Extreme resentment over mental load

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The posters suggesting to not not barely celebrate Christmas or birthdays aren’t very helpful.

You’re also not taking the rest of life into consideration. I can live in a $2 million dollar house, employ a cleaning lady, work a demanding job, exercise etc - but I’m going to drop the ball on Christmas and/or a birthday for my mental health?

Someone who is not celebrating Christmas for their child (assuming you’re Christian) is practically homeless or suffering from severe mental illness.

This post sounds like mental illness. What on earth?

+1! Figure out what "celebrating Christmas" means to you. If it means spending 10,000 hours decorating and buying gifts, and you don't have 10,000 hours to spend, you'll either need to take time from other things, outsource, or not spend 10,000 hours on Christmas. This isn't rocket science. My parents had demanding jobs and we had no other family, so they spend 2 hours decorating and gave my sibling and I one gift each, but that still counted as Christmas because we were celebrating together.

My parents were immigrants who worked themselves to the bone. We'd haul down the plastic Christmas tree from the attic, my brother and I would wrap the lights and tinsel, hang the few ornaments while my dad ran to the toy store to get a He-Man action figure for my brother and a My Little Pony for me. My mom would wrap them and stick them under the tree, and call it a day. Good times, and great memories.

Sounds to me like both of your parents participated.
I think OP is resentful because she has to do everything alone.

Would OP be satisfied if all her DH did was a last minute Target run for action figures?

I think she would be satisfied if he volunteered to go and he knew what he wanted to get.

She said that she is upset that he didn’t volunteer to do anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The posters suggesting to not not barely celebrate Christmas or birthdays aren’t very helpful.

You’re also not taking the rest of life into consideration. I can live in a $2 million dollar house, employ a cleaning lady, work a demanding job, exercise etc - but I’m going to drop the ball on Christmas and/or a birthday for my mental health?

Someone who is not celebrating Christmas for their child (assuming you’re Christian) is practically homeless or suffering from severe mental illness.

This post sounds like mental illness. What on earth?

+1! Figure out what "celebrating Christmas" means to you. If it means spending 10,000 hours decorating and buying gifts, and you don't have 10,000 hours to spend, you'll either need to take time from other things, outsource, or not spend 10,000 hours on Christmas. This isn't rocket science. My parents had demanding jobs and we had no other family, so they spend 2 hours decorating and gave my sibling and I one gift each, but that still counted as Christmas because we were celebrating together.

My parents were immigrants who worked themselves to the bone. We'd haul down the plastic Christmas tree from the attic, my brother and I would wrap the lights and tinsel, hang the few ornaments while my dad ran to the toy store to get a He-Man action figure for my brother and a My Little Pony for me. My mom would wrap them and stick them under the tree, and call it a day. Good times, and great memories.

Sounds to me like both of your parents participated.
I think OP is resentful because she has to do everything alone.

Would OP be satisfied if all her DH did was a last minute Target run for action figures?

I think she would be satisfied if he volunteered to go and he knew what he wanted to get.

She said that she is upset that he didn’t volunteer to do anything.

Yes, maybe this is all OP wanted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The posters suggesting to not not barely celebrate Christmas or birthdays aren’t very helpful.

You’re also not taking the rest of life into consideration. I can live in a $2 million dollar house, employ a cleaning lady, work a demanding job, exercise etc - but I’m going to drop the ball on Christmas and/or a birthday for my mental health?

Someone who is not celebrating Christmas for their child (assuming you’re Christian) is practically homeless or suffering from severe mental illness.

This post sounds like mental illness. What on earth?

+1! Figure out what "celebrating Christmas" means to you. If it means spending 10,000 hours decorating and buying gifts, and you don't have 10,000 hours to spend, you'll either need to take time from other things, outsource, or not spend 10,000 hours on Christmas. This isn't rocket science. My parents had demanding jobs and we had no other family, so they spend 2 hours decorating and gave my sibling and I one gift each, but that still counted as Christmas because we were celebrating together.

My parents were immigrants who worked themselves to the bone. We'd haul down the plastic Christmas tree from the attic, my brother and I would wrap the lights and tinsel, hang the few ornaments while my dad ran to the toy store to get a He-Man action figure for my brother and a My Little Pony for me. My mom would wrap them and stick them under the tree, and call it a day. Good times, and great memories.

Sounds to me like both of your parents participated.
I think OP is resentful because she has to do everything alone.

Would OP be satisfied if all her DH did was a last minute Target run for action figures?

I think she would be satisfied if he volunteered to go and he knew what he wanted to get.

