If H takes this job, it’s going to break me.

[Anonymous]

I rarely say this on DCUM, but I think divorce is reasonable here.

[Anonymous]

I make more than he does,

This is important. If true, it's odd you haven't mentioned this. It would have been logical to lead with it. Makes me wonder if it's true

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I make more than he does,

This is important. If true, it's odd you haven't mentioned this. It would have been logical to lead with it. Makes me wonder if it's true

OP. Why is that weird? I mentioned we both work. I don’t believe he should do more than me because he makes less. I just want him to do half.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Wait it out my fanny. Are you some doormat SAHM who's congratulating herself on how much crap she put up with for decades? Sorry but allowing yourself to be mistreated ks not a solution, it's a failure.

Um, no, and I'm not sure what your vaginas has to do with this.

So your advice is for OP to do all the work herself, allow herself to be treated disrespectfully by a lazy and irresponsible man, let him waste their money, this goes on for decades, and at the end what's the prize? Still being married to a jerk who's slightly better? No thanks.

He sounds immature. That tends to improve over time.

Where I'm coming from with this is, I did have a husband that didn't do as much housework as I felt he should and also was irresponsible with money. At some point I decided to stop nagging and just accept the situation. It was not easy and it was not fair. Fast forward about 10 years- he is now a much greater contributor to the household-- does all cooking, shopping, schlepping the kids around, and a non-terrible amount of cleaning. (I still do more cleaning.) And, his income is now extremely high, high enough that he is still able to make silly purchases or lose money in predictable ways and it doesn't impact us at all. I dislike clutter, so I don't love this trait, but it isn't a crisis like it was before. So yes-- people can and often do have a difficult time in the first part of marriage and then go on to have a great marriage.

It sounds like she's done and is leaving him, and that's also a path forward. But this is something that is a fairly common problem in relationships, and if you read the research on it, it does tend to improve with time, and in later life actually flips, with men doing more housework than women in retirement age.

But what if he didn't improve? What if he never made money? Would it be worth it then? Seems like a big gamble, especially if retirement security is on the line.

Yeah, that was a gamble. My retirement wasn't on the line though, we were financially okay in that department, along with paying for college, etc. After devoting a lot of time reading studies on the division of housework in modern American families, I decided that it was likely to improve and focused on that. It's hard to visualize the counterfactual, how I would have felt if we were still dealing with this. But I tend to be data driven and the numbers for married people are generally better than unmarried.

If my husband never made money at all, I wouldn't have married him. Financial security is a huge factor to me. He was always a good earner, just an even better spender until he made so much it'd be difficult to spend it.

So you married an immature man who treated you badly, but that's ok because money?

He treated me poorly in a way that the majority of men treat their wives poorly. In most American households, women do the majority of housework. So, uh, yeah, like most women in hetero couplings, who stay married, I tolerated this suboptimal yet common condition until it subsided. My decision to do so was less about money and more about wanting to be married to a man.

Okay no. It may be true that in most couples women do the majority of housework, but for a lot of them it's *on purpose*, agreed to, and peaceful.. It's a smaller proportion of couples who have that dynamic because the man is immature, lazy, disorganized, disrespectful, uncaring, etc. Stop acting like those marriages are the same, they aren't.

It's sad that you felt you needed a man that badly. I'm sad for the younger version of yourself.

You think that women just *want* to do more work? Like they walk in and say "no, Chad, don't do the dishes! I want to!" It is peaceful because women know the deal- that men are not likely to pull their weight in that regard, and they are tired of beating a dead horse. It's always disrespectful, uncaring, etc.

Thank you for your sympathy.

If they are SAHM or work part time, yes I would think that is definitely and explicitly the deal. The question is not "In how many households does the woman do more". It's "In how many households does the woman do much more despite working full time and going to therapy and constantly exhorting her DH to do the things he explicitly agree to do?". And that's a far smaller proportion.

On the contrary, when women outearn their husband, they do even more housework than in couples where the woman earns less. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/05/02/housework-divide-working-parents/

Are these women just like, obsessed with working? Is that it? Has nothing to do with the fact that men are cultured to regard it as women's responsibility?

I don't know, probably some of them are unahppy and others of them have their reasons, but I do know it's abnormal for a.man to behave like OP's husband, being lazy and yelling and doing hardly anything in the face of therapy and repeated requests.

