Two spouses: a play

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Act 1
A happy family, one husband, one wife and three lovely children. Child A has a holiday performance on Thursday morning and needs to wear a “green Christmas sweater, blue jeans and white sneakers” per teacher instructions. Child 2 has Christmas caroling at the old people’s home on Friday and needs a red dress and plate of cookies. Child 3 is receiving an award for a speech on Friday also, and will be needing a birthday present for friend’s party that same afternoon. Wife takes care of all of these things noiselessly, on top of regular work. She also lets husband know where to be on performance and award day.
Act 2
Husband: shows up.
Act 3
Society: why do women complain about mental labor? It’s a fiction that only exists in their hysterical imaginations and they invent tasks to do because they are hysterical.

Curtain.

All of these things being … picking out some clothing, getting some cookies and a birthday present? That … sounds … exhausting? Is that what my takeaway is here?

At any point was there some discussion in the family? “Larla, find a green shirt. Marla, get your read dress. Darla, pick out a present on Amazon. Honey, can you pick up some snickerdoodles on the way home?”

I don’t think you actually have elementary schoolers. Or that you are responsible for them anyway.
The only thing most elementary schoolers could do on the OP’s list without any help is make the cookies. And that’s the only thing you outsourced.

Maybe your elementary schoolers are a little slow? Mine know their colors. If I asked my daughter to get her green shirt, she would do so. If I remind my 4th grader to get her red dress, she'd go get it.

You're missing the point entirely. The husband isn't the issue here. The OP's inability to communicate and play the martyr is.

Are you really this dumb or are you being purposefully obtuse? The point is that not everyone already has a green shirt or a red dress. Neither of my daughters has either of those things - they aren't colors they like to wear. So yeah, my kids can pick out the green shirt from the closet if it's there, but they can't drive themselves to the mall to purchase one if it's not.

Why is a red dress necessary for caroling?

How would wearing an existing article of clothing prevent the caroling?

And does this child even want to sing to old people?

You're using strawmen here.

That's not what a strawman is.

And the PP raises a good point. OP is all bent out of shape that her DH isn't helping with something that is not all that important. They can teach the kid not to care about stupid stuff like that. Or if it is so important to OP to go along with the dumb thing from the school, she can do it herself. But why should her priorities control?

R u kidding?

Most of life with kids the dad just shows up at the final thing, with no effort or aid or care of any of the steps leading up to it. Vacations, concerts, holidays, training, college apps, therapies, teen relationships, funerals, weddings, games or meets, graduations, parties, update letters, health treatments, big item purchases even.

They literally do nothing but focus on themselves or work, then show up to pretend they were part of something they had nothing to do with.

In OP’s three examples it was some concert, school field trip, and what not. She probably has 100 more examples as well.

Maybe with your loser DH, but not in my household, and not with families in my social circle. Sorry that you picked a loser, and maybe OP did too (although hard to tell from her lame examples), but if your DH is missing all of that, you shouldn't have married him, and you surely shouldn't have had kids with him.

+1000

What that OP is not copping to is that there is some cultural or religious aspect at play that causes so much dissatisfaction in her marriage but she is obligated to stay in it. That's not how must American women go about their relationships which is why her complaints and generlizations about men are missing their mark and not resonating.

Once kids are involved and be parent is revealed as totally dysfunctional, you are quite stuck. Only bad options. Nothing cultural about it. The white people gray divorce stats support this.

Revealed? As if there was no way of knowing? Perhaps actually dating a spouse for several years or seasons would have helped.

How does dating a single guy in a rental for more years help one see how he’d be in his 40s with kids, a house and yard, a senior level job, a wife who works and two sets of aging parents?

Maybe spending more time with his parents and seeing and asking about their respective roles, responsibilities and values over time miiiiiiight help.

But really it’s up to the dude to out the effort in and adapt to a less simple and more demanding life. And not check out or be a freeloader jerk.

Maybe move in together? How long did you actually date your husband before getting married?

Move into a house with cars, a yard, pets, scheduled activities, meals for 4 each night, forecasted spring, summer and winter breaks off…. And see what happens and what he does or does not contribute to the household?

Interesting.

I also like the idea of trying to understand more fully, what his father’s role in life was the last few decades when married and with kids. And currently.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who organized all these events to begin with? Start there.

School

School organized the Thursday morning holiday performance. The caroling and birthday party are not school organized events.

Believing the school organized all these events is absurd, and these responses add to the possibility that OP too is creating unnecessary work for herself based on absurdities.

Going to the Girl Scout old people caroling, or church, or whatever, is by definition an extra curricular activity. If they don't have the time for these things they need to stop signing up.

Is it about having the time?

Or about having the parental effort and wherewithal?

Is it better to just sit at home from 3pm to 9pm and watch tv? Maybe that’s all the parents can handle for their kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who organized all these events to begin with? Start there.

