Husband Doesn't Help Around the House - I'm Tired Of It

[choochootwo]

I'll try to be brief. 

I am American and my husband is Mexican. I never thought we would have cultural issues, but they came to the forefront after our son was born. My husband works very hard during the week. Sometimes he's gone 6:30 a.m. - 6:30 p.m., sometime he comes home at 4:30. He's a landscaping foreman and I know how difficult his job is because I did it for two years.

I do all the house work. All of it. We don't have a dishwasher, so I wash everything by hand. I can count four times that he's washed dishes since the birth of our 15 month old son. We cloth diaper, he's never washed a load. I cook everything from scratch and then am left with a mess to clean up. We also homestead, which means we raise chickens for eggs and meat, this is my deal, so I do all of that. He does cut the grass and after I stopped washing his clothes, he washes his own. I work every Saturday, other than that I stay at home. I understand he's tired, so I am I. His only responsibility is to get our boy to bed at 7:30, something that rarely happens. Tonight he went to bed at 9:00, after I mentioned it at 8:30 because I had a screaming baby crying at me while I took the laundry out of the dryer while his dad watched TV.

It's impossible for me to get anything done in the evenings ( like wash the dishes or in this case color my hair ) because my child wants to be with me and his dad's too busy watching television, so I often am stuck doing dishes at 10:00-10:30 at night while everyone else is asleep. I'm resentful and have stopped having sex with him. I feel like it's just one more thing he's taking from me. When I try to talk to him about getting our son to bed earlier it's like talking to wall. I mentioned when our son was about 4 months old that I needed some help and he said "But I work all day". I told him I would be thrilled if he could cook one meal during the week and wash the dishes once during the week and we could split duties on the weekend. IT'S NEVER HAPPENED. I feel very disrespected. 

He is a good father. He loves our son and will watch anytime I need to run an errand. But, if it's in the evening after work, I'll oftentimes find myself cooking over a hot stove with grease spattering and our toddler wrapped around my leg crying and I'm trying to remind my husband for the millionth time that he should be in the kitchen with me. 

He's asleep now with our son. The kitchen is a wreck, I need to color my hair, his lunch for work needs to be packed and to top it off he says as I'm closing the bedroom door " Put my clothes in the dryer ". 

I feel like a fucking maid. I'll be damned if I'm going to be a prostitute too. I'm tired of it. I love him, but he's changed so much. 

Advice? 

[choochootwo]

Okay, I think I just needed to vent. I feel better now, LOL. 

[lookatreestar]

yeah i could have written this. before we got married we used to joke about those couples at the laundromat (the man would sit outside reading a car mag, or smoking while the wife looked after the 3 kids and folded all the laundry. if he would help they would get out of there faster, but noooo!)

[myseekai]

All I can say is, I am sorry! I've been in a similar situation too. It's since changed but it wasn't because of anything I did or said. My husband was working in landscaping and coming home to myself and our newborn. I did all the cleaning, housework, taking care of the baby. All I wanted him to do when he came home was take care of the baby so I could have 30 minutes to an hour of "recoup" time due to being a new mommy and having no idea what I was doing. I also overwhelm myself easily. It got to the point where I would wait till he was out of the shower and clothed, I would hand him the baby and say "I need a half hour." and then walk out of the house for a walk around the block, hop into the shower myself, etc.

Our situation changed because my husbands job changed. He was out of work for almost a year (during which he helped out with the baby and the housework a lot) and then *finally* got into a trucking school. He's now trucking and away from the house for 4 weeks at a time. He comes home for 4-7 days and then leaves again for another month. When he's home I try to give him as best a "vacation" as I can, preparing special meals, trying not to ask for too much time to myself, etc. He's usually pretty good about giving me a little bit of a break now too. Plus my son is so happy that daddy is home, he's usually glued to daddy instead of mommy.

I am sorry about your situation. I know how much it sucks.