She said that she is upset that he didn’t volunteer to do anything.

We have no idea what happened behind the scenes with PP’s parents. We have no idea if her mother told him to go to Target and what to buy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The posters suggesting to not not barely celebrate Christmas or birthdays aren’t very helpful.

You’re also not taking the rest of life into consideration. I can live in a $2 million dollar house, employ a cleaning lady, work a demanding job, exercise etc - but I’m going to drop the ball on Christmas and/or a birthday for my mental health?

Someone who is not celebrating Christmas for their child (assuming you’re Christian) is practically homeless or suffering from severe mental illness.

Sounds like living in a 2M dollar house prevents you from prioritizing your mental health.

Maybe if you sold that house and bought a 500k one, you won't need the demanding job. If you work a 9-5 with weekends off, you'd find 2 hours to focus on Christmas without caring about whether your DH is participating.

+1. Why is this poster working in such a demanding job that they can't take a few hours out for Christmas? What is the point of living?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The posters suggesting to not not barely celebrate Christmas or birthdays aren’t very helpful.

You’re also not taking the rest of life into consideration. I can live in a $2 million dollar house, employ a cleaning lady, work a demanding job, exercise etc - but I’m going to drop the ball on Christmas and/or a birthday for my mental health?

Someone who is not celebrating Christmas for their child (assuming you’re Christian) is practically homeless or suffering from severe mental illness.

This post sounds like mental illness. What on earth?

+1! Figure out what "celebrating Christmas" means to you. If it means spending 10,000 hours decorating and buying gifts, and you don't have 10,000 hours to spend, you'll either need to take time from other things, outsource, or not spend 10,000 hours on Christmas. This isn't rocket science. My parents had demanding jobs and we had no other family, so they spend 2 hours decorating and gave my sibling and I one gift each, but that still counted as Christmas because we were celebrating together.

My parents were immigrants who worked themselves to the bone. We'd haul down the plastic Christmas tree from the attic, my brother and I would wrap the lights and tinsel, hang the few ornaments while my dad ran to the toy store to get a He-Man action figure for my brother and a My Little Pony for me. My mom would wrap them and stick them under the tree, and call it a day. Good times, and great memories.

Sounds to me like both of your parents participated.
I think OP is resentful because she has to do everything alone.

Would OP be satisfied if all her DH did was a last minute Target run for action figures?

I think she would be satisfied if he volunteered to go and he knew what he wanted to get.

She said that she is upset that he didn’t volunteer to do anything.

We have no idea what happened behind the scenes with PP’s parents. We have no idea if her mother told him to go to Target and what to buy.

Action figure PP here. My dad definitely knew what to buy, because he would take the few minutes to notice us and the toys with which we played. That's why I have good memories. Christmas was that time they could take a break and show us that they did know who we were, even though they were normally away so much working. It didn't take a huge amount of time or money.

[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: And, to be clear, she can do the same. Nobody's forcing her to make a "magical" holiday experience. If you don't enjoy it, stop.

I mean, these things are important, to a degree.

But if I'm operating under extreme resentment and loathing because my spouse cannot or will not participate in the child's lives, I'm editing my mental load and protecting my mental health.

Millions of people live perfectly fine lives without ever celebrating Christmas at all, ever. This shit is entirely optional.

That’s total bullsh*t. Depriving your kid of cultural celebrations isn’t abuse per se but it’s really bad parenting. This is obviously just a cope to claim that traditional women’s work has no value.

So people who don't care about Christmas are abusers? You're mental. Get help.

Women's work has value so they should limit how often that value gets tapped without compensation or reciprocation. If you can't figure out how to do that without "depriving your kid of cultural celebrations" you shouldn't have had kids. The radio plays free Christmas music, every mall has a santa, holiday lights are probably all over your neighborhood and walking is free. You don't have to pay money or time to celebrate the holiday, should you choose.

It's "total bullsh*t" that this thread is this long and some of y'all still can't figure this out for your allegedly-grown selves, let alone the children you love and overprotect so damned much. God help their future spouses!

All of those things you listed take time. And you probably should not have kids if you don’t want to create a happy home for them.

So you want to create a happy home? Like this is a choice you make because you want it, not a burden thrust on you?

I want men to take equal responsibility to create a happy home and not freeload on women and then if called on it, claim that the only thing kids need is food and water.

Who gets to decide when is the home happy?
Women just can't grasp how little it actually takes to make a man happy. They need about 3 things and women need about 1,000. And women can't understand why men don't just jump and complete 500 chores that he doesn't care about or even think to do because happiness was achieved 997 chores ago

What about the kids?