School

School organized the Thursday morning holiday performance. The caroling and birthday party are not school organized events.

Believing the school organized all these events is absurd, and these responses add to the possibility that OP too is creating unnecessary work for herself based on absurdities.

+1.

The kid needs to change schools. This is what happens when you go to a school you cannot afford. I bet the school does this because most of the parents have either a stay at home parent or a full time nanny.

This would require significant resources from OP.

OP is struggling with cookies, dresses, and a birthday gift. Let's start with the cookies.

OP is not struggling.
But she is dealing with her life partner being a freeloader and taking advantage of her.
Thus the relationship and married are likely decaying due to the lack of action, respect, participation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who organized all these events to begin with? Start there.

School

School organized the Thursday morning holiday performance. The caroling and birthday party are not school organized events.

Believing the school organized all these events is absurd, and these responses add to the possibility that OP too is creating unnecessary work for herself based on absurdities.

+1.

The kid needs to change schools. This is what happens when you go to a school you cannot afford. I bet the school does this because most of the parents have either a stay at home parent or a full time nanny.

This would require significant resources from OP.

OP is struggling with cookies, dresses, and a birthday gift. Let's start with the cookies.

OP is not struggling.
But she is dealing with her life partner being a freeloader and taking advantage of her.
Thus the relationship and married are likely decaying due to the lack of action, respect, participation.

OP is complaining about "mental labor". Whether it's characterized as a 'struggle' or a 'deal' is irrelevant. The mental labor OP described included examples that can be delegated or edited. Let's start with the cookies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My husband and I have always viewed it as time spent ACTUALLY working is what matters. We have both out-earned each other over the years, but there are times when one of us is very busy with work or has travel or is generally stressed, so that's when the other person steps up. It doesn't matter who is contributing what to the joint checking account. My best friend is a teacher (but doesn't earn $100K!) and her husband has a desk job where he slightly out-earns her but works significantly less hard. He even comes home from work for an hour every day for lunch (they don't live in the DC area and his commute is under 10 minutes). But because his day ends at 5 pm and hers ends at 3 pm, she shoulders the majority of the kid-related tasks. He could do 99% of the administrative stuff and actually could more easily take leave to do stuff but he doesn't. He grew up with a SAHM and his dad was always treated like the king so he thinks he's important even though he makes under $100K and works 1/100th as hard as she does.

Or he could declare that all his tasks are necessary "needs" and questioning any particular one of them is "not the point".

We get it, you think your kids should be self-sufficient from birth. You shouldn't have to lift a finger for them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people are being a bit obtuse focusing on the individual tasks and arguing over whether or not they are important. That's not the issue. The issue is that when one spouse is left to do all the little administrative tasks and the other partner makes no effort to participate, doesn't pay attention to the emails about these things, doesn't participate in any way, not even in deciding "hey this is not important, let's let Carla where what she wants for caroling and if the organizer complains I'll handle it" or whatever, then what you've done is turned one spouse into the family's administrative assistant. And the stuff they do in this capacity may not be individually important in every instance, but overall the role is a lot and can become very burdensome.

To provide some examples:

- My DH cannot be bothered with anything related to the kids clothes, shoes, or hair. It gets defaulted to me because DH will say "Oh I'd have no idea where to start" or "I don't understand kids sizing" or "you bought their shoes last time, it makes sense for you to do it." Okay, fine, buying clothes and getting the kids' haircut is not a big deal, I don't really mind. Except then last year, there was a huge lice outbreak at their school. Both kids got it, and we caught it late because I had zero experience with lice prior to that and had missed the signs. I also got it. It took a full month of treatment and maintenance to fully eradicate the family and it was stressful and time consuming. I have a full time job just like DH and had to do all the lice stuff while juggling that. But when I'd say to DH "can you nit comb this child's hair tonight? I'm so wiped out and I still have to do my own hair" he'd protest and say he didn't know how and "you're the expert." I told him I was only an "expert" at that point because I'd had to undergo a crash course in lice over the previous week. So he does it but he doesn't look at the video I give him and he's not doing a thorough job, so I wind up doing it again after anyway. And he's like "don't assign it to me unless you are okay with me doing it my way" which sounds reasonable when it's buying a sweater but actually doesn't apply in this case because if you lice comb insufficiently, you wind up getting a reinfestation. But he was the one family member who didn't get lice and he didn't get it so it all just fell to me. And it was not an optional thing and it was not unimportant. And now I'm *still* the lice person in our household and I'm the one who does all the preventative maintenance to make sure we don't get it again and I'm the one who braids our daughter's hair and makes sure we have lice spray on hand when the school reports an outbreak and stays on top of it.

