anyone else feel highly underappreciated?

[MomBirthmomStepmom]

Okay, I'm brand new here, but would love some new company to commiserate with

I'm a SAHM, well, not totally, I work 10 hours a week, on the weekend when my SO is home. But the entire rest of the week I SAHM, and even on the days I work, I still do all the cooking and cleaning (with the exception of lunch, when SO usually takes the kids for fast food)...

Anyway, lately, I've been feeling soooo discouraged, and terribly underappreciated. I can't explain it, but most days I feel used up, taken for granted and taken advantage of. I try gently bringing this up with my SO, but he generally takes it as me saying I'm not happy with him. But I am, I truly am happy with HIM. I'm just not happy, I guess, with my workload, does that make sense?

I want some more help around the house. I want a back rub here and there. I want him to take the kids for the night and let me relax. While I am at work, I want him to clean up the house etc..

I verbalize these things, and nothing really ever comes of it (beyond that first day after mentioning it)..

Anyone else dealing with this? Care to keep me company?

[lauraess]

Yep, I understand. I think many of us feel this. dont know why no-one has replied yet. Anyway.... How old are the kids? -guess that might not matter.
It's a tough road-- the role of mother.. whether you woh or in-- there is just no way to get it all done by yourself and when you cant ask for help or get it than surely we feel underappreciated and taken advantage of.
My way of summing it up is basically the other half will NEVER get it. NEVER. And so i wont keep wasting my time expecting him to pick up the slack, whether I ask or not. even if he does try to help out it's never quite right. How could he know? when we were put into the role of mother it's like a complete new force undertook our will and pushed us along inorder to keep our babies healthy. They dont quite have the same thing happening. When you stay home most of the time you get a real good picture of what needs to happen and what cant wait and so you go and go and go. The only one that really can give you a true break is yourself. forget trying to get what you rightly deserve: a back/body rub every night, someone to cook diner for you once a week, flowers once a week, complete attention to your attempts at sharing the trials and tribulations and sweet moments of your day. I dont mean to sound cynical, it just isnt reality as far as i have found out.
-take care of yourself, ask for what you need, take what you need kindly and respectfully and remember you were made woman: STRONG, BEAUTIFUL, ABLE and ENDURING!
---Just my two cents
~L

[skueppers]

My husband and I used to have a real issue with making dinner, because we were both exhausted after work, and he hated to figure out what to make, while I was OK with figuring it out, but didn't really want to cook it. The obvious solution of having me do the figuring out and him do the cooking didn't really work, because he's the kind of cook who needs a really precise recipe, whereas I'm the sort of person who can say to herself, "I think I'll make something with chicken and a cheese sauce and pasta," and just sort of make it up as I go along.

Now that I'm a SAHM, it's actually better, because I do all the grocery shopping, and just provide the ingredients and the suggestion that he make a particular recipe (he has several standard recipes that he makes) on a given night. So it's like magic for him -- the shopping and the thinking are all done for him. And it's like magic for me -- I don't have to do the cooking every night.

I guess what I'm saying is, there is hope, as long as both people approach the situation with good will and keep trying to figure out what works for each of them.

The other piece of advice I have is to see if you can find any chores where he actually cares about the results more than you do, or where it would be possible for you to relax your standards so they were lower than his. If you can get him to agree to do those chores -- and if you can make yourself stop doing them -- then he'll wind up doing them because NOT doing them makes him feel like he's living in a pigsty.

[sparkprincess]

I hear you MBS! I hate saying that I feel unappreciated - it seems like the stereotypical "housewife" thing, but it's true for me.

DH is a sweet guy. I know he loves me and yada, yada, but I just don't think he gets it.

I dunno what to do. Are we just supposed to suck it up and realize that this is just how it is? Depressing thought.

Anywho, I'm right there with ya!

[Amys1st]

I agree- you need to work as a team. Give him some tasks that you know he will do better. Put him & your other family members in charge of different tasks. Hold them to it. Then thank them, show them how YOU would like to be treated for getting things done.

Also its all in the delivery. If you saying Your never doing anything or you're so lazy or No one cares about me. I can almost garentee they close their ears. But if you say I really like it when you help, I can see you're trying to help but tired, or I love it when you help me, it makes me feel loved. Keep doing it. It takes two to tango. If it stops after day 2, keep at it.

[sadiesmom]

sorry kinda long...

