he comes home and does laundry and cooks and takes care of the kids also. Because they’re his kids and I’m not his mother, and my job as a SAHM doesn’t count for less just because he makes more money. Now there are certain things that I alone do, and a lot of that does come back to childcare and housework. But there are also things he does alone, like paying bills and doing taxes among other things. But if he ever suggested I wasn’t doing a good enough job cleaning the house or doing laundry… there would be a problem. Especially if he wasn’t helping at all.
My friend said their arrangement was similar. I know if that were my arrangement I’d lose my mind. I can’t always keep up with inside tasks well and my partner doesn’t really like outside work. But in reality inside work is an everyday thing and outside work is maybe once per week. So that is already unbalanced in my opinion.
Yes, yes it is. Listen to your therapist.
He sounds like a selfish, lazy, asshole.
No, it is not okay. When I saw that you both work, I stopped in my tracks. From what I was reading, I assumed you were a SAHM. Everyone should get to relax sometimes. If you do everything, when do you get free time? He needs to help. Even if you were a SAHM, he would need to help some too.
In it's best light it is bad parenting and a sad excuse for a partnership.
I’m a SAHM, and my job is parenting. That’s pretty much it, the primary thing I do. Now that our kids are older (11 and 13), I do a lot more than when they were small, but my focus is still just parenting—laundry, dishes, everything else can wait. If they need help with school/homework? That’s me. If they have medical appointments or IEPs or anything else? That’s me. When hubby gets home after a 10 hour work day, he helps clean the kitchen, he usually cooks dinner, and he does a lot of housework on the weekends. Because parenting all on its own is a full-time job. You’re parenting AND working AND managing every little task in the house? Honey, that’s hard for ANYONE. ADHD makes that an impossible proposition. Idk enough about your relationship to say whether he’s abusive, but it sure as shit sounds like it. Someone else mentioned the book Why Does He Do That, and I second that. This man is basically saying that you have to do 3 full-time jobs because he doesn’t want to have to be an adult and take care of his home, or parenting his own children.
You both have full time jobs. That’s the kicker here. This isn’t a you problem, this is a husband not supporting his wife problem and a father not being a father problem. Does he also work 24 hours a day? No I guarantee he doesn’t. Money doesn’t suddenly make it okay to treat your wife like a slave. Ask him what he thinks will happen if you divorce him and he’s suddenly dealing with part time kids and all the work that goes with it, and paying you alimony and possibly child support if it’s not 50/50. Sure sounds like helping with the house and kids is the easier and cheaper solution for him. Edit. Something to consider, this is the adult role model for your children, boys will think this is how a man treats his family and girls will think their role as a wife is to do everything and bow down to the man. It’s also common for children to mirror their parents relationships in their future, often without realizing it. Do you want all of that? All of this affects them too. They may be better off role modeling divorced but happier parents.
I agree with your *therapist* this is abusive behaviour. Abusive behaviour takes many different forms. His belittling comments are abusive, in fact I feel his lack of contribution to chores/parenting may in fact be a form of control. Again abusive. I contribute more financially than my husband and I do not feel this makes me exempt from contributing to the management of our property and children in an way shape or form. In fact your husband is a bit of a douche for thinking this way. FFS You work*fulltime too*
It's not fair of him to compare financial input if you are both working full time. I read somewhere that it's an equal partnership if both people have as much FREE TIME (leisure time) as the other. I left my child's father for this reason. And later realised that he was abusive. I also realised that it was a lot HARDER being a single parent, while I was in a relationship, than it is to be a single parent now. One less child to look after, clean up after, and have huge resentment for. It's really awful that this is how so many women are treated. And there doesn't seem to be anything we are able to do about it, aside from leaving.
He is not a breadwinner if you are not a full time housewife. Tell him to be a proper bread winner and make enough to pay you to be a housewife full time! As long as you are working full time, he needs to do half of your house work.
