Wife is just lazy

[Anonymous]

I would be depressed if I was married to someone who vents to strangers how fat and lazy I am.

Put her out of her misery (i.e. leave).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How is your 10-year old totally self-sufficient???? That’s impressive. Hats off to you both, although I don’t know how developmentally appropriate that is for a 10yo.

Why wouldn't he be? They can brush their own teeth, bathe themselves, make a sandwich, wipe their own butts. What kinda kids are you over there raising?

Is that parenting to you???


I play games with them, talk to them, take them to friends' houses, help them with homework, remind them to do their chores, teach them to do things, and help them emotionally regulate. I also cook for them (they eat things besides sandwiches and ramen), I clean their sheets and towels, etc.

yes a 10-year old can keep themselves alive but it's pretty neglectful on the part of a parent to expect them to do that.

I agree.

And they were never excel like a kid who had the benefit of attentive parenting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know this thread will get hated on. But, I need to rant.

My wife is a stay at home mom. We have one kid who's ten. He's 100% self sufficient. She stays home all day. But, she hates to cook, do laundry, clean the house, wash the dishes, etc. I work 50-60 hours a week supporting the family and I do more house chores than she does. This summer she wanted to lose some weight. She's about 30lb over. She joins a gym for $50 a month and in the last two months she has lost zero pounds. I ask her what she's doing there and she's walking/jogging for 30-40 minutes. That's it. I asked her if she's able to jog 30 minutes in a row and she said no. Really? She's healthy. Nothing wrong with her. Yet, after two months at the gym she can't even job 30 minutes?

I do my own laundry, cook half the time, clean half the time, take care off of our kid's sports. So tired of playing the role of almost two parents.

Kids, when you marry. Listen to your gut.

She isn't going to lose weight running like a hamster on the treadmill. Cardio is just busywork. Get her a PT to lift heavy stat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know this thread will get hated on. But, I need to rant.

My wife is a stay at home mom. We have one kid who's ten. He's 100% self sufficient. She stays home all day. But, she hates to cook, do laundry, clean the house, wash the dishes, etc. I work 50-60 hours a week supporting the family and I do more house chores than she does. This summer she wanted to lose some weight. She's about 30lb over. She joins a gym for $50 a month and in the last two months she has lost zero pounds. I ask her what she's doing there and she's walking/jogging for 30-40 minutes. That's it. I asked her if she's able to jog 30 minutes in a row and she said no. Really? She's healthy. Nothing wrong with her. Yet, after two months at the gym she can't even job 30 minutes?

I do my own laundry, cook half the time, clean half the time, take care off of our kid's sports. So tired of playing the role of almost two parents.

Kids, when you marry. Listen to your gut.

She isn't going to lose weight running like a hamster on the treadmill. Cardio is just busywork. Get her a PT to lift heavy stat.

I wish OP's wife could see the PT who commented!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would be depressed if I was married to someone who vents to strangers how fat and lazy I am.

Put her out of her misery (i.e. leave).

My ex did that to me. Making fun of me but he is so insecure
I ending up leaving him and now I’m thriving and happy to be single forever

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would be depressed if I was married to someone who vents to strangers how fat and lazy I am.

Put her out of her misery (i.e. leave).

Imagine how depressed all the poor husbands would be if they knew what their wives said about them on DCUM Relationships.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I work as a fitness and nutrition coach, and I worked with a lot of SAHMs like your wife.

Lack of exercise is almost never about laziness. Most SAHMs have a long history of attempting to lose weight, work, etc. But they end up pulled in a million different directions - they want to work, but their H won’t handle half of the sick days or pickups. They want to work out, but society makes them feel guilty for not devoting that time to their families. They try to balance work and life by getting involved in things like MLMs, which are enticing because they promise you can make a ton of money while also raising kids full-time, but of course always fail.

After years of these “failures”, they lose all hope. Most of the time, their H’s are unsupportive, like you are. They see “my wife cannot run 30 minutes” rather than “wow, my wife is going to the gym every day, how awesome that she is doing something for herself and improving herself!” Improvement in health is a long, slow game, not a “be able to run a 5k in 8 weeks”.

Making things worse, they usually have to ask their husbands for permission to spend money on themselves. So you have a perfect storm of years of martyring, a husband who sees them as a failure, and who denies them access to the money and support that WILL help them thrive. They end up severely depressed and exactly like your W.

If you truly want to help her, be supportive. Don’t stress over the house and cooking - that will come. First, she needs to regain autonomy and control over her life. She needs to feel supported. Let her know you think it’s fantastic she’s going to the gym. Ask if she’d like to do personal training sessions and make it happen. Take an interest in her dreams - I promise you, she has them. Listen to what her dreams are and let her know you want to help her achieve them. She needs to re-discover herself and her identity.

You learned all of this being a fitness coach?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work as a fitness and nutrition coach, and I worked with a lot of SAHMs like your wife.

