I have an egalitarian marriage, and I HATE it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We split childcare, cooking, cleaning. Everything is always chaos. Who has time to work full time plus communicate constantly about every little detail of home management in order to keep things running remotely smoothly? Power struggles about how to do every little thing since there are two people who have to have ultimate responsibility for the outcome. We are bad at this!! Maybe other people can do it better.

To me the ideal arrangement would be that my husband was out of the house more, earning more money, and I had a part time job and had more time with kids and home management. Why do women complain about that arraignment? I really don't get it. I actually hate having other people (DH, nanny) in my kitchen, doing a half-ass job. My poor kids have part time with me, nanny, and daddy, but no one person who really gets to spend extended, quality time, learning about their needs and being there for them. I hate this.

My wife has what you want in my marriage - I am out of the house and earn a lot of money. And my wife is now miserable because she feels at age 46 she never had a real career and is resentful of me for having mine.

Not saying that you would feel the same, just answering your question.

I wonder if your wife feels the way she feels because she is inherently dissatisfied or more because the cultural tides have turned more aggressively, and she craves the status that being the wife of a successful husband used to confer but now does not.

I became a SAHM in 2012. Being the wife of a successful person didn’t confer status then and it doesn’t now. I think that the cultural tide is swinging to “all labor is a valuable contribution.”

2012 is less than 10 years ago. That is not the period I am referring to when I say “used to”

The wife in question is 46!!! Even if she became a SAHM 20 years ago, the point remains the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I basically have what you want, OP, though my DH is not a particularly high earner. My PT job has very high hourly pay though, so that balances it out a bit. We are pretty happy.

I’d still describe our marriage as egalitarian. We don’t split things 50/50 but we both do everything: childcare, cleaning, earn money. I do more of the long term planning (ok, basically all) and that’s the one part where I feel like my DH is a bit if a shirker. A lot of men seem to hate and/or are bad at that too. Stuff like finding a pediatric dentist, looking into summer camps for next year, figuring out vacation and family visit schedules, etc.

But that’s a major reason I prefer our current set up to one where we both work FT. I’d be doing that planning and household management piece no matter what. I’ve tried delegating at least part of it to DH and it causes strife. He resents it because he feels like he’ll fail and then I’ll be mad. It is absolutely a bit of learned helplessness. So I decided early on after we had kids that if I was going to be the family executive, I needed more bandwidth for it. It was really hard to do it with a full time job, especially with really little kids.

We deal with this in our house by having planning count as a contribution. The one who does the planning and managing does not have to do as much of the execution. Problem solved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP your problem isn’t egalitarianism. It’s that you’re bad at communicating and delegating.

This. We have an equal marriage and it works. We make about the same $ and have split most of the chores along strengths and preferences. I cook since i do it better and faster. Dh cleans up when i cook and he does all the laundry. Groceries are split but a common list. Yard stuff is split based on specific jobs, i like to garden so order plants and plant and he does clean up and lawn. We split bedtimes for the kids and spend time with them together and 1-1. DH does most of the after school activities for oldest from research and sign up to taking her. And i do dr appts since my workday is more flexible. We talk a lot about plans and schedules but once someone owns a task they own it and the other one butts out.

I doubt that it's that. Men half ass things or just don't do them. Her husband is a grown man. She's shouldn't have to nag him each week to do housework.

Way to invent facts to fit your narrative!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We split childcare, cooking, cleaning. Everything is always chaos. Who has time to work full time plus communicate constantly about every little detail of home management in order to keep things running remotely smoothly? Power struggles about how to do every little thing since there are two people who have to have ultimate responsibility for the outcome. We are bad at this!! Maybe other people can do it better.

To me the ideal arrangement would be that my husband was out of the house more, earning more money, and I had a part time job and had more time with kids and home management. Why do women complain about that arraignment? I really don't get it. I actually hate having other people (DH, nanny) in my kitchen, doing a half-ass job. My poor kids have part time with me, nanny, and daddy, but no one person who really gets to spend extended, quality time, learning about their needs and being there for them. I hate this.

If your H is doing a half-ass job, it’s not really egalitarian. If he stepped it up you wouldn’t feel so stressed.

Agree. Upgrade nanny and housekeeper.
Plus a couple days of week no work 6-9pm, spend with both okids or 1:1 kid.
Divide and conquer w dad on the weekend plus all family time plus alone time and adult friend time 2x a week.

[Anonymous]

Do either or both of you have ADHD or an executive functioning disorder, OP? The solution here is very obvious and the one mentioned by multiple PPs: split up the responsibilities so you each do the ones you enjoy or tolerate and butt out of what the other person is doing. Sit down together and make a list, and meet to discuss how it’s going once a month for the first few months until everything is running smoothly. Evaluate at that point whether you still feel any frustration with your work/life balance.