- Our school sends a million emails (like multiple per day) about everything from uniform policy reminders to upcoming events to request for volunteers. It's so much communication and a lot of it is unimportant or just invitations for make-work I have no interest in participating in. But buried among all the emails I don't care about are emails that are totally essential to our family, like the sign up link for next semester's aftercare program or info about scheduling changes for the week before winter break. So I open all the emails from the school to make sure I dont' miss something important. Most get deleted but int his way I can be confident I don't miss anything important, and that's how we wind up not missing aftercare sign ups or re-enrollment deadlines or know when testing is scheduled or whatever. DH ignores all of the emails because he says "they are mostly pointless" and when I explain that some of them are not pointless and we still have to pay attention to them, he's like "yeah, you're better at that stuff than me." Better at opening emails and reading? Who knows. But I wind up handling all the school admin stuff as a result because he's decided it's all useless. If I try to delegate it out to him, he'll push back and say "well I don't have the context for that and you did it last time so it makes sense for you to keep doing it." Which is true and also infuriating, because the only reason I have all the context is because I made it a point to learn it and the only reason I did it the last time is because he refuses to open school emails.

So all the little things OP is talking about can snowball into a heavy load to carry, and can also morph into essential family activities that only OP will have the context and experience to handle because her DH has made no effort to involve himself in things like staying on top of school notices about holiday concerts or interfacing with the activity group that does the caroling. It's nbd until one day it is a big deal and then OP is the only one positioned to handle it.

I hear you, PP. Can you pick certain things that are your husband's job that you don't have to think about? Say maybe the trash. If he doesn't take it to the curb then he can either go to the dump or deal with the fines from the HOA or handle the racoon infestation or whatever the results may be from failing that task. Maybe also things around the house that don't bother you, like fixing lightbulbs. I'm just wondering if there's a way for you to feel better about having to be the only person dealing with certain things?

NP and at one point my useless exDH had nothing left on his plate but trash and lightbulbs due to the exact reasoning you wrote here. And we did get a raccoon infestation because 1x/week trash was soooo hard, and they established a latrine, and then exDH did nothing but research raccoon latrines for a week and buy supplies and then psych himself up to remove it and then he had to decompress after doing so for an entire weekend day.

And he decided that lightbulbs were actually really complicated and spent tons of time researching them and ordering them and replacing them. I would be like “hey can you handle bedtime” and he’d be like, no, I had to finish figuring out this lightbulb thing. It was pathetic.

Then he filed for divorce, for reasons including that I “expected too much”.

And I moved and ended up in a place with a raccoon problem. Turns out raccoon latrines are not a big deal and can be solved in 2 hours with a quick drive to the hardware store and some hard work in old clothes in the backyard. Lightbulbs, even finicky overhead ones and new LED equivalents: 15 minutes of looking stuff up online once in my life, ordering a bunch, and putting them on the shelf. I was surprised to discover that pulling out a stepladder to replace one every other month or so is a 5 minute task. exDH would skip family events or ask me to drive kids to activities because he “had to handle the lightbulbs”.

I get so much more done and have so much more free time without the dead weight that was exDh. Everything that he made into a huge ordeal and therefore prevented him from contributing in any other meaningful way turned out to be an easy, rare task.

Getting divorced from a guy like this is hilarious because even if they initiate it, the executive functioning skills and focus required to follow through on a divorce make it really hard on them. Mine was shocked that I wouldn’t just do everything for him so he could “focus on work.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
My husband and I have always viewed it as time spent ACTUALLY working is what matters. We have both out-earned each other over the years, but there are times when one of us is very busy with work or has travel or is generally stressed, so that's when the other person steps up. It doesn't matter who is contributing what to the joint checking account. My best friend is a teacher (but doesn't earn $100K!) and her husband has a desk job where he slightly out-earns her but works significantly less hard. He even comes home from work for an hour every day for lunch (they don't live in the DC area and his commute is under 10 minutes). But because his day ends at 5 pm and hers ends at 3 pm, she shoulders the majority of the kid-related tasks. He could do 99% of the administrative stuff and actually could more easily take leave to do stuff but he doesn't. He grew up with a SAHM and his dad was always treated like the king so he thinks he's important even though he makes under $100K and works 1/100th as hard as she does.

Or he could declare that all his tasks are necessary "needs" and questioning any particular one of them is "not the point".

We get it, you think your kids should be self-sufficient from birth. You shouldn't have to lift a finger for them.

Children need fully committed parents.

(I'll refer the strawman poster to what PP posted for a proper example of the fallacy.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Act 1
A happy family, one husband, one wife and three lovely children. Child A has a holiday performance on Thursday morning and needs to wear a “green Christmas sweater, blue jeans and white sneakers” per teacher instructions. Child 2 has Christmas caroling at the old people’s home on Friday and needs a red dress and plate of cookies. Child 3 is receiving an award for a speech on Friday also, and will be needing a birthday present for friend’s party that same afternoon. Wife takes care of all of these things noiselessly, on top of regular work. She also lets husband know where to be on performance and award day.
Act 2
Husband: shows up.
Act 3
Society: why do women complain about mental labor? It’s a fiction that only exists in their hysterical imaginations and they invent tasks to do because they are hysterical.

