Anonymous wrote:Everything is life can be outsourced!

Nanny who truly cares for your kid, develops them, tells you when they are sick or has an issue, finds the right doctor and treatment.

Housekeeper who truly organizes your home to its best functionality and cooks, monitors the cleaning crew, keeps your health food stocked at at good prices, watches over the Mow & Blow guys, maintains the vehicles and schedules home repairs.

Date night! Book the 1st place that comes up on the Google search once a month. So thoughtful.

Coaches or tutors who challenge your older athlete kid and get them in the right programs, 1:1s, to progress and make the teams, and do car pools for you!

So many more things too. Jsut have your MIL figure them all out and OUTSOURCE!

If only I had such a MIL!

Everything is life can be outsourced!

Nanny who truly cares for your kid, develops them, tells you when they are sick or has an issue, finds the right doctor and treatment.

Housekeeper who truly organizes your home to its best functionality and cooks, monitors the cleaning crew, keeps your health food stocked at at good prices, watches over the Mow & Blow guys, maintains the vehicles and schedules home repairs.

Date night! Book the 1st place that comes up on the Google search once a month. So thoughtful.

Coaches or tutors who challenge your older athlete kid and get them in the right programs, 1:1s, to progress and make the teams, and do car pools for you!

So many more things too. Jsut have your MIL figure them all out and OUTSOURCE!

Anonymous wrote:After multiple failed attempts trying to reach my son to clean after himself, cook and do laundry I now use a different approach. He’s studying doing well in his field. He’s ordering his laundry twice a month pick up/drop off from Poplin directly to his college dorm. A cleaning lady comes once a month to make up his unit and place clothing scattered on the floor back in the wardrobe. He only eats outside dorm.

My mother-son relationship has improved tremendously after I switched to outsourcing and stopped nagging him. He can also see how much in real terms these services cost and can plan his future earnings around it.

I guess if a man is making decent income and has a working wife nobody should be shouldering housekeeping that can be outsourced. I know families that have house assistant to help navigate through this.

Spouses need to find workable solutions and perhaps accept that some socks will always be on the floor….

My son is smart talented and hard working but on ASD spectrum so he can’t learn these skills

Not just aspie men assume everything in life can be outsourced. Whilst not even being able to let out half of “everything”.
And that someone else will set that up.
And that someone else will “find workable solutions” to everything. Whilst they focus on themself and their own needs or work.

The magic fairy will be busy indeed! And neglected.

Anonymous wrote:After multiple failed attempts trying to reach my son to clean after himself, cook and do laundry I now use a different approach. He’s studying doing well in his field. He’s ordering his laundry twice a month pick up/drop off from Poplin directly to his college dorm. A cleaning lady comes once a month to make up his unit and place clothing scattered on the floor back in the wardrobe. He only eats outside dorm.

My mother-son relationship has improved tremendously after I switched to outsourcing and stopped nagging him. He can also see how much in real terms these services cost and can plan his future earnings around it.

I guess if a man is making decent income and has a working wife nobody should be shouldering housekeeping that can be outsourced. I know families that have house assistant to help navigate through this.

Spouses need to find workable solutions and perhaps accept that some socks will always be on the floor….

My son is smart talented and hard working but on ASD spectrum so he can’t learn these skills

We (I) outsource and it's still a lot: someone has to schedule the kids activities, make sure they have all their clothes and gear, schedule the nanny, be available for the nanny's sick days, have dinner and put the kids to bed (this may sound silly, but some of us don't believe our children should have a nanny put them to bed everynight), make the kids breakfast, get them dressed, and pack their lunches, prepare the house for the cleaners to arrive (I wake up at 430 am on the day our cleaner comes each week to start the sheets in the wash), hire the nanny and oversee her schedule and her issues, hire the cleaner, manage their schedule and what needs to be done and pay their bills, hire the landscaper, order the online groceries and put them away, attend the kids' events like games, theater, recitals, plan the vacations, renew the passports, schedule the doctors and dentists appointments, buy the birthday presents, go to the parent/teacher conferences, schedule playdates, find and manage the tutor, figure out which soccer team is the best fit and organize all that comes with it.

People who think that outsourcing is a simple solution for an overworked parent in a two-income family have never been an overworked parent in a two-income family doing all the outsourcing work, and all the other work that can't (or shouldn't) be outsourced on top of a full-time job. Almost anyone in this position will become very resentful.