I suspect that OP is more persistent about this issue than most women, as I also was before I made peace with it. Can we at least agree that it is not normal to write love letters thanking your spouse for cooking dinner? That's an unusual level of engagement on this topic. And, like most men are cultured not to do housework, women are cultured to do it. So this is probably not an issue that is brought to the surface in the way it is in OP's (and was in mine at first). So he sounds like a prick but maybe a lot of marriages would look like this if women weren't all out there cheerfully and consensually doing more than they should have to.

The "love letter" sounds like a desperate move from someone who's trying really hard to save her marriage to a man-baby who needs a cookie every time he wipes his own bum.

OP. So please tell me if this is abnormal...

On Wednesday, I was supposed to pick up DD1 from daycare, pick up DD6 from after school care, take DD6 to practice, pick up the dog from dog daycare, handle dinner, while H had....nothing, because he told me he wants to come home from work and have some time alone to unwind. I realized this was ridiculous and told him to pick up the dog and do dinner since he would just be sitting around while I drove kids around. And that's why I wrote the note, because he did it, and I wanted to show that I'm grateful.

But I'm also like...wtf. The reason the dog goes to daycare is H refuses to wake up half an hour early to walk her, he needs to sleep in until 8am instead while I wake up at 6am to get the kids ready. The reason we didn't have groceries for dinner is he said he would handle groceries that weekend but didn't. So why the hell should I be thankful for him doing basic household things when I'm on my feet from 6am-9pm?

Oh, come on. That “love” letter sounds passive aggressive as hell.
You aren’t grateful. You think that it’s his job to make dinner sometimes, and you don’t actually think that he is doing it nearly enough. I don’t know what this note was about, but whatever the words were, it wasn’t written with genuine appreciation or to tell him how much you love him.

I’m not surprised that he tore it down. He probably thought that you actually loved him and were appreciative when you wrote it. It’s like if he wrote you a letter detailing how awesome it was that you changed the oil on the car, and then later tells you that he only did that because you need a cookie anytime you do anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I make more than he does,

This is important. If true, it's odd you haven't mentioned this. It would have been logical to lead with it. Makes me wonder if it's true

OP. Why is that weird? I mentioned we both work. I don’t believe he should do more than me because he makes less. I just want him to do half.

I agree with this. Chores should be divided on time, not money. Though the fact that he's not even pulling his weight financially pushes me even more firmly into the "get rid of him" camp.

A harsh reality of divorce is that it costs money and supporting two households costs more that supporting one. So generally there's a fall in quality of life. Now this absolutely is worth it to get out of a bad situation.

Given this guy isn't covering his part of the bills, though I don't think OP's quality of life will fall that much. It might get better given his spending habits. He can't spend his half if it's garnished from his wages.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would support him in the job. If you don’t, he could resent you for it the rest of his life. He isn’t helping now anyway. If he takes this job, at least he will be working instead of napping. It might make you both less resentful.

Also, friend, you need to step it up and take care of your house and children. Your kids shouldn’t grow up in a house where they have to eat in a dirty kitchen or shower after they poop because their parents are engaged in some kind of passive aggressive battle of wills and neither of them wants to be the first to break and clean the kitchen or buy the toilet paper.
Get rid of the Fair Play cards. They aren’t helping. Figure out systems to get things done around your house without his help. He isn’t going to help. And be nice. Act how you want your kids’ spouses to treat them. It takes two people to have a screaming match. Stop your part.

I realize that it sounds like you will be falling into old fashioned gender roles where he is at work all of the time and you are taking care of everything at home, and that feels like you failed in some way, but you have to do what works for your family, and what you are doing now isn’t working for anyone.

I agree with all this with the caveat that the fact that you begin this path of action now does NOT mean you stay in the marriage. You can do all of this while you take some time to see if you can convince him to be evaluated for ADHD and eventually to be treated if needed; see if there is a shift in behavior when he gets the job; see if you find it easier when you hire help and lastly, see if you prefer to get divorced. Good luck, OP! This sounds like a lot.

Pp here, and I agree. If nothing else, they will be in a more amicable place to try counseling or even to coparent after divorce.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would support him in the job. If you don’t, he could resent you for it the rest of his life. He isn’t helping now anyway. If he takes this job, at least he will be working instead of napping. It might make you both less resentful.