450 of those chores are for the kids. You misinterpret them as being for your wife's "happiness" when she's really just trying to help you fulfill your obligation as a dad.

AND because she has the ability to engage in planning a long term thinking, she also understand that a lot of what she's trying to get you to do is actually essential to your longterm happiness. Because if you do what you want, which is the bare minimum, your kids will eventually come to resent you and not want to spend time with you. And there is going to come a day when you suddenly want a family around you who cares about you. And you're going to be mad when your kids are like "Sorry, Dad, I'm so busy with work. Happy birthday though." Even though this is literally what you did to them and your wife for decades. This is precisely what all those things she's trying to get you to do is designed to prevent, but you are too shortsighted to realize this.

You will wind up angry and alone and wondering why your family has abandoned you, and I'm here to tell you that it's because you refused to give a damn about the happiness of your wife or children so they stopped giving a damn about yours.

This is a thread about optional tasks. It’s clear many of the posters here are unable to decide what’s important and prioritize.

The only person who ends up angry is the person who cannot prioritize and thinks her whole family should do the things she thinks is important.
-a woman who doesn’t engage in fake work

Is celebrating the holidays optional when you have kids?

No, of course it’s not optional. Many PPs are just saying that a lot of moms totally overdo it for the holidays. And they expect everyone else (usually the dad) to be on board with doing the excessive, pointless holiday tasks.

I’m in my 50s, and my parents didn’t make a big deal about holidays or birthdays. It completely sucked for me as a kid. People on this thread who are downplaying holidays and birthdays are in denial or are just completely clueless crappy parents.

Your experience is valid, but not universal. Growing up, we only celebrated the big birthdays: 3, 5, 10. For the other birthdays, they gave us money from about age 8 and bought a cake and sang Happy Birthday. By 12, if you wanted friends over for your birthday, you took the lead and helped organize. My 4 siblings and I thought it was great. Many of my kids' friends do movie night, pizza and popcorn with about 6 friends at home.

My siblings and I still think birthdays are important to the extent that we never forget to call each other and say Happy Birthday. This is what we cherish, not the parties.

I mean, you just described a family with some great birthday traditions. The “big birthday” aspect is quirky but also part of being in a big family with its own traditions. Nobody is saying that it has to be a certain way.

Yes, I believe people are saying it has to be a certain way - a big way with lots of fanfare. That’s the whole point the “optional” people are making. Pick a few things you like and can handle. But since this is DCUM, people want to post extremes.

Literally nobody said that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The posters suggesting to not not barely celebrate Christmas or birthdays aren’t very helpful.

You’re also not taking the rest of life into consideration. I can live in a $2 million dollar house, employ a cleaning lady, work a demanding job, exercise etc - but I’m going to drop the ball on Christmas and/or a birthday for my mental health?

Someone who is not celebrating Christmas for their child (assuming you’re Christian) is practically homeless or suffering from severe mental illness.

This post sounds like mental illness. What on earth?

+1! Figure out what "celebrating Christmas" means to you. If it means spending 10,000 hours decorating and buying gifts, and you don't have 10,000 hours to spend, you'll either need to take time from other things, outsource, or not spend 10,000 hours on Christmas. This isn't rocket science. My parents had demanding jobs and we had no other family, so they spend 2 hours decorating and gave my sibling and I one gift each, but that still counted as Christmas because we were celebrating together.

My parents were immigrants who worked themselves to the bone. We'd haul down the plastic Christmas tree from the attic, my brother and I would wrap the lights and tinsel, hang the few ornaments while my dad ran to the toy store to get a He-Man action figure for my brother and a My Little Pony for me. My mom would wrap them and stick them under the tree, and call it a day. Good times, and great memories.

Sounds to me like both of your parents participated.
I think OP is resentful because she has to do everything alone.

Would OP be satisfied if all her DH did was a last minute Target run for action figures?

I think she would be satisfied if he volunteered to go and he knew what he wanted to get.

She said that she is upset that he didn’t volunteer to do anything.

We have no idea what happened behind the scenes with PP’s parents. We have no idea if her mother told him to go to Target and what to buy.

Action figure PP here. My dad definitely knew what to buy, because he would take the few minutes to notice us and the toys with which we played. That's why I have good memories. Christmas was that time they could take a break and show us that they did know who we were, even though they were normally away so much working. It didn't take a huge amount of time or money.

Yet we have 40 pages of the men of DCUM justifying not doing this for their own kids.

