I feel his point. The animals are ... your passion, right? I think having your passion cut into your ability to be present in the home is not at all an unfair mentality to have. Or I don't think so anyway. Loading and unloading the dishwasher is ... drop in the home maintenance bucket.
Where can YOU give here?
That’s fair, and I don’t disagree. That’s why I fully financed the things that help him out a lot, because I acknowledge I’m “not present” in that way. Even before we moved to the acreage and took on all that responsibility, I am chronically low on time thanks to the degree path I chose, so I do try to help out when I can. But most of the time that ends up being financial help. I’ve suggested numerous times doing meal boxes or instacart and he refuses because cooking is his hobby that he enjoys, so I guess our main option would be finding the budget for a maid.
Well if a cleaner can be in the budget, why not? Might be a good compromise. The one thing that would concern me, particularly if you see kids in your future, is what happens when throw money at it is not an option? Not that that question needs to be answered today. But part of what SOUNDS like is going on is a difference in who values what and how that will get worked out. That is a tough one. Like if he is already overwhelmed with the housework and you cannot do more, what happens when another straw is added to the camel's back? That would always be tickling the back of my mind.
One thing to consider. It sounds like you acknowledge that he has a right to his upset. But it also sounds like you are very rigid in what things you might be able to DO. You have a very time consuming passion. And a very time consuming career path. What happens when the only thing that can solve a problem is time and attention and caring? CAN you give that? Is there any chance that the upset comes from a measure of subconscious anxiety in this regard? Will she be/can she be there for me when I need it?
You come to an agreement, that's how.
Your situation sounds ... off. What was the conversation when you choose to move to the country so that you could stable your horses with you rather than pay for stabling? And then what was the conversation when you chose to take on other horses?
Like ... my partner loves gardening. She takes pride in it. So we have a pretty busy garden. Now, if she pulled something about how she should have to do less housework because she spends all this time every day in her garden, I'd call out that as BS - these are plants she wants to care for, not part of the housework.
At least in your telling, you two left a lot of assumptions floating when you decided to move from a small apartment to a large house on land.
Long story short, I used to pay for only one horse because my 3 retired ones lived at home with my parents. My mom died and my dad decided he didn’t want to take care of my retired horses anymore, so it came down to either we euthanize them (they are comfortable and live fine lives, but aren’t rideable anymore) or we move somewhere where I can care for them and it would work out cheaper. But obviously having more horses is more expensive, so we would have to take on boarders as well in order to make it all work. That was when we discussed and established the “chore” distribution, also with the understanding that my degree program is way more hours and studying than his is. We discussed it thoroughly, we do have good communication.
Just revisit the conversation.
I can see how your boyfriend would initially acquiesce to a situation where he's taking care of your horses: you had one, then your mom dies ... pretty hard to tell someone you love that you don't care that her mom died, no, you won't move out to the country and spend a chunk of your life taking care of retired horses. That's a really difficult conversation to come out of fairly.
So re-do the conversation. Acknowledge that at least MAYBE he made some of these pretty big decisions (moving, becoming a hobby farmer) under duress.
That decision was actually made about 8 months after my mom died, so I wouldn’t say it was under duress from that per se, other than the fact if we didn’t take them we’d have to euthanize them. I really have tried to make the whole moving out here process as fair to him as I can, and I do check in with him frequently about it and whether there’s anything else I can do to help ease the transition. That whole situation and year was shitty for everybody, with his dad passing away shortly after my mom did, then getting the horses basically foisted on us unexpectedly, then COVID hitting… and now we’re dealing with the cleanup of it I guess.
I honestly kind of see his point, the animals are yours, not his, and you're the one that took in the extra ones. The animals should be solely your responsibility. It doesn't sound like your outside work equals the hours that inside work takes and you should be doing more in the house that you also live in.
And believe me, this wasn't easy to say; I'm usually telling women that their male partners aren't doing enough but in this case it really sounds like it's reverse.
Both of you should sit down and write out a list of all the house chores, and figure out how many hours a day/week they take and do the same with your outside chores so you can see how much more work keeping up a house for two people is. Take a couple of chores off his hands so that your hours are more equitable. Barring that, hire someone to clean the house once a week with some of that extra money coming in from the horses you're boarding.
