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[quote=Anonymous]Hi hon,

I’m 15 years into this marriage (he’s also a theorist, I’m like you in terms of the expectations) so allow me to give you a preview. With each successive kid, he has picked up more skills. I handled his obliviousness to things like making a home, raising the kids, and having a community/social life by outsourcing what I can and training him to take care of concrete routine tasks. He now loads the laundry, cleans up after dinner, does weekday cooking and shopping, and wrangles the kids in the morning. He may not know if we have furniture or not — and yes, we kept our Craigslist grad school furniture for years — but he stocks the pantry. I tidy, organize, and furnish the home, take care of any education or parenting-related research, do holidays and birthdays and social calendar, keep an eye on house/yard maintenance (largely beneath his radar, though once identified, researched, etc. he can execute), take care of all child-related needs (from childcare, school, camp, health to clothes, toys, books, shoes, supplies, etc.), and work full time. I basically told him that I could not have my career and be CEO of the home and family if he didn’t step up on the day to day tasks. It’s impossible, especially with multiple kids.

He is a good and hands on dad. By modern standards he does plenty. However the general obliviousness and lack of vision for the family — our home, what we should do on weekends, what our life together could feel or look like — does still wear on me. I feel it in practical areas, like home repair issues he’s assumed “responsibility” for that blossom into disasters that take many months to fix. Or a pandemic comes, and he doesn’t realize we need to get masks, etc. He wouldn’t realize that we need a fire extinguisher and a first aid kit. He’s not going to organize a BBQ or build something for your stir crazy kids to play on outside during COVID. Every little thing has to be introduced as to an alien visiting from another planet.

I agree a little bit with the PP who said you’ll need to adjust your expectations. Do not expect him to be able to envision your home life or anticipate the family’s basic needs. Do anticipate a lonely road ahead of steering the course yourself (and get a good community of women to help). Accept that he will seem detached and even resentful about the additional demands on his time and mental energy, demands that simply don’t seem necessary or intuitive to him. And remain hopeful that he can be programmed over time to incorporate more and more routine tasks into his repertoire, freeing you up to create the kind of nurturing home and family life that you need.

In short, I wish I had understood and accepted his limitations earlier on, dropped the expectations that lead to resentment, and been more clear with myself that my needs in terms of home and family would be my responsibility. He can at best give you more time to manage all of it, but in the end he doesn’t sound like he’s going to put his heart into all the things you have in mind. And maybe over time you can accept that his heart is there when it counts.[/quote]

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