Lack of exercise is almost never about laziness. Most SAHMs have a long history of attempting to lose weight, work, etc. But they end up pulled in a million different directions - they want to work, but their H won’t handle half of the sick days or pickups. They want to work out, but society makes them feel guilty for not devoting that time to their families. They try to balance work and life by getting involved in things like MLMs, which are enticing because they promise you can make a ton of money while also raising kids full-time, but of course always fail.

After years of these “failures”, they lose all hope. Most of the time, their H’s are unsupportive, like you are. They see “my wife cannot run 30 minutes” rather than “wow, my wife is going to the gym every day, how awesome that she is doing something for herself and improving herself!” Improvement in health is a long, slow game, not a “be able to run a 5k in 8 weeks”.

Making things worse, they usually have to ask their husbands for permission to spend money on themselves. So you have a perfect storm of years of martyring, a husband who sees them as a failure, and who denies them access to the money and support that WILL help them thrive. They end up severely depressed and exactly like your W.

If you truly want to help her, be supportive. Don’t stress over the house and cooking - that will come. First, she needs to regain autonomy and control over her life. She needs to feel supported. Let her know you think it’s fantastic she’s going to the gym. Ask if she’d like to do personal training sessions and make it happen. Take an interest in her dreams - I promise you, she has them. Listen to what her dreams are and let her know you want to help her achieve them. She needs to re-discover herself and her identity.

I agree this is why many SAHMs end up depressed with a low sense of self worth. It is high burnout work, you’re always sacrificing your needs and even your attention span to myriad thankless tasks, and it’s hard to sustain your own projects and accomplishments.

This in a nutshell is why I work. So I can say NO to guys like OP who have no gratitude and expect more and more. Were he in a position to stay home with the kid for years, I’d love to see where his motivation and sense of self is.

As a man who works I do not know exactly how a SAHM is…my wife gets tons of hired help. What I can tell you is work is not fun. Most high paying jobs involve tremendous stress and anxiety. I would much rather do nothing than work if I had a choice.

As a woman who works a high pressure job, I would ten times rather work than be a SAHM. I don’t want to be managing the never ending minutiae of a household. Plus, infants and toddlers are high burnout, and caring for them round the clock including night parenting will make you batty. At least with work you are having a thought that lasts more than 20 seconds. You are using your training and skills, you are getting paid, you have some sense of how your tasks and time will be apportioned (even if you have to work overtime or have more things piled on). As a SAHM one minute it’s 9:20 AM and the next it’s 3:40 PM and all you’ve done is put a kid down for two naps and eat lunch and clean it up, any ambition you had to do more than that is gone and you still have five hours of thankless repetitive tasks to go. You’re around people who don’t see you, never say thank you or give you any rewards, and you never have time that’s defined as off because your time is not defined period. Don’t underestimate how demoralizing that lack of structure and identity can be.

+1 Being a SAHM sounds awful. I’d only do it if we were truly loaded and I could outsource everything I hated.

Separately, I hate lazy people. I don’t care what the cause is. OP’s wife needs to take responsibility for herself and why she sucks. Whatever changes she needs to be a functional human being she needs to communicate them and action on them. She doesn’t need DH to coddle her and be endlessly understanding; she needs to grow up.

+1. I can give both perspectives. I have a very stressful job. When my kids were young I managed to keep this job on more flexible hours and still be home for them to cook, clean, volunteer, plan bday parties, and everything else SAHM’s do. When I wasn’t doing that, I was working at my stressful job. My youngest is now 11. Kids are more self sufficient so i now fill all of those extra hours with working more hours at my job. It never occurred to me not to. My DH is also working his butt off so why would I assume I’m entitled to more down time? And I work out intensely 4-5 days a week - literally at the crack of dawn since that is the only time i have. I’m so tired of listening to all of my SAHM friends whose kids are literally in high school complain about how overwhelmed and busy they are. Um. Really?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I work as a fitness and nutrition coach, and I worked with a lot of SAHMs like your wife.

Lack of exercise is almost never about laziness. Most SAHMs have a long history of attempting to lose weight, work, etc. But they end up pulled in a million different directions - they want to work, but their H won’t handle half of the sick days or pickups. They want to work out, but society makes them feel guilty for not devoting that time to their families. They try to balance work and life by getting involved in things like MLMs, which are enticing because they promise you can make a ton of money while also raising kids full-time, but of course always fail.

After years of these “failures”, they lose all hope. Most of the time, their H’s are unsupportive, like you are. They see “my wife cannot run 30 minutes” rather than “wow, my wife is going to the gym every day, how awesome that she is doing something for herself and improving herself!” Improvement in health is a long, slow game, not a “be able to run a 5k in 8 weeks”.

Making things worse, they usually have to ask their husbands for permission to spend money on themselves. So you have a perfect storm of years of martyring, a husband who sees them as a failure, and who denies them access to the money and support that WILL help them thrive. They end up severely depressed and exactly like your W.

If you truly want to help her, be supportive. Don’t stress over the house and cooking - that will come. First, she needs to regain autonomy and control over her life. She needs to feel supported. Let her know you think it’s fantastic she’s going to the gym. Ask if she’d like to do personal training sessions and make it happen. Take an interest in her dreams - I promise you, she has them. Listen to what her dreams are and let her know you want to help her achieve them. She needs to re-discover herself and her identity.