And remember that the kids don’t stay little forever. The physical burdens of parenting decrease once they hit elementary school (other than the driving to activities) while the mental ones grow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP your problem isn’t egalitarianism. It’s that you’re bad at communicating and delegating.

This. We have an equal marriage and it works. We make about the same $ and have split most of the chores along strengths and preferences. I cook since i do it better and faster. Dh cleans up when i cook and he does all the laundry. Groceries are split but a common list. Yard stuff is split based on specific jobs, i like to garden so order plants and plant and he does clean up and lawn. We split bedtimes for the kids and spend time with them together and 1-1. DH does most of the after school activities for oldest from research and sign up to taking her. And i do dr appts since my workday is more flexible. We talk a lot about plans and schedules but once someone owns a task they own it and the other one butts out.

I doubt that it's that. Men half ass things or just don't do them. Her husband is a grown man. She's shouldn't have to nag him each week to do housework.

Way to invent facts to fit your narrative!

It’s actually a documented phenomenon, so you are the one inventing facts to fit our narrative. (This is coming from somebody whose husband does more than his fair share of housework. I’m far from bitter)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We split childcare, cooking, cleaning. Everything is always chaos. Who has time to work full time plus communicate constantly about every little detail of home management in order to keep things running remotely smoothly? Power struggles about how to do every little thing since there are two people who have to have ultimate responsibility for the outcome. We are bad at this!! Maybe other people can do it better.

To me the ideal arrangement would be that my husband was out of the house more, earning more money, and I had a part time job and had more time with kids and home management. Why do women complain about that arraignment? I really don't get it. I actually hate having other people (DH, nanny) in my kitchen, doing a half-ass job. My poor kids have part time with me, nanny, and daddy, but no one person who really gets to spend extended, quality time, learning about their needs and being there for them. I hate this.

My wife has what you want in my marriage - I am out of the house and earn a lot of money. And my wife is now miserable because she feels at age 46 she never had a real career and is resentful of me for having mine.

Not saying that you would feel the same, just answering your question.

I wonder if your wife feels the way she feels because she is inherently dissatisfied or more because the cultural tides have turned more aggressively, and she craves the status that being the wife of a successful husband used to confer but now does not.

I became a SAHM in 2012. Being the wife of a successful person didn’t confer status then and it doesn’t now. I think that the cultural tide is swinging to “all labor is a valuable contribution.”

2012 is less than 10 years ago. That is not the period I am referring to when I say “used to”

The wife in question is 46!!! Even if she became a SAHM 20 years ago, the point remains the same.

Wtf is the status of a successful workaholic? Unless he’s pulling in $10m a year from founding something successful and managing /operating it well there is no “status.” You’re not doing $40k butler vacations, $10k a seat fundraisers, and sitting on endowment boards because you have clients, work 60+ hours a week, never out down your phone.

Either way the kids and wife are neglects unless the “status guy” is grounded in values, religion, family and has good priorities. This can be rare but I work with some of them on a few Boards and it’s impressive. But the wife manages the staff but when H is home or in vacation he is present and engaged. Their children - many adults now- feel it too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We split childcare, cooking, cleaning. Everything is always chaos. Who has time to work full time plus communicate constantly about every little detail of home management in order to keep things running remotely smoothly? Power struggles about how to do every little thing since there are two people who have to have ultimate responsibility for the outcome. We are bad at this!! Maybe other people can do it better.

To me the ideal arrangement would be that my husband was out of the house more, earning more money, and I had a part time job and had more time with kids and home management. Why do women complain about that arraignment? I really don't get it. I actually hate having other people (DH, nanny) in my kitchen, doing a half-ass job. My poor kids have part time with me, nanny, and daddy, but no one person who really gets to spend extended, quality time, learning about their needs and being there for them. I hate this.

My wife has what you want in my marriage - I am out of the house and earn a lot of money. And my wife is now miserable because she feels at age 46 she never had a real career and is resentful of me for having mine.

Not saying that you would feel the same, just answering your question.

This. I’ve seen this over and over and over.

You have to be honest with yourself about what you want out of life and many people are so swept up in the daily grind of what society expects that they don’t know. Then in your 40s, the reality of not having a career hits and major resentment develops. That’s the kind of bitterness you cannot let go of easily because your kids are older, everyone is moving on, and you’ve sacrificed your self and your passions for a transient project of, what, 10-12 years?

If your dream is to be a mother and homemaker and you are realistic about what that means, day to day and in the big picture, fine. If you have any aspirations for self realization then please pursue those and do not subject your family to this level of resentment. The grass is always greener. FWIW I have the kind of partnership you describe and I feel lucky. I know that I want a career, another world to explore and a channel for my passions — challenges and opportunities to grow outside of the claustrophobic world of chores that never get done and little ones who need you constantly. There is definitely a price to pay for this, namely juggling in the early years, but for me it was a bargain compared to feeling trapped, resentful, and unfulfilled for the rest of my life.