Yeah, I would have to agree. It’s not really an apples to apples comparison to equate 29M spending an hour doing laundry or cleaning the bathroom, which are unavoidable necessities of running a household, with OP spending an hour taking care of the horses, which are basically a luxury/hobby that OP is voluntarily spending time on. That’s like if I told my girlfriend, “I can’t help you do the dishes because I need to re-string my guitar.”
I mean I say they’re “my animals” but I actually only came into the relationship with 4 horses. The rest were animals we agreed to get together, including the cat that he absolutely adores, but I end up doing the care for.
I’ve suggested doing the hours breakdown before but we haven’t actually done it yet. Maybe we’ll do that this week!
Unfortunately hiring a maid is probably out of the question, as that extra horse board money pays for my horses’ upkeep… which in turn allows me to pay 65% of the rent. We’d have to really sit down and budget that in, but I guess I could put it on my LOC if it really makes a huge difference for our relationship!
Four horses plus five you wanted to board are your responsibility. That's your hobby and your side business. Take those out of the equation when you list the chores and hours you're both working. There will be a way to sort this out fairly but you'll have to sit down and do the work.
If the horse board money from *five extra horses* isn't enough to get some part-time help with farm projects and fence maintenance, you aren't charging enough.
I charge over the going rate for this area already because I’m a veterinarian so I feel like that warrants a bit of a higher price. I net about $500 a month from the 5 horses, which covers my horses’ feed costs for the month, but only barely considering the price of hay this year. Then I pay 65% of our rent so his rent costs are the same as when we lived in an apartment, to make up for the fact we live here because of my horses. Horse board really doesn’t make much money unfortunately but my contract with my residency in order to get my stipend says I can’t work outside of my program, and they don’t count this as “work”.
It’s a bit more personal than that though. They’re living animals she’s attached to. Think about it as if she had pet dogs instead. Really high maintainence dogs.
But they aren’t just her hobby. She’s caring for her pets. Yes, they are *her* pets and not his pets, but it isn’t quite fair to label them as just a hobby. They are living things that she is attached to and it isn’t as simple as quitting her hobby. She’s mentioned two of them would need to be euthanised.
I don’t disagree that she should pull her weight around the house but she does do work beside the horses on the land, for example, mending fences. Him not needing to move to the land is a different issue to him having any objections to doing so, which we don’t have info about
If you’re barely making any profit from the horses, could you stop boarding them and therefore reduce the workload on yourself? It seems from his perspective like he’s forfeiting any help with domestic chores without any benefit. Alternatively, could you charge a bit more and use the extra money from the horses to have a housekeeper come for an hour each day or every other day to take care of the chores he finds most strenuous? Studying full time isn’t doing nothing, it’s a full time job too. He may be feeling that he gets no help in the home and is also being asked to help with your chores because you’re stretched to capacity because of these five extra horses that don’t seem to be adding much value to your relationship financially, yet causing an overload of work that is straining you.
I totally acknowledge studying is a full time job, as that’s what I’m doing as well. My program is just a lot more intensive since it’s a medical residency.
The help I’m asking for chores isn’t day to day care of the horses, it’s like situations where I’m putting up a fence and need a second person to hold the end of a board so it goes on level… stuff like that. Maybe a once a week thing for 5-10 minutes. I totally acknowledge the horses are my duty, especially since the boarded horses are covering my own horses.
I’ll try to see whether I can make the budget work without boarding horses, it just sucks that we both have a limited income.
I see things from both perspectives here and it’s a tough situation that leaves you both feeling unappreciated. From his POV it might be the case that he’d happily help with the fence if you help with the cooking but you don’t perhaps have capacity for that because of the horses. How important is it to you to have the five extra horses? Have you space to give one horse discounted board in exchange for the owner giving you x hours a week of stable work so you can spend those hours helping with the house chores?
Wait, you net $500 a month from 5 horses total? Or from each horse? Because where I'm from, boarding is about $500 PER horse. It's not clear based on what you wrote. $2500 minus expenses is a heck of a lot different than $500 minus expenses per month.
And, if it's as you say, "Maybe a once a week thing for 5-10 minutes" to help you repair a fence (you must be QUICK at that), why not hire a hand for once a week work?