Curtain.

All of these things being … picking out some clothing, getting some cookies and a birthday present? That … sounds … exhausting? Is that what my takeaway is here?

At any point was there some discussion in the family? “Larla, find a green shirt. Marla, get your read dress. Darla, pick out a present on Amazon. Honey, can you pick up some snickerdoodles on the way home?”

I don’t think you actually have elementary schoolers. Or that you are responsible for them anyway.
The only thing most elementary schoolers could do on the OP’s list without any help is make the cookies. And that’s the only thing you outsourced.

Maybe your elementary schoolers are a little slow? Mine know their colors. If I asked my daughter to get her green shirt, she would do so. If I remind my 4th grader to get her red dress, she'd go get it.

You're missing the point entirely. The husband isn't the issue here. The OP's inability to communicate and play the martyr is.

Are you really this dumb or are you being purposefully obtuse? The point is that not everyone already has a green shirt or a red dress. Neither of my daughters has either of those things - they aren't colors they like to wear. So yeah, my kids can pick out the green shirt from the closet if it's there, but they can't drive themselves to the mall to purchase one if it's not.

Why is a red dress necessary for caroling?

How would wearing an existing article of clothing prevent the caroling?

And does this child even want to sing to old people?

You're using strawmen here.

That's not what a strawman is.

And the PP raises a good point. OP is all bent out of shape that her DH isn't helping with something that is not all that important. They can teach the kid not to care about stupid stuff like that. Or if it is so important to OP to go along with the dumb thing from the school, she can do it herself. But why should her priorities control?

R u kidding?

Most of life with kids the dad just shows up at the final thing, with no effort or aid or care of any of the steps leading up to it. Vacations, concerts, holidays, training, college apps, therapies, teen relationships, funerals, weddings, games or meets, graduations, parties, update letters, health treatments, big item purchases even.

They literally do nothing but focus on themselves or work, then show up to pretend they were part of something they had nothing to do with.

In OP’s three examples it was some concert, school field trip, and what not. She probably has 100 more examples as well.

Maybe with your loser DH, but not in my household, and not with families in my social circle. Sorry that you picked a loser, and maybe OP did too (although hard to tell from her lame examples), but if your DH is missing all of that, you shouldn't have married him, and you surely shouldn't have had kids with him.

+1000

What that OP is not copping to is that there is some cultural or religious aspect at play that causes so much dissatisfaction in her marriage but she is obligated to stay in it. That's not how must American women go about their relationships which is why her complaints and generlizations about men are missing their mark and not resonating.

Once kids are involved and be parent is revealed as totally dysfunctional, you are quite stuck. Only bad options. Nothing cultural about it. The white people gray divorce stats support this.

Revealed? As if there was no way of knowing? Perhaps actually dating a spouse for several years or seasons would have helped.

How does dating a single guy in a rental for more years help one see how he’d be in his 40s with kids, a house and yard, a senior level job, a wife who works and two sets of aging parents?

Maybe spending more time with his parents and seeing and asking about their respective roles, responsibilities and values over time miiiiiiight help.

But really it’s up to the dude to out the effort in and adapt to a less simple and more demanding life. And not check out or be a freeloader jerk.

Maybe move in together? How long did you actually date your husband before getting married?

Move into a house with cars, a yard, pets, scheduled activities, meals for 4 each night, forecasted spring, summer and winter breaks off…. And see what happens and what he does or does not contribute to the household?

Interesting.

I also like the idea of trying to understand more fully, what his father’s role in life was the last few decades when married and with kids. And currently.

You know you married your husband without even knowing him and now you want to cry foul?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who organized all these events to begin with? Start there.

School

School organized the Thursday morning holiday performance. The caroling and birthday party are not school organized events.

Believing the school organized all these events is absurd, and these responses add to the possibility that OP too is creating unnecessary work for herself based on absurdities.

+1.

The kid needs to change schools. This is what happens when you go to a school you cannot afford. I bet the school does this because most of the parents have either a stay at home parent or a full time nanny.

This would require significant resources from OP.

OP is struggling with cookies, dresses, and a birthday gift. Let's start with the cookies.

OP is not struggling.
But she is dealing with her life partner being a freeloader and taking advantage of her.
Thus the relationship and married are likely decaying due to the lack of action, respect, participation.

I'd like to hear what her husband does for the family. We have but one side here and the examples of color coordinated clothing and snacks aren't really that convincing that partner is a freeloader taking advantage. He may rightly just not consider unimportant things unimportant.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Who organized all these events to begin with? Start there.

School

School organized the Thursday morning holiday performance. The caroling and birthday party are not school organized events.

