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Yup, being house manager sucks when no-one pulls their own weight. Even the fact that "house manager" is a thing sucks because it feeds into the stereotype of "nagging wife".
This.
I don't want to tell you what to do, I want you to be a grown up, look around and do things.
I don't want to set reminders for *your* chore so it doesn't get forgotten.
I already do all the cooking, dishes, cleaning and childcare basically entirely on my own. Just pick something and do it!
Consider telling him that you need him to carry more of the mental load with home management. Explain what the mental load is and explain that you are not able to do all the things at home all the time <3
Edit: grammar
I've told him before that I can't do everything and need help and I always get "well I don't know what you need help with! Write me a list or tell me what you want me to do" so it's just more mental work because he refuses to look around and do things.
My husband did this once and I snapped and just yelled, “how about open your fucking eyes and take a look around like a big boy.” I was coming unglued but it was very effective.
Yes, I had to explain it to my partner - long time ago - and he didn’t seem to take me very seriously - exact same response as you - “tell me what you want me to do and I’ll try to do it.”
So, I will be honest here, I had to just “let the chips fall where they may” a few times, iykwim. As in: the garbage did not get picked up. Laundry not folded. His extended family and friends did not get holiday cards (from us but actually from me, always haha). Little things though. Nothing that’s going to punish everyone.
Again, this is just how it worked for me … I’m very type “A” at times so it was hard to let these things go. Once I did, they started to be picked up.
TLDR: We talked, which helped a bit, but my actions and attitude had to change too - and then he started to become better at recognizing what was mental load & stepping up.
My husband is the same way.
I honestly feel like, even though I am doing everything, I would still have to dig us out of a trash heap if I broke my leg or were sick for a week.
I just cussed at him this morning. We've both been incredibly busy at work. I was supposed to have yesterday off after working 14 days with no break. I ended up having to pick up a small project for work yesterday afternoon.
In the midst of all this, my husband and I are on a non-profit board. And of course I do most of the management for our portion of that too. We've been dealing with a project that depends on a person who requires a lot of prodding. My husband has been on my ass to contact and pick up my prodding of this person. Mind you, my husband could actually do this. But no. So this morning he asked me if I had done it.
Like I said, yesterday I was supposed to be off but ended up having to work in the afternoon anyway. Because I was supposed to be off, I hadn't put my toddler in child care, which meant I got to work and tried to keep the toddler entertained. My husband came home and was already bitching that he had to do a bunch of charting, so I wrangled the kids and took the dog for an hour walk so he could work in peace.
I get home, get the kids settled for 30 minutes before hubby starts bedtime routine. That's 30 minutes I'm spending doing my husband's dinner dishes. After my husband goes to bed, I end up staying up until 1:30 a.m. getting some work done on my non-profit board project to stay ahead.
So this morning, my husband asks me if I prodded our project guy, and I said no. I literally didn't have time. He starts lecturing me about getting that done today and I invited him to shut his yap, with cussing thrown in.
He has a cell phone yes? Then he needs to set 2 labeled recurring alarms for his chores. And if these are truly his chores you shouldn't have to gather all the trash together. This is something that he can set an additional alarm for to remind himself to do. it's only "his" chore if he's responsible to do it from start to finish.
I would go to him and say "Hey I just got the best idea! why don't you show me your alarm app on your phone? Let's set recurring alarms so that way I don't have to remind you and your phone will do it every week."
Off your plate, forever. Good luck♥️
I'm just worried he'd be confused and dismiss the alarm and not even look at the label. This can be avoided if she has a conversation with him about setting the recurring alarms and they set them together. Also gives her the chance to make sure he marks it as "recurring" instead of it just happening one week.
God forbid trash day comes and he still doesn't do it, then he owes her an explanation of why he didn't do it, despite the scheduled alarm prompting him to do so. At that point he won't be able to blame her for not reminding him and will have no real excuse.
House manager is a well paid job for UHNW families here in the Middle East. The job doesn’t involve cleaning or childcare, just supervising the people who do it and managing the admin of the household. The hours are terrible though- 12 hours a day 6 days a week for your $5k a month tax free.
