Zero empathy of the man cold

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh my goodness OP I thought I had written this. I get you 100 percent- my husband is also a lawyer and does the same thing about going to meetings all day and then working late. It sounds absolutely miserable to me and he hates it too and has pushed back and is traveling less now he’s slightly more established. I don’t have a ton of answers because I basically pressure my husband 24/7 to try and find a different job. Different firm or go in house or something! He’s miserable a lot of the time and asks a lot of the rest of us. The money is not even as much as you might think and is not worth it. I basically just want to validate that if he’s making these choices and you do not agree the trade offs are worth it you are entitled to that opinion. Many people would rather have a spouse who is a real partner than more money.

OP here - you make me feel seen. We have been at this a long time (DH is a young/new partner) and he wants to try and see if he will "make it" before he taps out. He makes good money (between $575-$775K depending on his bonuses) but it sure is A LOT of work for that money. There is no downtime or rest. Is it worth it? I don't know. He/we don't really have generational money to fall back on. We have 3 young kids and want to try and provide them with a cushion in life.

OMG poor little baby has to feed her kids dinner and do the laundry and walk the dog while her husband is off earning half a million a year.

What a tragic life.

I’m the PP who is also married to a law firm partner. It’s not tragic but it’s absolutely not the life I would have chosen if I knew what was coming when we got married, and it’s a life I think is bad for my husband even more than for myself. It is not at all uncommon for him to end up working 12-16 hours over a weekend, often with little notice, so he never wants to make plans in case we end up having to cancel them. We spend very little time together and a lot of it is him talking about how miserable he is. It is frustrating when someone makes this type of life choices and then, when very unsurprisingly it results in them being tired and run down, you are expected to fix that regardless of what you have going on.

I think all the time about how I would feel if he was a brain surgeon or some other type of doctor who was actively saving lives by working this hard and I feel like that would at least be better because maybe he would be more fulfilled and we would both feel like it’s more worth it? But he’s not, just making a lot of money for people who already have a lot of money. We try to save a lot and maybe we can retire early and help our kids so there will be some value there but it’s not a given at this point.

Sorry, but he can quit and find another job. I'm a lawyer and I did the kind of work he does with the hours and the pay and I decided that it wasn't good for me or my family. I'm a woman, not that it matters. But I quit and found another job with a much better schedule and yes, less pay. I get that the government isn't a great employer right now and many firms aren't expanding, but he had time to quit and do something else. Enjoy the money or be willing to give it up. It's really not that complicated.

Her DH isn’t suddenly going to become all domestic and step up with a 9-5 job. He’s going to take up triathlons or something. He is not going to be happy going from cushy office work that is well paid, to the working parent slog unpaid. He will want to relax, he “earned” it.

The best model for families is the breadwinner, SAHP, period. And I say this as a working parent who was all in on equitable parenting with my spouse, who both work 9-5 jobs with flexibility. The dual income household was a mistake.

I disagree. The dual-income model (both earning close to what the other does, both relatively high earners) works very well for us. We've been equals since the day our twins were born (they had to be formula fed so my husband fed them as much as I did) and we have been 50/50 on all things since then. (Obviously there are some things that one of us does 100% on, but with the kids we are half and half). I can't imagine only one of us working and only one of us doing most of the childcare. Our kids know that they have two equal parents to whom they can turn for anything. I'm sorry it didn't work out for you.

You both work FT? How does your day work? Who gets home and picks up kids, makes dinner, gets them to activities?

We both work full-time, from home since COVID. Our kids leave the house at 7:15 to get on the bus for school and they get home from the bus at 4:15. One day a week, my husband takes them to their joint sports practice. One day a week, I take them. Twice a week they carpool with others (and we take the other kids). They only have competitions on the weekends, so we both attend those.

We take turns making dinner on the nights the kids are home early enough from sports. Some nights a week they eat in the car on the way home because practice goes late.

We have cleaners, so both of us keep the house neat and we take turns cleaning places like the kitchen that needs cleaning daily.

Until 2021 we had a full-time nanny, who transitioned to a household manager as the kids spent more hours a day at school. Her husband was transferred for his job (military) so she moved at the end of that year, otherwise we'd probably still have her, although with the kids being older and us now both working from home and traveling less we don't need it as much.

I do think there's a HHI piece to this. If you're both busting your butts working full-time for $50K each and one of you could earn $200K if the other didn't work, then yeah, this model likely isn't for you. In our case, our HHI is around $600K with each of us earning around half that. I could earn $600K alone but I'd be miserable and I'd definitely be working a lot more hours (my husband could not, his job is not scalable the way mine is). We had our kids in our early 30's so we had a decade of work under our belts before that time and therefore we both pretty high up by the time we took maternity and paternity leave. That seniority helped with flexibility and ultimately led to us both being able to work from home permanently. (Not sure that would have happened without COVID though, but we did both work from home at least one day a week prior to 2020).