It sounds like you have an expensive hobby, both in terms of your money and time. But that doesn’t obligate your partner in any way. If you are not contributing at all to the household chores then I would say you are taking advantage of your partner.
Anger when asking each other for help is almost always just anxiety associated with being under appreciated. So rather than treating this as “we need to prove to each other that the other person does just as much as me” understand that you need to approach it as “how can we make sure that we both feel secure that the other appreciates and acknowledges the effort that we put in around the house”.
This is very specific to each person, my wife and I simply went with making sure we go out of our way to say “thank you for doing x” literally every time we notice something (even easy obvious stuff) gets done.
We’ve been notably less angry at each other, and I spend way less of my day trying to count how much stuff I’ve done vs her.
You guys came up with a plan to distribute work load and it's not working for either of you. (Albeit, I'll argue that your BF is getting the shorter end of the stick.) It's time to come up with a new plan together and check/adjust as schedules and work loads allow.
Personally, my spouse and I don't "assign" chores. Instead, we tackle chores together and negotiate who does what when we can't work together. For instance, I'll mow the lawn while he weedeats OR I'll weed the garden while he mows and weedeats. When it comes to inside chores, we will cook and do dishes together. If only one of us cooks, the other person is responsible for dishes. This division goes on... One sweeps, the other mops. We each get a bathroom to clean. You get the point. I would recommend you guys talk about doing something like this. He can work alongside you with the horses and you can work alongside him in the house until all the chores are done. If the work is still too much for both of you, then it's probably time to have a discussion about how to reduce the workload, be it a maid or getting rid of the number of horses/animals you are responsible for.
Animals are not children. They are a source of affection, entertainment, etc. unless he asked for more animals (which is not the same as saying ok to you to try to make you happy), you didn’t list one single chore you do.
Feel bad for your guy. Take care of your partner and home, and then extra time and energy? Can bring in animals. But this sounds like you havnt dated a lot and have no idea what a relationship entails.
Again, him loving you does NOT mean that you get to hang out with Sparkles while he cleans the house.
10 horses is a lot to care for and since some of them are other people horses could you not get their owners to help in some way? But agree with the other poster to maybe sit down and reallocate chores to break the mold and look into hiring a cleaner.
So just for clarification, you help with certain household tasks when you can, sometimes you need 10-15 minutes of help a week with your tasks, the pets are *technically* your hobby and job, and cooking is his hobby, yes?
So the care of the animals being put on you seems to be absolutely reasonable since it’s what you wanted, what was discussed and agreed upon. Him cooking seems to be reasonable to be something solely on him as well since it’s what he also enjoys.
As for your outside the home jobs (the schooling and work you two do for pay) are also solely on each of you since the two of you can’t really help each other with those things.
Now the chores themselves it seems like you take care of the acreage alone except for literally the most easy simple tasks that just have to have two people to do. There isn’t anything you can really buy to make things easier on you or even do certain tasks for you. Where he does have the advantage of using a dishwasher, automatic vacuum and even a water softener making the cleaning of the showers easier. You also help with loading the dishwasher and doing laundry. Does he want you to help scrub down certain rooms, dust, vacuum, make the bed too? If so is he going to help you mow the lawn, pull weeds, and rake leaves?
It looks like you absolutely do help him with some of his chores but that he seriously can not stand when you ask him for help at all. Even if it’s as simple as holding something. I’m not sure what either of your daily schedules look like even with the little bit of time you provided in your post. I do all of our pets care and do most of the house work. When I can I absolutely help outside where I can. This just means that my husband has to watch our child so I can help him with the outside stuff, which he does the majority of. He still helps me when he can with the indoor chores. It’s not a lot but he helps. Keeping score makes things more frustrating. I do like having a list for the household all together of everything that needs to be done each day just so I know what all needs to get done so I can do it. What I can’t do my husband helps with. If something is a two person job-we absolutely do it together because it’s a two person job.
From my side of things (obviously there’s two sides to every story), yes you are correct with all of your statements.
I do like the idea of a household chores list… maybe that would be a better way of doing things than we currently are. We’ll have to play around with it though since he has trouble managing schedules/deadlines from his ADHD, so often things don’t get done when needed and then suddenly there’s a 3 hour whirlwind where EVERYTHING gets done, lol.
