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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think that you have to set clear expectations and boundaries with a spouse who doesn’t proactively parent and would leave the work to you unless you said something.

There is a lot of pressure for women to pick up the slack and take on more work at home to keep the peace. It’s entirely fair to request an even distribution of labor at home and to not want to be taken advantage of.

Also, I don’t think real concerns over consistent inequalities with division of labor should be reduced to “tantrums” or “bean counting”. Flexibility is so important but both partners need to be offering it and it shouldn’t result in one partner continuously taking on the bulk of the work. That’s a pattern of behavior and it only leads to resentment and frustration [/quote]

Op here. This. He doesn’t proactively parent. Or proactively do things around the house. If I don’t ask him to do things, he’s satisfied to sit and either catch up on work or watch tv. Then he grumbles or half asses the task.

Recent example/ I asked him to please put away the dish towels as I folded laundry. He put them on top of
The stove. Not in the drawer  next to the stove. Jsut on top of the stove. Go ahead and flame me All you want but the weaponized incompetence and “I’ll don’t best she will do the rest” attitude is GRATING.  It makes me feel taken advantage of and used. And that he feels his time is so much more important that he can’t be bothered. I wanted a partner out of marriage. Not an intern waiting for assignments. At least an intern would do things more than half assed.[/quote]

Please get marriage therapy or your intense focus on details will kill you and his inabilty to focus on details will kill him.

If you've already tried therapy and want to dismiss the idea "because it didn't work," either try again or admit you are both failures are being married because your expections and his expectations are so ill-matched and because you both communicate horribly. And you both are focused on minutiae and keeping score and both have to be right, right, right.

Find a new couples therapist and commit to therapy (and to letting the towels thing just GO) if you want to stay married. I don't actually know why you married each other in the first place. Did you ever love each other? Why do your score-keeping parenting and household chores destroy whatever positives you saw in each other? [/quote]

I don’t disagree with any of this. It’s hard to not keep score and “bean count” when I look around and can’t figure out what he contributes to make life run easier smoother etc. [b]I don’t see what positives he adds to my life, much of the time. I don’t need him for finances, and it’s not like he is leading the charge re parenting or the home. [/b]It’s hard to think of wiping the slate clean.

I was busting my ass working saving money while pregnant and he refused to get out there and try to make more money. I am so resentful for that. I begged him to take a non passion project job to pad our accounts for preparation for baby. I felt like I was thinking about what was best for us and our growing family, and he was only thinking about him.  That still feels true today. I don’t know how to just wipe that resentment away. Especially when it keeps Manifesting in different forms[/quote]

Do you….like him as a person? Look forward to seeing him? Like talking to him? Enjoy having sex with him? Generally like hanging out with him….?[/quote]

This, above. I get ZERO sense that she ever did love him, even when they first married. I'm baffled at how OP has vented for 30 pages and drawn in many questions and much advice and yet we have no idea if she even likes any aspect of her husband as a person, or ever has, much less whether she loves him and wants the best for him and for the marriage. Instead we have seething, stewing resentments that started out as being about one day's issue of who would fix their child's lunch and handle a nap...and morphed into "I resent the period he wasn't working, I've asked him to get a higher-paying job, he half-a$$es putting away the kitchen towels." All are irritants, for sure. But there seems to be no undercurrent of her having any affection for him now and I wonder if she ever did.

They both need intensive marriage counseling but I fear she, at least, would not commit to actually working on the marriage at this point because she would see that, or any compromise on her part, as admitting she's wrong.

And before someone comes along to say, well, HE sounds awful and unproductive etc. -- Yes, that may be, but we only know her feelings and vents, so that's what I'm talking about. I truly wonder if on his side, he thinks thinks are basically fine as they are, despite her saying she tells him X, Y and Z all the time. If X, Y and Z are chore lists, that's not actual communication about the big picture.

And...we still don't know if she likes or loves, or ever has liked or loved, him, and why income and lifestyle and chores and score-keeping child care are overriding any actual love between them. [/quote]

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