[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:

Anonymous wrote: And, to be clear, she can do the same. Nobody's forcing her to make a "magical" holiday experience. If you don't enjoy it, stop.

I mean, these things are important, to a degree.

But if I'm operating under extreme resentment and loathing because my spouse cannot or will not participate in the child's lives, I'm editing my mental load and protecting my mental health.

Millions of people live perfectly fine lives without ever celebrating Christmas at all, ever. This shit is entirely optional.

That’s total bullsh*t. Depriving your kid of cultural celebrations isn’t abuse per se but it’s really bad parenting. This is obviously just a cope to claim that traditional women’s work has no value.

So people who don't care about Christmas are abusers? You're mental. Get help.

Women's work has value so they should limit how often that value gets tapped without compensation or reciprocation. If you can't figure out how to do that without "depriving your kid of cultural celebrations" you shouldn't have had kids. The radio plays free Christmas music, every mall has a santa, holiday lights are probably all over your neighborhood and walking is free. You don't have to pay money or time to celebrate the holiday, should you choose.

It's "total bullsh*t" that this thread is this long and some of y'all still can't figure this out for your allegedly-grown selves, let alone the children you love and overprotect so damned much. God help their future spouses!

All of those things you listed take time. And you probably should not have kids if you don’t want to create a happy home for them.

So you want to create a happy home? Like this is a choice you make because you want it, not a burden thrust on you?

I want men to take equal responsibility to create a happy home and not freeload on women and then if called on it, claim that the only thing kids need is food and water.

Who gets to decide when is the home happy?
Women just can't grasp how little it actually takes to make a man happy. They need about 3 things and women need about 1,000. And women can't understand why men don't just jump and complete 500 chores that he doesn't care about or even think to do because happiness was achieved 997 chores ago

What about the kids?

450 of those chores are for the kids. You misinterpret them as being for your wife's "happiness" when she's really just trying to help you fulfill your obligation as a dad.

AND because she has the ability to engage in planning a long term thinking, she also understand that a lot of what she's trying to get you to do is actually essential to your longterm happiness. Because if you do what you want, which is the bare minimum, your kids will eventually come to resent you and not want to spend time with you. And there is going to come a day when you suddenly want a family around you who cares about you. And you're going to be mad when your kids are like "Sorry, Dad, I'm so busy with work. Happy birthday though." Even though this is literally what you did to them and your wife for decades. This is precisely what all those things she's trying to get you to do is designed to prevent, but you are too shortsighted to realize this.

You will wind up angry and alone and wondering why your family has abandoned you, and I'm here to tell you that it's because you refused to give a damn about the happiness of your wife or children so they stopped giving a damn about yours.

This is a thread about optional tasks. It’s clear many of the posters here are unable to decide what’s important and prioritize.

The only person who ends up angry is the person who cannot prioritize and thinks her whole family should do the things she thinks is important.
-a woman who doesn’t engage in fake work

Is celebrating the holidays optional when you have kids?

No, of course it’s not optional. Many PPs are just saying that a lot of moms totally overdo it for the holidays. And they expect everyone else (usually the dad) to be on board with doing the excessive, pointless holiday tasks.

I’m in my 50s, and my parents didn’t make a big deal about holidays or birthdays. It completely sucked for me as a kid. People on this thread who are downplaying holidays and birthdays are in denial or are just completely clueless crappy parents.

Your experience is valid, but not universal. Growing up, we only celebrated the big birthdays: 3, 5, 10. For the other birthdays, they gave us money from about age 8 and bought a cake and sang Happy Birthday. By 12, if you wanted friends over for your birthday, you took the lead and helped organize. My 4 siblings and I thought it was great. Many of my kids' friends do movie night, pizza and popcorn with about 6 friends at home.

My siblings and I still think birthdays are important to the extent that we never forget to call each other and say Happy Birthday. This is what we cherish, not the parties.

I mean, you just described a family with some great birthday traditions. The “big birthday” aspect is quirky but also part of being in a big family with its own traditions. Nobody is saying that it has to be a certain way.

Yes, I believe people are saying it has to be a certain way - a big way with lots of fanfare. That’s the whole point the “optional” people are making. Pick a few things you like and can handle. But since this is DCUM, people want to post extremes.

Literally nobody said that.

Said what? We’re at 41 pages. Pretty sure everything has been said multiple times over.

[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:

Anonymous wrote: And, to be clear, she can do the same. Nobody's forcing her to make a "magical" holiday experience. If you don't enjoy it, stop.

I mean, these things are important, to a degree.