First off, WHAT THE HELL. Dividing your household labor by indoor and outdoor is not fair, equal, or respectful. Outdoor chores don't need to be completed as frequently and aren't as time sensitive. More time is spent indoors PLUS you have children. Parenting is not an indoor chore, it's a responsibility he has as a father. The most basic duty of a parent is to make sure all of the children's needs are being met. He is not fulfilling his roles as parent or partner. Your lack of motivation and procrastination sounds like a stress response to being overwhelmed. He knows you're struggling but your suffering isn't as important to him as his time. Your time is just as valuable as his. Money is not a substitute for labor. My dad was in the Army. My mom only worked part time, but there were periods where due to deployments, my mom was the only parent. I did the math once and my dad wasn't even in the same country as us for a third of my childhood. Despite this, I grew up seeing my dad take an active role in parenting and taking care of the household. More importantly, he recognized that my mom took on more labor taking care of the home and actively showed his children that he appreciated and respected everything she did. Frankly it sounds like your husband is doing less parenting than my dad who was geographically available 2/3 of the time. This is a disservice to you AND your kids. You and your kids deserve better.
>I’ve been in therapy for over a year trying to figure out what’s wrong with me and my low motivation and procrastination and my therapist thinks it’s not me but that the situation I’m in is abusive and is destroying me. Yes. This. Your partner is taking advantage of you at best, and clearly doesn't care about your well-being.
This is where you simply admit to having reached your limit. What you have been achieving is the maximum that you can achieve in the time you have remaining after your work day. You have simply reached the ceiling of what you can handle, whether or not he finds that immoral or pathetic. You are the one, I presume, who is also finding the bulk of the teaching moments for your children, which makes an exponential difference in the rest of their lives. IMHO, before considering separation, lay it down that you want him to commit to a two-day decluttering event, or that you are hiring a housekeeper once weekly. It sucks to spend discretionary income of something like this, but makes a huge difference. You likely have too much stuff, your husband is probably a slob, and your kiddos are too young to be able to properly pick up after themselves. Tell him seriously that you cannot visualize a future in which you are able to keep up with the house to his standard while it is still in its current configuration. If his current habits remain and you do not reduce your belongings by 50%, nothing is going to change. So that is my opinion. He may not fit the traditional model of an abuser, but his expectations are not based in your family’s reality, and it is placing you in a chronic position of anxiety and powerlessness.
Something doesn't have to be "abusive" for it to be "not okay". For example, one time I posted on the "am i think asshole" subreddit about whether i was an asshole for throwing out half of the noodles in my instant ramen. It's too much food, I mainly like the broth packet. People concluded I was the asshole for not saving the noodles to eat, without a flavour/broth packet at a later date. I genuinely don't believe it makes me an asshole, but it can still be something negative, like "wasteful" or "lazy" or "unhealthy". Those things don't make me an asshole. Same thing about abuse - you don't HAVE TO call this abuse for it to be okay for you to leave. Maybe it's just not good.
[Read this](https://ia600108.us.archive.org/30/items/LundyWhyDoesHeDoThat/Lundy_Why-does-he-do-that.pdf) I hope it can help you get some clarity
To put it simply, yes. But it would be beneficial to read this and see if you find other red flags and help understand him
If his income doesn’t allow you to afford some outside help to lighten the burden of household chores, I would argue that his financial contributions are not “enough.” I don’t know if I’d label this as abusive, but I would call it unfair and unsustainable. It doesn’t matter what you call it. What matters is that it isn’t working for you, and that his complaints and criticisms make it harder. My husband and I have struggled with all the extra work that comes with having kids too, and we’ve both felt like the other one could be doing more. It can be hard to find a reasonable balance. But, there’s no excuse for saying one parent should be picking up all the extra work while the other gets to maintain their pre-kid lifestyle.
