u/othermegan

For the record, we generally end up sitting down to eat somewhere between 7 and 8. It’s not ideal, but I work until 5:30 or 6 most days and then have to try and make dinner while the toddler is screaming for attention and snacks. Also, I’m not trying to be ungrateful because I know some husbands won’t even offer to cook dinner. But hearing that from my husband last night really pissed me off.

This is the guy that openly admits he mostly at Five Guys and Chipotle before we started dating.

This is the guy who thinks you make scrambled eggs by cracking raw eggs into a cold pan and then start beating them to death with 2 wooden spoons once the whites start solidifying. If you have fillings, you add them after the eggs are cooked by also beating them to death with your spoons. And on the topic of eggs, this is also the guy that decided to surprise me with eggs filled with cinnamon, nutmeg, and strawberry jelly one morning because he “thought they’d be fun secret ingredients.”

This is the guy who, when I try to get him to pick ONE meal for the week to help lighten the mental load, will respond with, “um… chicken?” and then make me pull his teeth to get the additional details of “a breast cooked in a skillet with salt and pepper?” No sides, no actual meal. Just salt and pepper chicken breast.

This is the guy that looks in the fridge full of fully stocked ingredients and decides we have no food so he needs to eat Cheerios for dinner.

The man thinks he’s a nutritional expert because he “only eats organic and ‘non-processed’ foods.” Meanwhile, I’m the one who has spent the last several years working with nutritionists/dietitians and learning about plate balancing and what foods support our medical needs (thyroid issues, insulin resistance, etc). He makes up his own pseudoscience about what’s healthy but won’t actually eat the healthy meals I make.

And don’t even get me started on his inability to multitask or follow a recipe even if I could get him to actually meal plan and do the shopping.

So please explain to me how this is supposed to work. I’m honestly tempted to freezer prep a week of meals for me and my daughter and then let him have his week of being the main cook just to see how terribly this goes.

Our daughter was able to snag a coveted full time spot at daycare for summer session. Unfortunately, summer session ends soon and she’ll be back to part time. Overall, I’m ok with that because it will be a couple weeks of juggling followed by me going on maternity leave so she can stay home with me then. Once I’m back at work, if my husband isn’t able to be home, it’ll be 6 short weeks of juggling and then she moves to full time preschool. But then, we got a message from daycare letting us know one of the kids is leaving so we can have a permanent FT spot starting immediately if we want. And it has caused so much chaos.

Prior to this, my husband was 100% on board with the original plan. But once we had to make the decision of “do we want to keep her full time so that we have those last 6 weeks covered?” everything went out the window.

Suddenly he started talking about pulling her out of daycare completely and sending her back once I go to work. He’s blowing up the daycare chat asking every possible outcome: can we reserve her spot if she’s gone for months? How about if we want her to drop to 3 days a week? Would 2 days a week be available? What about this? What about that? Then he starts calling his parents asking if they can be our FT childcare now that our niece is in preschool but we originally put our daughter in daycare because they have been our niece’s full time childcare since she was born and she’s got some serious behavioral issues.

Plus, now that our daughter has been in daycare for almost 9 months, she’s got a good routine. She has friends. She’s learning things. I don’t want to pull her out of that to sit alone at her grandparents’ house while the news runs 24/7.

For my husband, it seems like the only thing he’s thinking about is money. He’s unemployed and those benefits are running out. Job hunting has been hard and every interview turns up empty. I get it. It’s a real concern. But even with my partial pay on leave, we’ll be able to cover daycare. Things might get tight, but we’ll make it work.

Meanwhile, he’s completely ignoring everything else. If we pull her out full stop and he gets a job, I’m stuck with a newborn and toddler. If we send her to his parents, she loses out on structured curriculums and gets handed an iPad and YouTube. And at the end of all this, I go back to work and we will need childcare for her.

I don’t understand why he’s making this so difficult. we had a plan. Nothing about the plan should have changed except for the option to stay full time. He’s thinking about money and I’m thinking about everything that could go wrong. Daycare needs a decision tomorrow morning and now he wants to sit down and do a deep analysis on our financials which is something we don’t really have the time for since we have barely prepped for baby and I’m scrambling to tie up work every day.