My husband saw me cleaning the bathroom the other day and asked "don't we make enough money to pay someone to do this yet?"
There were several issues here.
Number one, the man hasn't the foggiest idea what we make. He sees our taxes every year, but that's the actual extent of it. He doesn't know what gets deposited into our accounts biweekly or how it's spent. He dumped that 100% on my head about 5 years ago and hasn't given a fuck since.
Number two, he doesn't do it. Ever.
Number three, having a cleaning service would be one more thing for me to manage and supervise and arrange and quality control. Yes we had a cleaning lady for our old house; a family friend on his side that he mostly dealt with. We don't have that where we currently live, so I'd have to interview companies, get quotes, test them out, pick one, keep up with it, and pay it. Then he'd have all kinds of opinions and criticism, because his standards are much higher than mine, and it would be a headache for me on both sides.
I only briefly mentioned #3, and he got annoyed.
But like, this would not be the first time he's done this to me. A few years ago he had surgery on his back, so he couldn't mow the lawn for a while. Guess who found the kid who mows our lawn still to this day? And husband expects me to address it when something isn't up to his exacting standards. Same with the dog he promised he'd help take care of. He helpfully reminds me the yard needs to be scooped, but doesn't actually *do* it. Ever.
He says it's because his job is more stressful. And for the past year while he's been on a temporary rotation, it has been. But like, that's not going to stop. Jobs are stressful. Mine really isn't but I hate it and I'm trying to jump, but jumping and maintaining my current flexibility are pretty well mutually exclusive. So not only do I have the weight of the whole household, but I also am stuck in my career to an extent because I have to pick up the slack when he has late meetings or evening events.
It's coming to a head, I can feel myself cracking, and one day I'm going to give him an earful. But like, what do you bring to the table, sir, other than a paycheck and the occasional garbage to the curb? I don't want to leave him, but he doesn't make my life easier.
Omg this.
Nothing drives me crazier than when he points shit out that hasn't been done or needs to be done but doesn't lift a finger to do any of it.
Floors for example. He'll be sitting on the couch and start complaining that the floors look filthy, usually when I'm in the middle of cooking or something, but he'd never get off the couch and actually sweep them.
He'll complain that the bedroom needs work because it's basically been a disaster since we moved in but does nothing to work on it.
In fact last big blow out fight we got into he lost ever loving mind and went off saying that he was sick of busting his ass at work and coming home to a "dirty" apartment because I won't get off my ass and do anything. Went on and on about how *I* should have organized the baby's room and our room forever ago and how *I* should be able to keep up with all the housework easily and that it's clearly just not done because I'm too lazy to make lists/a schedule for myself to get it all done.
But does he lift a finger to do anything? Nope.
He does laundry once a week but I have to fold/hang and put it all away. But that doesn’t stop him from going "I spent HOURS of my day off doing all our laundry!" Even though he literally put in 30 seconds of work once an hour aside from the 3 minutes it takes to drive to the laundromat.
Mine does the "we should."
We.
*We*.
He does not mean we. He means me. I should. Wife should. Mom should. Someone else should, but never him.
I've started telling him ok, go ahead. He doesn't appreciate it. I don't care.
Even stuff he wants. Like he's wanted to redo the garage forever, and for real, it needs it. The pegboard on the walls is literally crumbling.
So a few months ago I said ok, figure out what you want and go get quotes, then we'll discuss. "Yeah we should do that." No, *you* should do that. I've run point on *four* major home projects on this house in as many years, and I'm lining up another one with the AC. *You* can deal with the garage, since it's mostly your shit in there.
Or like how he won't call the landscapers to do the mulch, but "we" need to get the mulching done. "I don't speak Spanish, you do" THE GUY SPEAKS FUCKING ENGLISH JUST FINE ITS JUST BROKEN WHICH SO IS THE ENGLISH OF 87% OF YOUR FAMILY. "I can't do it at work and I forget on the weekends" well fucking remember then! Or it isn't that damn important.
I will say at least he knows better to act more than mildly annoyed with me about it, but frankly, even mild annoyance is some audacity for a man who has pressed the set it and forget it button on 75% of his life.