But if I'm operating under extreme resentment and loathing because my spouse cannot or will not participate in the child's lives, I'm editing my mental load and protecting my mental health.

Millions of people live perfectly fine lives without ever celebrating Christmas at all, ever. This shit is entirely optional.

That’s total bullsh*t. Depriving your kid of cultural celebrations isn’t abuse per se but it’s really bad parenting. This is obviously just a cope to claim that traditional women’s work has no value.

So people who don't care about Christmas are abusers? You're mental. Get help.

Women's work has value so they should limit how often that value gets tapped without compensation or reciprocation. If you can't figure out how to do that without "depriving your kid of cultural celebrations" you shouldn't have had kids. The radio plays free Christmas music, every mall has a santa, holiday lights are probably all over your neighborhood and walking is free. You don't have to pay money or time to celebrate the holiday, should you choose.

It's "total bullsh*t" that this thread is this long and some of y'all still can't figure this out for your allegedly-grown selves, let alone the children you love and overprotect so damned much. God help their future spouses!

All of those things you listed take time. And you probably should not have kids if you don’t want to create a happy home for them.

So you want to create a happy home? Like this is a choice you make because you want it, not a burden thrust on you?

I want men to take equal responsibility to create a happy home and not freeload on women and then if called on it, claim that the only thing kids need is food and water.

Who gets to decide when is the home happy?
Women just can't grasp how little it actually takes to make a man happy. They need about 3 things and women need about 1,000. And women can't understand why men don't just jump and complete 500 chores that he doesn't care about or even think to do because happiness was achieved 997 chores ago

What about the kids?

450 of those chores are for the kids. You misinterpret them as being for your wife's "happiness" when she's really just trying to help you fulfill your obligation as a dad.

AND because she has the ability to engage in planning a long term thinking, she also understand that a lot of what she's trying to get you to do is actually essential to your longterm happiness. Because if you do what you want, which is the bare minimum, your kids will eventually come to resent you and not want to spend time with you. And there is going to come a day when you suddenly want a family around you who cares about you. And you're going to be mad when your kids are like "Sorry, Dad, I'm so busy with work. Happy birthday though." Even though this is literally what you did to them and your wife for decades. This is precisely what all those things she's trying to get you to do is designed to prevent, but you are too shortsighted to realize this.

You will wind up angry and alone and wondering why your family has abandoned you, and I'm here to tell you that it's because you refused to give a damn about the happiness of your wife or children so they stopped giving a damn about yours.

This is a thread about optional tasks. It’s clear many of the posters here are unable to decide what’s important and prioritize.

The only person who ends up angry is the person who cannot prioritize and thinks her whole family should do the things she thinks is important.
-a woman who doesn’t engage in fake work

Is celebrating the holidays optional when you have kids?

Holidays, real vacations, sports, and experiences were not done at my aspergers in law’s home. Neither were birthday cakes.

Guess how they all turned out!?

Just fine?

+1. It was good enough for the son to find and hold a job, find a wife, and have some children.

Masking works until it doesn’t!

So everyone in that family fell apart after PP married into that family. Interesting...

Much more likely than one person mysteriously destabilizing an entire established family is one person shedding light on the longstanding dysfunction(s) everyone used to think were just normal family things.

Healthy groups shun dangerous outsiders. Unhealthy groups blame outsiders for pointing out their shit.

+1000
That’s their normal: dysfunction and isolation.

The dysfunctional mentally ill family is probably sitting at home doing nothing, making fun of everyone else who does holidays, travel, eat out, sports, socializes.
It’s a typical maladaptive cope: be in denial.

[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:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: And, to be clear, she can do the same. Nobody's forcing her to make a "magical" holiday experience. If you don't enjoy it, stop.

I mean, these things are important, to a degree.

But if I'm operating under extreme resentment and loathing because my spouse cannot or will not participate in the child's lives, I'm editing my mental load and protecting my mental health.

Millions of people live perfectly fine lives without ever celebrating Christmas at all, ever. This shit is entirely optional.

That’s total bullsh*t. Depriving your kid of cultural celebrations isn’t abuse per se but it’s really bad parenting. This is obviously just a cope to claim that traditional women’s work has no value.

So people who don't care about Christmas are abusers? You're mental. Get help.

Women's work has value so they should limit how often that value gets tapped without compensation or reciprocation. If you can't figure out how to do that without "depriving your kid of cultural celebrations" you shouldn't have had kids. The radio plays free Christmas music, every mall has a santa, holiday lights are probably all over your neighborhood and walking is free. You don't have to pay money or time to celebrate the holiday, should you choose.