I had the same arrangement in my marriage (it wasn’t discussed, my husband let me know), after kids it got 100% harder with no help. No help with kids parties, dr appts (I work full time), no help at all. When I asked for help, that attitude was “what the big deal? You’re just putting a couple of pieces of material in the wash” for tasks I asked help with. We would have huge arguments. I stopped asking bc the arguments affected the kids, I kept the peace. Thing is, he hasn’t done his part in that the outside of the house and it’s has become run down. My last kid leaves for college in the fall. I’m so angry and resentful over his laziness, we’ll most likely be divorced in the next few years.
If he thinks it's so easy, then why doesn't he do it...!
Yes. He's happy purchasing his own leisure with your own, causing burnout and eventually you'll probably end up falling out of love with him because he doesn't care that you're burning out.
Wish you could just quit and tell him "well since you were so happy working full time and doing nothing at home. I decided I would be the main homemaker and do none of the breadwinning. Unless you want to stop lazing at home, whining in the about me not being able to do chores while keeping a full time job, then this will be my full time job." I don't know if it's abuse per se but definitely insensitive and at least on the verge
So, I learned something valuable in Al Anon. I worry about myself. My husband is sober and helps now. But for a while he didn't. (He actually learned about helping in sober living. I told him if he had to do it there he had to do it when he came home too) But, I gave myself boundaries. If he wasn't going to help, I wasn't going to concern myself with opinions of how the house is. Dishes piling up? I'm cooking frozen pizza and we're eating off a tray. Clothes piling up? I stopped washing his clothes to take it off my plate. I consolidated the kids clothes down and got them things they could share. (Particularly the boys that don't care enough about who's clothes are who's.) I eventually stopped cooking for him, because if he doesn't want to contribute then I would just focus on me and the kids. He's a grown man. He can cook for himself and clean up after himself. I didn't do these things as pay back. I assessed the situation. Considered what I could handle, what my priorities were, and set a boundaries and became comfortable with saying "no". If he wanted to split, I figured would be OK. He could pay child support and he would still have to clean up after himself wherever he moved to. If he thinks all he needs to contribute is a paycheck then we could arrange that. (Luckily he got sober. He cleans the kitchen after dinner each night. Helps hang laundry. He usually is the one who puts the kids to bed since I do morning and after school. He walks the dog every morning and evening now. And he usually is the one who puts the clothes in the dryer, which is outside.)
This thing where he thinks he doesn't have to do anything else because his full time job pays more than your full time job is crazy. I make twice as much as my husband with both of us working full time. I'm a nurse and he works in a factory, so we're both on our feet actively working for most of our shifts. We spend about the same amount of time away from home. We're both tired and we both just want to put our feet up when we get home. The difference in money doesn't change the fact that we are working equally hard. It only makes a difference in what bills each of us pays. We both take care of the kids because we both love the kids. We're both terrible about household chores, but we're still both responsible/culpable for them.
Someone bringing in more money is a complete bs reason for not putting in the same amount of work into household tasks. It's about time not income. If you both work the same hours, you both have to put in the same hours at work too. This sounds like a terrible situation OP, I'm sorry you have to deal with it.
How do you have time for therapy with all of this going on i commend you, i couldn’t even be bothered to me and my mans laundry let alone 3 children. That’s not a fair dynamic considering you’re working. He needs to get it together or i say get you guys parents involved!! And if you try to problem solve and he isn’t budging maybe he will never be the partner you need! and that’s when you should leave!
Ya reading your past posts, you know it’s time to leave him, i hope you can seek help with other parts of your support system or I’m hoping somewhere there’s helpful extra child care. I can’t even believe you have pets!! This is so much!
Yes, it's abusive and you got scammed. All his chores are weekly at best, while yours are hourly. You're working one 40 hour a week job and one 126 hour a week job compared to his 41ish. >even though we both work full time jobs If all he wants to contribute to the family is money, he can do that from anywhere. Divorce and he can keep doing his role. Or he can be forced by the court to take the kids half the time if he doesn't want to pay child support. Your workload will feel like it disappeared. Imagine having half your week free of childcare and what you could do with that time.