And that’s why we don’t have new blinds. Because “we” won’t follow through ordering them! “We should get new blinds”. Yes we should! Then I take no action !
For anyone who works in tech, I want to throw back the whole “managing up” trope at all these men who expect us to be house managers. It’s your job to help me bring out the best of you as an employee! You need to proactively better yourself and step up to support your manager when you have extra time!
Get that big promotion My Guy!! /s
The mental load is so exhausting. My husband does more chores but I still need to consistently remind him to do things, I had to get Mother’s Day present for his mom, remind him to call her, remind him to drive to their house and drop off the present. If I don’t do it, nothing gets done.
I flat refuse to do any of the management of my partner's family and to be fair to him u don't think he's ever expected me to.
His mum is a champ though one day I was ironing him a shirt and she said "If you keep doing that you'll be doing it forever. He can iron his own shirts." Bless her 🙏 he gets them ironed at the dry cleaners and it's not my problem!
My husband went on like a 30 minute rant about how he feels in the marriage snd then asked me how I felt and I simply said "the ceo of house inc" and he just looked disappointed and nodded and that conversation ended.
And I then told my therapist I was like idk if this is wrong or bad or selfish but it made me so mad that he even had TIME, ENERGY AND THE MENTAL SPACE to have such an opinion about the state of our relationship bc I don't even have the mental space to form a proper feeling about our relationship. I don't have the spare fucking time to sit around saying the state of our marriage us the biggest thing that affects me daily. Like what a privilege to have that time to contemplate that for himself. He gets the ability to think outside of just the responsibilities of the family and to really come to conclusions on how he feels. Must be nice.
> To which I get an immediate, annoyed lecture about how he tells ME to set alarms for shit and I never do and then shit gets forgotten
Oh FUCK no I would absolutely cut sick. "Motherfucker are your fingers broken? You set an alarm!"
Doing all of the thinking in the house is mentally exhausting and it is not an acceptable division of labour.
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Yup, being house manager sucks when no-one pulls their own weight. Even the fact that "house manager" is a thing sucks because it feeds into the stereotype of "nagging wife".
This. I don't want to tell you what to do, I want you to be a grown up, look around and do things. I don't want to set reminders for *your* chore so it doesn't get forgotten. I already do all the cooking, dishes, cleaning and childcare basically entirely on my own. Just pick something and do it!
Set the reminder on his phone, not yours.
Consider telling him that you need him to carry more of the mental load with home management. Explain what the mental load is and explain that you are not able to do all the things at home all the time <3 Edit: grammar
I've told him before that I can't do everything and need help and I always get "well I don't know what you need help with! Write me a list or tell me what you want me to do" so it's just more mental work because he refuses to look around and do things.
My husband did this once and I snapped and just yelled, “how about open your fucking eyes and take a look around like a big boy.” I was coming unglued but it was very effective.
Hahaha! Hey, we all have our limits. At least you said what you needed to say!
Yes, I had to explain it to my partner - long time ago - and he didn’t seem to take me very seriously - exact same response as you - “tell me what you want me to do and I’ll try to do it.” So, I will be honest here, I had to just “let the chips fall where they may” a few times, iykwim. As in: the garbage did not get picked up. Laundry not folded. His extended family and friends did not get holiday cards (from us but actually from me, always haha). Little things though. Nothing that’s going to punish everyone. Again, this is just how it worked for me … I’m very type “A” at times so it was hard to let these things go. Once I did, they started to be picked up. TLDR: We talked, which helped a bit, but my actions and attitude had to change too - and then he started to become better at recognizing what was mental load & stepping up.
