Louise - posted on 06/12/2012 ( 3 moms have responded )
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I feel like I shoulder all the responsibility and am just taken for granted by my husband of nine years. I work full time and have six year old daughter. Because he chooses to go to work early and often stays late, I do all the school runs and pick ups from after school club, never having the option to in in early or finish late although my job is demanding. He expects that I should cook dinner every night "because he works later", even if this impacts upon quality time with our daughter. I told him that ensuring that we ate dinner at a reasonable hour every night was impacting on quality time and I thought she was acting out as a result, he said she would have to get used to it!
I handle all the finances and the laundry, I was feeling really ill with a sickness bug and still managed to do three loads of laundry, cook dinner because all that was on offer otherwise was a takeaway, and do a pile of ironing in between amusing our daughter. He played with her a little but spent most of his time on the computer. The day after I had vomitted in the night he still played golf as planned despite me expressing reservations as to whether I would cope and wanted to go out that evening as I was obviously not going to be much company! When he is ill it's off to bed to recover without a thought for anything else.
Today I'm feeling very stressed over work and admittedly overreacted when our daughter messed about with her dinner and spilt it all down her. When he asked what was wrong I tried explaining that I feel like I am shouldering all the responsibility and pointed out that I'd done lots over the weekend whilst he did very little. He got the hump as usual, said he would only talk to me when I could give him credit for what he does and stormed off. I've tried talking to him many times but he thinks I should be doing the women's role and he cannot change. He expects me to do the role of a 50's wife despite my full time job. Whenever we argue about this, his main complaint is that he does not get enough bedroom action! I've tried pointing out that a more even split of household and childcare responsibilities may improve on that, things improve for a while but then slip back. Don't get me wrong, he can be a great dad, but this is when he wants to be and it suits him. Thankfully we have a cleaner or this would be down to me too.
Am I being unreasonable in feeling undervalued and unappreciated?
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