Tuesday, 1 October 2019

Being constantly guilt tripped for having a job


BackgroundExH and I have twins, who are three. They attend nursery at a school, and are there for the full school day (9am-3pm ish).ExH and I split up in June, but for a multitude of reasons we still live together. A quick scan of my post history shows this isn't the best environments, but we're pretty much stuck in it until our house is sold (currently on the market)I started my job in May 2018, working evenings and weekends from home. My hours changed in April this year, to more typical "business hours", and started working in our office (3 miles away) more often. I got promoted in June, with these hours and work set-up remaining.ExH works a part time contract in the evening, and takes on overnight overtime when he can. Sometimes this is short notice, and the frequency of this alters from week to week.I have an element of flexibility in my work, as long as I don't take advantage of it. I am able to work 1 day a week from home, although I only use this when I need to, as my promotion has come with an increased workload that I can handle better in an office setting. There's only one day when my hours are 100% set in stone due to work commitments, which is a Monday. This has been the case since April. Because of the flexibility, and the fact I've worked from home, ExH and his family don't take my job too seriously, even though I make better money than he does, and I have a lot of responsibility in my line of work (no MLMs here, guys!)The kids started at school this September. With my flexibility I have agreed with ExH to drop them off at school Tuesday - Friday, but he would be responsible for Monday drop off/pick up, and pick ups Tuesday - Friday (NB: Any hours outside of my regular business hours that I do not work, I have to make up in my own time, as you can expect) . I proposed this to him as a way for him to still get a decent amount of sleep when he works overtime (he gets home about 5am, kids get out of school just after 3pm), and it's still split as evenly as it can be.ExH goes along with this, but constantly makes comments about how I am a bad parent for "prioritising my work over the children", which is far from the truth. I would pick them up and take them to school every single day if I could, but my working hours, which have been in place long before the kids started school, need to be worked to provide for the family.I've mentioned that with him being at home in the day he has the ability to catch up on his sleep (not perfect, I know, but he has never had issues sleeping in the day since doing this job), but he continually turns it into an argument about how I am not doing enough, and my work should be more flexible (I've yet to find another company as flexible as mine, yet flexibility is about give and take, and I can't just take, take, take.) I don't see it as that unreasonable that the kids get picked up by their dad, and dropped off most of the time by their mum. As long as they're being cared for does it really matter who does it?As a side note, I have often come home from work, or even from picking the kids up from school when I've been able to, and ExH, by his own admission, has been awake for 3 or 4 hours and has just been sitting watching TV the whole time, and the house is a complete mess. If I dare to not do any housework after the kids go to bed, he will absolutely let me know I'm a terrible person. I'm sick of the double standards.So, my question is, how do I make him see that as much as I adore my children and would love to do all of the school runs, I have to keep my work happy in order to keep my job, which in turn keeps money coming in, without him calling me a bad mother? I'm at my wits' end with everything, and these constant guilt trips are making it really difficult for me to keep my head down and get on with what I need to do.​EDIT: I'd just like to add a recent example of how unreasonable some of these outbursts are. On Sunday I offered to go to the shop and buy some bread, as we had ran out. ExH said no, as he was going shopping the following day. On Monday morning he says he is making eggs and toast for the kids, then five minutes later realises we have no bread, and gets in my face shouting at me because I "should have remembered and told him we had no bread". via /r/Parenting https://ift.tt/2p1bgCx

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