I find that our equality in things works very well for both of us and I'm happy that our kids are seeing two parents who mostly both do everything. But that's just my opinion. You're free to disagree.

“Our kids know that they have two equal parents to whom they can turn for anything”

“Until 2021 we had a full-time nanny, who transitioned to a household manager as the kids spent more hours a day at school.”

“ Twice a week they carpool with others”

“ We have cleaners”

“ I'm happy that our kids are seeing two parents who mostly both do everything”

Is this a joke? You and your spouse did/do not “mostly both do everything” nor did/do your kids have two equal parents. Your kids had THREE parents, and the one who actually did most of the things was the hired help.

It actually sounds like you both equally do the bare minimum on the homefront and with the kids. But hey, at least you’re aligned on your priorities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel you OP. My DH constantly complains of one ailment or another. He actually does a lot around the house and with DC and powers through (he knows I'll be unhappy if he doesn't do his share in general) but the constant sighing about how tired he is and how he has some random symptom gets exhausting and stressful for me. Yes, he has been to a doctor (after literally years of me begging him to), no issues there.

My husbands pain threshold is super super low.

He got lasic - it hurt and he demanded to return to the clinic as he was adamant something was very wrong. They talked him down over the phone. All was fine an hour later

He got his cavity-riddled wisdom teeth out at age 30, he called the oral surgeon daily about what to do for two weeks straight. Same advice- big sockets need to scab up.

Sadly when other people are hurting- our child broke her leg, he does nothing. She couldn’t walk after a bad fall at the trampoline park, he did nothing. I only got the truth the next day and zipped her to children’s national ER myself.

This is totally a thing with men. My husband had Covid and insisted he should go to the ER. I asked him if he was having trouble breathing, was vomiting or had a fever over 103. No, no, and no. He just didn't feel good. I asked what he thought they would tell him besides rest and drink fluids. He didn't know, he just knew that he was uncomfortable, and thought he shouldn't have to put up with it for a minute. Meanwhile he refused to take ibuprofen or acetaminophen.

I think this is what gets me the most. Men (generalizing here) cannot halfway handle pain or discomfort like women. I know this is a sweeping generalization and there are plenty of me who can handle pain but if the human race had to rely on men going through pregnancy or birth we would have died out generations ago.

Depends on the pain. I can get beat up on or cut or wipe out and take a significant amount of road rash without it slowing me down too much. But give me a fever or a runny nose, and I'm worthless.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh my goodness OP I thought I had written this. I get you 100 percent- my husband is also a lawyer and does the same thing about going to meetings all day and then working late. It sounds absolutely miserable to me and he hates it too and has pushed back and is traveling less now he’s slightly more established. I don’t have a ton of answers because I basically pressure my husband 24/7 to try and find a different job. Different firm or go in house or something! He’s miserable a lot of the time and asks a lot of the rest of us. The money is not even as much as you might think and is not worth it. I basically just want to validate that if he’s making these choices and you do not agree the trade offs are worth it you are entitled to that opinion. Many people would rather have a spouse who is a real partner than more money.

OP here - you make me feel seen. We have been at this a long time (DH is a young/new partner) and he wants to try and see if he will "make it" before he taps out. He makes good money (between $575-$775K depending on his bonuses) but it sure is A LOT of work for that money. There is no downtime or rest. Is it worth it? I don't know. He/we don't really have generational money to fall back on. We have 3 young kids and want to try and provide them with a cushion in life.

OMG poor little baby has to feed her kids dinner and do the laundry and walk the dog while her husband is off earning half a million a year.

What a tragic life.

I’m the PP who is also married to a law firm partner. It’s not tragic but it’s absolutely not the life I would have chosen if I knew what was coming when we got married, and it’s a life I think is bad for my husband even more than for myself. It is not at all uncommon for him to end up working 12-16 hours over a weekend, often with little notice, so he never wants to make plans in case we end up having to cancel them. We spend very little time together and a lot of it is him talking about how miserable he is. It is frustrating when someone makes this type of life choices and then, when very unsurprisingly it results in them being tired and run down, you are expected to fix that regardless of what you have going on.

I think all the time about how I would feel if he was a brain surgeon or some other type of doctor who was actively saving lives by working this hard and I feel like that would at least be better because maybe he would be more fulfilled and we would both feel like it’s more worth it? But he’s not, just making a lot of money for people who already have a lot of money. We try to save a lot and maybe we can retire early and help our kids so there will be some value there but it’s not a given at this point.

