This is really bothering me- always being "on" as the parent

[Anonymous]

let's teach our boys to be more OBSERVANT of their partner's sacrifices, needs, and wants. It seems that a lot of these issues arise because women are so sensitively attuned to the needs of their children and the wants of their spouses, that women are making sacrifices that their husbands simply don't see, were never trained to see, were never taught as a valuable skill to take notice.

[Anonymous]

(OP)

I think DH read this post

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:let's teach our boys to be more OBSERVANT of their partner's sacrifices, needs, and wants. It seems that a lot of these issues arise because women are so sensitively attuned to the needs of their children and the wants of their spouses, that women are making sacrifices that their husbands simply don't see, were never trained to see, were never taught as a valuable skill to take notice.

I don’t think that it’s such a gendered thing. There are plenty of men out there who make sacrifices that their wives don’t see. I don’t think that OP is one of those wives, but I do think the people here saying that OP doesn’t seem to recognize that her husband is working are coming from that perspective.

What I think needs to happen is that if you are the type of person who is a people pleaser or was raised to be a people pleaser, then you need to figure out how to 1). Complain about stuff more 2) Learn to accept help, or at least a compliment, when it’s offered.
If you never complain about how hard it is to take care of the kids, or how hard it is to get off work early so you can help out your wife at home, and you blow it off when your spouse offers compliments about it, then you are part of the problem, and you are making your spouse into kind of a jerk.

[Anonymous]

If you don't change your $hitty attitude you're going to be back on here in one year complaining that you found out about your husband's affair and you're devastated because your relationship was great you didn't see it coming.

[Anonymous]

My DH is like this too. We have a super similar dynamic where he will sleep in on weekends, go to the gym during the kids' dinner hour, disappear on the weekend to do some random chore, without any sense that he needs to think about the kids and/or ensure that I am available to take care of them. Whereas I have to remind him at least three times if I have a hair appointment or a girls' dinner or something where I need him to cover.

If I just walked out of the house without saying anything he would probably not even realize and leave them unattended. Our kids are 2 and 5 so it's not like they're self-sufficient.

Similarly, he is overall a great dad and does a lot with the kids, and typically if I tell him I need him to watch the kids, he will do it. So I just suck it up and have resigned myself to this dynamic. But I do have resentment over it.

[Anonymous]

My DH would do this if I never said anything, but he has been responsive to change when I bring it up, which I do when it bothers me.

For instance: he works in the office three days a week and from home two days a week. I work from home every day, something I arranged when we had kids because I wanted that flexibility and also I just prefer WFH.

On days he goes to the office, I handle the full morning routine with kids from wakeup to drop off. He has to leave somewhat early for his commute, and I don't mind this -- like I said, I wanted the flexibility of work from home and this is one of the reasons why. It keeps us from needing before care and it means we don't have to wake the kids up at the crack of dawn to get them out the door before we both commute to work.

But on the days he works from home, he does drop off. He wants to, he values that time with the kids. However, for a while, I was still doing the entire morning routine with the kids on my own even though DH is home and is not yet working during that time. DH will sleep in and then go open his work computer, but not work (he just looks at Twitter or plays a game on his phone) until the kids are ready to go, and then he'll go deliver them to school. Literally he would wait until they were standing at the door with jackets, shoes, and backpacks on before doing anything child related.

I obviously noticed this immediately and started asking for help. Can you go wake up the kids while I get breakfast ready? Or the youngest needs help getting dressed, can you go help her while I'm packing lunches? Or can you check backpacks for their take-home folders, I can't remember if we looked last night? That kind of thing. And immediately DH started trying to get out of or shirk this stuff. He'd say he had to check email first, and then look at his email for 5 second before turning to Twitter on his phone for 20 minutes. He'd disappear into the bathroom for 15 minutes just as the kids were getting up so that by the time he emerged, everything was underway and he could be like "oh, looks like you got this." He really seemed to think his contribution was walking them to school and the rest was up to me, even though on other days I do the routine and the drop off by myself and still come home to start work at the same time he usually does.