It's "total bullsh*t" that this thread is this long and some of y'all still can't figure this out for your allegedly-grown selves, let alone the children you love and overprotect so damned much. God help their future spouses!

All of those things you listed take time. And you probably should not have kids if you don’t want to create a happy home for them.

So you want to create a happy home? Like this is a choice you make because you want it, not a burden thrust on you?

I want men to take equal responsibility to create a happy home and not freeload on women and then if called on it, claim that the only thing kids need is food and water.

Who gets to decide when is the home happy?
Women just can't grasp how little it actually takes to make a man happy. They need about 3 things and women need about 1,000. And women can't understand why men don't just jump and complete 500 chores that he doesn't care about or even think to do because happiness was achieved 997 chores ago

What about the kids?

450 of those chores are for the kids. You misinterpret them as being for your wife's "happiness" when she's really just trying to help you fulfill your obligation as a dad.

AND because she has the ability to engage in planning a long term thinking, she also understand that a lot of what she's trying to get you to do is actually essential to your longterm happiness. Because if you do what you want, which is the bare minimum, your kids will eventually come to resent you and not want to spend time with you. And there is going to come a day when you suddenly want a family around you who cares about you. And you're going to be mad when your kids are like "Sorry, Dad, I'm so busy with work. Happy birthday though." Even though this is literally what you did to them and your wife for decades. This is precisely what all those things she's trying to get you to do is designed to prevent, but you are too shortsighted to realize this.

You will wind up angry and alone and wondering why your family has abandoned you, and I'm here to tell you that it's because you refused to give a damn about the happiness of your wife or children so they stopped giving a damn about yours.

This is a thread about optional tasks. It’s clear many of the posters here are unable to decide what’s important and prioritize.

The only person who ends up angry is the person who cannot prioritize and thinks her whole family should do the things she thinks is important.
-a woman who doesn’t engage in fake work

Is celebrating the holidays optional when you have kids?

Holidays, real vacations, sports, and experiences were not done at my aspergers in law’s home. Neither were birthday cakes.

Guess how they all turned out!?

Just fine?

+1. It was good enough for the son to find and hold a job, find a wife, and have some children.

Masking works until it doesn’t!

So everyone in that family fell apart after PP married into that family. Interesting...

Much more likely than one person mysteriously destabilizing an entire established family is one person shedding light on the longstanding dysfunction(s) everyone used to think were just normal family things.

Healthy groups shun dangerous outsiders. Unhealthy groups blame outsiders for pointing out their shit.

+1000
That’s their normal: dysfunction and isolation.

The dysfunctional mentally ill family is probably sitting at home doing nothing, making fun of everyone else who does holidays, travel, eat out, sports, socializes.
It’s a typical maladaptive cope: be in denial.

Yet here you are, pulling guesses out of your a$$ about how they are ' probably' making fun of others. How do you find time and energy to obsess over people less fortunate than you are? 🤔

[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: And, to be clear, she can do the same. Nobody's forcing her to make a "magical" holiday experience. If you don't enjoy it, stop.

I mean, these things are important, to a degree.

But if I'm operating under extreme resentment and loathing because my spouse cannot or will not participate in the child's lives, I'm editing my mental load and protecting my mental health.

Millions of people live perfectly fine lives without ever celebrating Christmas at all, ever. This shit is entirely optional.

That’s total bullsh*t. Depriving your kid of cultural celebrations isn’t abuse per se but it’s really bad parenting. This is obviously just a cope to claim that traditional women’s work has no value.

So people who don't care about Christmas are abusers? You're mental. Get help.

Women's work has value so they should limit how often that value gets tapped without compensation or reciprocation. If you can't figure out how to do that without "depriving your kid of cultural celebrations" you shouldn't have had kids. The radio plays free Christmas music, every mall has a santa, holiday lights are probably all over your neighborhood and walking is free. You don't have to pay money or time to celebrate the holiday, should you choose.

It's "total bullsh*t" that this thread is this long and some of y'all still can't figure this out for your allegedly-grown selves, let alone the children you love and overprotect so damned much. God help their future spouses!

All of those things you listed take time. And you probably should not have kids if you don’t want to create a happy home for them.

So you want to create a happy home? Like this is a choice you make because you want it, not a burden thrust on you?

I want men to take equal responsibility to create a happy home and not freeload on women and then if called on it, claim that the only thing kids need is food and water.