Anonymous wrote:After multiple failed attempts trying to reach my son to clean after himself, cook and do laundry I now use a different approach. He’s studying doing well in his field. He’s ordering his laundry twice a month pick up/drop off from Poplin directly to his college dorm. A cleaning lady comes once a month to make up his unit and place clothing scattered on the floor back in the wardrobe. He only eats outside dorm.

My mother-son relationship has improved tremendously after I switched to outsourcing and stopped nagging him. He can also see how much in real terms these services cost and can plan his future earnings around it.

I guess if a man is making decent income and has a working wife nobody should be shouldering housekeeping that can be outsourced. I know families that have house assistant to help navigate through this.

Spouses need to find workable solutions and perhaps accept that some socks will always be on the floor….

My son is smart talented and hard working but on ASD spectrum so he can’t learn these skills

He only knows what he knows.

So will always need a Mommy or Secretary figure to adapt, learn and tell him what to do. That’s the opposite of raising children- who have different needs every few weeks or every hour. There is no formula (crafted by Mom) to follow come hell or high water for adult life.

If he does choose to marry or have kids, make sure his life partners knows this all. Plus she better be type A and independent because telling him everyone’s needs (and hers), all the time is exhausting and lonely. Also, if something happens to her, the whole house of cards goes down. Hard.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband has always been a bit selfish and I knew that but it’s gotten worse as he’s gotten older. He’s just not resilient at all, he gets all old mannish about things like technology and is helpless sometimes. He then criticizes me constantly and never has a kind word for me maybe once in a while he will compliment something I cooked. But never my appearance. I think he truly believes if he does I will “let myself go”. Yeah. I have kept separate finances to protect an inheritance of mine because some day I may just be done. We have a school age child and mostly get along fine on the surface. It’s not bad enough to leave, it seems. I dunno. I used to feel he was always on my side but I’m not sure now.

This post sounds like you are evaluating the relationship against perfect with little communication about expectations and needs. Adding in the separate finance reasoning it doesn’t sound like your relationship is a relationship. You need to find a good IC, then MC if you want a better marriage.

FYI, If you didn’t have a prenup it is all 50/50 in divorce, unless the inheritance was given in some form of trust, but in that case you wouldn’t need separate finances.

You don't think at some point she communicated that she doesn't want to be criticized constantly?

I think you are referencing a different post than the one I was responding to with that message. I didn’t see anything about her dh constantly criticizing her.

DP. She literally says “he then criticizes me constantly and never has a kind word…”
Maybe you meant to quote a different post?

You are right, she said that, but I was focusing on all of the other stuff mentioned like technology issues, lack of resiliency, only complimentary of some things occasionally, might think she let herself go etc. It read like she might hear everything as a criticism since all she does in her own head is criticize him because he must feel the same way. Criticizing the way you interpreted it would be a post by itself for me to believe that was the real problem.

After multiple failed attempts trying to reach my son to clean after himself, cook and do laundry I now use a different approach. He’s studying doing well in his field. He’s ordering his laundry twice a month pick up/drop off from Poplin directly to his college dorm. A cleaning lady comes once a month to make up his unit and place clothing scattered on the floor back in the wardrobe. He only eats outside dorm.

My mother-son relationship has improved tremendously after I switched to outsourcing and stopped nagging him. He can also see how much in real terms these services cost and can plan his future earnings around it.

I guess if a man is making decent income and has a working wife nobody should be shouldering housekeeping that can be outsourced. I know families that have house assistant to help navigate through this.

Spouses need to find workable solutions and perhaps accept that some socks will always be on the floor….

My son is smart talented and hard working but on ASD spectrum so he can’t learn these skills

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did anyone experience marrying someone who became a real nag? (I keep hearing about women having to chase men to do chores but opposite problem here; you can't feel comfortable in your own home unless it's how they want it.) Wish they could be more laid back as I grew up in a comfortable, clean house where we had this little word called fun and it seems the opposite of what I hear.

My husband is a combo of this and OP’s husband. He has high standards and is upset if they aren’t met, but he doesn’t feel that he needs to do any of it himself.
I did hire a lot of help when the kids were little. I had a babysitter when I was working plus a husband and wife team that did all of the housework, cooking, and yard work. It saved our marriage, but I’m not sure if it was the right thing to do. It really covered up a lot of issues.

What was your DH’s childhood and cultural background like that he grew up expecting this?!