So finally I just sat him down and explained that this was unfair to me, and also that the way the dynamic read to me was that he thought it was my job to prepare the kids for him, like he didn't need to get involved in part of the morning where our 5 year old refuses to put on pants or the 7 year old touches a toothbrush to his teeth gently for two seconds and calls it a day. He doesn't want to deal with the fact that we ran out of milk for cereal and need an alternative or that the picky eater won't eat sandwiches in her lunch anymore so we need an alternative with similar nutritional value. He just gets to stare at his phone and fart around for 30-40 minutes (he's not even getting ready for the day since he doesn't shower on WFH days). And when I put it starkly that way, he saw that he was being unfair and he has stopped shirking morning duties on his WFH days. This morning he put out breakfast and made lunches while I oversaw backpacks and helped our kindergartener get ready.

But if I hadn't said anything then he would have stuck with the original set up forever and it never would have occurred to him that this was unfair to me. He thinks of his commute on his in-office days as burdensome (and I can see that it is in someways) and he had though that his lazy mornings on WFH days were his reward for that. And it just never occurred to him that while he's commuting I am crazy busy. That I never get to shower until lunch on his in-office days because he's showering before he leaves and then after he leaves I'm helping the kids get ready, and then since I do drop-off, by the time I get home I have to start work. He just didn't think about what my days were like on his in-office days and that maybe I also needed a break, too. I had to explain it to him.

But at least he listened.

[Anonymous]

Not to derail but mens lives change very little with few extra obligations. And that's not even into account physical changes. Men are just baffled as to why sex time changes when kids are in the mix.
Once again, it's the woman who is supposed to cater to let the man wants.

[Anonymous]

The leaving the house without even telling you and the drinking the way he does would be where I’d start. He’s selfish and it sounds like he may be an alcoholic, a drink sure, drinking to where he puts himself in a state where he literally sleeps through whatever is going on is concerning.
The problem with “schedule time” and “take time” is that someone needs to be home with the kids, and the spouse that has to stay late at work can always fire back with “but this is work” or “tell your friend you’ll see her another night, it costs money to go out, you know”. Also, as one poster said, some of us don’t want a girls’ week, we want to feel like we are part of a family ideally with the men we married. Even if girls’ weeks are your thing, you still get back into “but this is for fun, your enjoyment, I’m doing this for the family”. That’s a real tough dynamic to break.

As for his work, you say you agreed to this before he took this job, I’d ask him to find another job or find work circumstances that work better for you. What did he do before and why did this job appeal to him? Traveling may have skewed his perspective, I haven’t met anyone who travels for work who doesn’t seem to forget that the spouse at home is in your position, you can’t just call down to the front desk, and even if you have a condo with that service, they aren’t going to take your kid to the doctor.
Talk to your husband and find out what exactly appeals to him about this job and what appealed to him before he took it. If he had a job with more consistent work hours, it’s strange he’d take one that offers *less* consistency.

My husband worked in an office and would often have to work late seemingly at random. Yes, I have no doubt that’s really what he was doing, and he’s had to do that for the entirety of our marriage given his field. I didn’t love it, but after covid (he was in an office even during lockdown) and after a miscarriage, I’d had enough. I asked him to find a work from home job and he did. Yes, I’m fortunate that is now an option for him.. for a long time it wasn’t, and I am well aware it isn’t an option for everybody. He still has to work late sometimes, even has some weekend work, but I am a lot more chill about it now because he’s physically here. He can bring his computer upstairs and eat with us, maybe not talk, but eat in the same room, v. eating a sandwich at his desk, and even if he needs to eat at his desk, his desk is in the house, and it’s food that he gets from the house which I am convinced makes him appreciate us more. This also means I can go pick up a sick kid at school without worrying that the one still at school will come home to an empty house. The beauty of this hit me when our middle child had the flu. We were at the doctor and she said “I’m so worried” and it turns out she was worried about her little brother coming home and nobody being there and him being scared. I reminded her Daddy is home and she instantly relaxed, I could literally feel it happen as she was lying on me while we were in the waiting room. It means he’s home for household stuff, I prefer he be here when we have tradesmen in the house. I was able to get us on a cancellation list for an install we need because as he put it “I’m here, they can come whenever”. He’s more aware of what goes on in the house, or at least he listens to me, the kids were complaining about being tired this morning and I said “good, then we can shorten bedtime” and he said “Yes, indeed we can”. When this issue came up when he was in an office, he viewed bedtime as something to make my life easier not something the kids needed.