Also, friend, you need to step it up and take care of your house and children. Your kids shouldn’t grow up in a house where they have to eat in a dirty kitchen or shower after they poop because their parents are engaged in some kind of passive aggressive battle of wills and neither of them wants to be the first to break and clean the kitchen or buy the toilet paper.
Get rid of the Fair Play cards. They aren’t helping. Figure out systems to get things done around your house without his help. He isn’t going to help. And be nice. Act how you want your kids’ spouses to treat them. It takes two people to have a screaming match. Stop your part.

I realize that it sounds like you will be falling into old fashioned gender roles where he is at work all of the time and you are taking care of everything at home, and that feels like you failed in some way, but you have to do what works for your family, and what you are doing now isn’t working for anyone.

How do you propose OP do this while maintaining a full time job? I work full time and am fortunate to have a very capable, helpful partner who cares about my well being. There is NO WAY I could take on what you are proposing OP does while also working full time without have a full blown mental breakdown. It’s not fair and OP shouldn’t have to sacrifice her own sanity for this useless human.

[Anonymous]

Get rid of the dog. You don’t have the time or the money to take care of it.
Use the doggie daycare money to hire household help. Go to the grocery store and get some toilet paper and toothpaste.
Get rid of the Fair Play cards and stop trying to fix your marriage with internet pop psychology.
Accept that this is the husband you have and the marriage you have. Your marriage is never going to be the way you pictured it, and you can’t force it.
Apologize to your husband for calling him lazy and tell him that you believe in him and will support him with this job interview.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Get rid of the dog. You don’t have the time or the money to take care of it.
Use the doggie daycare money to hire household help. Go to the grocery store and get some toilet paper and toothpaste.
Get rid of the Fair Play cards and stop trying to fix your marriage with internet pop psychology.
Accept that this is the husband you have and the marriage you have. Your marriage is never going to be the way you pictured it, and you can’t force it.
Apologize to your husband for calling him lazy and tell him that you believe in him and will support him with this job interview.

Be a giant doormat. Your husband is so useless you can't have anything nice, even a dog. Accept the mistreatment. Support him in a clearly terrible doormat.

Yeah no.

[Anonymous]

NP. Admit I have not read every post so if this has come up already, I apologize to OP. Focusing on one single part of the OP's initial post, and it isn't the chores:

This new position would require work travel. That will make the domestic issues, and associated tension, a thousand times worse as you'll be entirely on your own (though you could argue that you're effectively 100 percent doing everything as it is, with him present). Then add in: There's zero pay raise for at least six months because this is a trial period, so, you can't start outsourcing because you haven't got the money now and won't have any more money for at least that six-month period. Your tension will be off the charts compared to what it is now. And like I said -- I'm not even here to talk about the chores. From how you describe your DH overall, OP, I would be concerned that eventually, work travel is going to end with his having a one night stand, multiple one night stands, or an affair. I'm sorry to introduce that idea on top of the household issues. But he sounds as if he will start to view work travel as a blissful break from domesticity, chore cards, "notes," kids and wife, and to be blunt, that's when some men compartmentalize and have sex while on travel. I don't have a solution for you other than intensive couples therapy that should have happened long ago, and now won't happen because...work travel.

Also, your first post immediately made me think: What effing employer says "You'll do this high-pressure job for six months and in that time you get NO extra compensation because this is a trial period"? I'm sure it happens. But that doesn't mean an employee should put up with it. I get it, this could lead to big things but it sounds almost abusive to me. I don't know what industry he's in but honestly, if he were right for this promotion he'd be given the damn promotion outright without all this "trial" crap. I'm sorry. It sounds as if his employer is going to take advantage of him for six months and wring him out with zero guarantee of this job being permanent. If DH doesn't get the job permanently, he'll be sure to take it out on you at home.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I make more than he does,

This is important. If true, it's odd you haven't mentioned this. It would have been logical to lead with it. Makes me wonder if it's true

OP. Why is that weird? I mentioned we both work. I don’t believe he should do more than me because he makes less. I just want him to do half.

Probably because most assumed you were staying with his lazy ass because you were broke and needed his money

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:He won't change. Decide how to proceed going forward. You might be better off as a single mom.

However, I will say I remember that stage of life (two working parents, no outsourcing). I let a lot of things go. I didn't care about tidying or dusting.