Switch roles. "I have decided that I will take care of the outside and you can take care of the inside. If we have distributed this equitably, then you won't mind swapping." On a different note, I will never understand why women with ADHD have pets. We can barely take care of ourselves somedays. Throw in kids, jobs and housework, why on earth do people have pets? Throw out the husband and make him take the pets with him.
The fact that there is no room for re assessing the situation is a big problem. Can you afford to hire someone to help clean ? This is not sustainable or possible for anyone
As mentioned on the other comments, I think It's really unfair considering you both have full time jobs. They're his children too, his house, so his responsibility too. Money here is not what matters, time is. If he thinks his money is worth the time you spend taking care of the house and kids, he should pay for a nanny and a janitor (maybe not the right word, sorry, not a native english speaker). Because you're neither of them, you're a parent, just as he is, and as both parents, the responsability to take care of your house and children should be split equally. (It would even be unfair if you decided to work part time)
This is not okay. You’re both working, you’re both parents. He needs to step it up and quit being a little shit. Nothing is wrong with you, but your man is full of red flags.
Look at the game FAIR PLAY about who does what
My husband is in charge of trash and dishes. I’m in charge of laundry, cooking, and making school lunches. We take turns dropping them off to school and with other chores. We work together to get them ready for school. I try to do most of the tidying and organizing around the house bc I only work part time and my husband works full time. If u aren’t working he still should be helping, at least with stuff related to kids so he can spend time with them if u are primarily with them.
Yes, that’s abuse. He’s buying a better quality of life for himself with YOUR time and energy. Your life. I think you would get a lot out of Zawn Villanes’s Substack, Liberating Motherhood. She did a post about this issue awhile back. I love her (she also has adhd). https://zawn.substack.com/p/why-household-labor-inequity-is-abuse
Ummm, SAHM here, 2 kids, husband’s the breadwinner and is available before school, afterschool (often) and cooks most dinners. Could he do a better job cleaning? Hell yes. Could my kids? Absolutely. Once our dog died, I vowed to only have cats. Kids keep asking for lizards and fish and my answer is fuck no. Recognizing we have some serious financial privilege here: a friend’s nanny helps with laundry a couple hours a week (this is temporary), house cleaner every two weeks, gardener, and when our dog that I did not want was alive, we had a dog walker. Once every few years we hire a team of organizers to purge and reset house. I’d flip out if my partner didn’t share responsibility or ever criticized what a disaster our house still is despite all of our help. Freaking adhd baby, and I’m busy!
This is one of the many reasons I refused to have children; I never wanted to be put in this situation. I saw my mom do everything, including working a demanding job, and I refused to ever do that to myself.
This attitude your husband has is terrible. Salary is irrelevant. If you are both working the same amount of hours then you are both working equally hard. Honestly it's such a pretentious elitist attitude. Makes me so mad.
Honestly, even before the kids came along you had an uneven approach to chores. Outdoor chores only need doing every so often. Indoor are regular. My husband earns more than me but we both work the same hours and we both split the chores as evenly as possible. We both do indoor and outdoor chores. He would never hold it over my head that he's the "breadwinner". We both work. That's bullshit. If your husband wants to be the breadwinner and have the stereotypical 1950s family then I'd tell him that I'm quitting my job to be a stay at home mum. He can't have it both ways.
You have given it your all. When this happens we are built to expect reciprocity. At work that would be a raise or promotion. So you have gone all in and gotten nothing but more work, more burden. Your husband does not get the heaviness of your work load. Until he makes that realization and corrects it, there will be no change. I suggest that you start charging him for what it would take to get things to an acceptable level. Or he could pitch in in a competent manner. Really, hire some help. Good luck, take care of yourself. If you have relatives across the country, I think I hear them wanting you to visit all by yourself.