Again, he still has to work and you need to be aware of this. I’d not leave my husband home with a baby or toddler, not unless the kid was sleeping and I could get home.. that’s just not fair and babies and toddlers do grow up. I don’t expect him to take a kid to the doctor during his workday, I do it or we go to the after hours clinic, and yes, we made it a point to find a provider with an after hours clinic. I have no problem with him working late and I mean that. That being said, he needs to do well enough at his job to be there for the kids important events.. and they can’t all be important. I’m handling routine karate tonight and tennis for our older kid. We got a membership for an indoor play space so the kids can play after school and not bother him. He’s really enjoying the kids in Scouts, more then I think he thought he would, when I wanted to sign them up, he viewed it s “one more activity” now he wants us to take on more of a leadership role. He works in the basement which the kids don’t play in. He doesn’t come upstairs to “say hi” or “check in” or interact much during the day. He is here though, and some days he notices me more then others, he told me I smelled nice the other day and that I looked nice on a different day and he will sometimes pause to give me a hug if I come down to do laundry.. which again makes me way more tolerant of last minute work stuff. He doesn’t have to commute at all. I feel I can literally sleep well when he works late because he’s in the house, no need to worry about him being too tired to drive or bad road conditions. By contrast, I can remember one office job where he’d have to work late and I literally felt hung over the next day and that ws with no alcohol, the waiting up for him, the worrying if he’d get home ok, the solo bedtimes, the everything just wore me out.
I’d sort out your husband’s just randomly leaving the house and his heavy drinking and then I’d tackle the work issue. I’m not convinced he didn’t choose a job that gave him the freedom to not be a participant in the family. I wouldn’t be a fan of the travel (one or two times a month) plus the random “gotta stay late” assignments. Travel would be one thing, staying late is another, both in the same job seems like something that would be untennable. Could you guys get an au pair? They have their challenges too, but it might be something to consider, if only because she’d be another adult you *could* leave the kids with. Would quitting your job help? I know, the 1950’s just called, but the advantage is that you’d not have to deal with a mad boss on top of kid stuff. We have a teenager now, and I’ll tell you that teens need you as much if not more then little kids. It’s mostly emotional but you’d damn well better be paying attention.. and we have a good teen. You also don’t get the hugs and kisses type of feedback with a teen so you’ll have to listen to what they say.. my kid told me her boyfriend is a “really great guy” and I thought about that and realized that we her parents are the ones who showed her what traits to look for.
For you, you need to know if you’re dealing with an addict, or just a guy who grew up believing his job is to support the family and doesn’t realize that his mom probably didn’t have the same type of job you do. Mostly, you want to be sure he isn’t using “going for a run and the store” all without telling you mind you as an excuse to do something you’d prefer he didn’t. Ditto for the working late, even my husband in his most office driven days was always clear about where he was. I don’t recall him leaving the house without telling me.. I’ve done it to him but that’s because he’s working and I didn’t want to bother him. I wouldn’t do it and expect him to do childcare though, that’s just odd especially given the age of your kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I had this dynamic too. I told him that even though it's almost always ok, he needs to "ask" me before making plans. For example, he likes to do yoga in the morning. He needs to ask me if it's ok before he books it--it almost always is, but I do have occasional work calls that overlap with school drop-off. I He's gotten really good about asking first, but will occasionally forget. For example, last week and he booked a massage, then said "I have a massage booked for 4-6, which would mean you have to get the kids from school. I can reschedule if I need to, but does that work?" I told him it worked, but that he needs to ask before he books. At first he said he thought I was making too big of a deal out of it, but when I explained my therapist said it's manipulative to do something then say you can change it (instead of having a discussion, it puts the onus on me to tell him no) he got it.

I also know he's terrible at estimating how long things will take and also gives me the estimates for the best case scenario, so I would just assume he's not going to be home if he's been working late on a project.