He grew up middle class in the Midwest. His family didn’t really have things together. His dad was an alcoholic.
I think that he just believed that if he did the right things, studied hard and did well in school, got a good job, that he would have his life together at home. Like he felt that if he had a good job and he got married and had kids and mortgage and a golden retriever, then there would be a clean house and dinner on the table every night at six. It didn’t really occur to him that the only way for there to be dinner on the table every night at six is for someone to go out and buy the ingredients and to cook a meal and set it on the table.
It’s not that he thought that I should be doing all of this stuff. He believed in this dream for me too. Like that I could work and come home to a clean house and a homecooked meal at six.
It just didn’t really occur to him that someone has to clean the house and do the shopping and cooking and that it’s really kind of a lot of work.

Oh man, my husband was like this too for years though he has finally learned (he sounds more with it than your husband). He always thought I should work even when our baby was tiny because why wouldn’t you? It makes me sad for SAHM, I think they often work hard but apparently you can have a kid think everything you produced happened by magic even 20 years later. Trying to be different for my kids and make sure they understand how much work it t takes to run a household and be capable of doing it, even if later they outsource some.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband has always been a bit selfish and I knew that but it’s gotten worse as he’s gotten older. He’s just not resilient at all, he gets all old mannish about things like technology and is helpless sometimes. He then criticizes me constantly and never has a kind word for me maybe once in a while he will compliment something I cooked. But never my appearance. I think he truly believes if he does I will “let myself go”. Yeah. I have kept separate finances to protect an inheritance of mine because some day I may just be done. We have a school age child and mostly get along fine on the surface. It’s not bad enough to leave, it seems. I dunno. I used to feel he was always on my side but I’m not sure now.

This post sounds like you are evaluating the relationship against perfect with little communication about expectations and needs. Adding in the separate finance reasoning it doesn’t sound like your relationship is a relationship. You need to find a good IC, then MC if you want a better marriage.

FYI, If you didn’t have a prenup it is all 50/50 in divorce, unless the inheritance was given in some form of trust, but in that case you wouldn’t need separate finances.

You don't think at some point she communicated that she doesn't want to be criticized constantly?

I think you are referencing a different post than the one I was responding to with that message. I didn’t see anything about her dh constantly criticizing her.

DP. She literally says “he then criticizes me constantly and never has a kind word…”
Maybe you meant to quote a different post?

Anonymous wrote:As a wife who has been married for 40+ years, I advise you women that marriage can get better after kids are grown. Children raising years are so hard and women bear the brunt. You might like your husband better later. Being single isn’t easy either. Unless he is a cheater, or abuser, if so cut him loose.

When we were both working full time and raising kids those were our golden years. We have nothing to talk about now that he’s retired and I am still working full time, kids are grown

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband has always been a bit selfish and I knew that but it’s gotten worse as he’s gotten older. He’s just not resilient at all, he gets all old mannish about things like technology and is helpless sometimes. He then criticizes me constantly and never has a kind word for me maybe once in a while he will compliment something I cooked. But never my appearance. I think he truly believes if he does I will “let myself go”. Yeah. I have kept separate finances to protect an inheritance of mine because some day I may just be done. We have a school age child and mostly get along fine on the surface. It’s not bad enough to leave, it seems. I dunno. I used to feel he was always on my side but I’m not sure now.

This post sounds like you are evaluating the relationship against perfect with little communication about expectations and needs. Adding in the separate finance reasoning it doesn’t sound like your relationship is a relationship. You need to find a good IC, then MC if you want a better marriage.

FYI, If you didn’t have a prenup it is all 50/50 in divorce, unless the inheritance was given in some form of trust, but in that case you wouldn’t need separate finances.

You don't think at some point she communicated that she doesn't want to be criticized constantly?

I think you are referencing a different post than the one I was responding to with that message. I didn’t see anything about her dh constantly criticizing her.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband has always been a bit selfish and I knew that but it’s gotten worse as he’s gotten older. He’s just not resilient at all, he gets all old mannish about things like technology and is helpless sometimes. He then criticizes me constantly and never has a kind word for me maybe once in a while he will compliment something I cooked. But never my appearance. I think he truly believes if he does I will “let myself go”. Yeah. I have kept separate finances to protect an inheritance of mine because some day I may just be done. We have a school age child and mostly get along fine on the surface. It’s not bad enough to leave, it seems. I dunno. I used to feel he was always on my side but I’m not sure now.

This post sounds like you are evaluating the relationship against perfect with little communication about expectations and needs. Adding in the separate finance reasoning it doesn’t sound like your relationship is a relationship. You need to find a good IC, then MC if you want a better marriage.

FYI, If you didn’t have a prenup it is all 50/50 in divorce, unless the inheritance was given in some form of trust, but in that case you wouldn’t need separate finances.

You don't think at some point she communicated that she doesn't want to be criticized constantly?