Believing the school organized all these events is absurd, and these responses add to the possibility that OP too is creating unnecessary work for herself based on absurdities.

+1.

The kid needs to change schools. This is what happens when you go to a school you cannot afford. I bet the school does this because most of the parents have either a stay at home parent or a full time nanny.

This would require significant resources from OP.

OP is struggling with cookies, dresses, and a birthday gift. Let's start with the cookies.

OP is not struggling.
But she is dealing with her life partner being a freeloader and taking advantage of her.
Thus the relationship and married are likely decaying due to the lack of action, respect, participation.

OP is complaining about "mental labor". Whether it's characterized as a 'struggle' or a 'deal' is irrelevant. The mental labor OP described included examples that can be delegated or edited. Let's start with the cookies.

Let’s start with how her spouse doesn’t know what’s on tap for the week or his children’s needs at school or for their upcoming ECs. Why does he not know? He doesn’t talk with any of them nor read the mails from the school or ECs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people are being a bit obtuse focusing on the individual tasks and arguing over whether or not they are important. That's not the issue. The issue is that when one spouse is left to do all the little administrative tasks and the other partner makes no effort to participate, doesn't pay attention to the emails about these things, doesn't participate in any way, not even in deciding "hey this is not important, let's let Carla where what she wants for caroling and if the organizer complains I'll handle it" or whatever, then what you've done is turned one spouse into the family's administrative assistant. And the stuff they do in this capacity may not be individually important in every instance, but overall the role is a lot and can become very burdensome.

To provide some examples:

- My DH cannot be bothered with anything related to the kids clothes, shoes, or hair. It gets defaulted to me because DH will say "Oh I'd have no idea where to start" or "I don't understand kids sizing" or "you bought their shoes last time, it makes sense for you to do it." Okay, fine, buying clothes and getting the kids' haircut is not a big deal, I don't really mind. Except then last year, there was a huge lice outbreak at their school. Both kids got it, and we caught it late because I had zero experience with lice prior to that and had missed the signs. I also got it. It took a full month of treatment and maintenance to fully eradicate the family and it was stressful and time consuming. I have a full time job just like DH and had to do all the lice stuff while juggling that. But when I'd say to DH "can you nit comb this child's hair tonight? I'm so wiped out and I still have to do my own hair" he'd protest and say he didn't know how and "you're the expert." I told him I was only an "expert" at that point because I'd had to undergo a crash course in lice over the previous week. So he does it but he doesn't look at the video I give him and he's not doing a thorough job, so I wind up doing it again after anyway. And he's like "don't assign it to me unless you are okay with me doing it my way" which sounds reasonable when it's buying a sweater but actually doesn't apply in this case because if you lice comb insufficiently, you wind up getting a reinfestation. But he was the one family member who didn't get lice and he didn't get it so it all just fell to me. And it was not an optional thing and it was not unimportant. And now I'm *still* the lice person in our household and I'm the one who does all the preventative maintenance to make sure we don't get it again and I'm the one who braids our daughter's hair and makes sure we have lice spray on hand when the school reports an outbreak and stays on top of it.

- Our school sends a million emails (like multiple per day) about everything from uniform policy reminders to upcoming events to request for volunteers. It's so much communication and a lot of it is unimportant or just invitations for make-work I have no interest in participating in. But buried among all the emails I don't care about are emails that are totally essential to our family, like the sign up link for next semester's aftercare program or info about scheduling changes for the week before winter break. So I open all the emails from the school to make sure I dont' miss something important. Most get deleted but int his way I can be confident I don't miss anything important, and that's how we wind up not missing aftercare sign ups or re-enrollment deadlines or know when testing is scheduled or whatever. DH ignores all of the emails because he says "they are mostly pointless" and when I explain that some of them are not pointless and we still have to pay attention to them, he's like "yeah, you're better at that stuff than me." Better at opening emails and reading? Who knows. But I wind up handling all the school admin stuff as a result because he's decided it's all useless. If I try to delegate it out to him, he'll push back and say "well I don't have the context for that and you did it last time so it makes sense for you to keep doing it." Which is true and also infuriating, because the only reason I have all the context is because I made it a point to learn it and the only reason I did it the last time is because he refuses to open school emails.

So all the little things OP is talking about can snowball into a heavy load to carry, and can also morph into essential family activities that only OP will have the context and experience to handle because her DH has made no effort to involve himself in things like staying on top of school notices about holiday concerts or interfacing with the activity group that does the caroling. It's nbd until one day it is a big deal and then OP is the only one positioned to handle it.

I hear you, PP. Can you pick certain things that are your husband's job that you don't have to think about? Say maybe the trash. If he doesn't take it to the curb then he can either go to the dump or deal with the fines from the HOA or handle the racoon infestation or whatever the results may be from failing that task. Maybe also things around the house that don't bother you, like fixing lightbulbs. I'm just wondering if there's a way for you to feel better about having to be the only person dealing with certain things?