Sorry, but he can quit and find another job. I'm a lawyer and I did the kind of work he does with the hours and the pay and I decided that it wasn't good for me or my family. I'm a woman, not that it matters. But I quit and found another job with a much better schedule and yes, less pay. I get that the government isn't a great employer right now and many firms aren't expanding, but he had time to quit and do something else. Enjoy the money or be willing to give it up. It's really not that complicated.

Her DH isn’t suddenly going to become all domestic and step up with a 9-5 job. He’s going to take up triathlons or something. He is not going to be happy going from cushy office work that is well paid, to the working parent slog unpaid. He will want to relax, he “earned” it.

The best model for families is the breadwinner, SAHP, period. And I say this as a working parent who was all in on equitable parenting with my spouse, who both work 9-5 jobs with flexibility. The dual income household was a mistake.

I disagree. The dual-income model (both earning close to what the other does, both relatively high earners) works very well for us. We've been equals since the day our twins were born (they had to be formula fed so my husband fed them as much as I did) and we have been 50/50 on all things since then. (Obviously there are some things that one of us does 100% on, but with the kids we are half and half). I can't imagine only one of us working and only one of us doing most of the childcare. Our kids know that they have two equal parents to whom they can turn for anything. I'm sorry it didn't work out for you.

You both work FT? How does your day work? Who gets home and picks up kids, makes dinner, gets them to activities?

We both work full-time, from home since COVID. Our kids leave the house at 7:15 to get on the bus for school and they get home from the bus at 4:15. One day a week, my husband takes them to their joint sports practice. One day a week, I take them. Twice a week they carpool with others (and we take the other kids). They only have competitions on the weekends, so we both attend those.

We take turns making dinner on the nights the kids are home early enough from sports. Some nights a week they eat in the car on the way home because practice goes late.

We have cleaners, so both of us keep the house neat and we take turns cleaning places like the kitchen that needs cleaning daily.

Until 2021 we had a full-time nanny, who transitioned to a household manager as the kids spent more hours a day at school. Her husband was transferred for his job (military) so she moved at the end of that year, otherwise we'd probably still have her, although with the kids being older and us now both working from home and traveling less we don't need it as much.

I do think there's a HHI piece to this. If you're both busting your butts working full-time for $50K each and one of you could earn $200K if the other didn't work, then yeah, this model likely isn't for you. In our case, our HHI is around $600K with each of us earning around half that. I could earn $600K alone but I'd be miserable and I'd definitely be working a lot more hours (my husband could not, his job is not scalable the way mine is). We had our kids in our early 30's so we had a decade of work under our belts before that time and therefore we both pretty high up by the time we took maternity and paternity leave. That seniority helped with flexibility and ultimately led to us both being able to work from home permanently. (Not sure that would have happened without COVID though, but we did both work from home at least one day a week prior to 2020).

I find that our equality in things works very well for both of us and I'm happy that our kids are seeing two parents who mostly both do everything. But that's just my opinion. You're free to disagree.

“Our kids know that they have two equal parents to whom they can turn for anything”

“Until 2021 we had a full-time nanny, who transitioned to a household manager as the kids spent more hours a day at school.”

“ Twice a week they carpool with others”

“ We have cleaners”

“ I'm happy that our kids are seeing two parents who mostly both do everything”

Is this a joke? You and your spouse did/do not “mostly both do everything” nor did/do your kids have two equal parents. Your kids had THREE parents, and the one who actually did most of the things was the hired help.

It actually sounds like you both equally do the bare minimum on the homefront and with the kids. But hey, at least you’re aligned on your priorities.

You are complaining about OP getting help for carpooling and house errands. That’s not being a parent.

[Anonymous]

I travel often for work (usually international at least once a month and domestic once a month) and I have rarely (if ever, I'm trying to recall a single instance) not been up and at it the next day full-on parenting and household managing. If I am sick, even decently sick, I tough it out. It's not fair to the parent that was just home for the week alone to then have to keep going. I would make an exception for the flu or if I was very ill, but standard colds/even covid I power through. DH should do the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Oh my goodness OP I thought I had written this. I get you 100 percent- my husband is also a lawyer and does the same thing about going to meetings all day and then working late. It sounds absolutely miserable to me and he hates it too and has pushed back and is traveling less now he’s slightly more established. I don’t have a ton of answers because I basically pressure my husband 24/7 to try and find a different job. Different firm or go in house or something! He’s miserable a lot of the time and asks a lot of the rest of us. The money is not even as much as you might think and is not worth it. I basically just want to validate that if he’s making these choices and you do not agree the trade offs are worth it you are entitled to that opinion. Many people would rather have a spouse who is a real partner than more money.

OP here - you make me feel seen. We have been at this a long time (DH is a young/new partner) and he wants to try and see if he will "make it" before he taps out. He makes good money (between $575-$775K depending on his bonuses) but it sure is A LOT of work for that money. There is no downtime or rest. Is it worth it? I don't know. He/we don't really have generational money to fall back on. We have 3 young kids and want to try and provide them with a cushion in life.

