Reply to Extreme resentment over mental load

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]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. [/quote]

This post sounds like mental illness. What on earth? [/quote]

+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. [/quote]

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.[/quote]

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

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.[/quote]

Okay.[b] I literally don’t know anyone who whines because their husband immediately does the thing they asked [/b]as soon as they ask and with enthusiasm.  
This would be like a man complaining that he always has to initiate sex, but every time he does, his wife gives him an enthusiastic blowjob.

What women complain about is more the equivalent of a man complaining that he has to initiate sex, and every time he does, she will lay there like a starfish and ask how much longer it’s going to take.

[/quote]

But that’s *literally* what this thread is about.  Move the goalposts all you want, you’re still wrong.[/quote]

Even in a modern marriage with men actively participating,[b] it’s almost always up to the DW to assign tasks and make all household decisions. [/b]Yet my DH can manage a complex job with many direct reports. I don’t believe he can’t manage buying teacher gifts or signing up for aftercare. Instead, he doesn’t care and knows I’ll do it. What this means is that I have an extra burden he doesn’t have - all the admin work. We both have FT jobs and present for the kids and then I have an admin job on top of it all.

Men are great at prioritizing themselves and their careers.

[/quote]

What’s your source for this claim?  If it’s just unhappy shrews whining on the internet about how hard thinking is, be advised that you have a biased sample.[/quote]

My source is I’ve never met a man who is in charge of admin tasks in the home. [/quote]

I don't know any men who are 100% in charge of the admin tasks but I'd say in most of my friends' marriages (and in my own), we are 50/50 on that stuff. We all read the emails, we all text about things, we all buy the needed things, etc. [/quote]

+1. I do most of it (I'm a man), but not all. I don't have any dad friends like people talk about on DCUM. [/quote]

My DH does more than I do, but there are only a few dads like him in my circle of family and friends. And in these instances where the nen do more, [b]the women do a very significant amount of the work[/b]. On the other hand, in most of the instances where the women do more than their DHs, the DHs do little.[/quote]

(a) what work? and (b) what do the men do?

I, a woman, am in charge of 99% of our children's clothes. I could complain about that or I could acknowledge that my husband is 99% responsible for everything electronic in our house. I do all 99% of the laundry. My husband does 99% of the trash and yard and house maintenance. Childcare we do 50/50, same with pet care. The point is, picking ONE THING that you are 99% in charge of is kind of missing the bigger picture here.[/quote]

Trust, the women complaining about being the default parent would be overjoyed to have your situation.

With my ex, I did literally everything, fro assembling the entire baby nursery by myself to the finances to every doctor appointment to all childcare details to coordinating all household repairs and services to the yard work and on and on. Lol at the clothes - that is literally the last thing he would ever think about unless it directly impacted him (like DS needed hiking pants for a vacation he wanted to take him on).

The only thing my ex did was: some additional childcare and housework in the newborn phase; take out the trash weekly; split school drop off and pick up (but only because I drew a very hard boundary and enforced this for the sake of keeping my job). He would show up to spend time with DS when he felt like it - sometimes going days without seeing the kid. He cooked dinners once or twice a week at first but in the last few years not at all.

[/quote]

This. I do 90% of almost everything: kids clothes, school communication, camp, sports and activity stuff, yard work, home maintenance, grocery shopping, vacation planning, cleaning, child care arrangements, pet care, car maintenance, bill paying, taxes. I could go on.

My DH cooks one more day a week than I do and will do things like take out the trash or change a lightbulb *if* I ask him directly (has never initiated these activities on his own).

If he handled 99% (or even 75%) of anything, it would be thrilling to reclaim whatever corner of my brain currently manages it.[/quote]

I don't know PP so can't comment on her specifically, but I'm convinced that so many people who post things like this and act like a martyr are just lazy or disorganized, and certainly exaggerating.

Many of those things are really very occasional (e.g., taxes and "car maintenance"). Others are set up once and then rarely need to be changed. And others, like home cleaning can just be accomplished as you go. You see a room that isn't as clean as you'd like, you either ask someone to do it or do it. What "corner of your brain" is being occupied by that? There really should be little "mental load" with most of this stuff.

Now, the actual time it takes to do these things should be shared as much as work hours allow. But that's different than the mental load point. [/quote]

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