Pp you are responding to and this is an important view. I am in a field where successful people make 700k-2M and I remember when my wife was pregnant once of my senior partners told me to not let my wife stay home because when kids get older its a disaster for your marriage. I heard they from a couple others as well. Of course, my marriage would be different.

It was a wonderful division until it wasn't and right at the time when the kids hit middle school and didn't need the intensive attention.

Of course, it's totally possible that we just weren't going to make it as a couple even if she worked but at least she would have a job and salary to support her if we divorce which is looking like a real possibility

[Anonymous]

I would hate your ideal arrangement because I hate chores and cooking and house keeping and I am terrible at it. My ideal situation would actually be making more money and a house husband. People like different things!

Also, DH and I avoid your issue by splitting routine household tasks on a permanent basis and one person is in charge of their areas and the other person has no involvement or input and honestly probably doesn’t even know what’s going on there. No duplication and works for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We split childcare, cooking, cleaning. Everything is always chaos. Who has time to work full time plus communicate constantly about every little detail of home management in order to keep things running remotely smoothly? Power struggles about how to do every little thing since there are two people who have to have ultimate responsibility for the outcome. We are bad at this!! Maybe other people can do it better.

To me the ideal arrangement would be that my husband was out of the house more, earning more money, and I had a part time job and had more time with kids and home management. Why do women complain about that arraignment? I really don't get it. I actually hate having other people (DH, nanny) in my kitchen, doing a half-ass job. My poor kids have part time with me, nanny, and daddy, but no one person who really gets to spend extended, quality time, learning about their needs and being there for them. I hate this.

If your H is doing a half-ass job, it’s not really egalitarian. If he stepped it up you wouldn’t feel so stressed.

Well, I am not sure that is the issue. I suspect is is more that when no one is entirely sure what their responsibility is vs someone else’s, then things go to shit. “Tragedy of the commons”

This could in theory be addressed with better communication, but when both people are super busy with work responsibilities it is challenging to do that. This is my experience anyway.

That’s called shrinking and poor communication at the office. Everyone should want the ball. Get the ball and run with it. That’s a good office and household.
Don’t drop the ball and sit on the couch all the time. It’s rewarding to get stuff done and accomplish goals. Do a mix of that and relaxing.

[Anonymous]

I think most high earning jobs in the US don’t allow for a reasonable work life balance. Even high fed jobs require ‘love time.’ This was probably enabled by the housewife phenomenon but now women have to do it too just to keep up.

[Anonymous]

My husband doesn’t notice much less appreciate anything that magically happens in the house, to the house, or with the kids so I’ll be damned if I quit my career to do only that. At least for now I can rationalize I’m doing it for my kids - to have traditions (holidays, decorating, cooking takes effort!), do ECs and sports (more planning, deadlines and logistics!), see their friends (planning and logistics), and have someone to talk with (engage and interact with your kids verbally, gasp!), etc.

I also ramped up going out with girlfriends once my kids where in elementary school. They actually talk and give a damn about people other than themselves and their image at work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I basically have what you want, OP, though my DH is not a particularly high earner. My PT job has very high hourly pay though, so that balances it out a bit. We are pretty happy.

I’d still describe our marriage as egalitarian. We don’t split things 50/50 but we both do everything: childcare, cleaning, earn money. I do more of the long term planning (ok, basically all) and that’s the one part where I feel like my DH is a bit if a shirker. A lot of men seem to hate and/or are bad at that too. Stuff like finding a pediatric dentist, looking into summer camps for next year, figuring out vacation and family visit schedules, etc.

But that’s a major reason I prefer our current set up to one where we both work FT. I’d be doing that planning and household management piece no matter what. I’ve tried delegating at least part of it to DH and it causes strife. He resents it because he feels like he’ll fail and then I’ll be mad. It is absolutely a bit of learned helplessness. So I decided early on after we had kids that if I was going to be the family executive, I needed more bandwidth for it. It was really hard to do it with a full time job, especially with really little kids.

We deal with this in our house by having planning count as a contribution. The one who does the planning and managing does not have to do as much of the execution. Problem solved.

Sort of. Planning and execution don't always balance, and they don't always work with people's work schedules. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I have found it's very hard to be the planner while having a demanding full time job. I also didn't love my job and wanted more time with my kids, so going PT so that I could focus more on planning and my kids was a no brainer for me. My DH does a lot of the execution, yes. But the whole arrangement only works because I don't work full time. There isn't enough execution for him to do to make up for the planning piece, especially because of course there is some stuff I'm going to execute because I actually want to and because that's often the part that involves interacting directly with your kids and, as I mentioned, I want more of that, not less. We also often do the execution piece together and that's part of our teamwork -- cooking together, taking the kids to activities together, etc. It's about enjoyment and being a family, not just division of labor.

