Me (29F) and my husband (32M) have been together for 6 years. Since the beginning, I’ve been much worse off money wise, because I was completely questioning my future and ended up going back to school and that’s what I’m currently still doing. I’m a full time university student and have a part time job that I go to about 4 times a month, so quite rarely. My husband though, is doing very well in his career and ever since moving in together, he’s handled all of our bills that are to do with the house, food, living, etc. He’s bought all our furniture, my laptop, my phone and has even helped out my family if they had money issues.
So the division of labour is pretty simple, he works full time and pays for most things, excluding my personal stuff like clothes, hobbies, phone bill and also does some minor house work. (Though he has bought me some of my stuff like I mentioned above) Like sometimes doing some vacuuming, dishwasher loading/unloading, mowing the lawn and he also does the ”heavy” stuff like when the plumbing needs cleaned.
My job is to doo 100% of the cooking and the majority of the cleaning. Also while being a full time student and every now and then going to work. To me this always felt fair, especially because we always agreed that this would change as I move on from school and we’d figure out a new system, so it’s not like we’ve got the same roles forever.
Lately though, my friends have been telling me that it’s super unfair of my husband to expect me to do the majority of housework while being a full time student. They’recsaying they wouldn’t take that kind of ”treatment”. But I always thought it was fair, since he works really hard and long days and I wouldn’t feel comfortable making him do half of the chores and pay for everything while contributing absolutely no money to our lives myslef. Sometimes I feel really tired and ask him to help out and he does, but my friends have sort of been getting me to question myself, because of how pushy they’re being.
What I wanted advice on is does our division sound fair to you? Am I just letting myself be talked around for no reason? Any advice on if I should even bring it up to my husband?
24 comments
Sounds fair to me. I’m a woman too. And it sounds like you can readjust when you do start working, so that’s fair. Tell your friends to stop looking for issues in YOUR marriage. They sound unhappy.
From what you’ve described, you’ve got a good husband on your hands. Be very careful about sharing too much about your marriage to outsiders, allowing open season criticism of your spouse, or otherwise letting anyone have the opportunity to drive a wedge between the two of you.
Tell your friends to f××× off. It’s your relationship and I think it sounds great!!
Outside influence causes lots of confusion and questions.
Sounds like you two are working towards a great future. Keep going.
You’ve got good advice already. If it feels fair to you then that’s what really matters.
I’m on the opposite side of things and I am the one working while my partner is unemployed at the moment. He does all of the meals through the week. Fridays I make pizza dough and we have pizzas for dinner on Saturday. I try and make a pot of chili or soup or something that we can have for lunches on Sunday. I do the laundry, but he does all of the day to day cleaning and household chores.
I am a full time nursing student and have the same set up as you. But we also have an almost 5 year old who ibdo almost all the care of, do you guys have any kids?
I feel because he works so hard I should be able to handle it all but school is fucking hard and is like a full time job.
I feel my setup is not fair, we have totally didfferent standards of what clean is. He needs spotless, immaculate, magazine ready rooms. I don’t think it’s fair of him to put that standard on me. As long as the room isn’t dirty and issl relatively organized I am happy.
Do you both have the same standards for clean?
Honestly, your friends can only speak to what would be acceptable for THEM. If this arrangement works for you and your husband, he helps pick up more slack when you are feeling worn down or tired and neither of you are building up resentment over the division of chores, then tell them this works for you as a couple and they should really mind their own business.
It sounds like it could be fair. The best way to know for sure is to talk about it. Invite him to let you know if he feels like he needs more help, and let him know you’ll do the same.
In our marriage my wife is a SAHM and I work. My work was very demanding and she had a lot of things on her plate. Sometimes I needed her to lend me extra support from our typical roles, but usually she needed extra support from me. There really wasn’t ever even a request or plea: if I saw her having a hard time, I dug in and worked harder; if she saw me falling apart, she lent support. I bet something similar would work for you.
Hope this helps. It comes from “The Love Dare”:
In the deep and private corridors of your heart, there is a room. It’s called the Appreciation Room. It’s where your thoughts go when you encounter positive and encouraging things about your spouse. And every so often, you enjoy visiting this special place.