God I just want to scream. He has zero vested interest in making sure the bills get paid or the chores get done. He’s half-assed the last year of job hunting. He doesn’t do any cooking or meal prep. It’s all on me. But suddenly he wants to be the gatekeeper to one of the most important decisions we need to make?! Aaaaarrrrgh

So turns out that the stomach pain the on call OB thought was heartburn and my family thought was the lettuce parasite is actually just the nasty GI bug going around.

Despite my MIL being a bitch about my husband dropping our daughter off with her for a few hours, despite being on the verge of begging my husband to drag me to triage for fluids, despite our shitty landlord installing the tiniest fucking water heater so I can’t even sit in a long, hot shower for relief, and despite being in such pain that I yearn for labor pains….

Despite all of that, one of my new core memories will be my 2 year old daughter realizing I don’t feel well and trying to take care of me. First she saw me sitting in the shower and brought me all her bath toys then tried to rub water on me like she was cleaning me. Later, she walked in on me sleeping on her big girl bed (that she refuses to sleep in yet). She lays her head on my arms and hands me a stuffy. The she said, “I sleep in the big girl bed too.”

Y’all, I can’t. My heart just melted at all that. Despite being in the throws of her autonomy phase (aka terrible 2’s), she is the sweetest, most kind child I have ever seen.

And the cherry on top, even my almost deadbeat husband has been super kind and caring today. I hope he doesn’t catch this before I’m better because it’ll be right back to me taking care of him. But it’s nice to see a glimpse of the guy I decided to marry instead of the Mr. Hyde I’ve been living with for the last few years.

Something I ate yesterday is not sitting well with me. I went to bed with stomach cramps. And I woke up at 5am with the same cramps. After some unsuccessful bathroom time and hydrating, I got back in bed and asked my husband if he also felt sick after eating dinner. He said no and rolled back over.

I couldn’t sleep and the pregnancy anxiety started getting to me so I went down the Google rabbit hole about what food poisoning could do to my baby. I know, bad idea.

At that point, I was wide awake, just laying in bed with paranoia and pain. My husband’s alarm went off and he was shocked to see me up. I asked if we have any Gasx or Tums and told him about how sick I feel. Unfortunately we don’t but he said he hopes I feel better and it’ll all be ok.

Then he told me he was going to go take a shower. The last thing he said/did before getting up was to caress me in what I thought was comfort then totally ruin the moment with “so do you want to have sex?”

What is wrong with this man? Is he fucking brain damaged?

I’m working with a dietician for IR and she has me wearing a CGM so we can catch trends. She’s big on taking “baby steps” and not banning yourself from the occasional treat because that will make the lifestyle change harder. Basically, aim to eat right and balanced 95% of the time.

Here’s the thing though, the trend shows that every time I do indulge just a little (a single scoop of ice cream, a handful of m&ms, a flavored latte), not only does it spike my blood sugar like crazy and send me crashing right after, it keeps me low for the next 36 hours with multiple episodes of going hypo.

So basically, my body doesn’t ever want me to snack ever again if it doesn’t require prepping something healthy and balanced ahead of time.

No, dumbass. I’m not going to your parents’ house because whenever you don’t go somewhere with us and get alone time, I come home to the house in a worse state than I left it. You had the whole day to yourself yesterday and didn’t even empty the dishwasher. So now I have to stay behind to get all the Sunday chores you didn’t do done so we have clean underwear and dishes. Unlike you, I don’t get to use my child free time to sit on my ass and watch YouTube videos for 12 hours straight.

To keep a long story short, we are celebrating our daughter’s second birthday at my parents’ house because they have the space to host people and we do not. It’s very informal: come on over any time after 2. Pizza and cake at X time. Any family that wants to come is welcome.

My husband thinks that my parents should pay for the food and drive 20 minutes out of their way to get the very specific cake he wants from the very specific store that sells it. I say we should pick the cake up on our way down and offer to pay for the pizza (there’s no way my dad will let us but that’s beside the point).

He said, “absolutely not! They’re the ones hosting the celebration. I don’t agree to this.” He has a habit of delivering “jokes” in this offended/upset manner so I said, “this is a fucking joke, right?” Now he’s offended and not talking to me because he’s not kidding and he’s angry I want to pay for our daughter’s birthday cake and dinner.

Oh, and for some added color, he didn’t call the store bakery to special order the cake he’s insisting on. He’s just planning to show up and buy it out of the case- assuming they’ll have it. So that’s going to be fun.

My husband was supposed to swing by the grocery store after daycare pickup to get fruit (we’re bringing snack tomorrow) and a couple ingredients I needed to make dinner. I was stuck working late on something so I couldn’t go myself.