I wouldn't bother with systems/cards/love letters. We stockpiled necessary things like TP, food when we had time. Otherwise, we picked a Saturday morning and the whole family helped clean the house. Good enough and no nagging.

Sounds like you had a partner. OP clearly does not. If any of these things get done, it's because she did it, not they.

It sounds like that, but I usually did the shopping. I rounded everyone up on Saturday and gave orders lol. I think my kids think I run the entire show. I'm OK with that.

Have you learned by now that just because something is 'ok' for you doesn't mean it's 'ok' for someone else? OP has tried a lot more than just 'give orders' and she still gets no results. You, clearly, have nothing to offer here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would support him in the job. If you don’t, he could resent you for it the rest of his life. He isn’t helping now anyway. If he takes this job, at least he will be working instead of napping. It might make you both less resentful.

Also, friend, you need to step it up and take care of your house and children. Your kids shouldn’t grow up in a house where they have to eat in a dirty kitchen or shower after they poop because their parents are engaged in some kind of passive aggressive battle of wills and neither of them wants to be the first to break and clean the kitchen or buy the toilet paper.
Get rid of the Fair Play cards. They aren’t helping. Figure out systems to get things done around your house without his help. He isn’t going to help. And be nice. Act how you want your kids’ spouses to treat them. It takes two people to have a screaming match. Stop your part.

I realize that it sounds like you will be falling into old fashioned gender roles where he is at work all of the time and you are taking care of everything at home, and that feels like you failed in some way, but you have to do what works for your family, and what you are doing now isn’t working for anyone.

How do you propose OP do this while maintaining a full time job? I work full time and am fortunate to have a very capable, helpful partner who cares about my well being. There is NO WAY I could take on what you are proposing OP does while also working full time without have a full blown mental breakdown. It’s not fair and OP shouldn’t have to sacrifice her own sanity for this useless human.

I did this for several years.
Every night you wash the laundry from the day before. Fold it in the morning and put it away when you get kids up. Prep dinner or put it in the crockpot before you leave for work. Take kids to the playground after daycare, then go home, eat dinner. Put some music on and clean up together. Bathe kids, put them to bed, grab their laundry. Repeat.
Hire a cleaning service to come every other week and do the deep cleaning. Hire someone to mow the lawn. Rehome the dog.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I would support him in the job. If you don’t, he could resent you for it the rest of his life. He isn’t helping now anyway. If he takes this job, at least he will be working instead of napping. It might make you both less resentful.

Also, friend, you need to step it up and take care of your house and children. Your kids shouldn’t grow up in a house where they have to eat in a dirty kitchen or shower after they poop because their parents are engaged in some kind of passive aggressive battle of wills and neither of them wants to be the first to break and clean the kitchen or buy the toilet paper.
Get rid of the Fair Play cards. They aren’t helping. Figure out systems to get things done around your house without his help. He isn’t going to help. And be nice. Act how you want your kids’ spouses to treat them. It takes two people to have a screaming match. Stop your part.

I realize that it sounds like you will be falling into old fashioned gender roles where he is at work all of the time and you are taking care of everything at home, and that feels like you failed in some way, but you have to do what works for your family, and what you are doing now isn’t working for anyone.

How do you propose OP do this while maintaining a full time job? I work full time and am fortunate to have a very capable, helpful partner who cares about my well being. There is NO WAY I could take on what you are proposing OP does while also working full time without have a full blown mental breakdown. It’s not fair and OP shouldn’t have to sacrifice her own sanity for this useless human.

I did this for several years.
Every night you wash the laundry from the day before. Fold it in the morning and put it away when you get kids up. Prep dinner or put it in the crockpot before you leave for work. Take kids to the playground after daycare, then go home, eat dinner. Put some music on and clean up together. Bathe kids, put them to bed, grab their laundry. Repeat.
Hire a cleaning service to come every other week and do the deep cleaning. Hire someone to mow the lawn. Rehome the dog.

All to stay with a useless lump of man? No thanks.

Look at the message OP is sending to her daughter if she stays. Men are useless babies and you just give give give.

Nope. Break the cycle. Kick him out.

[Anonymous]

You are married to a child. WTF, OP? Fair Play cards? What the heck are those? Zero chance I’d survive my marriage if I had to negotiate with my DH to act like an adult. Just Wow.