[redheather]

Oof! Painful. I can relate some as my husband is much older than I and still has some "traditional" values to let go of....

Have you ever talked with him about where your backgrounds are clashing? Often, in cultures where a man does all the work outside the home and the woman does all within, she's got a nice big extended family of aunties and grandmothers helping too. Maybe asking him about what his life was like growing up, and then pointing out the differences, could be a place to begin?

Maybe throw the TV out too! Ha.

[*bejeweled*]

Hire a cleaning lady with his money.

[Adaline'sMama]

I know it sucks, and its hard to deal with, especially homesteading. But 10-12 hour landscaping days really suck too. It's hard work. I would say that its really more about his attitude than him doing the work, right? DH is a landscaper too, and he doesnt do dishes or clean or laundry ever. We agreed on a few (what I like to call) "inside chores" that he will do each week. He doesnt mind mowing, cutting wood, hauling wood, and doing any outside work, but he refuses to clean. Ever. So, he is in charge of all garbage, compost, kitty litter, anything that requires a ladder or bleach, and making sure that all dead mice are removed from the premises without me having to look at it. Thats pretty much it. I pack lunch, make coffee, cook all the meals, clean, do all the laundry, and pretty much everything in the house. I feel way better now that he has these responsibilities and does them each week.

But with DH, I dont think its so much a SAHM vs. him working kind of thing. He has never, ever liked to clean. He was a messy roommate long before I married him, and I knew it getting into the relationship. I just thought it would get better, not worse.

[choochootwo]

Life's going to get a bit easier for me. My husband fixed the dishwasher. While my 16 month old and I visited family in another state for the past week, he also cleaned and organized the house from top to bottom. It looks wonderful. He even reorganized the closet. I think we're both just exhausted and losing focus, is all. And yes, his culture does include aunties etc that live together and help out. That makes a tremendous difference for them. I'm unsecretly very jealous. I've been exhausted recently and a doctor's visit discovered I'm anemic. I think it scared my husband and I both a bit. 

I think I need to let the dishes thing go. That's my big thing that I need help with and that's the one thing he doesn't like to do. He does all the outside work when he can. He will load a dishwasher, just not wash the dishes. And since he's fixed the dishwasher, it's a non issue now. I can deal with everything else knowing the mountain of dishes can go in a dishwasher now. 

I'm grateful my bad days are fare fewer than my great days. 

[Nan411]

Hi...I can totally relate. My husband and I are both Mexican-American. I was born here and he was born in Mexico(moved here when he was 5) and we have a major cultural clash. It's mainly due to how we grew up. My mom was very independent, always worked and wasn't much of a cook or house-keeper, while his mom stayed home, did EVERYTHING for her husband(washing, cooking, ironing, etc.). We've been married 7 years and have 2 kids (7 and 2) and although things aren't exactly how I would like them to be, they have gotten a bit better....I guess I don't really have much helpful advice...just wanted to let you know I understand and it does get better. Perhaps being specific about what you want him to do would help. I think men sometimes don't understand when you just ask them to "help out"...you need to ask them to do "x" and "x"

[sweetBBkendall]

Men! haha, I am so glad you posted because this is my boyfriend to a T....

My BF is a stone mason and works similar hours so, I get it!

I BF'd for a year, still doing cloth diapers after 1 1/2, I cook many meals from scratch and we don't have a dishwasher!

The truth is I don't know what it is that makes them flip completely around like they do. For example, my BF came all the way to Colorado, from OH, because we took a break 1/2 way into our relationship about 3 years ago. We get home, moved into a house, I got preggers and he wouldn't have drove 2 miles to see me for the entire pregnancy!

Maybe it will get better and he will 'see' the light. I would maybe find new ways to tell him how your job is hard too, only you don't get a break like he does because you are always home! I don't make his lunches anymore, I tried to as sort of a kind gesture and it was just ignored like everything else, so I said forget it. I would be happy now if he just didn't make any MORE mess when he came home!!