I don't want a weeklong girls trip or to try to force him to always be on by just disappearing and leaving the kids with him, I want to be able to plan and make sure that plans work for our family, not just him!

Hmm. Your husband shouldn't have to ask you permission to do things (same goes for you). Your husband's approach is only manipulative if he would have guilted you if you said "Hey actually, that time doesn't work. Can you reschedule?" Is this what your husband does do? Because then that seems like a separate issue.

I do agree with the sentiment, though, that couples should always have a conversation around plans and let each other know in advance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Woman create this dynamic, naturally/subconsciously/out of instinct, pushing men to the side. Then get mad at men when they have put they tire of it or realize that once you start down this path it is a habit you really can’t just step away from. And then eventually want the man to take this on when it isn’t instinctive to him and because they see/feel he isn’t doing it the “right” way they push him to the side again before he can develop the habit. Animosity builds relationships is damaged, rinse and repeat.

Or men instinctively slink out of the forefront bc “he’s tired” and kids “are hard” and they “prefer mom” and then uses the fact that he is incompetent as a parent against HER and makes it her fault. M

When she leaves, he is shocked. But doing all the work alone is way better when you do t have a “partner” sitting on the couch taking half of the credit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had this dynamic too. I told him that even though it's almost always ok, he needs to "ask" me before making plans. For example, he likes to do yoga in the morning. He needs to ask me if it's ok before he books it--it almost always is, but I do have occasional work calls that overlap with school drop-off. I He's gotten really good about asking first, but will occasionally forget. For example, last week and he booked a massage, then said "I have a massage booked for 4-6, which would mean you have to get the kids from school. I can reschedule if I need to, but does that work?" I told him it worked, but that he needs to ask before he books. At first he said he thought I was making too big of a deal out of it, but when I explained my therapist said it's manipulative to do something then say you can change it (instead of having a discussion, it puts the onus on me to tell him no) he got it.

I also know he's terrible at estimating how long things will take and also gives me the estimates for the best case scenario, so I would just assume he's not going to be home if he's been working late on a project.

I don't want a weeklong girls trip or to try to force him to always be on by just disappearing and leaving the kids with him, I want to be able to plan and make sure that plans work for our family, not just him!

Hmm. Your husband shouldn't have to ask you permission to do things (same goes for you). Your husband's approach is only manipulative if he would have guilted you if you said "Hey actually, that time doesn't work. Can you reschedule?" Is this what your husband does do? Because then that seems like a separate issue.

I do agree with the sentiment, though, that couples should always have a conversation around plans and let each other know in advance.

Could OP ever schedule something like this though? 1/4 of the time, her husband is out of town and not available to help. And the rest of the time, he might be at work hours later than he thought he was going to be and not available to pick up the kids at daycare or relieve the nanny or what have you.
He might be a great partner when he is around, but he is completely unreliable. She can’t schedule anything and expect that he will hold up his end of the bargain and manage the house and kids while she is gone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why I don’t work 😬

I have a little bit of this dynamic at home and I don’t work. DH has an intense job and the minute he gets some opening he fills it up with something he is interested in. But if I want to do something without the kids I have to ask him if his calendar is open and sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.

A few months ago I was going to the gym early in the morning, and right when I was headed out DH said he was going to the gym as well. When I told him that I didn’t want to leave our kids alone asleep, he said that they (10 and 7) would be fine. He thought I was being a martyr when I said I wasn’t going if he was.

And yes, I know that the kids would likely be fine alone, but damn, men sure are good at getting their needs met!

I don’t blame either of you for wanting your marriage to be better, but at an aggregate level, enabling this kind of behavior is terrible for the working world. Many jobs don’t need to be so “intense” and are artificially that way to increase earning potential. So then you get the workaholic DH with a SAHM-who-babies-him dynamic and that is terrible for couples who want to get ahead professionally while maintaining work-life balance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is why I don’t work 😬

I have a little bit of this dynamic at home and I don’t work. DH has an intense job and the minute he gets some opening he fills it up with something he is interested in. But if I want to do something without the kids I have to ask him if his calendar is open and sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.