He shows up after pickup to switch cars since mine has better tires and it’s pouring rain. But then once they got inside, he decided he didn’t want to go back out. He’s got a standing Wednesday-night men’s group thing at church so off he went when the time came, leaving me to figure out what survival pantry meal I could make our screaming hungry toddler. I made her pasta (which I can’t eat because I can’t have gluten) and after a very long, painful dinner, we braved the weather to get the berries for daycare because his meeting won’t end until after the store closes.

He calls me as we’re packing the car and flips out that I got the fruit because he “was going to go first thing in the morning.” A) he never said that. But apparently that’s my fault for “assuming instead of communicating.” And B) he has not gotten his ass up early once this week so wouldn’t have believed him anyways.

Somehow, despite getting out of his meeting the same time I was leaving the store, it took him a full hour to get home. I had already brought the groceries in and given our daughter a bath. He shows up with chipotle and says it’s an apology dinner because I mentioned I hadn’t eaten yet and he was sorry he yelled.

Guys… he got me a kids meal. Kids tacos to be exact. With flour tortillas. I asked why he got a kids meal and he said “because for only $6.37, it’s a lot of food! It always fills me up!” He also got fruit instead of chips so that I can “keep up with my diet.” I’m 34 weeks pregnant. He even made a point to really brag that he got my favorite protein until his face fell and went “oh shit… you always get the pork not the beef, right?”

I thank him. Tell him I appreciate the gesture. I mention that they do have a crispy corn shell I can eat so that’d be a safer option next time. And if they don’t have that, then as nice as the fruit was, chips would help make it a more substantial meal. He starts calling me ungrateful and says I’m ripping him a new one when he was just trying to do something nice.

That part pissed me off so I pointed out that he got me a kids meal because it was cheaper. I had barely eaten all day, which he should have known considering we talked about how I had nothing for lunch, and that an adult sized entree would have been nice.

So now he’s not talking to me, I’m ungrateful, and he’s “never going to do something nice for me again.” So I guess it’s gluten free mozzarella sticks while I cut berries at midnight and he pouts in bed.

Why can these men not retain anything?! I’ll spare you the long setup, but husband called after daycare drop off and said “I’m at your favorite coffee shop, what do you want?” He was looking to get me an apology breakfast.

I pulled up their coffee of the day list and told him what I wanted. Turns out, they had just sold out of that one. So we went back and forth with me asking a couple questions and him answering. We specifically spoke about a Dubai chocolate and a chocolate coconut option. I decided on chocolate coconut because HE pointed out Dubai chocolate isn’t always gluten free and I discovered the chocolate coconut was more fresh.

Then he asked if I wanted anything else. I said “I’d love a breakfast sandwich but they’re very expensive so if you don’t have enough cash for me and you, just get the coffee.” He insisted I get the sandwich and so I told him a bacon, egg, and cheese. And to make the coffee a small.

This man… literally right after I said my order to him repeated back, “ok so a large iced coffee and then an egg and cheese sandwich. No bacon or anything?” Like DUDE

Then he gets home. The sandwich is right but he complains that it was expensive so, “this is the last time you’re ever getting that. I can make you a better one myself.” Which alone is a whole other post because a) I’m sorry, you’re banning me from buying food? And b) you are never going to make me a sandwich. You know that. Stop pretending.

But the kicker? He got the wrong iced coffee. He went with Dubai chocolate after HE was the one to point out that it might not be safe for me.

I’m not ungrateful for the gesture. I just don’t understand how he could fuck it up so much when I was holding his hand through the whole thing.

This pisses me off so much because it’s such an easy way to write off an uneven workload/broken partnership.

If both of us were doing a similar amount of work and I started nitpicking you over the one extra time I did the dishes, yeah, feel free to call me out for scorekeeping.

But when only one of us works AND does all the cooking (including the meal planning and grocery shipping) AND does cleanup 30 out of 31 days a month AND has suddenly done all the morning/afternoon childcare and daycare drop offs all week, calling that out isn’t “keeping score.” It’s pointing out an unsustainable imbalance. Especially when that one day you “did” the dishes, you didn’t actually finish. You just emptied half the dishwasher then gave up and left all the other clean dishes and dirty dishes to sit.

I don’t think my earlier post is even 2 days old yet. Some of you are still commenting on it and I’m super grateful for everyone there.