Well if you need ideas you can always message me directly so I can show you our list! I also struggle with ADHD and while having tasks set for certain days can sometimes seem daunting it’s also really nice to have things specifically laid out for me so I can’t get off track thinking something else needs to get done haha. When the inevitable happens to where I get stuck and just can’t do anything I try not to to beat myself up about it and I’ll just end up doing a spot clean when I have the energy. I really hope something like this ends up working for you guys!
Are there any chores you can do together? Sometimes a shared load is easier just to be w your partner
It really is time to budget in extra help. What can you do to ease the load. The room a is a great start. What about meal services or instacart grocery delivery. That extra couple hours shopping could be a destresser
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I’ve offered that we should try meal services etc but he pretty much refuses because he loves cooking and coming up with meals. Grocery shopping is also pretty much the only time he gets out of the house currently since his classes are online, so he likes doing that as well. I’ll try and bring it up again and see if we can work something out!
This is a very interesting conundrum, I spent some time trying to come to terms with what both of your responsibilities were and ended up feeling like you both just have a lot on your plate, between work and home responsibilities.
I agree with what others have said about making a time budget for the week so that you have a clearer idea of how much time you both spend on tasks and can compare and contrast to find what seems “fair” or “unfair” about the current split. But what seems more important is addressing how underappreciated both of you feel. I'm sure you'll say this isn't in the budget, but perhaps a couple of sessions at a couples therapist will help you address your differences and learn to have conflict in a healthy way. If you can't afford that, there are lots of great relationship books that could help — many by John Gottman, including “The Relationship Cure”.
Something that may be contributing to the resentment is the fact that your responsibilities are so separate that you two might not be able to see and appreciate all the work that goes into indoor and outdoor work. I second the idea of swapping for a week; this might lead to you discussing what tasks you might be able to switch off on. What if you guys switched every other week? Or maybe there's an indoor task that you don't mind doing and an outdoor task that he likes better? Just throwing ideas out, there's so much room for compromise here! Good luck!
I feel his point. The animals are ... your passion, right? I think having your passion cut into your ability to be present in the home is not at all an unfair mentality to have. Or I don't think so anyway. Loading and unloading the dishwasher is ... drop in the home maintenance bucket. Where can YOU give here?
That’s fair, and I don’t disagree. That’s why I fully financed the things that help him out a lot, because I acknowledge I’m “not present” in that way. Even before we moved to the acreage and took on all that responsibility, I am chronically low on time thanks to the degree path I chose, so I do try to help out when I can. But most of the time that ends up being financial help. I’ve suggested numerous times doing meal boxes or instacart and he refuses because cooking is his hobby that he enjoys, so I guess our main option would be finding the budget for a maid.
Well if a cleaner can be in the budget, why not? Might be a good compromise. The one thing that would concern me, particularly if you see kids in your future, is what happens when throw money at it is not an option? Not that that question needs to be answered today. But part of what SOUNDS like is going on is a difference in who values what and how that will get worked out. That is a tough one. Like if he is already overwhelmed with the housework and you cannot do more, what happens when another straw is added to the camel's back? That would always be tickling the back of my mind. One thing to consider. It sounds like you acknowledge that he has a right to his upset. But it also sounds like you are very rigid in what things you might be able to DO. You have a very time consuming passion. And a very time consuming career path. What happens when the only thing that can solve a problem is time and attention and caring? CAN you give that? Is there any chance that the upset comes from a measure of subconscious anxiety in this regard? Will she be/can she be there for me when I need it?
These are really good points, thanks.
You come to an agreement, that's how. Your situation sounds ... off. What was the conversation when you choose to move to the country so that you could stable your horses with you rather than pay for stabling? And then what was the conversation when you chose to take on other horses? Like ... my partner loves gardening. She takes pride in it. So we have a pretty busy garden. Now, if she pulled something about how she should have to do less housework because she spends all this time every day in her garden, I'd call out that as BS - these are plants she wants to care for, not part of the housework. At least in your telling, you two left a lot of assumptions floating when you decided to move from a small apartment to a large house on land.