Who gets to decide when is the home happy?
Women just can't grasp how little it actually takes to make a man happy. They need about 3 things and women need about 1,000. And women can't understand why men don't just jump and complete 500 chores that he doesn't care about or even think to do because happiness was achieved 997 chores ago

What about the kids?

450 of those chores are for the kids. You misinterpret them as being for your wife's "happiness" when she's really just trying to help you fulfill your obligation as a dad.

AND because she has the ability to engage in planning a long term thinking, she also understand that a lot of what she's trying to get you to do is actually essential to your longterm happiness. Because if you do what you want, which is the bare minimum, your kids will eventually come to resent you and not want to spend time with you. And there is going to come a day when you suddenly want a family around you who cares about you. And you're going to be mad when your kids are like "Sorry, Dad, I'm so busy with work. Happy birthday though." Even though this is literally what you did to them and your wife for decades. This is precisely what all those things she's trying to get you to do is designed to prevent, but you are too shortsighted to realize this.

You will wind up angry and alone and wondering why your family has abandoned you, and I'm here to tell you that it's because you refused to give a damn about the happiness of your wife or children so they stopped giving a damn about yours.

This is a thread about optional tasks. It’s clear many of the posters here are unable to decide what’s important and prioritize.

The only person who ends up angry is the person who cannot prioritize and thinks her whole family should do the things she thinks is important.
-a woman who doesn’t engage in fake work

Is celebrating the holidays optional when you have kids?

Holidays, real vacations, sports, and experiences were not done at my aspergers in law’s home. Neither were birthday cakes.

Guess how they all turned out!?

Just fine?

1 divorced narc son with no friends or relationship w his kids. He works. No hobbies or friends.

1 unemployed single 42 yo son still living with them. Churns through hobbies and friends.

The 70-something parents have no friends, jsut cook, cook, read books, dont talk to each other much, and watch two movies a day for the last 5 decades.

Oh wow. Why would you marry someone like your ex DH and his loser family?

Because that is the best she could do.

Well hopefully she didn’t have kids with him. A lot of this is genetic as she can see.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:The posters suggesting to not not barely celebrate Christmas or birthdays aren’t very helpful.

You’re also not taking the rest of life into consideration. I can live in a $2 million dollar house, employ a cleaning lady, work a demanding job, exercise etc - but I’m going to drop the ball on Christmas and/or a birthday for my mental health?

Someone who is not celebrating Christmas for their child (assuming you’re Christian) is practically homeless or suffering from severe mental illness.

This post sounds like mental illness. What on earth?

+1! Figure out what "celebrating Christmas" means to you. If it means spending 10,000 hours decorating and buying gifts, and you don't have 10,000 hours to spend, you'll either need to take time from other things, outsource, or not spend 10,000 hours on Christmas. This isn't rocket science. My parents had demanding jobs and we had no other family, so they spend 2 hours decorating and gave my sibling and I one gift each, but that still counted as Christmas because we were celebrating together.

My parents were immigrants who worked themselves to the bone. We'd haul down the plastic Christmas tree from the attic, my brother and I would wrap the lights and tinsel, hang the few ornaments while my dad ran to the toy store to get a He-Man action figure for my brother and a My Little Pony for me. My mom would wrap them and stick them under the tree, and call it a day. Good times, and great memories.

Sounds to me like both of your parents participated.
I think OP is resentful because she has to do everything alone.

Would OP be satisfied if all her DH did was a last minute Target run for action figures?

I think she would be satisfied if he volunteered to go and he knew what he wanted to get.

She said that she is upset that he didn’t volunteer to do anything.

Yes, maybe this is all OP wanted.

That’s what she said she wanted. She wants him to volunteer to do something for Christmas without being asked.

I’m sure that him going out and getting gifts for the kids would meet her needs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not reading this whole thread but usually the mental load whiners discount what their partner does while overinflating their own contributions, while simultaneously inventing useless make work that they can cross off as yet another one of their own accomplishments.

+1

The goalpost moving in this thread is epic. Started as the usual whining that it’s SO mentally draining to ask a DH to do something and have him then do it without complaint…

To men don’t participate at all EVER…

To not celebrating in a sufficiently performative way being akin to child abuse…

And finally to all of this leading to the kids being the next midsommar cult if mom has to remind or ask dad to go get the tree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The posters suggesting to not not barely celebrate Christmas or birthdays aren’t very helpful.

You’re also not taking the rest of life into consideration. I can live in a $2 million dollar house, employ a cleaning lady, work a demanding job, exercise etc - but I’m going to drop the ball on Christmas and/or a birthday for my mental health?