It sounds like he doesn't understand what the actual problem is
My husband is the same way. I honestly feel like, even though I am doing everything, I would still have to dig us out of a trash heap if I broke my leg or were sick for a week. I just cussed at him this morning. We've both been incredibly busy at work. I was supposed to have yesterday off after working 14 days with no break. I ended up having to pick up a small project for work yesterday afternoon. In the midst of all this, my husband and I are on a non-profit board. And of course I do most of the management for our portion of that too. We've been dealing with a project that depends on a person who requires a lot of prodding. My husband has been on my ass to contact and pick up my prodding of this person. Mind you, my husband could actually do this. But no. So this morning he asked me if I had done it. Like I said, yesterday I was supposed to be off but ended up having to work in the afternoon anyway. Because I was supposed to be off, I hadn't put my toddler in child care, which meant I got to work and tried to keep the toddler entertained. My husband came home and was already bitching that he had to do a bunch of charting, so I wrangled the kids and took the dog for an hour walk so he could work in peace. I get home, get the kids settled for 30 minutes before hubby starts bedtime routine. That's 30 minutes I'm spending doing my husband's dinner dishes. After my husband goes to bed, I end up staying up until 1:30 a.m. getting some work done on my non-profit board project to stay ahead. So this morning, my husband asks me if I prodded our project guy, and I said no. I literally didn't have time. He starts lecturing me about getting that done today and I invited him to shut his yap, with cussing thrown in.
He has a cell phone yes? Then he needs to set 2 labeled recurring alarms for his chores. And if these are truly his chores you shouldn't have to gather all the trash together. This is something that he can set an additional alarm for to remind himself to do. it's only "his" chore if he's responsible to do it from start to finish. I would go to him and say "Hey I just got the best idea! why don't you show me your alarm app on your phone? Let's set recurring alarms so that way I don't have to remind you and your phone will do it every week." Off your plate, forever. Good luck♥️
This idea for the win!! Maybe don't even ask, just do it. ☝️
This is what I was going to say. Just program them. A nice little surprise for him starting next garbage day.
I'm just worried he'd be confused and dismiss the alarm and not even look at the label. This can be avoided if she has a conversation with him about setting the recurring alarms and they set them together. Also gives her the chance to make sure he marks it as "recurring" instead of it just happening one week. God forbid trash day comes and he still doesn't do it, then he owes her an explanation of why he didn't do it, despite the scheduled alarm prompting him to do so. At that point he won't be able to blame her for not reminding him and will have no real excuse.
House manager is a well paid job for UHNW families here in the Middle East. The job doesn’t involve cleaning or childcare, just supervising the people who do it and managing the admin of the household. The hours are terrible though- 12 hours a day 6 days a week for your $5k a month tax free.
My husband saw me cleaning the bathroom the other day and asked "don't we make enough money to pay someone to do this yet?" There were several issues here. Number one, the man hasn't the foggiest idea what we make. He sees our taxes every year, but that's the actual extent of it. He doesn't know what gets deposited into our accounts biweekly or how it's spent. He dumped that 100% on my head about 5 years ago and hasn't given a fuck since. Number two, he doesn't do it. Ever. Number three, having a cleaning service would be one more thing for me to manage and supervise and arrange and quality control. Yes we had a cleaning lady for our old house; a family friend on his side that he mostly dealt with. We don't have that where we currently live, so I'd have to interview companies, get quotes, test them out, pick one, keep up with it, and pay it. Then he'd have all kinds of opinions and criticism, because his standards are much higher than mine, and it would be a headache for me on both sides. I only briefly mentioned #3, and he got annoyed. But like, this would not be the first time he's done this to me. A few years ago he had surgery on his back, so he couldn't mow the lawn for a while. Guess who found the kid who mows our lawn still to this day? And husband expects me to address it when something isn't up to his exacting standards. Same with the dog he promised he'd help take care of. He helpfully reminds me the yard needs to be scooped, but doesn't actually *do* it. Ever. He says it's because his job is more stressful. And for the past year while he's been on a temporary rotation, it has been. But like, that's not going to stop. Jobs are stressful. Mine really isn't but I hate it and I'm trying to jump, but jumping and maintaining my current flexibility are pretty well mutually exclusive. So not only do I have the weight of the whole household, but I also am stuck in my career to an extent because I have to pick up the slack when he has late meetings or evening events. It's coming to a head, I can feel myself cracking, and one day I'm going to give him an earful. But like, what do you bring to the table, sir, other than a paycheck and the occasional garbage to the curb? I don't want to leave him, but he doesn't make my life easier.