[inky leeuhhh]

i am so right there with you right now. i just became a sahm, and dh (who was not into helping with chores before, but at least would try) has stopped helping me with ANYTHING. omg! i didn't realize how much work being at home would be. i'm 7 mos pregnant, i homeschool my oldest dd, and my 2.5 year old is very high spirited and refuses to potty train with this baby coming, and is still up 2-3x per night. UGH! we live in a tiny apt that needs to be constantly cleaned up, and the only one who helps me at all is my oldest dd- and she can only do so much. she has autism and gets confused/ frustrated easily. i try to talk to dh, or ask him to do things gently, and i get a snotty response. he did the dishes this am, which i thought was AMAZING- there was a big stack. i did them yesterday morning and he uses so many dang dishes they were just piled way more than usual up by this am. i thanked him super nicely, i was really, genuinely grateful, and all he says is "well i HAD to do them. there was nothing to eat off of" @@. he made it very obvious he wasn't doing it to help out his tired preggo wife. and this guy doesn't work a 9 hr a day landscaping job. he works 7 hrs a day as a cook, and is home by 2:30 every afternoon. he also has many random days off because he works for a school. he gets home and gets right on his video games and doesn't really talk to any of us for the rest of the night except to play with dd2 for maybe 15 min. i won't even get started about the money he blows through, either. i work really hard to budget our money, and he doesn't take me or our bank acct seriously at all. UGH!

omg, sorry this turned into a total rant, too. i'm sure we will come to some sort of understanding eventually, but geesh. i was not expecting this when i made the switch to becoming a sahm. it's nuts!

[chspizzz]

Hi I so can relate to this I'm a stay at home mom, my husband is in the car sales business he is in management and works long hours but on his days off he doesn't help me with the kids or the house. At the moment he took time off he is going to work for another dealer. Every day he sleeps in late it makes me so angry because i was sick this week and told him i need your help to watch the kids but since we live with his parents his mom picks up his slack and desperately want to move out too so he can grow up! I now his mom tries to help us as much as but i think its hurting us because he doesn't realize he needs to help me not her. This morning i blew up because he wouldn't get up to watch the two little ones so that i could take my oldest to the doctor. I was so mad i told him maybe i should leave with my kids and not come back so he can wake up. This is just one of many issues that we have. I really love my husband but i think he is still a 32 year old kid

Wow i really needed to vent im feeling better letting out

[forser8386]

Hi there,

I'm sorry, I needed to get this out there. My Mom spent years doing everything while my Dad would watch TV and just lounge

letting her work hard and do all the work. She would even go to work, as my Dad refused to go to work or even leave the

living room. Us kids weren't allowed access to the living room or the TV. 

I just wanted to let you know, your child growing up seeing his Dad acting like that is not healthy. I should know, I have

needed years of counseling and therapy because I have major trust issue's with men. I can never get over the way

my Dad was to my Mom, and even us kids. He was bitter though because he had 4 girls and all he wanted was a boy.

Because we were all girls he took no part in our lives, now that I have 3 boys, 1 girl, and soon 1 more boy he's trying

to be involved with me now. 

I have never been able to get over or forgive my Dad for being so secluded from my life while growing up. I don't suggest

any child to go through what I went through. My Mom is now completely worn out from him doing what he did to her for 25

years of her life. She's so worn out in fact she's in the hospital and lost her foot, has diabetes, and probably wont be able

to walk again. I do blame my Dad because to this day he believes everyone else was meant to take care of him because

he was in the army for 8 years. He was not in the army anymore and had retired when I was 9 months old; we then moved

provinces and he continued his selfish lazy ways, and wouldn't work. He would leave us kids unattended. I had to take care

of my own little sister for years. I clothed her, fed her, changed her when she was a baby. I'm 3 years older then she is, I didn't get a 

childhood. As I said, I never forgave him for it and cannot because to this day he still makes excuses.