Someone who is not celebrating Christmas for their child (assuming you’re Christian) is practically homeless or suffering from severe mental illness.

This post sounds like mental illness. What on earth?

+1! Figure out what "celebrating Christmas" means to you. If it means spending 10,000 hours decorating and buying gifts, and you don't have 10,000 hours to spend, you'll either need to take time from other things, outsource, or not spend 10,000 hours on Christmas. This isn't rocket science. My parents had demanding jobs and we had no other family, so they spend 2 hours decorating and gave my sibling and I one gift each, but that still counted as Christmas because we were celebrating together.

My parents were immigrants who worked themselves to the bone. We'd haul down the plastic Christmas tree from the attic, my brother and I would wrap the lights and tinsel, hang the few ornaments while my dad ran to the toy store to get a He-Man action figure for my brother and a My Little Pony for me. My mom would wrap them and stick them under the tree, and call it a day. Good times, and great memories.

Sounds to me like both of your parents participated.
I think OP is resentful because she has to do everything alone.

OP is not doing everything alone, though. If OP was the mom in the above example, she would be whining about having to remind her DH that it was time to haul the tree down from the attic and ask him to run to the store for the gifts. Her DH does participate. She is whining about her “mental load” which is not really a thing if your actual concern is the kids.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote: And, to be clear, she can do the same. Nobody's forcing her to make a "magical" holiday experience. If you don't enjoy it, stop.

I mean, these things are important, to a degree.

But if I'm operating under extreme resentment and loathing because my spouse cannot or will not participate in the child's lives, I'm editing my mental load and protecting my mental health.

Millions of people live perfectly fine lives without ever celebrating Christmas at all, ever. This shit is entirely optional.

That’s total bullsh*t. Depriving your kid of cultural celebrations isn’t abuse per se but it’s really bad parenting. This is obviously just a cope to claim that traditional women’s work has no value.

So people who don't care about Christmas are abusers? You're mental. Get help.

Women's work has value so they should limit how often that value gets tapped without compensation or reciprocation. If you can't figure out how to do that without "depriving your kid of cultural celebrations" you shouldn't have had kids. The radio plays free Christmas music, every mall has a santa, holiday lights are probably all over your neighborhood and walking is free. You don't have to pay money or time to celebrate the holiday, should you choose.

It's "total bullsh*t" that this thread is this long and some of y'all still can't figure this out for your allegedly-grown selves, let alone the children you love and overprotect so damned much. God help their future spouses!

All of those things you listed take time. And you probably should not have kids if you don’t want to create a happy home for them.

So you want to create a happy home? Like this is a choice you make because you want it, not a burden thrust on you?

I want men to take equal responsibility to create a happy home and not freeload on women and then if called on it, claim that the only thing kids need is food and water.

You do realize that men will say the same thing, except with regard to breadwinning.

Have you seen the stats on this? Or are you stuck in the 70s.

What’s “bread winning” mean? All you do is office work and are a paycheck? Wow.

Even not counting the 40% of pump and dump fathers who are never their children’s “breadwinner,” women are pulling their weight and more in all realms. Financial, parenting, maintaining the property, community, family traditions, emotional support, finding health treatments, schedule planning, socializing, finding appropriate ECs, etc.

Why do women marry men in the first place?? They seem to be completely unnecessary.

That's the scam. Tradition and religion both say it's important, because reasons, but both a predicated on ideas from a time when women literally had no other viable options for sustaining a life and livelihood. Owning property, having credit in her own name, working a job that can pay her own bills, etc. are all opportunities only relatively recently afforded to women, and there are plenty of "men" (in quotes, because not all men and certainly no good men) trying to revert back to rules and restrictions that would either directly or de facto remove those opportunities (keeping a woman pregnant and forcing the housework onto her mean she's less likely to have career success or even a career at all, just as an example).

Men don't know how to pull their weight because they didn't used to have to. Women don't know how not to settle because literally all the women who came before us did and that's what we saw, at least to some extent (yes, including your granny who stayed married for 60 years or whatever). Women who refuse to cater to men and capitulate to The Way Things Are are pariahs, and the people who will treat them most cruelly are actually other women who haven't the strength or the courage to try to correct the inequalities in their own homes and marriages. Just look at this thread.

+1! There is no need to get married and have kids. You can have kids on your own if you want them, or best arrangement— be in a house with other women and raise all your kids together. If you want sex there are always young guys available, but permanently attaching yourself to one is stupid.

+2. The only reason women marry is because they fear the judgment of other women. Like crabs in a jar.

Not all women. Some of us are married to great men.