NP and at one point my useless exDH had nothing left on his plate but trash and lightbulbs due to the exact reasoning you wrote here. And we did get a raccoon infestation because 1x/week trash was soooo hard, and they established a latrine, and then exDH did nothing but research raccoon latrines for a week and buy supplies and then psych himself up to remove it and then he had to decompress after doing so for an entire weekend day.

And he decided that lightbulbs were actually really complicated and spent tons of time researching them and ordering them and replacing them. I would be like “hey can you handle bedtime” and he’d be like, no, I had to finish figuring out this lightbulb thing. It was pathetic.

Then he filed for divorce, for reasons including that I “expected too much”.

And I moved and ended up in a place with a raccoon problem. Turns out raccoon latrines are not a big deal and can be solved in 2 hours with a quick drive to the hardware store and some hard work in old clothes in the backyard. Lightbulbs, even finicky overhead ones and new LED equivalents: 15 minutes of looking stuff up online once in my life, ordering a bunch, and putting them on the shelf. I was surprised to discover that pulling out a stepladder to replace one every other month or so is a 5 minute task. exDH would skip family events or ask me to drive kids to activities because he “had to handle the lightbulbs”.

I get so much more done and have so much more free time without the dead weight that was exDh. Everything that he made into a huge ordeal and therefore prevented him from contributing in any other meaningful way turned out to be an easy, rare task.

Getting divorced from a guy like this is hilarious because even if they initiate it, the executive functioning skills and focus required to follow through on a divorce make it really hard on them. Mine was shocked that I wouldn’t just do everything for him so he could “focus on work.”

I believe it. So pathetic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people are being a bit obtuse focusing on the individual tasks and arguing over whether or not they are important. That's not the issue. The issue is that when one spouse is left to do all the little administrative tasks and the other partner makes no effort to participate, doesn't pay attention to the emails about these things, doesn't participate in any way, not even in deciding "hey this is not important, let's let Carla where what she wants for caroling and if the organizer complains I'll handle it" or whatever, then what you've done is turned one spouse into the family's administrative assistant. And the stuff they do in this capacity may not be individually important in every instance, but overall the role is a lot and can become very burdensome.

To provide some examples:

- My DH cannot be bothered with anything related to the kids clothes, shoes, or hair. It gets defaulted to me because DH will say "Oh I'd have no idea where to start" or "I don't understand kids sizing" or "you bought their shoes last time, it makes sense for you to do it." Okay, fine, buying clothes and getting the kids' haircut is not a big deal, I don't really mind. Except then last year, there was a huge lice outbreak at their school. Both kids got it, and we caught it late because I had zero experience with lice prior to that and had missed the signs. I also got it. It took a full month of treatment and maintenance to fully eradicate the family and it was stressful and time consuming. I have a full time job just like DH and had to do all the lice stuff while juggling that. But when I'd say to DH "can you nit comb this child's hair tonight? I'm so wiped out and I still have to do my own hair" he'd protest and say he didn't know how and "you're the expert." I told him I was only an "expert" at that point because I'd had to undergo a crash course in lice over the previous week. So he does it but he doesn't look at the video I give him and he's not doing a thorough job, so I wind up doing it again after anyway. And he's like "don't assign it to me unless you are okay with me doing it my way" which sounds reasonable when it's buying a sweater but actually doesn't apply in this case because if you lice comb insufficiently, you wind up getting a reinfestation. But he was the one family member who didn't get lice and he didn't get it so it all just fell to me. And it was not an optional thing and it was not unimportant. And now I'm *still* the lice person in our household and I'm the one who does all the preventative maintenance to make sure we don't get it again and I'm the one who braids our daughter's hair and makes sure we have lice spray on hand when the school reports an outbreak and stays on top of it.

- Our school sends a million emails (like multiple per day) about everything from uniform policy reminders to upcoming events to request for volunteers. It's so much communication and a lot of it is unimportant or just invitations for make-work I have no interest in participating in. But buried among all the emails I don't care about are emails that are totally essential to our family, like the sign up link for next semester's aftercare program or info about scheduling changes for the week before winter break. So I open all the emails from the school to make sure I dont' miss something important. Most get deleted but int his way I can be confident I don't miss anything important, and that's how we wind up not missing aftercare sign ups or re-enrollment deadlines or know when testing is scheduled or whatever. DH ignores all of the emails because he says "they are mostly pointless" and when I explain that some of them are not pointless and we still have to pay attention to them, he's like "yeah, you're better at that stuff than me." Better at opening emails and reading? Who knows. But I wind up handling all the school admin stuff as a result because he's decided it's all useless. If I try to delegate it out to him, he'll push back and say "well I don't have the context for that and you did it last time so it makes sense for you to keep doing it." Which is true and also infuriating, because the only reason I have all the context is because I made it a point to learn it and the only reason I did it the last time is because he refuses to open school emails.

