Husband frustrated by irritable wife?

[conuly]

DEAR NATALIE: My wife has a busy life and a hectic work schedule. We have two small children and she works full-time as a lawyer. I am also a lawyer, but she always seems to have more to do than me. Whenever we are home from work, there’s homework to do, dinner to make and clothes to put away. I keep telling her it’ll get done, but then she becomes exasperated with me. “Who’s going to do it?” she says. I have offered to get a cleaning service or a part-time nanny to help her, but she says that there are better things to spend money on. At the end of the day, she’s exhausted and really irritable toward me. I want to do something to make her feel better, like a vacation, but I’m worried she will say that we don’t have time for it. What can I do to make her happier? I don’t want this to hurt our relationship. -- FRUSTRATED HUSBAND

DEAR FRUSTRATED HUSBAND: I want you to look up the term “emotional labor.” I want you to study what you just wrote to me. Reflect. Recognize your role in all of this. Your wife is doing the same job as you, but when she comes home, her role as house manager kicks in and your work appears done. She has every right to be irritable and exasperated — she feels like everything at home is falling on her shoulders. Instead of offering to hire a cleaning service, fold the laundry when you see it in the dryer. (You do know where your dryer is, right?) Instead of asking what you can do to “help,” take a proactive role as a partner: See what needs to be done and just do it. Also, don’t expect a pat on the back for doing dishes, vacuuming, getting the kids ready for bed or cooking a meal. Show that you care instead of asking her why she’s stressed. A vacation is only a band-aid. Equity should be in the home as well as the workplace. The real work begins when you show up for your household like you do at your job. Both of you will be less stressed when you share the load.

https://www.uexpress.com/ask-natalie/2020/2/19/husband-forgot-your-40th-birthday-and

Comments

[ashbet]

As Captain Awkward says, sometimes the cheapest way to pay for something is with money.

While I agree with all of you that “to help HER” is bad framing, and the husband SHOULD make changes, I also think that if they can afford it, getting a cleaning service or childcare or cooking assistance might make a material difference in everyone’s exhaustion and irritability.

His wife is coming home and working the “second shift” — taking over some of that burden by outsourcing, AND by the husband taking over some of those tasks, is a good way to ease stress on the marriage and its inhabitants.

(Obviously, this advice only works for people who can afford it, but two lawyers have a decent likelihood of being able to do so.)

[sara]

Yeah, but who's going to have to hire and supervise the help? I'll bet he won't be doing it. It's very difficult to hire people to do household tasks and it's so rarely an actual time saver.

[ashbet]

Yes and no?

I’m disabled, and regularly (wish I could afford weekly) pay to have certain household stuff done that I physically can’t do myself.

[jadelennox]

I'm disabled, too, and I tried hiring household help, and discovered it was too much work for me to handle. I know plenty of people for whom hired help is a godsend, don't get me wrong. But for me, finding people, communicating with them, tidying the house so they could come in, etc. was too much.

If LW's wife is already doing all the household management, it may well be that she can't wrangle that as well. Heck, LW sounds like the kind of guy who might happily leave his crap all over, ignoring the fact that you need to tidy in front of the cleaning service, or the kind who thinks that once you have a cleaning service then the magical fairies have handled everything and suddenly he doesn't need to worry about getting dinner or groceries or talking to the kids' teachers.

[conuly]

or supervising the homework or doing the daily cleaning in between cleaning service visits or doing the school run or supervising bathtime or putting the kids to bed or making breakfast or....

[ashbet]

True -- I have not had great luck with cleaning/maid services, the amount of work I had to do in advance (tidying everything so that the surfaces can be cleaned) made the "help" I was receiving not very helpful.

I've had better luck hiring individuals who do *actual housekeeping/organizing* through sites like care.com, or just paying a friend to come and mop the floors twice a month.

(This is not to say that I'm wealthy at all, but paying $100 for a few hours of heavy cleaning once a month saves me from badly re-injuring my back, so I pretty much consider it a medical expense.)