So dh and I just had our first blowout re: childcare/me sah, etc. I made dinner early so we could eat immediately after I put dd to bed. She usually falls asleep by 7:30. Well tonite she would not go to sleep. I rocked and rocked and nursed and rocked some more. At 8ish I told dh to eat w/out me and went back to trying to get dd to sleep. 8:40 pm still no go but her eyes are rolling back in her head so I don't want to give up, I hear dh going to bed. I am instantly hurt then really mad. I finally get dd to sleep and go in to dh and say "thanks for offering to help rock her so I could eat too." He says he has to get up early to go to work so back the f*** off. Things escalated of course and now I'm just SO upset and feeling so alone, underappreciated, and sad. I feel like he thinks that dd is mostly my responsibility cause he's the breadwinner. I never ask him to get up at night or even ask for much help with her period. I take care of the house/cook/etc. I feel like I'm taking care of everybody and there's nothing or no one left to "take care" of me. I don't like that now I feel financially dependent on dh and that because I don't contribute to the pot I don't have the right to ask for help. I don't know if this makes any sense - I'm just really upset and needed to vent.

[skueppers]

Originally Posted by sadiesmom

Things escalated of course and now I'm just SO upset and feeling so alone, underappreciated, and sad. I feel like he thinks that dd is mostly my responsibility cause he's the breadwinner. I never ask him to get up at night or even ask for much help with her period. I take care of the house/cook/etc. I feel like I'm taking care of everybody and there's nothing or no one left to "take care" of me. I don't like that now I feel financially dependent on dh and that because I don't contribute to the pot I don't have the right to ask for help.

I'm sorry you're going through such a rough time.

One thing that occurs to me reading this is that you may have unwittingly set up a situation where he feels like he's not competent to do anything to take care of your daughter, and where he doesn't feel equally responsible for her care.

By doing everything, never asking him to get up in the night, etc. you may have given him the impression that you don't need/want any help. And if you criticize what he does do, that reinforces the idea. You might want to talk with him about this -- maybe you can agree that he'll take care of your daughter one or two evenings a week, or one day on the weekend. Or if he's not comfortable with doing everything during particular periods of time, maybe he can be responsible for specific tasks, like putting her to bed a couple of nights a week. Then, it's very important for you not to make suggestions or corrections to what he's doing -- let him take care of her his way, unless he asks for help/advice.

Regarding the whole equal responsibility thing, you don't have to do equal work/the same work in order to feel equally responsible. Bringing home the proverbial bacon is one way that he's taking responsibility for your family. But I suspect that if he spent more time with your daughter, he would begin to feel other kinds of responsibility as well -- which would hopefully eventually lead to a situation where you're functioning more as a team in taking care of her.

If I were in your shoes, I'd probably begin by apologizing for being snide last night. Explain that you do appreciate how hard he works for the family, and talk calmly about how overwhelmed you've been feeling. Listen to him when he talks about how he's feeling. Hopefully in the calm light of day, you'll be able to make some progress.

Best of luck!

[LuvMyBabos]

Originally Posted by sparkprincess

I hear you MBS! I hate saying that I feel unappreciated - it seems like the stereotypical "housewife" thing, but it's true for me.

DH is a sweet guy. I know he loves me and yada, yada, but I just don't think he gets it.

I dunno what to do. Are we just supposed to suck it up and realize that this is just how it is? Depressing thought.

Anywho, I'm right there with ya!

Count me in! I know DH totally gets it - how much work it is, how stressful it often is...problem is, he doesn't act accordingly. (Ex., don't wake up & watch the news in bed while I get breakfast for the kids & dog - while they scream, chatter, & bark.)

Sorry, I've been needing to vent that all day!!! :

[mmace]

I don't feel underappreciated, I feel unappreciated. I am a single SAHM, so I'm taking care of 100% of the household, 100% of the childcare, 100% of everything. No one is ever here to give me a break. No one else makes dinner. No one else packs lunches, or gives the kids a bath, or puts them to bed....

And because I don't work, I never have a supervisor telling me I did a good job, I don't get a paycheck to give me "worth", I don't have co-workers telling me they appreciate me.


I shouldn't say I'm totally unappreciated - my kids do appreciate me. I know that. But sometimes some positive reinforcement from a grown-up would be nice...

[Salema]

My two cents:

To make a long story short, I just spent the last week at my parent's house (2 hours away from home) dealing with some family stuff. (Nothing bad, just needed to be there.) I thought I'd be gone Tuesday thru Friday but didn't get home until Monday (yesterday).