So all the little things OP is talking about can snowball into a heavy load to carry, and can also morph into essential family activities that only OP will have the context and experience to handle because her DH has made no effort to involve himself in things like staying on top of school notices about holiday concerts or interfacing with the activity group that does the caroling. It's nbd until one day it is a big deal and then OP is the only one positioned to handle it.

I hear you, PP. Can you pick certain things that are your husband's job that you don't have to think about? Say maybe the trash. If he doesn't take it to the curb then he can either go to the dump or deal with the fines from the HOA or handle the racoon infestation or whatever the results may be from failing that task. Maybe also things around the house that don't bother you, like fixing lightbulbs. I'm just wondering if there's a way for you to feel better about having to be the only person dealing with certain things?

NP and at one point my useless exDH had nothing left on his plate but trash and lightbulbs due to the exact reasoning you wrote here. And we did get a raccoon infestation because 1x/week trash was soooo hard, and they established a latrine, and then exDH did nothing but research raccoon latrines for a week and buy supplies and then psych himself up to remove it and then he had to decompress after doing so for an entire weekend day.

And he decided that lightbulbs were actually really complicated and spent tons of time researching them and ordering them and replacing them. I would be like “hey can you handle bedtime” and he’d be like, no, I had to finish figuring out this lightbulb thing. It was pathetic.

Then he filed for divorce, for reasons including that I “expected too much”.

And I moved and ended up in a place with a raccoon problem. Turns out raccoon latrines are not a big deal and can be solved in 2 hours with a quick drive to the hardware store and some hard work in old clothes in the backyard. Lightbulbs, even finicky overhead ones and new LED equivalents: 15 minutes of looking stuff up online once in my life, ordering a bunch, and putting them on the shelf. I was surprised to discover that pulling out a stepladder to replace one every other month or so is a 5 minute task. exDH would skip family events or ask me to drive kids to activities because he “had to handle the lightbulbs”.

I get so much more done and have so much more free time without the dead weight that was exDh. Everything that he made into a huge ordeal and therefore prevented him from contributing in any other meaningful way turned out to be an easy, rare task.

Getting divorced from a guy like this is hilarious because even if they initiate it, the executive functioning skills and focus required to follow through on a divorce make it really hard on them. Mine was shocked that I wouldn’t just do everything for him so he could “focus on work.”

You know there would be a diagnosis and label for this, right? It didn’t just show up one day. No struggles in school? Parents never mentioned anything?

[Anonymous]

“Had to handle the lightbulbs” is so incredible. I mean I’m sorry you had to deal with that but I’m cackling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

You know there would be a diagnosis and label for this, right? It didn’t just show up one day. No struggles in school? Parents never mentioned anything?

DP I think this is irrelevant.

If it is mostly the case that men cannot be vetted as parents, that's your sign. Your sign is men cannot be vetted. Expect a bad outcome playing Russian roulette. Do not proceed if it's a man.

Of course it's mostly the case, not always, that red flags exist. The reason they are overlooked and minimized is women want children. We know this for many reasons; for instance, women will have more children with men who aren't talking care of existing children.

Children are the reason signs are overlooked. And children suffer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people are being a bit obtuse focusing on the individual tasks and arguing over whether or not they are important. That's not the issue. The issue is that when one spouse is left to do all the little administrative tasks and the other partner makes no effort to participate, doesn't pay attention to the emails about these things, doesn't participate in any way, not even in deciding "hey this is not important, let's let Carla where what she wants for caroling and if the organizer complains I'll handle it" or whatever, then what you've done is turned one spouse into the family's administrative assistant. And the stuff they do in this capacity may not be individually important in every instance, but overall the role is a lot and can become very burdensome.

To provide some examples:

- My DH cannot be bothered with anything related to the kids clothes, shoes, or hair. It gets defaulted to me because DH will say "Oh I'd have no idea where to start" or "I don't understand kids sizing" or "you bought their shoes last time, it makes sense for you to do it." Okay, fine, buying clothes and getting the kids' haircut is not a big deal, I don't really mind. Except then last year, there was a huge lice outbreak at their school. Both kids got it, and we caught it late because I had zero experience with lice prior to that and had missed the signs. I also got it. It took a full month of treatment and maintenance to fully eradicate the family and it was stressful and time consuming. I have a full time job just like DH and had to do all the lice stuff while juggling that. But when I'd say to DH "can you nit comb this child's hair tonight? I'm so wiped out and I still have to do my own hair" he'd protest and say he didn't know how and "you're the expert." I told him I was only an "expert" at that point because I'd had to undergo a crash course in lice over the previous week. So he does it but he doesn't look at the video I give him and he's not doing a thorough job, so I wind up doing it again after anyway. And he's like "don't assign it to me unless you are okay with me doing it my way" which sounds reasonable when it's buying a sweater but actually doesn't apply in this case because if you lice comb insufficiently, you wind up getting a reinfestation. But he was the one family member who didn't get lice and he didn't get it so it all just fell to me. And it was not an optional thing and it was not unimportant. And now I'm *still* the lice person in our household and I'm the one who does all the preventative maintenance to make sure we don't get it again and I'm the one who braids our daughter's hair and makes sure we have lice spray on hand when the school reports an outbreak and stays on top of it.