Anywho, whatever night that was, after sleeping all day, this asswipe apologizes and says from now on he will do every pickup and drop off because I have to work. Notice how all he’s doing is drop off and pickup, not any other chores despite being the one that’s unemployed. But hey, at that point, I was exhausted so I took the win.

Did he take her to daycare the next morning? No. Because he had reflux and got a bad night’s sleep so he needed to sleep in. He once again slept most of the day away. He did pick up her up though and decided to go to the park. But that was also a disaster with her coming home sobbing and him being pissed that the toddler wanted to play in dirty puddles. Like, what did you expect dude?!

Anyways, last night was all on me again. He’s making his second pot of ramen at 11pm because apparently we learned nothing from the previous night’s GERD. I go down to bed. He comes down to say goodnight and tells me he’ll be back later.

Well I woke up at 5:30 this morning to our toddler screaming into the monitor. I notice he’s not in bed. As I’m making my way to her room, I notice the lights are on in the living room. He’s already in her room trying to comfort her, but it turns out he pulled another fucking all-nighter. He claims leaving the lights on was “just an accident” but I heard him walk into her room while I was making my way up so he wasn’t sleeping there and forgot to turn the lights off.

She did not go back to sleep but he did. So I’ve been doing chores, daycare, and then working while he continues to fuck up his sleep cycle even more. I’m tempted to decide it’s time to wash the curtains so he’s stuck with daylight and start blasting loud music to “keep myself awake”

This man is going to get one of us killed. Either me from a sleep deprivation induced accident or him from a rage induced “accident”

First of all, I want to preface this by saying I know this rant is brought to you by exhaustion and pregnancy hormones. But I also know my husband is being an absolute douche canoe.

Last night I was on hour 48 of being a married single mom. I mean… I’m almost always a married single mom but we’re talking next level where my husband did fuck all for 48 straight hours while I took care of our toddler, did all the cleaning/cooking/shopping/etc, did all the daycare drop off/pickups, and worked my full time job. All while 32 weeks pregnant with really bad SPD. Why was my husband more useless than a sack of potatoes you ask? Well that’s a whole other story about the 4 day fight we had, his lack of functioning adrenal glands, and his refusal to take extra synthetic cortisol during emotional and mental stress.

But last night, I was wiped. Like, bone-achingly tired. I somehow managed to wrap up early and make it down to bed before midnight only to find he had left a pile of clean laundry on the bed and all the baskets were in use. I fold the laundry, put it away, and am about to get in bed when he comes down to tell me about this new job posting he found. This man loves to hear himself talk and he went on for 25 fucking minutes about it until I was finally like, “it is after midnight. I am exhausted. I’m going to sleep.” He left saying he was going to apply and will be down after.

My alarm went off at 7:30 in the morning and I realize he never came down. He comes in to get a change of clothes as I’m hitting snooze for the second time. I ask if he slept in our daughter’s room. No. He pulled a fucking all nighter. Which means now he’s going to crash today.

I stupidly think that since he’s up early, he’ll start daycare prep. I go back to sleep. Again, big nope. I get up at 8:30 and realize he went to fucking sleep in our daughter’s room while she played on the floor. Didn’t get her dressed. Didn’t make lunch. Didn’t give her anything to eat.

So guess who was left scrambling to get everything together and get out the door so they could be to work at 9. Guess who was late to work. And guess was sound asleep by the time I got back from drop off.

Best part? I accidentally got curb rash on my wheel while rushing about. My very expensive wheel he loves to lecture me on. So I’m definitely not productive today as I ruminate over how that’s going to play out when he finally wakes up.

My husband and I got in a huge fight on Thursday. I ended up crying in bed that night. The next morning he was apologetic and asked what I wanted for dinner because he “wanted to make dinner for [me].” Thing is, I was still really hurt and mentally shut down so I didn’t know what I wanted. I told him as much and added, “as long as it’s gluten free, I’ll eat it.” It’s important to know that I do 99% of the meal planning and 100% of the shopping. I haven’t gone in a while so he would have had to go to the store to get ingredients anyways.

He asked me many more times through the day and I always gave the same answer. Dinner comes around and he isn’t cooking. I give him a little time and he doesn’t get takeout or offer to go anywhere. We have a toddler who is now crying she’s hungry so I make her some food. We only had gluten pasta so I couldn’t eat any but I made extra in case he wanted some too.

