We have been together 9 years and living together 2.5. I have had my current job for just over a year and before that worked a construction job. She has had her job for almost two years and before that was a “full time” student taking 3 classes a semester. I work an office job where I get to work from home 1 day/wk. I work 40hrs/wk (ends up closer to 45 as I get unpaid lunch breaks so I work through lunch) and have about 2 hrs of transit time each day I go to the office. My girlfriend however works 35hra/wk which includes a paid half hour for lunch and gets to work from home 2 days per week (she often doesn’t want to make the walk to work in the cold so works from home a lot more than that usually) . So on the days we both go to the office I wake up at 530 and am out by 6am and get home at 4-430pm. She sleeps in till 830 most days and more often than not beats me home (she has a 15 minute walk to the office). On the days she works from home she often won’t get out of bed till 11 as she can appear available on her phone even though she isn’t working. And then unless she has meetings she spends her day downstairs watching Netflix or on her phone to her friends or family.
She has been complaining often that she doesn’t seem to have time to balance work and her personal life and it drives me mental. She also wants to go to the gym with me (one of my few releases) but drags her heels every time I want to go and gives me a ton of attitude if I say I’m going to go without her. On top of this she also is dissatisfied with how much she gets paid and thinks she should be earning the same salary as I do. If you break it down to hours worked in a year she makes only $2.50/hr less than me. If you break it down to actual hours worked she would be making way more per hour as I think she consistently only puts in 28-30 hrs per week. All of this has been building for about a year to the point where I silently resent her and want to tell her to suck it up any time she complains about anything work or time related. Up to this point I havnt said anything or let on that I feel this way because I’m positive that will result in a huge fight and a conversation worthy of an AITA post.
TLDR: my girlfriend puts in at most 30hrs/week(including travel time) and complains to me (who puts in 50hrs/wk) she should get paid the same as me and doesn’t have work/life balance.
So I guess the advice I’m looking for is how do I bring this up to her in a way that is constructive? Or how do I recondition my own thoughts to see it as a positive thing for her and us that she has that much more free time?
Edit:20 minutes and I’m already getting private messages calling me a pedophile. We have a 6 year and one month age difference. She was 18 and I was 24 when we met. I bet many peoples parents have similar if not larger age gaps. This is not the part of my relationship I am looking for advice about and if it bugs you you can keep it to yourself.
4 comments
I’m sorry – you were a 24 year old dating a 17 year old?
The only time you should look in your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure that they have enough.
However, the complaining, seemingly lack of awareness and dragging her feet to the gym would bug the shit out of me. You’re gunna have to have some conversations that don’t get out of control.Try some I statement’s “I feel really burnt out from my work and I get envious of your work arrangements”.
The gym thing is easier. Tell her how important the gym is to you and that you will not compromise on your schedule. “I will be leaving at x time, and if you are not ready, I will leave without you”. Then, most importantly, follow through. If there’s kickback, don’t engage and stay the course. You need firm boundaries on this one.
The truth is both of you are not grateful for what you each have. Walking entitled, all you both see is what the positive the other one has…
The talk shouldn’t be about proving what is what but both realizing that in the worldwide scale, you two are the lucky ones, both of you need to start and realize that… But instead you point at the wrong, dismissing all the good.
As for the gym situation, if you two want to keep going, you’re going to have to learn to communicate, be open to the issues you see, if you fear it will explode then you shouldn’t be together, you would just pretend and it will keep feeding that resentment.
Whatever problems you two have, you both need to pinpoint and Together work on it as a team.
Especially after 9 years, maintaining a relation is work where you give and sacrifice but you focus on what needs improvement as well.
I think the gym thing is external to everything else; is it feasible to go at different times?
Consider your envy like a directional indicator, pointing you to what you want; less commute, better work/life balance, better office culture, and go after it. But I guess take it from your girlfriend’s position that even dream jobs have issues that you have to work through.