On the walls are written kind words and phrases describing the good attributes of your mate. These may include characteristics like “honest” and “intelligent”, or phrases like “diligent worker”, “wonderful cook,” or “beautiful eyes.” They are things you’ve discovered about your husband or wife that have embedded themselves in your memory. When you think about these things, your appreciation for your spouse begins to increase. In fact, the more time you spend meditating on these positive attributes, the more grateful you are for your mate.
Most things in the Appreciation Room were likely written in the initial stages of your relationship. You could summarize them as things you liked and respected about your loved one. They were true, honorable and good. And you spend a great deal of time dwelling on them in this room… before you were married. But you may have found that you don’t visit this special room as often as you once did. That’s because there is anothercompeting room nearby.
Down another darker corridor of your heart lies the Depreciation Room, and unfortunately, you visit there as well.
On its walls are written the things that bother and irritate you about your spouse. These thingts were placed there out of frustration, hurt feelings and the disappointment of unmet expectations.
This room is lined with the weaknesses and failures of your husband or wife. Their bad habits, hurtful words and poor decisions are written in large letters that cover the walls from one end to the other. If you stay in this room long enough, you get depressed and start expressing things like, “My wife is so selfish,” or “My husband can be such a jerk.” Or maybe, “I think I married the wrong person.”
Some people write very hateful things in this room, where tell-off statements are rehearsed for the next argument. Emotional injuries fester here, adding more scathing remarks to the walls. It’s where ammunition is kept for the next big fight and bitterness is allowed to spread like a disease. People fall out of love here.
But know this. Spending time in the Depreciation Room kills marriages. Divorces are plotted in this room and violent plans are schemed. The more time you spend in this place, the more your heart devalues your spouse. It begins the moment you walk in the door, and your care for them lessens with every second that ticks by.
You may say, “But these things are true!” Yes, but so are the things in the Appreciation Room. Everyone fails and has areas that need growth. Everyone has unresolved issues, hurts and personal baggage. This is a sad aspect of being human. We have all sinned. But we have this unfortunate tendency to downplay our own negative attributes while putting our partner’s failures under a magnifying glass.
Let’s get down to the real issue here. Love knows about the Depreciation Room and does not live in denial that it exists.
But love chooses not to live there.
You must decide to stop running to this room and lingering there after every frustrating event in your relationship. It does you no good and drains the joy out of your marriage.
Love chooses to believe the best about people. It gives them the benefit of the doubt. It refuses to fill in the unknowns with negative assumptions. And when our worst hopes are proven to be true, love makes every effort to deal with them and move forward. As much as possible, love focuses on the positive.
It’s time to start thinking differently. It’s time to let love lead your thoughts and your focus. The only reason you should glance in the door of the Depreciation Room is to know how to pray for your spouse. And the only reason you should every go in this room is to write “COVERED IN LOVE” in huge letters across the walls.
It’s time to move into the Appreciation Room, to settle down and make it your home. As you choose to meditate on the positives, you will learn that many more wonderful character qualities could be written across these walls. Your spouse is a living, breathing, endless book to be read. Dreams and hopes have yet to be realised, Talents and abilities may be discovered like hidden treasure. But the choice to explore them starts with a decision by you.
You must develop the habit of reining in your negative thoughts and focusing on the positive attributes of your mate. This is a crucial step as you learn to lead your heart to truly love your spouse. It is a decision that you make, whether they deserve it or not.
My wife announced unilaterally that she couldn’t do anything household and deal with the business degree she was doing due to the number of assignments due in and the number of physical hours of attending the course. She needed the degree to change career and that would benefit the house long term.
I took on making every drink, snack, meal, cleaning washing, dishwashing etc 7 days a week. While still doing childcare of our son (bed time stories, home work etc).
Me in a demanding management position with a commute to work too that was supporting us through this period.. It was tough. The logic was sound in my view that she needed to do as best as she could at the degree to benefit us all with future job prospects from a good degree, she got a 1st.
Slightly different view on it maybe.
Full time student is a full time job. I don’t see why you are doing everything around the house, that definitely doesn’t seem fair to me either.
You are home most. It is not unreasonable.
There are no children requiring special attention.
When I was a SAHM the house was my “job” the money and yard was his.
Being a student is not nearly as consuming as parenting. You can reasonably balance. You are fine.
Your friends are not advising you well.