I wanted another hour and nothing. So I ended up eating rice cakes with peanut butter, an apple, and cheese. He never commented or said anything. Later at night he did finish off the pasta.

As we were going to bed, I asked why he didn’t cook dinner. He said I never told him what I wanted. I explained that most weeks when I’m meal planning I ask what he wants and he says he doesn’t know. And yet, every night, there’s still dinner ready for him. The fact that he couldn’t even order takeout without me doing the mental labor of picking everything really hurt. He snapped at me that I have “no idea” how depressed he was that day because of our fight and that’s why he didn’t do the work to figure out dinner. I tell him this wasn’t an attack. I was just trying to express my feelings.

We wake up this morning and I try to say good morning. He snarkily asks why I’m being nice to him. I say it’s because I love him. He says that “that’s rich” given how badly I hurt him last night. I just repeated again that I wasn’t attacking him. I was trying to be vulnerable and talk about my feelings.

He’s since ignored me. When he finally joined me and our daughter at the table, he was affectionate to her and then turned to me and said “I have nothing to say to you. Do you even love me?” I said I do but I’m still hurting one of the top 5 hurts in our whole relationship. I asked if he loved me and he said, “sometimes, I don’t know right now. You have NO IDEA what I was planning on doing for you yesterday.” And that’s the last thing he’s said to me so far. It’s been the silent treatment since.

So that’s where we’re at. And I genuinely don’t know if this is all my fault. I lean towards it not being my fault because I didn’t attack him, I was just trying to share my feelings and he’s making it about him. But, who knows. It could be me and I need an unbiased opinion.

TL;DR: husband and I got in a fight. Later, I tried to express my feelings about the whole thing. Now he’s giving me the silent treatment and saying my expression of my feelings hurt him. Is this really my fault? Am I the one that owes him an apology or is it the other way around?

Everyone warned me I shouldn’t marry my husband. But I didn’t listen. When I got pregnant and he was awful, friends told me I should get out. But I excused it has him being stressed about work and me being hormonal. I only started to see things differently when he started treating our daughter the way he treats me… the way my dad treated us as kids. That’s when I stopped ignoring the behavior and started standing up to him- when I stopped placating his ego and started calling him out.

But I still didn’t call it abuse. I still didn’t remove my daughter. People kept telling me to leave him. I continued to make excuses to not leave: he wasn’t always like this/it’s a bad season, things will change when he gets the right job, he’s in therapy so things will get better, he always apologizes afterwards, he isn’t doing it intentionally… etc

But they aren’t getting better. And now that he’s going on 9 months unemployed, it’s only getting worse.

I am tired of being his emotional punching bag. I am tired of feeling like I can’t spend the money I earn because of how he will react. I am heartbroken when my not even 2 year old comes to me and says “I don’t want dad. I don’t like dad.” And yet, I still am just barely starting to come around to the idea that this is abuse. I’m still in denial. It took 4 minutes staring at the screen for me to actually click this flair.

Worse even, I’m still making excuses for why I can’t leave: I have nowhere to go, I can’t afford my own apartment, I don’t even know how to leave, I can’t kick him out because his parents’ own our place… etc

I am fully aware that Reddit thinks I’m scum because every day that goes by is another day I’m letting my daughter be exposed to this. That I’m a coward who isn’t prioritizing her safety. That I am selfish because I had the audacity to get pregnant again and give this man a second child.

I was so worried about not doing to my children what my parents did to me that I completely ignored the fact that I married a man who is exactly like my dad. I failed my kids and am the worst mother in the world because I know what needs to be done but I’m too scared to actually pull the trigger.

Look, I understand that marriage is a covenant and a covenant means you both give 100% even if the other does not. But this is getting unsustainable to the point where I’m ready to get legally divorced and live the rest of my life alone if it didn’t mean financially ruining myself because I currently live in an apartment owned by my in laws for basically nothing.

Has my husband’s behavior changed since we got married? Yeah, I definitely feel like I got bait and switched. But there were enough red flags and enough people telling me to pump the brakes to probably disqualify us from an annulment.

He’s depressed. He hates his life. I get it. But I am so tired of being his emotional and verbal punching bag. And I’m reaching my breaking point now that he’s extending that behavior to our toddler. He has zero idea about childhood psychology and development and then gets angry because the one year old “misbehaves.”