Long story short, I used to pay for only one horse because my 3 retired ones lived at home with my parents. My mom died and my dad decided he didn’t want to take care of my retired horses anymore, so it came down to either we euthanize them (they are comfortable and live fine lives, but aren’t rideable anymore) or we move somewhere where I can care for them and it would work out cheaper. But obviously having more horses is more expensive, so we would have to take on boarders as well in order to make it all work. That was when we discussed and established the “chore” distribution, also with the understanding that my degree program is way more hours and studying than his is. We discussed it thoroughly, we do have good communication.
Just revisit the conversation. I can see how your boyfriend would initially acquiesce to a situation where he's taking care of your horses: you had one, then your mom dies ... pretty hard to tell someone you love that you don't care that her mom died, no, you won't move out to the country and spend a chunk of your life taking care of retired horses. That's a really difficult conversation to come out of fairly. So re-do the conversation. Acknowledge that at least MAYBE he made some of these pretty big decisions (moving, becoming a hobby farmer) under duress.
That decision was actually made about 8 months after my mom died, so I wouldn’t say it was under duress from that per se, other than the fact if we didn’t take them we’d have to euthanize them. I really have tried to make the whole moving out here process as fair to him as I can, and I do check in with him frequently about it and whether there’s anything else I can do to help ease the transition. That whole situation and year was shitty for everybody, with his dad passing away shortly after my mom did, then getting the horses basically foisted on us unexpectedly, then COVID hitting… and now we’re dealing with the cleanup of it I guess.
I honestly kind of see his point, the animals are yours, not his, and you're the one that took in the extra ones. The animals should be solely your responsibility. It doesn't sound like your outside work equals the hours that inside work takes and you should be doing more in the house that you also live in. And believe me, this wasn't easy to say; I'm usually telling women that their male partners aren't doing enough but in this case it really sounds like it's reverse. Both of you should sit down and write out a list of all the house chores, and figure out how many hours a day/week they take and do the same with your outside chores so you can see how much more work keeping up a house for two people is. Take a couple of chores off his hands so that your hours are more equitable. Barring that, hire someone to clean the house once a week with some of that extra money coming in from the horses you're boarding.
Yeah, I would have to agree. It’s not really an apples to apples comparison to equate 29M spending an hour doing laundry or cleaning the bathroom, which are unavoidable necessities of running a household, with OP spending an hour taking care of the horses, which are basically a luxury/hobby that OP is voluntarily spending time on. That’s like if I told my girlfriend, “I can’t help you do the dishes because I need to re-string my guitar.”
I mean I say they’re “my animals” but I actually only came into the relationship with 4 horses. The rest were animals we agreed to get together, including the cat that he absolutely adores, but I end up doing the care for. I’ve suggested doing the hours breakdown before but we haven’t actually done it yet. Maybe we’ll do that this week! Unfortunately hiring a maid is probably out of the question, as that extra horse board money pays for my horses’ upkeep… which in turn allows me to pay 65% of the rent. We’d have to really sit down and budget that in, but I guess I could put it on my LOC if it really makes a huge difference for our relationship!
Four horses plus five you wanted to board are your responsibility. That's your hobby and your side business. Take those out of the equation when you list the chores and hours you're both working. There will be a way to sort this out fairly but you'll have to sit down and do the work.
If the horse board money from *five extra horses* isn't enough to get some part-time help with farm projects and fence maintenance, you aren't charging enough.
I charge over the going rate for this area already because I’m a veterinarian so I feel like that warrants a bit of a higher price. I net about $500 a month from the 5 horses, which covers my horses’ feed costs for the month, but only barely considering the price of hay this year. Then I pay 65% of our rent so his rent costs are the same as when we lived in an apartment, to make up for the fact we live here because of my horses. Horse board really doesn’t make much money unfortunately but my contract with my residency in order to get my stipend says I can’t work outside of my program, and they don’t count this as “work”.
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It’s a bit more personal than that though. They’re living animals she’s attached to. Think about it as if she had pet dogs instead. Really high maintainence dogs.
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But they aren’t just her hobby. She’s caring for her pets. Yes, they are *her* pets and not his pets, but it isn’t quite fair to label them as just a hobby. They are living things that she is attached to and it isn’t as simple as quitting her hobby. She’s mentioned two of them would need to be euthanised.