How much time is spent on the school classes and work? Because that may well be a full time job too. Meaning you both have full time gigs that bring value to the family.
As one of this sub’s grandpas, I can’t imagine a guy who does absolutely zero of the household chores. It’s my house too so I’ve always just jumped in until things are done. I can’t sit idle if my wife is working. Soon you’ll be graduated and able to bring in a better income (a win for the family) and at that point it damn well better be 50/50.
Don’t listen to what other people think your relationship should look like. How did you feel about it before they gave their 2 cents? That is what matters. Sometimes being equitable does not mean dividing up right down the middle. In my marriage, Sometimes I do more, sometimes he does. We pick up the slack for each other when needed. We both have responsibilities in our home and with the raising of our children. When something doesn’t feel right, we reexamine what we are doing. For example, he called me out because I was not cooking dinner the days I worked from home. I was pissed, but eventually understood what he meant. He knows I hate to cook. So now, I do all the transportation for our kids and he cooks. That means I get home later, but dinner is his job. It works for US. That is what is important.
I mean, only you can really say what works for you in your relationship… but from my perspective, while your girlfriends might be feeling stridently about this they may have a point worth considering. I recommend reading FAIR PLAY by Eve Rodsky.
That said – you’re doing a few jobs already. Personally, I don’t particularly feel it’s fair to expect someone to do 100% of any domestic labor, full stop.
In my house, my husband works – I work – and I’m probably going to start going to school. He makes more than me sometimes; I make more than him sometimes. It’s not a situation where *the amount of money we make* determines *who has to do more work at home* to make our lives nice… because we share our life together. It’s a team effort. If I stopped making money tomorrow, that would not change how often he does the dishes – and to us, nor should it.
One person being responsible for domestic bliss because they don’t bring in as much money… that is how financial coercion happens. You don’t want to end up in one of those dynamics.
If it works for you, that’s great – but I’d really hesitate to ask this sub, as well, because I’ve noticed an influx of super conservative commenters in the last few weeks. They will always tell you that whatever the man does is the right thing. If you have a broader community you can kind of poke around about and just ask people how things work at *their* house – particularly if you have an acquaintance who seems to have an enviable life or one you’d want – that will get you better results than asking randoms on the Internet. 🙂
Your friends sound like idiots and most likely, bringing in their own personal relationship issues when giving you advice.
Question- did you bring up the topic in a complaining manner to your friends? Or just swapping stories?
Does your husband hold over your head that he makes more money than you so you have to do xyz around the house? Or complaining how expensive your needs are with laptop, etc? Or in any way belittle where you are with schooling?
If none of what I mentioned applies, and you and him are happy with the current arrangement, then that’s all that matters.
That sounds nominally fair, if he can cook then maybe ask him to make you a dinner every now and then, but otherwise sounds like a decently cooperative household.
Are your friends married?
Yes a good husband. My wife has health issues so I work full time and do the cleaning and most of the cooking. She cooks when she feels good. She saves her strength so we can spend time together in the evenings and for intimacy. Outsiders feel like I am doing everything but it works for us and we are happy with it.
Single friends are clueless! Period.
Insanity to question anything I’ve read it’s about being married and doing what needs to be done to get ahead him paying ro everything while you getting your degree is like no doubt on point. And you shouldn’t pay no attention to classmates that aren’t married or in a similar set up situation.
You should think for yourself of what’s fair and what’s not. Your friends have different boundaries may be due to them contributing more to household bills or whatever. You can’t really apply other people’s expectation to your own
pinktvstand, you asked “Any advice on if I should even bring it up to my husband?”
Yes, please bring up your APPRECIATION of him and thank him for being your lovely husband!
My husband work load is more than mine and i generally do most housework IF i am up for it. Some days, one of us might be lazy, or even both of us. It doesnt matter. All that matter is, are you happy living like that? With the arrangement you have? From what you said, its not like your husband doesnt do anything at all and expect you to do everything. Start to worry only if he starts spilling water then calling you from another room just to clean it up. Anything else is fine.
your husband seems really nice!
and yes your friends being single and all may not understand what really happens betwern married couples so their opinions should be taken with a pinch of salt
what really matters is what you feel and if there are any misgivings just speak to your husband I’m pretty sure he’s open to any discussion