A few months ago I was going to the gym early in the morning, and right when I was headed out DH said he was going to the gym as well. When I told him that I didn’t want to leave our kids alone asleep, he said that they (10 and 7) would be fine. He thought I was being a martyr when I said I wasn’t going if he was.

And yes, I know that the kids would likely be fine alone, but damn, men sure are good at getting their needs met!

I don’t blame either of you for wanting your marriage to be better, but at an aggregate level, enabling this kind of behavior is terrible for the working world. Many jobs don’t need to be so “intense” and are artificially that way to increase earning potential. So then you get the workaholic DH with a SAHM-who-babies-him dynamic and that is terrible for couples who want to get ahead professionally while maintaining work-life balance.

How is the PP "babying" her husband who works all the time? Yeah, sure, maybe your job isn't that time consuming, but a lot are in this area, and people make a lot of money doing it. But PP could go work out at another time because SHE DOESN'T WORK! That isn't babying -- that's reasonable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I had this dynamic too. I told him that even though it's almost always ok, he needs to "ask" me before making plans. For example, he likes to do yoga in the morning. He needs to ask me if it's ok before he books it--it almost always is, but I do have occasional work calls that overlap with school drop-off. I He's gotten really good about asking first, but will occasionally forget. For example, last week and he booked a massage, then said "I have a massage booked for 4-6, which would mean you have to get the kids from school. I can reschedule if I need to, but does that work?" I told him it worked, but that he needs to ask before he books. At first he said he thought I was making too big of a deal out of it, but when I explained my therapist said it's manipulative to do something then say you can change it (instead of having a discussion, it puts the onus on me to tell him no) he got it.

I also know he's terrible at estimating how long things will take and also gives me the estimates for the best case scenario, so I would just assume he's not going to be home if he's been working late on a project.

I don't want a weeklong girls trip or to try to force him to always be on by just disappearing and leaving the kids with him, I want to be able to plan and make sure that plans work for our family, not just him!

Hmm. Your husband shouldn't have to ask you permission to do things (same goes for you). Your husband's approach is only manipulative if he would have guilted you if you said "Hey actually, that time doesn't work. Can you reschedule?" Is this what your husband does do? Because then that seems like a separate issue.

I do agree with the sentiment, though, that couples should always have a conversation around plans and let each other know in advance.

I think this gets a bit semantic, but I disagree with you because I don't view the PP as saying her DH has to ask "permission." She's not saying that he needs to ask if it's okay if he takes a yoga class or gets a massage -- those are his decisions.

Rather, he has obligations for childcare during the time he is scheduling these things. They both do -- it's a joint obligation. What he's really asking for is to get out of this obligation and for her to do it for him. It's not about her giving permission, it's about her agreeing to do childcare for him.

And yes, the PP would also have to ask him if she wanted to schedule something during that time, for the same reasons. Again, not asking for permission to do something, asking for help covering shared childcare obligations. Just like you would ask your coworker to cover for you if you wanted to leave work early one day but had something you were both obligated to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:(OP)

I think DH read this post

I hope that means you had a productive discussion!

Leaving without mentioning it while caring for young kids is definitely problematic. He's saying that there's a double-standard . . . you're on the hook, but he's not. Because the alternative is that he thinks it's fine for both of you to wander in and out, and maybe someone will be home with the kids, and maybe not, and obviously that would be a ridiculous, "we need to call CPS" approach to parenting.

My husband chafed at the "permission" thing too, once upon a time. At one point we had a newborn and he was going out 4 nights a week, because being a parent wasn't going to change him. Um OK, but what if I went out four nights a week? We'd never be together and there would be one night a week with no one watching the baby? And honestly it took his entitlement reaching its natural conclusion (he had an affair) for him to wake up, and grow up, and to realize that it's about courtesy and adulting, not your big bad Mommy telling you what you can and can't do. In the aftermath of the affair we had a total reset where he really barely went out because he was trying to rebuild trust, and then slowly he added things back in, but only to a reasonable and mutually satisfying degree. And of course, now our kids are older and we can leave them alone if we have a scheduling conflict.