Must I do everything around here!?

 'must I do everything around here'- my husband's favourite line.


I do believe he says that just to get under my skin
I think he likes to see the hairs on my neck rise up at attention and the vein on my head strain as I practice biting my tongue.
like most thing in our marriage I let it slide
Because really is it necessary to hit him with the frying pan because he said something idiotic...
no it is not because at the end of it all it would be me tending to the bruise!
like I need more things to take care of! LOL
 (for the record I don't believe in violence)

In the beginning of our marriage it would bug me more because I was working full time, dealing with the extra-curriculars of both children and making sure everything in the house was in order. He on the other hand was working for himself- 'exploring his options' ( he is a self taught web designer and innovator) and trying his hand on volunteer coaching. Yeah it would bug me a whole lot then.

I went away for a week one time and it provoked him into saying that I left him to take care of his life and my life. If I didn't know how stressed he was!. huh?!
My life being the children and everything else; his life being just him.
I could have throttled him.

Instead I did what I always do I tried to put myself in his shoes and I was able to rationalize that he did indeed have his role.
I may have been the more stable breadwinner
BUT
he was responsible for getting those bills paid; for doing the budget and making sure we stayed on it; for keeping gas in the car, oh and that the car stayed 'healthy'; and for any thing that involved a form or a document.
hmmm he did have a lot on his plate!

Time happened  we added more children to the family and my pregnancies though easy enough and uneventful usually start off with a dire warning of 'don't lift anything but your elbow' and he did take more and then I got pregnant with the twins and he basically took everything on because I was so pained up and tired ALL the time!

He did the groceries
picked up the children
bought me nutritious not always delicious meals but always good for me and my growing belly for breakfast and lunch
was responsible for bathing the children- bathing children is so taxing I would be a wreck each time or is it just my children LOL
and he also had taken on his father's business with a whole can of stress.

All of this on top of what he used to do before!
I really gained an appreciation for him through this third pregnancy. My hero.

Even now that things have gotten less chaotic with me bodywise he still takes responsibilty for the groceries and he bathes/supervises the older children... what a relief!
So now when he say must i do everything around here?! I say yes and smile because he may not do everything but it is pretty darn close.

Alisa Bowman of Project Happily Ever After said this:

many spouses probably walk around with this simmering resentment about their partners who seemingly do so little around the house. Little do they know that their partners have the same resentment about them. Fascinating, right?

And I knew this was true for us at least, because this was a topic I had been piecing together to share here and saw that she was tackling the same issue there.


So I suggest you read her post ( I like how she breaks down the division and allocation of tasks) then think about what exactly it means when you or the significant other shouts
MUST I DO EVERYTHING AROUND HERE!