He contributes nothing: no job, no cleaning, no chores, minimal child care (our daughter is in full time daycare), and then has the nerve to lecture me on finances and being an adult. Meanwhile, I’m working myself to the bone to keep us afloat and keep the house running. He gets to live a cushy pampered life where everything is handled for him because if I let him sink, we all sink. But then he sits there and talks like he is the eternal victim and the world is constantly out to get him.

He has the nerve to say things like “you take things personally when I’m upset” and “I don’t recognize you anymore” and “when we were dating, didn’t you say a good wife should help her husband be a better person?” Like, I don’t recognize myself anymore. I’m a bang-maid/cook/corporate robot and incubator. That’s all I am. I take things personally because they are personal; you’re bitching about the stuff I can’t get to because my cup is completely empty instead of being an adult who just does them because he lives here. And yes, I did say that, but you’re also supposed to help me and you don’t.

This covenant is a prison and he is my jailer tasked with torturing me. He went to therapy but nothing changed. His therapist was just like “everything is a choice, you need to choose better.” Wow, thanks Jim. What wise advice. He’s offered to do couples counseling with me, but then backs out every time I point out insurance doesn’t cover it (because everything is tied to money and if he can’t get it for cheap, it’s a scam or waste).

I used to excuse this behavior. I used to say he had bad moments but I still love him. Now? I hate him. I’m repulsed by him. I’m jealous of all my friends who got married to these wonderful men who give them fulfilling lives and are so kind and selfless. I dream of him dying young so I can be free.

After being a moody fuckface all day yesterday to the point where we found me in bed crying instead of sleeping, my husband had the gall to ask me “why is it that when I’m in a bad mood, you take it personally instead of comforting me?”

Are you fucking kidding me?

Maybe I’d be more of a comfort if he was actually expressing his real emotions. But he’s not. He’ll be pissed at his mom and instead of talking about that, he chooses to rant about how the house is a pigsty despite the fact that he does nothing to try and remedy it.

Why do I take it so personally? Because all I do is wake up, take care of our kid, go to work (late because of said kid), get off work late (because I got in late), immediately start taking care of the kid and cooking dinner while hearing a lecture about how I must be on my phone too much during the day if I have to work late, try to keep the kid from accidentally killing herself, do bedtime, clean up after bed time, sleep, and repeat. I clean as much as I can in as little time I have.

So when he says “this house is a fucking disaster,” while not contributing ANYTHING during the day, it IS personal. Because you’re not attacking a mess we both let happen. You are attacking the product of my blood, sweat, and tears. It’s not pretty. It’s actually very embarrassing. But it’s everything I have left to give.

Honestly, I’m at the point where I would file for divorce but I can’t because we live in an apartment rented from his parents (no lease, just a verbal agreement), I can’t afford to pay market price for an apartment in our area, and I have no family close by to help me out.

Today is my husband’s and my dating anniversary. Now, I’m of the mindset that once you’re married, it’s nice to acknowledge the dating anniversary but it’s not YOUR ANNIVERSARY. My husband does not think this way. Originally we wanted to make this a whole big vacation to celebrate, but I talked him out of it. We compromised and I took the day off work (which was very stressful given what I have going on at work).

He didn’t make any plans because he felt I wasn’t making any plans (I was looking but he wants free events to save money and it’s a Thursday. All events are on the weekend or geared towards children). So here I am scrambling day of trying to make it meaningful.

We decide to go get brunch at this place that’s always packed on the weekends. How did that go? Well he spent the whole time (plus the hour we drove around afterwards) complaining that he has no job; talking about all his “amazing business ideas” like hosting a car show, organizing a rally race, and opening a driving school to teach licensed drivers how to drive manual cars; and bemoaning that there’s no good job that exists that will make him both happy and rich.

I’m so glad I took today off work… 😒

My husband is the king of “Big Picture with Zero Execution.” He comes to me with a grand idea, has no logistics planned out, and then leaves me to execute. One in particular has been our financials. While we treat income as “shared money,” we never got around to actually getting a joint bank account and all our bills remained on the autopays they were prior to moving in together (meaning, I pay 90% of our household expenses out of my account).