As a SAHM, I am "in charge" of laundry, grocery shopping, and most of the cooking. I have no problem with this, as dh does the yard work, and with his commute, is gone from home about 50+ hrs/week. I know he would love to get to be home with our baby too, and I try to be considerate of that.

But I came home to find out that he had morked in the yard on Saturday and then lazed around ALL day on Sunday. So I come home, still a stress-basket, have to RUN to make ds's pediatric appt (where he got his first vaccine... sob, sob, it was so hard), and then I realize that there is NO food in the house, about four loads of laundry to do, and the house is a mess (dog hair everywhere - gross).

I was so mad. I mean, I worked my butt off at my parent's house, it was really stressful, I had a baby on my hip the whole time, and all he did was some yard work on Saturday?!

Talk about feeling used and underappreciated! ARG!

Sorry for the vent.

I guess what this is all about is that sometimes the "yucky" part of our jobs as SAHMs is say what we need, and negotiate with our partners so everyone's needs are fulfilled, while everyone gets some much needed rest and relaxation. I don't think the partners of the SAH parents understand that we don't get any "time off" of our work, as long as we're still nursing.

And as for "equal opportunity parenting", the best deal my dh and I worked out was to take turns on the weekend mornings. DS usually wakes up around 7am, so one of us gets him up and goes for a walk and lets the other one sleep in (when it's my turn to sleep in, I still have to wake up and nurse, but then I go back to sleep.)

Sorry I got so long winded!

[skueppers]

Originally Posted by Salema

But I came home to find out that he had morked in the yard on Saturday and then lazed around ALL day on Sunday.

I went out of town with our daughter a couple of weekends ago, and there were diapers in the washer when I left. I asked my husband to move them into the dryer over the weekend -- not a big deal, he often does some of the laundry if my hands are full.

Anyway, I came back two days later to find the diapers still in the washer! He'd completely forgotten about them! He was pretty embarrassed about that.

I wasn't mad about it -- mostly I just thought it was funny. I'm actually glad he got to take a little mini-vacation that weekend -- at least one of us got 2 uninterrupted nights of sleep, for the first time since our daughter was born!

[MomBirthmomStepmom]

Thanks so much for the replies everyone! I posted this the other day (one of my first posts at this forum), and it seems it was only just approved last night, I had almost forgotten about it... :LOL

Anyway, to be honest, I'm glad it's not just me. See, I'm a divorcing mom of a 4yo. Her father was highly abusive, and did NOTHING at all ever in the house. (he even quit working, oh, 2 1/2 years ago, and seemingly has no plans to go back to work, he now lives with his mother)... So, the man I live with now (and have been with for over 2 years), is SO much better than my ex-husband.. I will give him that. Considering what kinds of appreciation I had before, to what I have now, is a HUGE improvement. I do feel like I'm just whining or complaining sometimes, but at the end of the day, I'm too exhausted to really even care about 'me time'..

I'm also the soon-to-be step-mom of a 9yo boy, who lives with us. I do everything a mother does for her children, for this boy. His mother doesn't even call on a regular basis, and will take him for a couple hours a week, not very long at all. I've been told for some time now how being a step-parent is a highly thankless 'job', but I really didn't realize it would be this hard until recently. (we've lived together about 6 months now... maybe a little more) So, I parent my child, and am parenting my SO's child, who reminds me almost daily that I'm not his 'real parent' (which I understand, but it hurts my feelings sometimes too, as I do more for him daily than his mother does for him in a year)....

Then, my SO who works outside the home, comes home, eats dinner, sits in front of the TV, plays video games, over-rules everything I said to the kids during the day (about chores, homework etc), and then goes to bed... It's just exhausting emotionally.

To top it all off, he's been real sick lately. Getting worse by the day it seems. Refuses to see a DR or go to the hospital, but is just doing bad. So he's home from work, been sleeping pretty much for 4 days straight, and although I feel bad and wish I could help him feel better, I'm jealous too...lol I wanna be in bed with nothing to do...lol Does that sound bad? Honestly, does that sound completely cruel of me?

[sadiesmom]

skueppers - thanks for the advice. I'm gonna talk to dh tonite when I'm a bit calmer.

I don't feel so alone. Thanks mamas for sharing.