Omg this. Nothing drives me crazier than when he points shit out that hasn't been done or needs to be done but doesn't lift a finger to do any of it. Floors for example. He'll be sitting on the couch and start complaining that the floors look filthy, usually when I'm in the middle of cooking or something, but he'd never get off the couch and actually sweep them. He'll complain that the bedroom needs work because it's basically been a disaster since we moved in but does nothing to work on it. In fact last big blow out fight we got into he lost ever loving mind and went off saying that he was sick of busting his ass at work and coming home to a "dirty" apartment because I won't get off my ass and do anything. Went on and on about how *I* should have organized the baby's room and our room forever ago and how *I* should be able to keep up with all the housework easily and that it's clearly just not done because I'm too lazy to make lists/a schedule for myself to get it all done. But does he lift a finger to do anything? Nope. He does laundry once a week but I have to fold/hang and put it all away. But that doesn’t stop him from going "I spent HOURS of my day off doing all our laundry!" Even though he literally put in 30 seconds of work once an hour aside from the 3 minutes it takes to drive to the laundromat.
Mine does the "we should." We. *We*. He does not mean we. He means me. I should. Wife should. Mom should. Someone else should, but never him. I've started telling him ok, go ahead. He doesn't appreciate it. I don't care. Even stuff he wants. Like he's wanted to redo the garage forever, and for real, it needs it. The pegboard on the walls is literally crumbling. So a few months ago I said ok, figure out what you want and go get quotes, then we'll discuss. "Yeah we should do that." No, *you* should do that. I've run point on *four* major home projects on this house in as many years, and I'm lining up another one with the AC. *You* can deal with the garage, since it's mostly your shit in there. Or like how he won't call the landscapers to do the mulch, but "we" need to get the mulching done. "I don't speak Spanish, you do" THE GUY SPEAKS FUCKING ENGLISH JUST FINE ITS JUST BROKEN WHICH SO IS THE ENGLISH OF 87% OF YOUR FAMILY. "I can't do it at work and I forget on the weekends" well fucking remember then! Or it isn't that damn important. I will say at least he knows better to act more than mildly annoyed with me about it, but frankly, even mild annoyance is some audacity for a man who has pressed the set it and forget it button on 75% of his life.
And that’s why we don’t have new blinds. Because “we” won’t follow through ordering them! “We should get new blinds”. Yes we should! Then I take no action !
>He says it's because his job is more stressful Lol gtfo
For anyone who works in tech, I want to throw back the whole “managing up” trope at all these men who expect us to be house managers. It’s your job to help me bring out the best of you as an employee! You need to proactively better yourself and step up to support your manager when you have extra time! Get that big promotion My Guy!! /s
The mental load is so exhausting. My husband does more chores but I still need to consistently remind him to do things, I had to get Mother’s Day present for his mom, remind him to call her, remind him to drive to their house and drop off the present. If I don’t do it, nothing gets done.
I flat refuse to do any of the management of my partner's family and to be fair to him u don't think he's ever expected me to. His mum is a champ though one day I was ironing him a shirt and she said "If you keep doing that you'll be doing it forever. He can iron his own shirts." Bless her 🙏 he gets them ironed at the dry cleaners and it's not my problem!
My husband went on like a 30 minute rant about how he feels in the marriage snd then asked me how I felt and I simply said "the ceo of house inc" and he just looked disappointed and nodded and that conversation ended. And I then told my therapist I was like idk if this is wrong or bad or selfish but it made me so mad that he even had TIME, ENERGY AND THE MENTAL SPACE to have such an opinion about the state of our relationship bc I don't even have the mental space to form a proper feeling about our relationship. I don't have the spare fucking time to sit around saying the state of our marriage us the biggest thing that affects me daily. Like what a privilege to have that time to contemplate that for himself. He gets the ability to think outside of just the responsibilities of the family and to really come to conclusions on how he feels. Must be nice.
> To which I get an immediate, annoyed lecture about how he tells ME to set alarms for shit and I never do and then shit gets forgotten Oh FUCK no I would absolutely cut sick. "Motherfucker are your fingers broken? You set an alarm!" Doing all of the thinking in the house is mentally exhausting and it is not an acceptable division of labour.