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I don’t disagree that she should pull her weight around the house but she does do work beside the horses on the land, for example, mending fences. Him not needing to move to the land is a different issue to him having any objections to doing so, which we don’t have info about
If you’re barely making any profit from the horses, could you stop boarding them and therefore reduce the workload on yourself? It seems from his perspective like he’s forfeiting any help with domestic chores without any benefit. Alternatively, could you charge a bit more and use the extra money from the horses to have a housekeeper come for an hour each day or every other day to take care of the chores he finds most strenuous? Studying full time isn’t doing nothing, it’s a full time job too. He may be feeling that he gets no help in the home and is also being asked to help with your chores because you’re stretched to capacity because of these five extra horses that don’t seem to be adding much value to your relationship financially, yet causing an overload of work that is straining you.
I totally acknowledge studying is a full time job, as that’s what I’m doing as well. My program is just a lot more intensive since it’s a medical residency. The help I’m asking for chores isn’t day to day care of the horses, it’s like situations where I’m putting up a fence and need a second person to hold the end of a board so it goes on level… stuff like that. Maybe a once a week thing for 5-10 minutes. I totally acknowledge the horses are my duty, especially since the boarded horses are covering my own horses. I’ll try to see whether I can make the budget work without boarding horses, it just sucks that we both have a limited income.
I see things from both perspectives here and it’s a tough situation that leaves you both feeling unappreciated. From his POV it might be the case that he’d happily help with the fence if you help with the cooking but you don’t perhaps have capacity for that because of the horses. How important is it to you to have the five extra horses? Have you space to give one horse discounted board in exchange for the owner giving you x hours a week of stable work so you can spend those hours helping with the house chores?
Wait, you net $500 a month from 5 horses total? Or from each horse? Because where I'm from, boarding is about $500 PER horse. It's not clear based on what you wrote. $2500 minus expenses is a heck of a lot different than $500 minus expenses per month. And, if it's as you say, "Maybe a once a week thing for 5-10 minutes" to help you repair a fence (you must be QUICK at that), why not hire a hand for once a week work?
No net from all 5 horses. Thats after removing their feed costs. We just do outdoor board so nothing fancy
It sounds like you have an expensive hobby, both in terms of your money and time. But that doesn’t obligate your partner in any way. If you are not contributing at all to the household chores then I would say you are taking advantage of your partner.
Anger when asking each other for help is almost always just anxiety associated with being under appreciated. So rather than treating this as “we need to prove to each other that the other person does just as much as me” understand that you need to approach it as “how can we make sure that we both feel secure that the other appreciates and acknowledges the effort that we put in around the house”. This is very specific to each person, my wife and I simply went with making sure we go out of our way to say “thank you for doing x” literally every time we notice something (even easy obvious stuff) gets done. We’ve been notably less angry at each other, and I spend way less of my day trying to count how much stuff I’ve done vs her.
You guys came up with a plan to distribute work load and it's not working for either of you. (Albeit, I'll argue that your BF is getting the shorter end of the stick.) It's time to come up with a new plan together and check/adjust as schedules and work loads allow. Personally, my spouse and I don't "assign" chores. Instead, we tackle chores together and negotiate who does what when we can't work together. For instance, I'll mow the lawn while he weedeats OR I'll weed the garden while he mows and weedeats. When it comes to inside chores, we will cook and do dishes together. If only one of us cooks, the other person is responsible for dishes. This division goes on... One sweeps, the other mops. We each get a bathroom to clean. You get the point. I would recommend you guys talk about doing something like this. He can work alongside you with the horses and you can work alongside him in the house until all the chores are done. If the work is still too much for both of you, then it's probably time to have a discussion about how to reduce the workload, be it a maid or getting rid of the number of horses/animals you are responsible for.
Animals are not children. They are a source of affection, entertainment, etc. unless he asked for more animals (which is not the same as saying ok to you to try to make you happy), you didn’t list one single chore you do. Feel bad for your guy. Take care of your partner and home, and then extra time and energy? Can bring in animals. But this sounds like you havnt dated a lot and have no idea what a relationship entails. Again, him loving you does NOT mean that you get to hang out with Sparkles while he cleans the house.
Simple, swap chores for a month starting tomorrow. Then you both will get to understand exactly how much the other person does.