About a year ago, we had just gotten through the first year of parenthood and life was starting to feel normal again despite my husband being laid off. Feeling the financial pinch, he came to me saying, “we should have monthly budget meetings to determine where we can cut back and how much we’re going to put into [daughter’s] 529 plan. How does next week sound for the first one?” Cue me asking about logistics: what bank are we using for a joint account? What budgeting method will we use? What system will we use to monitor the budget? Where are we opening the 529? I ended with “I have no problem doing monthly budget meetings. But we can’t sit down next week and talk numbers when we don’t know the numbers. Our first conversation needs to be deciding on how everything is done.” He agreed. That conversation never happened.

Well it’s been a year and today he just unloaded on me out of nowhere because I “always hold him back.” He says I’m the reason we never had a budget conversation is because I made it too difficult. I put too many prerequisites on it. It’s easy to just “open your bank statement and see where the money is.” I asked if he looked at banks. No, he didn’t. Did he look at budget methods? No. Systems of record? No. Places that offer 529s or how they work? No. Has he found a job? No. Has he done anything to actually move towards this goal he has? No. And what did I do that stopped him from doing any of that? Nothing.

And yet, somehow, it’s all my fault because I discouraged him and occasionally treat myself to a $17 bag of coffee beans or DoorDash lunch when I’m nauseatingly hungry and not interested in cooking. I’m so sick of being this man’s emotional punching bag. I get it. He hates his life. But he’s convinced his the victim and the world is out to get him- especially me who is holding him back from so much. Well if I’m that big of an anchor, just cut me loose and go on your merry way, free from the burdens I bring you like not having to think about the price of groceries or if the electric bill was paid.

Anyone else sick of dealing with men who pitch these ideas that sound nice only to find out they’ve put no thought into the logistics?

My husband walked up to me this morning and said, “would you be open to driving somewhere and having a picnic today?”

I told him yes but I have some follow up questions first like what are we eating, where are we going, and is he talking lunch or dinner?

His answer? “I don’t want to spend money on sandwiches or takeout so I figured we could eat the food we have here. You know, grill up some chicken and make a salad. Then we could drive to [location an hour away], see if they have picnic tables, and have lunch.” Sir, we have spent the last 2 days out of state visiting family and friends. Not only do we have no prepared food here, we have no GROCERIES. All our chicken is frozen and we don’t have salad supplies.

So you want me, who literally just woke up, to plan a picnic meal, go shopping and/or defrost and marinade chicken, grill up said chicken, then pack up the car and a toddler to drive somewhere we don’t even know if they have tables? All in the next 2.5 hours for lunch? When I haven’t even had my coffee yet? Not to mention the fucking heatwave and you want to be in direct sun at NOON?!

“You always shoot down my ideas!”

Same lack of a full thought earlier this week. I was frustrated about having to cook dinner with our toddler demanding I take her outside to play now. He said “you never accept help! I could cook tonight but you won’t let me.” I said, “great! Here’s the meat. What are you putting on it?” He said he didn’t think about seasoning the food but he’d do teriyaki sauce. I said “that’s not gluten free and will make me sick.” He said, “oh, well that’s all I can think of so I guess you should do it.”

Like, motherfucker, I would LOVE for you to step up and help! I’m not being controlling because I like it. You just literally don’t think anything through. You don’t start cooking dinner at 5pm. It starts at 9am when you take something out to defrost or 3 days earlier when you’re at the store meal planning and buying ingredients.

I’m all for spontaneity but he clearly has no interest in taking on the full mental load. It’s total CEO energy: he’s the fun idea guy and he expects everyone else to figure it out

Daycare mornings are normally a chaotic rush of me getting up, trying to get ready for work, and trying to get our daughter packed/dresses/fed so we can get out the door without her missing cut off (100% of the time I am 5-15 minutes late to work and haven’t eaten). Thankfully I work remotely and am the earliest time zone on my team so no one notices and I just stay a little late. We always roll into daycare right at snack time which is perfect because all I am able to feed her these mornings is banana. Meanwhile, my unemployed husband (layoffs/not his fault, he’s trying to get work) sleeps in despite promising the night before that “tomorrow will be different!”

So tell me why today we all just happened to wake up significantly earlier and I had her all packed before she was awake, but yet somehow my husband was walking out the door with her later than ever and I was still 15 minutes late to work.

Seriously! At 8:30 she was sitting down for a real breakfast and I said “damn, if we hurry, she might be able to get there early today and make morning playground.” Apparently what my husband heard was “we are so ahead of schedule you can take your sweet ass time.” She completely missed snack which he wrote off as “fine since she ate breakfast.”

The only net positive is that I actually got to eat today (in peace, no less).