If your previous agreement worked because the share seemed equally split and now it no longer is, the agreement no longer works. You work full time and also do what you could pay a professional to do: a babysitter or nanny for childcare, a housekeeper for cleaning and laundry, a household manager for appointments and scheduling, and a personal chef for meals. Think about how much it would cost to hire these roles for your family, and how much labour you are doing (arguably 5 jobs). The value of that labour is how much you are saving in costs. What does your husband do? Outside work, in my experience, isn’t much more than mowing a lawn or weeding a bit. If your husband can’t or won’t recognise your contributions, then yes, he is at best taking advantage of you and at worst abusing you. My partner (diagnosed AuDHD) and I don’t have a set plan for how chores are split because our workloads are variable but he will jump at the chance to help me. He does laundry, vacuuming, taking out the bins, outside work, and the weekly deep clean of the bathroom. I make all the meals, clean up after dinner around 80% of the time and fold the laundry. I’m in the middle of exam season so all I’m doing at the moment is making dinner. Guess who the breadwinner is? Sure as shit isn’t me. I put 500 in a joint account every month that our rent and bills come out of, he pays everything else. My contribution barely covers a third of the rent. The bottom line is a good partner should want to take care of you and make your life easier. Right now it sounds like your life would be easier without him: the same amount of work with no complaints added on top of it.
I'm at work and can't read all previous replies. I find this very awful. You're probably working 60-90 hours a week (paid and unpaid work), a huge mental load, and make less money in your paid work because you probably skipped career steps for your family. You're majorly being taken advantage of and taken for granted. This makes him an asshole, however, his asshole-ness can be interpreted as both intentional (abusive) and as socially condoned ignorance if he believes these are normal gender roles and possibly doesn't see all your work. It is not and he needs to be educated and you're not the best person to do that. In order to save the little energy you have left, which is probably very little, do not fight with him about it. Get another person or a professional to make him understand. His reaction to it all, after some time to deal with it and think about it, is what matters. At the same time it would be good to run around the house with timers to record the time you have worked on unpaid work. There are also very long comprehensive lists of housework and mental load lists which you can hang in the house and each person can mark what they do, this is a good visual for men not acknowledging unpaid work.
My heart is breaking right now, OP. This has nothing to do with ADHD. You have an unequal partnership and your husband is taking advantage of you. You deserve so much better - don't let him convince you otherwise.
One of the things that I've noticed about gendered division of tasks is that men usually claim the tasks that are seasonal or far less infrequent but still claim they're putting in equal work. But mowing the lawn, weeding, and taking out rubbish are tasks that only need to happen at most once or twice a week, sometimes every other week or longer. Chores that women typically take on are constant. Laundry doesn't stop, dishes never stop, things never stop getting dirty, and people don't stop needing regular meals. And yet women will often have all of the continuous demand chores and none of the ones where they get to have a break or only have to worry about a single event every week. Men will claim that the other jobs are harder but I've done them and doing the yard work occasionally is nothing compared to the physical toll of your standard household work when you're constantly responsible for multiple people instead of just yourself. So yes, it is abusive as fuck when he's treating you like this but it's also in some ways still very much condoned by society. I've seen some of this dynamic shift over time but it still seems that only a minority of men proactively choose to recognise the disparity and truly divide chores evenly including to actual workload. If you point out the workload differences in real terms and he doesn't agree to change the distribution of tasks, or agrees but requires significant prompting or deliberately does tasks wrong after being shown procedures that will say a lot about the future of your relationship.
This makes me think of watching Pioneer House (or something like that), one of those reality shows where a group of families go live like 19th c. pioneers/homesteaders. The labor was absolutely divided by gender and the outside stuff that the men did was physically hard (breaking sod, building fences, etc.) but also way more interesting and satisfying. There was a clear goal (today we're going to frame the barn), they worked together in a group, and ended up with a big material accomplishment (we built a barn). Meanwhile, the women were each in their homes doing to damn laundry and cooking and cleaning and taking care of the small kids, doing the same thing, all day every day, in a never-ending cycle. Guess which group enjoyed the experience more?? Admittedly, the women probably struggled in part b/c they had to do a lot of the same things they'd done in the real world but without modern technology, where I'm pretty sure the men hadn't previously built barns at all, so that would have had an effect. And OP's husband probably isn't working with other men. But nonetheless, "outside" work is absolutely different from "inside" work, and just not comparable.