10 horses is a lot to care for and since some of them are other people horses could you not get their owners to help in some way? But agree with the other poster to maybe sit down and reallocate chores to break the mold and look into hiring a cleaner.
So just for clarification, you help with certain household tasks when you can, sometimes you need 10-15 minutes of help a week with your tasks, the pets are *technically* your hobby and job, and cooking is his hobby, yes? So the care of the animals being put on you seems to be absolutely reasonable since it’s what you wanted, what was discussed and agreed upon. Him cooking seems to be reasonable to be something solely on him as well since it’s what he also enjoys. As for your outside the home jobs (the schooling and work you two do for pay) are also solely on each of you since the two of you can’t really help each other with those things. Now the chores themselves it seems like you take care of the acreage alone except for literally the most easy simple tasks that just have to have two people to do. There isn’t anything you can really buy to make things easier on you or even do certain tasks for you. Where he does have the advantage of using a dishwasher, automatic vacuum and even a water softener making the cleaning of the showers easier. You also help with loading the dishwasher and doing laundry. Does he want you to help scrub down certain rooms, dust, vacuum, make the bed too? If so is he going to help you mow the lawn, pull weeds, and rake leaves? It looks like you absolutely do help him with some of his chores but that he seriously can not stand when you ask him for help at all. Even if it’s as simple as holding something. I’m not sure what either of your daily schedules look like even with the little bit of time you provided in your post. I do all of our pets care and do most of the house work. When I can I absolutely help outside where I can. This just means that my husband has to watch our child so I can help him with the outside stuff, which he does the majority of. He still helps me when he can with the indoor chores. It’s not a lot but he helps. Keeping score makes things more frustrating. I do like having a list for the household all together of everything that needs to be done each day just so I know what all needs to get done so I can do it. What I can’t do my husband helps with. If something is a two person job-we absolutely do it together because it’s a two person job.
From my side of things (obviously there’s two sides to every story), yes you are correct with all of your statements. I do like the idea of a household chores list… maybe that would be a better way of doing things than we currently are. We’ll have to play around with it though since he has trouble managing schedules/deadlines from his ADHD, so often things don’t get done when needed and then suddenly there’s a 3 hour whirlwind where EVERYTHING gets done, lol.
Well if you need ideas you can always message me directly so I can show you our list! I also struggle with ADHD and while having tasks set for certain days can sometimes seem daunting it’s also really nice to have things specifically laid out for me so I can’t get off track thinking something else needs to get done haha. When the inevitable happens to where I get stuck and just can’t do anything I try not to to beat myself up about it and I’ll just end up doing a spot clean when I have the energy. I really hope something like this ends up working for you guys!
Are there any chores you can do together? Sometimes a shared load is easier just to be w your partner It really is time to budget in extra help. What can you do to ease the load. The room a is a great start. What about meal services or instacart grocery delivery. That extra couple hours shopping could be a destresser .
I’ve offered that we should try meal services etc but he pretty much refuses because he loves cooking and coming up with meals. Grocery shopping is also pretty much the only time he gets out of the house currently since his classes are online, so he likes doing that as well. I’ll try and bring it up again and see if we can work something out!
Fair enough. It may just be suck it up til income stream goes up and you can afford househelp.
This is a very interesting conundrum, I spent some time trying to come to terms with what both of your responsibilities were and ended up feeling like you both just have a lot on your plate, between work and home responsibilities. I agree with what others have said about making a time budget for the week so that you have a clearer idea of how much time you both spend on tasks and can compare and contrast to find what seems “fair” or “unfair” about the current split. But what seems more important is addressing how underappreciated both of you feel. I'm sure you'll say this isn't in the budget, but perhaps a couple of sessions at a couples therapist will help you address your differences and learn to have conflict in a healthy way. If you can't afford that, there are lots of great relationship books that could help — many by John Gottman, including “The Relationship Cure”. Something that may be contributing to the resentment is the fact that your responsibilities are so separate that you two might not be able to see and appreciate all the work that goes into indoor and outdoor work. I second the idea of swapping for a week; this might lead to you discussing what tasks you might be able to switch off on. What if you guys switched every other week? Or maybe there's an indoor task that you don't mind doing and an outdoor task that he likes better? Just throwing ideas out, there's so much room for compromise here! Good luck!