@adrian77 Thanks for sharing your experiences. My broken bowl salutes your broken toilet seat.
I guess the additional positive spin is you got to offload some of the labor to a third party male. Honestly it rubs me the wrong way that a lot of the solutions suggested here are to hire a mommy's helper or cleaner or a female-coded helper. These are good suggestions, but why do we live in a world where women are literally cleaning up after men?
@margrethe First of all, mastitis with a newborn is THE WORST. Don’t make any decisions and actually just rest well. Keep pushing both kids onto him. Why men don’t understand when we are super super sick? Is it because we just keep on momming because we have no choice? Uggh. Anyways rest and think over your future later. Meanwhile tell him exactly what you need over and over - sleep, and for him to feed you and take the kids. You stay with the newborn only to breastfeed. Mastitis is no fucking joke.
@armywife78 You'd think he would know better since this is the second time I've had mastitis. At least this time he didn't say it was all in my head. Seriously. I was running a 105 degree fever and particularly unfiltered so I asked him if he was being purposely incompetent and useless.
@margrethe Honestly, I feel like this might just be the result of being married to someone who comes from wealth.
I have a friend who married a trust fund baby and she is always complaining how clueless he is. When they started dating, he was a career student and she had to push him to get an actual job.
@margrethe Can you use some of the trust fund to hire a cleaner to come in twice a month? He's not going to change. Messy people don't normally wake up one morning and go wow, those crumbs that will take two seconds to wipe into the sink really bother me. I'm guessing he's always been this way, just it didn't seem as overwhelming when you didn't have two small human beings, being even messier and needy-er.
I can't speak to your relationship, but I know that my relationship with my husband was rocked after baby #2. Everything seemed so much harder, and he wasn't registering that I needed help with things I didn't before. Everything was overwhelming. I had spreadsheets mapped out of if/how I could swing finances if we were to separate.
I had to and still have to be painfully clear in my communication with what I needed. Things aren't perfect, but they have definitely improved as our youngest started sleeping through the night and is becoming more independent. We've also prioritized alone time. He'll take the kids a few hours so i can take a break and vice versa. We've also reintroduced date nights, but that's still a work in progress on consistency. Continue talking with your therapist and do some soul-searching as to what your breaking point is. Is this a phase, or are things truly irreparable, and you need to seriously pursue divorce. I wish you all the best as you work through this.
@margrethe Yes divorce. I’ve done it and it was super scary. Part of me after we separated was thinking “was it that bad? Really” . Yes yes it was that bad. Now I’ve got a new husband and he does all those things you have just mentioned that your current husband doesn’t. My husband now actually gives a damn about me. He’s not perfect. And his attention to detail for house work isn’t great. But if I was sick he would put me in bed. Fetch me things. take the kids out. Rub my feet.
@squanto Now it’s 5 nights for him and I get the rest. But for years he just had every other weekend. He’s the typical dad that’s has he wants to be there and I’m the one who holds him back….. but when time came he just wasn’t there for the kids and still is often absent. To start with the kid thing was super hard…. But over time it became normal.
@bbarb I have an individual account that he can't touch, though it's visible through our budgeting app. I figure our assets get disclosed during a divorce anyway so I didn't think of setting up another private one.
@margrethe I would open a separate HYSA and have some portion of your paycheck direct deposited to build savings just for you that he doesn’t know about.
@margrethe If there’s no room for divorce or access to his finances, then downsize your contribution to the lifestyle so he’s either forced to pay for more or he can live with having less. Like refuse to pay for takeout or special groceries that he likes, and make him pay for cleaners. And if he’s going to say “you didn’t ask,” then start being absolutely pedantic about it. Make him pick up the tiniest scraps on the floor. Literally guide him through doing dishes. Be cheerful the whole time, and if he starts throwing a fit, then just innocently say “oh but if I don’t ask, you won’t know how to do it, so here I am asking!”
@margrethe Look you can’t have it both ways. You have all these complex reasons for every answer and there’s literally 3 options no matter how much fud you throw in.
1) agressively manage him and try to make your life livable by dragging him into functionality.
2) ignore his limitations and just try to be happy with what is.
3) divorce.
You can decorate this all you want with trust funds and incomes and lunch plates and therapists but those are the options.
Edit: or stick with your current option which is Complain About Everything Forever.