OMG poor little baby has to feed her kids dinner and do the laundry and walk the dog while her husband is off earning half a million a year.

What a tragic life.

I’m the PP who is also married to a law firm partner. It’s not tragic but it’s absolutely not the life I would have chosen if I knew what was coming when we got married, and it’s a life I think is bad for my husband even more than for myself. It is not at all uncommon for him to end up working 12-16 hours over a weekend, often with little notice, so he never wants to make plans in case we end up having to cancel them. We spend very little time together and a lot of it is him talking about how miserable he is. It is frustrating when someone makes this type of life choices and then, when very unsurprisingly it results in them being tired and run down, you are expected to fix that regardless of what you have going on.

I think all the time about how I would feel if he was a brain surgeon or some other type of doctor who was actively saving lives by working this hard and I feel like that would at least be better because maybe he would be more fulfilled and we would both feel like it’s more worth it? But he’s not, just making a lot of money for people who already have a lot of money. We try to save a lot and maybe we can retire early and help our kids so there will be some value there but it’s not a given at this point.

Sorry, but he can quit and find another job. I'm a lawyer and I did the kind of work he does with the hours and the pay and I decided that it wasn't good for me or my family. I'm a woman, not that it matters. But I quit and found another job with a much better schedule and yes, less pay. I get that the government isn't a great employer right now and many firms aren't expanding, but he had time to quit and do something else. Enjoy the money or be willing to give it up. It's really not that complicated.

Her DH isn’t suddenly going to become all domestic and step up with a 9-5 job. He’s going to take up triathlons or something. He is not going to be happy going from cushy office work that is well paid, to the working parent slog unpaid. He will want to relax, he “earned” it.

The best model for families is the breadwinner, SAHP, period. And I say this as a working parent who was all in on equitable parenting with my spouse, who both work 9-5 jobs with flexibility. The dual income household was a mistake.

I disagree. The dual-income model (both earning close to what the other does, both relatively high earners) works very well for us. We've been equals since the day our twins were born (they had to be formula fed so my husband fed them as much as I did) and we have been 50/50 on all things since then. (Obviously there are some things that one of us does 100% on, but with the kids we are half and half). I can't imagine only one of us working and only one of us doing most of the childcare. Our kids know that they have two equal parents to whom they can turn for anything. I'm sorry it didn't work out for you.

You both work FT? How does your day work? Who gets home and picks up kids, makes dinner, gets them to activities?

We both work full-time, from home since COVID. Our kids leave the house at 7:15 to get on the bus for school and they get home from the bus at 4:15. One day a week, my husband takes them to their joint sports practice. One day a week, I take them. Twice a week they carpool with others (and we take the other kids). They only have competitions on the weekends, so we both attend those.

We take turns making dinner on the nights the kids are home early enough from sports. Some nights a week they eat in the car on the way home because practice goes late.

We have cleaners, so both of us keep the house neat and we take turns cleaning places like the kitchen that needs cleaning daily.

Until 2021 we had a full-time nanny, who transitioned to a household manager as the kids spent more hours a day at school. Her husband was transferred for his job (military) so she moved at the end of that year, otherwise we'd probably still have her, although with the kids being older and us now both working from home and traveling less we don't need it as much.

I do think there's a HHI piece to this. If you're both busting your butts working full-time for $50K each and one of you could earn $200K if the other didn't work, then yeah, this model likely isn't for you. In our case, our HHI is around $600K with each of us earning around half that. I could earn $600K alone but I'd be miserable and I'd definitely be working a lot more hours (my husband could not, his job is not scalable the way mine is). We had our kids in our early 30's so we had a decade of work under our belts before that time and therefore we both pretty high up by the time we took maternity and paternity leave. That seniority helped with flexibility and ultimately led to us both being able to work from home permanently. (Not sure that would have happened without COVID though, but we did both work from home at least one day a week prior to 2020).

I find that our equality in things works very well for both of us and I'm happy that our kids are seeing two parents who mostly both do everything. But that's just my opinion. You're free to disagree.

“Our kids know that they have two equal parents to whom they can turn for anything”

“Until 2021 we had a full-time nanny, who transitioned to a household manager as the kids spent more hours a day at school.”

“ Twice a week they carpool with others”

“ We have cleaners”

“ I'm happy that our kids are seeing two parents who mostly both do everything”

Is this a joke? You and your spouse did/do not “mostly both do everything” nor did/do your kids have two equal parents. Your kids had THREE parents, and the one who actually did most of the things was the hired help.

It actually sounds like you both equally do the bare minimum on the homefront and with the kids. But hey, at least you’re aligned on your priorities.

You are complaining about OP getting help for carpooling and house errands. That’s not being a parent.

You can’t read.