- Our school sends a million emails (like multiple per day) about everything from uniform policy reminders to upcoming events to request for volunteers. It's so much communication and a lot of it is unimportant or just invitations for make-work I have no interest in participating in. But buried among all the emails I don't care about are emails that are totally essential to our family, like the sign up link for next semester's aftercare program or info about scheduling changes for the week before winter break. So I open all the emails from the school to make sure I dont' miss something important. Most get deleted but int his way I can be confident I don't miss anything important, and that's how we wind up not missing aftercare sign ups or re-enrollment deadlines or know when testing is scheduled or whatever. DH ignores all of the emails because he says "they are mostly pointless" and when I explain that some of them are not pointless and we still have to pay attention to them, he's like "yeah, you're better at that stuff than me." Better at opening emails and reading? Who knows. But I wind up handling all the school admin stuff as a result because he's decided it's all useless. If I try to delegate it out to him, he'll push back and say "well I don't have the context for that and you did it last time so it makes sense for you to keep doing it." Which is true and also infuriating, because the only reason I have all the context is because I made it a point to learn it and the only reason I did it the last time is because he refuses to open school emails.

So all the little things OP is talking about can snowball into a heavy load to carry, and can also morph into essential family activities that only OP will have the context and experience to handle because her DH has made no effort to involve himself in things like staying on top of school notices about holiday concerts or interfacing with the activity group that does the caroling. It's nbd until one day it is a big deal and then OP is the only one positioned to handle it.

I hear you, PP. Can you pick certain things that are your husband's job that you don't have to think about? Say maybe the trash. If he doesn't take it to the curb then he can either go to the dump or deal with the fines from the HOA or handle the racoon infestation or whatever the results may be from failing that task. Maybe also things around the house that don't bother you, like fixing lightbulbs. I'm just wondering if there's a way for you to feel better about having to be the only person dealing with certain things?

NP and at one point my useless exDH had nothing left on his plate but trash and lightbulbs due to the exact reasoning you wrote here. And we did get a raccoon infestation because 1x/week trash was soooo hard, and they established a latrine, and then exDH did nothing but research raccoon latrines for a week and buy supplies and then psych himself up to remove it and then he had to decompress after doing so for an entire weekend day.

And he decided that lightbulbs were actually really complicated and spent tons of time researching them and ordering them and replacing them. I would be like “hey can you handle bedtime” and he’d be like, no, I had to finish figuring out this lightbulb thing. It was pathetic.

Then he filed for divorce, for reasons including that I “expected too much”.

And I moved and ended up in a place with a raccoon problem. Turns out raccoon latrines are not a big deal and can be solved in 2 hours with a quick drive to the hardware store and some hard work in old clothes in the backyard. Lightbulbs, even finicky overhead ones and new LED equivalents: 15 minutes of looking stuff up online once in my life, ordering a bunch, and putting them on the shelf. I was surprised to discover that pulling out a stepladder to replace one every other month or so is a 5 minute task. exDH would skip family events or ask me to drive kids to activities because he “had to handle the lightbulbs”.

I get so much more done and have so much more free time without the dead weight that was exDh. Everything that he made into a huge ordeal and therefore prevented him from contributing in any other meaningful way turned out to be an easy, rare task.

Getting divorced from a guy like this is hilarious because even if they initiate it, the executive functioning skills and focus required to follow through on a divorce make it really hard on them. Mine was shocked that I wouldn’t just do everything for him so he could “focus on work.”

You know there would be a diagnosis and label for this, right? It didn’t just show up one day. No struggles in school? Parents never mentioned anything?

Diagnoses plural after our first and only was born. Sometimes he embraced the diagnoses as a Get Out of Jail Free card and sometimes he would say that not only were the diagnoses not real but they had never happened (!).

And a year before the divorce, during a visit when she sat back and observed me hustling nonstop, his mom, who is usually very quiet, suddenly burst out with a monologue about how she had done too much for him growing up and it was good he had found me because he really needed the help and thank goodness he had me go do what she had always done for him. And the criticized me for making DC do chores and not letting DC just focus on school like she has for exDH.

It was disgusting to hear her acknowledge that she basically knew how differently abled he was all along and covered it up and then celebrated that he had found me, his new mommy.