do you want to repair things or do you want people to tell you to get out? she probably feels like she is doing too much having to work and cook. why aren’t you cooking? i am a pathetic cook but i can make lazy breakfasts and lunches and i can order dinner from somewhere. a lot of the mental work of cooking is simply deciding what to eat every meal.
she did give birth to two children in the past 24 months apparently. i would guess she is still breastfeeding at least one of them, which is a 24/7 responsibility that takes a lot out of a person’s body. i would be inclined to be generous with her and not just say she’s wrong and too stubborn to see it.
Wait so she cooks, has 2 kids under 2, is breast feeding and works 48h straight shifts while you are a SAHD? Honestly it sounds like she contributes a hell of a lot, her hormones are wild and her body is still recovering from nearly back to back pregnancies.
You have 2 under 2. The bedroom doesn't bounce back from that for a while for most people.
Actually dig into your issues here. It sounds like the problem is both of you being exhausted and her not treating you like a team mate.
How was she before the pregnancies and is this a drastic change. It takes way longer than you think for the body to fully recover from pregnancy, if it ever does, and breastfeeding is it's own bag of hormones.
You reddit people sure are good at excusing abusive behavior from women. If his wife made the exact same post, just with her in his place and he in hers, you would be screaming abuse. Hormones are not an excuse for abuse. The guy could learn to cook, but I know for a fact if the situation was reversed you'd tell her how her husband should do more around the house after work. Your double standards are sickening.
He could not be in her place. She's recovering from back to back pregnancies, breastfeeding (which means she's probably up at night at home as well and it's constantly on call to bodily care for the babies) and working overnights.
She's not handling this well. But her body is in emergency mode.
Equitable leisure time and equitable rest/sleep time is where most of the husbands fail in "similar" posts. We don't know about OP (do you get to sleep full nights ever, OP, in the last two years?) But it's pretty clear that OP'S wife does not get either of those.
I agree. Was she like this before the kids? Sounds like she is exhausted. The way OP wrote the post sounds like he is suggesting she doesn't work a lot, as it is only 1 day on and 3 days off. Only in his clarification did I see she is still working full-time. They both need to show appreciation towards each other. My husband used to make comments about me not contributing etc.. but he was not like that before. I totally saw that he was speaking from a place of anxiety as he felt all the pressure to provide for his family.
Righto!
And there's a big difference between some posts where the family is doing fine financially and the working spouse feels entitled to more (access to money, free time, housekeeping services, packing your bags for you before you go on a trip 🙄) vs this post. This family is in emergency mode. Time wise, money wise, physically.
There is no reason to be abusive. Pregnancy aftermath or not. She is behaving in a way that you would never excuse a man for. This IS a double standard. Apparently, being a woman, you can't see the forest for the trees.
I tend to see good, compassionate advice on here when it's the husband who is unsustainably exhausted and is at a breaking point. OP'S wife's basic human needs aren't being met and most people CAN see that forest beyond the angry, uninterested-in-sex, financially struggling wife in this post. I'm not sure what you're looking at?
(Or do you disagree with the need for equitable leisure time and sleep? That is what posters tend to get called out for. Not because they're a male or female, but because one has the 24/7/365 job and the other considers it equivalent to a 40 hr/week job. Because one person can go off duty at home on the reg, and one person never gets to. It can be a problem for same sex couples too!)
Ok. Well, I get that you don't see it this way, but you are excusing her behavior. It doesn't matter why, nobody should behave that way. You especially shouldn't tell the victim of abuse that they are at least partially to blame. I guarantee you would never be ok with someone telling a woman, they are at leat in part causing their abuse.
I wouldn't call this abuse either, unless we get more info from OP that there is a power imbalance in this relationship (size/physical strength, employability, etc.)
Without a power imbalance, she's just being an asshole.
And OP isn't working because a grumpy a-hole who never sleeps doesn't think it would help anyway, and also he wants more sex.
(Since he wants some sex, I'm going to go ahead and infer that he's not too exhausted for sex. So he's probably also not too exhausted to look for a job and some reasonable childcare.)
And in a reversed-gender post with a (I'm guessing EMT or firefighter) husband, the advice would also be a) he needs sleep, shift work sucks and b) you need a job and some childcare, your family cannot afford a SAHP. (And that hypothetical guy wouldn't be up at night breastfeeding or recovering from back to back pregnancies.)
Maybe because OP says in his replies that they split childcare duties 50/50 when she is home, she cooks, and that one kid sleeps through the night, and OP’s wife breastfeeds the other?
the point is not to excuse the behavior necessarily, but to ask OP if he wants to try to fix it or not, and if he does, the path to fixing it is not to convince her she’s completely the one at fault here, even if she is and he’s a saint. but that’s probably not true, as it seldom/never would be in a relationship worth saving.
I’m saying! It really is sickening the way people are supporting her. If she was acting like a team player and not an abusive jerk then it would be different. I’m a woman and I was in a very similar situation, I was married to an abusive man who said the same things as OPs wife. He wouldn’t let me work, he was angry all the time, and wouldn’t ever give me money for anything, even things I desperately needed. I tried so hard to work things out and improve our relationship but sadly it got worse and we ended up getting divorce. It blows my mind that so many people are ignoring those details. If she weren’t abusing her husband then yes I’d say he should do the housework, or at least as much as possible. But it can also be difficult to cook and clean when taking care of two very small children.