[lauraess]

mombirthmomstepmom: Okay, please understand that im saying this in all due respect. I worry about a mom who has just left an abusive situation where she was not supported and has quickly taken on the repsonsibility of another child and another relationship. On top of that you wonder if you are cruel for wanting to be lying in bed.
If i've gotten this all wrong i am truly sorry.
please be careful for yourself and your child.
If you do not have a good support system of other women see if you can find a group listed in the paper. we have a community paper that lists many ongoing happenings and classes all within the holistic and healing areas. Maybe you can find something like that.
Im just finding what you wrote upsetting and hope you can stop taking care of everyone else so much.
~L

[MomBirthmomStepmom]

If I'm honest, I worry about me too.. I have NO support, let alone good support, or anything really. My family lives 3000 miles away, and we have very strained relationships as it is (again, abusive childhood...pattern? probably), and I left the one good friend I had behind when I moved to be here with my SO.

I know noone here, and feel very isolated and alone alot of the time.

I want to stop taking care of everything for everyone all the time... Don't get me wrong, I adore my family, my kids, and what I do as a SAHM, but I just want a break sometimes... I wanna be acknowledged, and not feel so alone all the time...

I don't know how to do that...

[lauraess]

mombirthmomstepmom> I bet you are doing a great job taking care of everyone else, so lets just switch the reciever to you. Look into what i mentioned: papers/ flyers that list meetings for women trying to support one another through the transitions of life, Holistic gatherings that involve people/women advising others on how to stop abusive patterns. Start speaking up at the playground, looking at bulletin boards for any info that may point you in the right direction. I believe when you seek the answers they are there. I KNOW there is a whole lot of support for living better out there. Start somewhere, start tomarro, now. Just begin.
~L

[4cornersmamma]

: I hate to admit this, but I was feeling completely unapreciated, so I stoped cleaning. I cooked only for the kids and I stoped doing the laundry. Our house got so messy.

I was really mad. I think I needed help and didn't have it. On top of that my dh is a neat freak, which I'll admit that I was one too. Yikes.

Now, I do what I can during the day and dinner and when 9pm hits, I go to bed. Sometimes I leave dishes undone, but I'm not going to kill myself over the house not being spotless. I think it helps my mental state if I just take a breath and realize that I'm only 1 person.

[RedWine]

Originally Posted by lauraess

Yep, I understand. I think many of us feel this. dont know why no-one has replied yet. Anyway.... How old are the kids? -guess that might not matter.
It's a tough road-- the role of mother.. whether you woh or in-- there is just no way to get it all done by yourself and when you cant ask for help or get it than surely we feel underappreciated and taken advantage of.
My way of summing it up is basically the other half will NEVER get it. NEVER. And so i wont keep wasting my time expecting him to pick up the slack, whether I ask or not. even if he does try to help out it's never quite right. How could he know? when we were put into the role of mother it's like a complete new force undertook our will and pushed us along inorder to keep our babies healthy. They dont quite have the same thing happening. When you stay home most of the time you get a real good picture of what needs to happen and what cant wait and so you go and go and go. The only one that really can give you a true break is yourself. forget trying to get what you rightly deserve: a back/body rub every night, someone to cook diner for you once a week, flowers once a week, complete attention to your attempts at sharing the trials and tribulations and sweet moments of your day. I dont mean to sound cynical, it just isnt reality as far as i have found out.
-take care of yourself, ask for what you need, take what you need kindly and respectfully and remember you were made woman: STRONG, BEAUTIFUL, ABLE and ENDURING!
---Just my two cents
~L

Just wanted to say how beautiful this response was. Spoke directly to my heart, since I often feel the same way as the op. Thanks, lauraess!

[lauraess]

Redwine: : Aww Gee Thanks!!! That means a whole lot me!
~L

[Abbyloos Mommy]

I am forever feeling underappreciated. Hubby will come home and just want to play his video games and not help.

Well, he was like that untill I finally got it through that thick skull of his that he helped make our dd, he needs to take responsibility for her too.

I get that he busts his butt all day in the sun, I really do. I used to work with him. And while I may not have done as much as he did, I busted my butt too. I just feel like, when you get off of work and come home, that's your break. But he looks at it as work. And it is work. But for him, it's a break from work, if you kunderstand me. My break is when he gets home to take over for a bit.

I just don't get how he can just not want to spend quality time with her and love her all up when he gets home, how can he not miss her like crazy?

I guess it's just the motherly bond thing, I don't know.