With ONE ten-year old, there's zero reason for this tired old horse of "sick days and pickups". You need just one well spent hour in the gym, and not even every day. Don't try to tell me that his wife doesn't have an hour a day with one ten-year old. The indulgence of white American women never ceases to amaze me.

Yes this reason like a satire. This isn't like 2 kids under 5 who are home all the time needing nonstop attention. The 10yo is in school most of the day.

No, they are actually logistically challenging. If you work a 9-5 job, needing to leave at 8:30 and getting home at 5:30, you can’t do it without help of some kind. At a minimum you need aftercare and before-school care and isn’t always available (at our school it’s a lottery and only available for working parents).

Most dual income families share pickup and drop off responsibilities or have reliable childcare.

It’s unlikely that this would be the one thing keeping a parent from working, but it was definitely a factor in why I am not going to go back to work. DH and I just don’t want that added stress. Also the kids do before and after school sports that aren’t at the school so that’s yet another wrinkle.

I’m the PP above. Both my kids play travel sports. Somehow I still manage to work at my job, do domestic duties, work out and get kids to practices and games including traveling most weekends during season. Many of you are just lazy and looking for excuses not to work.

[Anonymous]

Op, if all this is true then you can dump her. If she is educated then might not be eligible for spousal support.

It is horrible that your wife acts like this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know this thread will get hated on. But, I need to rant.

My wife is a stay at home mom. We have one kid who's ten. He's 100% self sufficient. She stays home all day. But, she hates to cook, do laundry, clean the house, wash the dishes, etc. I work 50-60 hours a week supporting the family and I do more house chores than she does. This summer she wanted to lose some weight. She's about 30lb over. She joins a gym for $50 a month and in the last two months she has lost zero pounds. I ask her what she's doing there and she's walking/jogging for 30-40 minutes. That's it. I asked her if she's able to jog 30 minutes in a row and she said no. Really? She's healthy. Nothing wrong with her. Yet, after two months at the gym she can't even job 30 minutes?

I do my own laundry, cook half the time, clean half the time, take care off of our kid's sports. So tired of playing the role of almost two parents.

Kids, when you marry. Listen to your gut.

Such a weird criticism. Not everyone can jog continuously for 30 min, even active people. I can ride my bike for several hours, but have a hard time jogging for 30 min. It's just not for everyone. I think it's awesome that she's getting herself to the gym to walk/jog, and with more encouragement, she may push herself to do more. If she starts to feel great about herself, then maybe she'll pick up in the areas that you are griping about.

I agree completely. Plus I find this OP so specific and miserly - he had to spell out they are paying $50!!!!! For the gym. And he doesn’t seem to realize that is quite inexpensive around here. Poor lady the distain is palpable

[Anonymous]

Face it, work sucks. Why do you think it’s so hard to get people to come back to the office now? OP’s DW would never in a million years tolerate a complete role switch. And neither would 95% of the SAHPs on DCUM. Because, once the 1-2-3 kids are in school during the best part of every day, SAHPs are enjoying retirement on the backs of their spouses. So of course they wouldn’t change places. It’s like a master and slave changing places.

So WOHPs of school-age-and-older children be aware of your SAH spouses: you are being played, and the fact that you tolerate it breeds contempt, because people by human nature develop contempt for the people they mistreat (It helps them live with themselves.)

[Anonymous]

Everyone is defending her. I do understand where she coming from because I’m in the same situation. I work 50 plus hours a week not including commute. I get home and the house is a mess yet my wife on the couch on her phone the two older kids on their computer or iPad while the one year old is playing with toys. Shell cook the same chicken rice and veggies nearly everyday. While the baby sleeps she says it’s her time to herself, goes to be late (1 am) to be on her phone. All while the kitchen is a mess. Then when we have company coming over she rushes to claim then complains that it’s a lot

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everyone is defending her. I do understand where she coming from because I’m in the same situation. I work 50 plus hours a week not including commute. I get home and the house is a mess yet my wife on the couch on her phone the two older kids on their computer or iPad while the one year old is playing with toys. Shell cook the same chicken rice and veggies nearly everyday. While the baby sleeps she says it’s her time to herself, goes to be late (1 am) to be on her phone. All while the kitchen is a mess. Then when we have company coming over she rushes to claim then complains that it’s a lot

Dude, you revived a 2 year old zombie thread to b&tch about your wife. Get a life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Based on all the threads with the same topic you must recognize that there is no laziness. Only depression and ADHD. You are not supportive of her challenges and are therefore at fault.

Yes there is. She sounds lazy. Many of us who grew up before these conditions were diagnosed learned to adapt and be responsible adults. I have suffered from depression, and I probably have ADHD (ie my niece has been diagnosed and I am a lot like her), but I learned the hard way. When I was 18, I was not re-hired for a job due to my “laziness”. It was a huge wake up call. I am lucky that my parents did not enable and coddle me back then.