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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I work as a fitness and nutrition coach, and I worked with a lot of SAHMs like your wife.

Lack of exercise is almost never about laziness. Most SAHMs have a long history of attempting to lose weight, work, etc. But they end up pulled in a million different directions - they want to work, but their H won’t handle half of the sick days or pickups. They want to work out, but society makes them feel guilty for not devoting that time to their families. They try to balance work and life by getting involved in things like MLMs, which are enticing because they promise you can make a ton of money while also raising kids full-time, but of course always fail.

After years of these “failures”, they lose all hope. Most of the time, their H’s are unsupportive, like you are. They see “my wife cannot run 30 minutes” rather than “wow, my wife is going to the gym every day, how awesome that she is doing something for herself and improving herself!” Improvement in health is a long, slow game, not a “be able to run a 5k in 8 weeks”.

Making things worse, they usually have to ask their husbands for permission to spend money on themselves. So you have a perfect storm of years of martyring, a husband who sees them as a failure, and who denies them access to the money and support that WILL help them thrive. They end up severely depressed and exactly like your W.

If you truly want to help her, be supportive. Don’t stress over the house and cooking - that will come. First, she needs to regain autonomy and control over her life. She needs to feel supported. Let her know you think it’s fantastic she’s going to the gym. Ask if she’d like to do personal training sessions and make it happen. Take an interest in her dreams - I promise you, she has them. Listen to what her dreams are and let her know you want to help her achieve them. She needs to re-discover herself and her identity. [/quote]

I agree this is why many SAHMs end up depressed with a low sense of self worth. It is high burnout work, you’re always sacrificing your needs and even your attention span to myriad thankless tasks, and it’s hard to sustain your own projects and accomplishments.

This in a nutshell is why I work. So I can say NO to guys like OP who have no gratitude and expect more and more. Were he in a position to stay home with the kid for years, I’d love to see where his motivation and sense of self is.[/quote]

As a man who works I do not know exactly how a SAHM is…my wife gets tons of hired help.  What I can tell you is work is not fun. Most high paying jobs involve tremendous stress and anxiety. I would much rather do nothing than work if I had a choice. [/quote]

As a woman who works a high pressure job, I would ten times rather work than be a SAHM. I don’t want to be managing the never ending minutiae of a household. Plus, infants and toddlers are high burnout, and caring for them round the clock including night parenting will make you batty. At least with work you are having a thought that lasts more than 20 seconds. You are using your training and skills, you are getting paid, you have some sense of how your tasks and time will be apportioned (even if you have to work overtime or have more things piled on). As a SAHM one minute it’s 9:20 AM and the next it’s 3:40 PM and all you’ve done is put a kid down for two naps and eat lunch and clean it up, any ambition you had to do more than that is gone and you still have five hours of thankless repetitive tasks to go. You’re around people who don’t see you, never say thank you or give you any rewards, and you never have time that’s defined as off because your time is not defined period. Don’t underestimate how demoralizing that lack of structure and identity can be.[/quote]

+1 Being a SAHM sounds awful. I’d only do it if we were truly loaded and I could outsource everything I hated.

Separately, I hate lazy people. I don’t care what the cause is. OP’s wife needs to take responsibility for herself and why she sucks. Whatever changes she needs to be a functional human being she needs to communicate them and action on them. She doesn’t need DH to coddle her and be endlessly understanding; she needs to grow up. [/quote]

+1. I can give both perspectives. I have a very stressful job. When my kids were young I managed to keep this job on more flexible hours and still be home for them to cook, clean, volunteer, plan bday parties, and everything else SAHM’s do.  When I wasn’t doing that,  I was working at my stressful job. My youngest is now 11. Kids are more self sufficient so i now fill all of those extra hours with working more hours at my job.  It never occurred to me not to. My DH is also working his butt off so why would I assume I’m entitled to more down time? And I work out intensely 4-5 days a week - literally at the crack of dawn since that is the only time i have. I’m so tired of listening to all of my SAHM friends whose kids are literally in high school complain about how overwhelmed and busy they are. Um. Really?  [/quote]

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