The division of labor piece has to involve a critical look at the paid labor. I know not everyone can afford for one parent to be PT and I feel very lucky in that respect. But I totally get where OP is coming from because the whole "we split everything 50/50 and both work FT" thing is really not a very sustainable option. IME it leads to a lot of women doing a ton of invisible "mental load" tasks but never really getting credit for them, and struggling at work because they are so overloaded with management of their home and kids, while their DH thinks he's doing 50% because he's doing 50% or more of the execution. It just doesn't balance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We split childcare, cooking, cleaning. Everything is always chaos. Who has time to work full time plus communicate constantly about every little detail of home management in order to keep things running remotely smoothly? Power struggles about how to do every little thing since there are two people who have to have ultimate responsibility for the outcome. We are bad at this!! Maybe other people can do it better.

To me the ideal arrangement would be that my husband was out of the house more, earning more money, and I had a part time job and had more time with kids and home management. Why do women complain about that arraignment? I really don't get it. I actually hate having other people (DH, nanny) in my kitchen, doing a half-ass job. My poor kids have part time with me, nanny, and daddy, but no one person who really gets to spend extended, quality time, learning about their needs and being there for them. I hate this.

My wife has what you want in my marriage - I am out of the house and earn a lot of money. And my wife is now miserable because she feels at age 46 she never had a real career and is resentful of me for having mine.

Not saying that you would feel the same, just answering your question.

I wonder if your wife feels the way she feels because she is inherently dissatisfied or more because the cultural tides have turned more aggressively, and she craves the status that being the wife of a successful husband used to confer but now does not.

I became a SAHM in 2012. Being the wife of a successful person didn’t confer status then and it doesn’t now. I think that the cultural tide is swinging to “all labor is a valuable contribution.”

There was a point, relatively recently, that it did confer status. Look up the NYTimes article "The opt out revolution" by Lisa Belkin which summarized the deal. For a successful professional woman, to drop everything and envelope herself in domestic bliss demonstrated to the world that her husband is doing really, really well.

Yes. And now the opt out generation wants back in!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I basically have what you want, OP, though my DH is not a particularly high earner. My PT job has very high hourly pay though, so that balances it out a bit. We are pretty happy.

I’d still describe our marriage as egalitarian. We don’t split things 50/50 but we both do everything: childcare, cleaning, earn money. I do more of the long term planning (ok, basically all) and that’s the one part where I feel like my DH is a bit if a shirker. A lot of men seem to hate and/or are bad at that too. Stuff like finding a pediatric dentist, looking into summer camps for next year, figuring out vacation and family visit schedules, etc.

But that’s a major reason I prefer our current set up to one where we both work FT. I’d be doing that planning and household management piece no matter what. I’ve tried delegating at least part of it to DH and it causes strife. He resents it because he feels like he’ll fail and then I’ll be mad. It is absolutely a bit of learned helplessness. So I decided early on after we had kids that if I was going to be the family executive, I needed more bandwidth for it. It was really hard to do it with a full time job, especially with really little kids.

We deal with this in our house by having planning count as a contribution. The one who does the planning and managing does not have to do as much of the execution. Problem solved.

Sort of. Planning and execution don't always balance, and they don't always work with people's work schedules. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I have found it's very hard to be the planner while having a demanding full time job. I also didn't love my job and wanted more time with my kids, so going PT so that I could focus more on planning and my kids was a no brainer for me. My DH does a lot of the execution, yes. But the whole arrangement only works because I don't work full time. There isn't enough execution for him to do to make up for the planning piece, especially because of course there is some stuff I'm going to execute because I actually want to and because that's often the part that involves interacting directly with your kids and, as I mentioned, I want more of that, not less. We also often do the execution piece together and that's part of our teamwork -- cooking together, taking the kids to activities together, etc. It's about enjoyment and being a family, not just division of labor.

The division of labor piece has to involve a critical look at the paid labor. I know not everyone can afford for one parent to be PT and I feel very lucky in that respect. But I totally get where OP is coming from because the whole "we split everything 50/50 and both work FT" thing is really not a very sustainable option. IME it leads to a lot of women doing a ton of invisible "mental load" tasks but never really getting credit for them, and struggling at work because they are so overloaded with management of their home and kids, while their DH thinks he's doing 50% because he's doing 50% or more of the execution. It just doesn't balance.

OP here. I agree with you PP. I think I would like what you have, but I am actually the higher earner so it is never going to happen. I have to learn to delegate better to Nanny, find time for planning, and convince DH that planning counts as work and he needs to execute more if I plan more. Not my dream life by any means, feels like having another employee, kid etc. instead of a partner but DH is never going to be a master organizer. He might have some ADHD issues, but I doubt he would ever admit that.