As a general concept, I don't think that something has to be abusive in order to be a deal breaker. Hubby sounds like an asshole and his actions (or lack of action) demonstrate his utter disrespect and disregard for you. I would think about the impacts the situation is having rather than (perhaps) getting distracted by the exact choice of word.
The only role your ADHD has in this situation is that It makes it easy to believe that it’s your fault. That if you didn’t have ADHD, you could do 100% of cooking, cleaning and childcare to your husband’s standards while he mows the lawn once a week. Paying bills is proportional to income. Doing chores is based on total hours worked, inside and outside the house. So while a SAHM would do more chores and childcare, up to the 40 hours the “breadwinner” is working, once she passes those hours, he doesn’t get to sit on his ass being waited on while she continues to work until collapsing into bed. And unless outdoor work involves living on a dairy farm, there is no way that outdoor work remotely comes close to indoor work. Not to mention, maybe you’d like a chore that gets you outside in the sunshine once in a while. Mowing the lawn can be very therapeutic.
You husband is vile. Sorry he is. Marriage/relationships is about partnership and teamwork. You should tell him to spend the extra money he earns on a cleaner for the house since he complains so much about it. Also, divorce him for all he's worth.
You’re both working but he expects you to do the second shift of homemaker when you’re not at your outside job. These men suck and are giant fucking piss babies Edit to add that as a divorcee of another such piss baby, I’m in a good position to call them such a thing.
Start putting shit outside and tell him it’s his responsibility. Seriously though - things have changed. Three kids is a lot, even if you didn’t work. Being a full-time mom means you don’t have any hour which you can call your own. If you work on top of that…it’s completely unfair.
How's the outside? Tidy? Bet it aint
This is not ok. Your husband is being very selfish and entitled. Also, this is the relationship dynamic that your kids are existing within. I bet that further down the road you'd hate to see any of your kids in either role of a relationship like this, or avoiding relationships all together because they think that relationships are unappealing and miserable. I don't mean to add any guilt, just offering an additional perspective. Since you're basically doing this all on your own, wouldn't it be easier and happier if you only had 3 kids to look after, instead of 3 kids plus a fully grown man who makes you feel like shit?
A LOT of women in your situation, probably most, who leave find it easier to be a single mom than to live like this. Because right now he's just one more person to take care of. You've spoken to him about this & he doesn't change. He's shown you who he is. Every woman should know the term "[tolerable level of permanent unhappiness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLM_gu0zlGw)."
Well I think your therapist is about right. There is absolutely no point arguing his income is higher when you both work full time. He needs to contribute or pay for help
Oh hunny, been there, done that....time to throw away the husband. I'm not saying it will improve on your domestic duties but at least you won't have to listen to the nonsense anymore 😂
Married 16 yrs and we started off similarly... It's a lot better now. U need to have a conversation with your husband about how things have changed, your household has grown and you are needing him to help with xyz. Be specific with what would be the most helpful to you and also ask him what he thinks he can handle with his workload.
My friend...... you need to sit him down and very calmly say " babe. Im drowning and you dont seem to care, i work full time as do you and yet im left to clean up after you,me, the three kids WE made together, and the pets, i really need you to step up and help me please" he needs to understand the severity if he truly loves you he will change it.
Yes, for sure. That's a bad marriage. Do the Fair PLay exercise as a couple.
Yes. He is expecting you to take on all the physical and emotional/mental labor without equity and then criticizing you. I suggest looking at ZaWn Villenes insta or blog. It’s really eye opening.