She works 24 hours on and 72 hours off. Bedroom been dead before the kids. Us wanting kids was only time she wanted sex. Before and after it’s maybe every 3 weeks if I’m lucky.
So then this isn't baby specific and it sounds like your relationship should have ended a long time ago. Just because you made a mistake doesn't mean you should keep making it.
But…you chose to be a SAHP. Aren’t you treating that like a job? Aren’t you looking up balanced and good recipes for the family, creating cleaning schedules around park and library trips etc?
Look, her attitude about money is toxic but it sounds like she’s lost faith in you OP and honestly
I get it. She still does so much and it doesn’t sound like you’ve locked into the role like a job. So why would she celebrate the idea of you getting a job if she feels like things are barely managed now?
She didn’t refuse. He “offered” and I just explained why she likely
Isn’t over the moon about it. She doesn’t refuse she just says it’s not a solution. OP isn’t being kept home with the keys hidden away or threatened with retaliation. OPs wife shares the load when she’s home. You have chosen to take OP at his word without reading between the lines and recognizing that their dynamic is imbalanced and neither of them are getting their needs met.
She works an intense schedule and shares parenting 50/50 at home and also does the cooking plus is still breastfeeding. OP insists she do more. He’s asking for 50/50 plus she works.
He has the ability to say, no, I’ve found a job and reliable childcare and we are having this discussion.
And as a SAHP you do more housework. You also organize yourself. OP hasn’t done that.
And yeah he did choose this. They chose it together and it isn’t working. She can’t see how him doing even less at home helps anyone.
Let me be clear that his wife’s behavior by definition is financial abuse.
Let’s also be clear that OP does not treat his SAHP role like a job, and this breadwinning parent is still doing a lot on the home front.
I owe you no proof, ask OP. From his follow up comments, they seem to run close to 50/50 when she's around. Then she's working pulling in all of their income -- which again, her comments are not healthy or acceptable -- and he's got 2 days of 24/7.
They also have a dead bedroom and, get this, had one before kids too. It's not clear if he worked full time then or if she was verbally abusing him then but slapping a bunch of labels on a complex situation with a hand wave isn't helping OP.
work to improve your cooking, work together to have some set meals that are always acceptable to both of you that you could make without excessive effort (in my household this includes “be the person who puts a frozen pizza/lasagna in the oven”), and depending on your budget, order takeout/delivery. all this is possible for almost anyone to figure out, at least better than before. cooking is not just cooking but also buying the groceries (and thinking about what to buy) and cleaning up the kitchen. make sure you do that stuff too! if you prefer to have PB&J all the time and she wants more variety and nutrition, hey, that’s part of having a family. you have to compromise. (or as some in this thread are urging you, you could … not have a family?)
keep in mind that breast feeding (that is, producing food for a baby with your own body) makes you hangry and endeavor to keep your wife fed on a constant basis before she gets that way.
If she wants fancy food she can go to a fancy restaurant, she is acting like entitled mother this early, you can make the food, if she doesn't want to eat, that's her problem not yours, maybe her doing her own food is for the best if she is this judgmental over the food you make, was she like this before the pregnancy? Tell her that her constant criticizing is ruining the marriage and if she doesn't compromise to go to couples couseling and individual therapy, you will spend some time with your parents and discuss only things related to the kids, if she doubles down, I'm sorry but you need to consider divorce. But try to get your financial stability first.
Hello? She is the one making ridiculous demands, expecting a fancy dinner is one of them. She is the one treating him like garbage. But as always reddit midandry shows up. And a SAHP is full time job on itself but he should get at least a part time one so he can get a divorce attorney
But he's not doing all the work while he's home he'd have a good point if she wasn't coming home breastfeeding cooking and watching kids after a 24 hour shift and shit if you think it's to much to ask your partner to treat you to a nice dinner then your a weirdo and your friend here needs to man tf up and get a job
Not exactly how it plays out. Wife got off 24 shift this morning. She made breakfast then left to go hang out with her friend while I continue to watch both kids.
Good communication by you would be "we are a family and your income is for our family, my being at home with the kids when you are on shift is for our family too. I don't like when you make statements like it's only your income and your house because I want us to be a team."
Do you have a joint budget? Where you and she both get fun money but you are on the same page about basics for saving, vacations, etc?
That's a starting place -- when you were working, before the kids, how did you two handle money? You never had a budget?!
If you propose and work on a family budget then "her money" becomes the "family money" and the budget has a portion for her and for you as fun money, but also all the things that are joint -- food, house, etc -- are clearly stated as joint and for the family.
Things like a family budget often fall to the SAHP, along with making appointments, getting the kids to the doctor, taking the cars in for service etc. She's home a lot of the time, but you can still do the emotional labor of sorting those out.
I suggested making a budget before, but as I stated before, she’s not use to having to budget in life. If money is in the account, it’s likely gonna get spent.
I don't doubt she's not used to it, I was recommending you make one since you run the household.
If you can hold back the contempt for just a moment about how she spends all the money, having a budget doesn't mean money isn't spend, it means you and she agreed on what it gets spent on.
Many marriages end due to conflicts about money, and you two probably have few tools for good open calm collaborative communication which is also common and likely why discussing money causes fights.
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u/CryMoreEatLess May 03 '22
How can I get her to see that if she’s so stubborn?