My husband (M/28yo/married 3yrs) expects me (F/24yo) to do all the housework because I work one day less than him. Just had a big fight :(

Kind of ridiculous that everyone here is just on "omg your husband sucks" bandwagon, like that's some kind of insight or something. I mean, no shit he's being a dick, and it's pretty clear you know this from your post. It's not like you're saying "is he out of line?" or something.

What I'm not seeing anyone talk about here is the communication pattern between you guys, or rather, lack thereof:

it has become apparent that my husband

expects me to have his uniforms laundered since (his words), "you're just at home all day"

feel that the disparity between our work hours is not so great as to put the whole burden of responsibilities on me and, without being mean, he isn't the primary bread winner.

he made a snide comment saying "I guess I'm sleeping in dirty sheets tonight?"

so I replied with, "you're welcome to change them yourself if it bothers you"

I lost it and shouted "a housekeeper too?! In addition to what?" and we had a huge fight.

You know what I don't see in there, anywhere? The two of you sitting down and having a rational conversation about expectations. Just a bunch of passive aggressive bullshit and assumptions about how relationships and home life should work when one person makes more while working less.

Assuming you want to have an actually functional relationship (and not just reddit telling you "oh yeah you're right, he sucks, wallow in that resentment!!"), you gotta talk about this. Some time when you're not fired up at each other.

The bottom line is that right now you guys aren't a team, you sound like two people who live together an resent each other -- he resents that you outearn him AND get more days off, you resent that he expects you to do all the housework because of your time off.

You can take the easy advice here, get pissed off, tell him to pay half the bills, go fuck himself, hire a maid, but that isn't gonna fix SHIT in your marriage. Playing hardball with your partner isn't how stuff gets fixed -- you might "win" in the short term but guess what, being married to someone you "beat" ain't no way to live.

So sit down and talk to each other and get on the same page about how your lives together work. You will both have to compromise here. If you can't come to any kind of agreement, then fuck, you're 24 and you're married to someone that you literally can't find common ground with. Do you want this to be the rest of your life?

/r/relationships Thread