Household Division Puns

Excuse me for writing a book- if you have time to read this and could offer some advice, thank you so much in advance.

My husband and I are really struggling to figure out the division of household labor. For reference, we have two dogs (one is a 9 month old puppy and can be a handful), but no kids yet. We live in a 1400 sf home together. We've had a few respectful conversations about some tension/frustration (on both sides) and neither of us really knows what's right.

The backstory:

Both of us work; I have an office management position that's pretty challenging, and I would consider the job moderately stressful. I work an average of 40 hours per week (7:30-4PM, M-F). I am also a part-time college student, aiming for a degree in my career field, and I have a Fiverr side gig. He has a government job, and for about ten months now he has been on a really unique schedule, where he doesn't work on a lot of days. When he does go to work, he's in at 8:30 AM and usually off between 9 AM and 1 PM. I would estimate he works an average of about 15 hours per week, maybe 20-25 on a 'busy' week. He often gets 4-day weekends, or entire weeks off, because of the nature of his job. Both of us are paid fairly well and make about the same amount. We're both salaried, and his pay is the same as if he were working a full schedule. So he is not working so few hours by choice, nor has he lost any income.

Since he's had so much more time at home, he has been handling the majority of the house work. Almost daily, he does the dishes, folds laundry, etc and does the "deep cleaning" chores when needed- like cleaning bathrooms, full vacuum, etc. during the week while I'm at work. These items are getting done significantly less often than when we both worked pretty evenly and split chores more evenly- dishes every other day, bathrooms every couple of weeks, etc. When he's not doing chores at home, he's usually playing video games. He generally has time to play video games daily, often multiple times a day, and still get the chores he does, done. I also do chores, mostly on the weekends when "deep cleaning" needs to be done, and also more "everyday" chores during the week when I have time and they need doing. I still cook more often (or at least 50/50) and I still routinely tidy the house, balance the budget, pay bills, make plans/appointments, handle home paperwork, etc. That being said, he's probably doing about 75% of the house work.

Lately he's been feeling frustrated with the

I'm an Irish expat living in Vietnam and I can relate to a lot of the experiences on the channel. But I was pretty shocked by this video.

https://youtu.be/0zo8hwh0dwA

Despite both being raised in western cultures, both men consider housework to be "womanly duties" and lament the fact that women in the West aren't prepared to do everything anymore.

I have no problem with relationships where one person takes care of the house while the other works, but AFAIK Winston's wife was working as a doctor during this time, I'm not sure if C-milks girlfriends were also working full time when he describes them doing all his housework for him? Working full time and doing all the housework is a massive burden and it surprises me to hear western men describe that dynamic as a positive thing.

Winston then goes on to say that "every man wants to be taken care of" in that way. I guess I'm extremely lucky to have a boyfriend who genuinely wants to share housework. When I'm tired or not feeling well he doesn't even let me clean up because he wants to do it for me. He is also South African like Winston, and another SA man I dated also had the polar opposite view of Winston's, so in my experience it doesn't seem to be a cultural thing.

I sincerely hope that most western men wouldn't be happy to watch their partner get burnt out from endless work outside and inside the home, the way Chinese and Vietnamese men do. Equal division of labor is a positive development in western culture imo, and it's interesting to me to hear the opposite from two men who are so critical of every other way china is undeveloped.

https://e.vnexpress.net/news/life/trend/indolent-husbands-leave-vietnamese-women-burnt-out-4126939.html

Clearly unpacking from a lifestyle night out takes a couple of days. My wife left an unused bottle of lube on the stairs for me to put away!

That demonstrates clearly I am the “equipment manager/hardware” guy of our duo: I handle and store all tangible materials related to sex, maintain our online profiles, and do the majority of typing (as you can see).

My wife is the “soft skills/public relations” gal: calls the club for reservations, initiates conversations with prospective play partners (or even chats up vanillas - gotta shoot your shot), and let’s face it, it’s her selfies & pics of her that open up the doors for us in all enterprises related to swinging! I do search for the “mood porn” but she selects from that what we watch mutually :)

So kind folks out there in Swingerland, what roles in the lifestyle are delegated to you? To your spouse/partner? Inquiring minds want to know!

Hi Everyone,

I wanted to get some insight into what you all do in your households as I am struggling.

But of Background Info:

• LO is just over 1 year
• I had 12 months Mat Leave
• I had nerve damage from birth to approx 7.5 months (difficulty walking, standing etc). During this time, hubby did majority of cooking, cleaning because I was in so much pain. I did what I could but it obviously wasn't as much as him
• hubby works full time with over time as well.

I am now back to work full-time and LO is in daycare. I am been doing the laundry, cooking 95% of meals, washing dishes, general daily cleaning (wiping down counters, vacuuming, feeding cat, stocking baby room, Diaper bag, etc) 50% of grocery shopping by myself, the other 50% we do as a family on weekends. My hubby works late sometimes.. Differs every day/week but maybe 1. 5-2hrs each day. He is also working on house Renos when he has time, takes the garbage out, shovels snow and deals with the vehicles and changes cat litter.

In regards to LO - he does 50% of getting her ready in the morning, I take her to daycare 95%. I also pick her up, and entertain her. For bathtime, if he is not home yet from Work, I will get her ready. If he is home, LO and I will usually shower together, and he will take her out and dress her in pj's. LO nurses to sleep 98% of the time and I am up with her at night as she is a high emotional needs baby (she only wants me).

Am I doing enough? I feel like he's always upset with me. This morning I walked into the kitchen with Tupperware all on the floor. I asked him what was up and he was really frustrated with the Tupperware in the kitchen cabinet and ended up throwing them out. (they are old take-out containers.. I use them for plants or if we need emergency Tupperware.. But there's no other use for them and they take up space). He then said that this is my job to do (news to me as we've never spoken about it before) and he started talking about what I should be doing and "how about you start doing the stuff I do, and I do the stuff you do" . I mean, yeah sure I can take the garbage out and shovel the snow, but then the baby is left inside and she's so needy when I'm with her. I don't know how to do the renovations nor anything with the car. I told him that we can chat when he has calmed down and he said I'm downplaying his feelings so I apologized and walked away to take LO to day care. This is not how I wanted to start my day. His reaction didn't match th

My boyfriend's spending habits are quite exorbitant. It is creating strife in our relationship. About a year ago, he asked me to move in with him. He owns his home. His mortgage was more than double what I had previously been paying for my rental property. I was also a bit taken aback. As soon as he made this proposition, he pulled out a list of shared expenses that he had already drafted up - without any input on my behalf and before he even knew if I'd be interested in living together at all. Essentially, his initial expectation was that we would go 50/50 on everything.

I was very upfront about the fact that his lifestyle is far above my means, and this arrangement would simply not be possible for me at the present time. It's worth noting that he earns significantly more than me. He was insistent that he didn't want that to prevent us from taking this next step together. He said we would work something else out. I ended up moving in and paying for nearly all of the groceries, as well as household items like paper products, toiletries, etc. My family gifted us a new furniture set for the living room. In addition, I do nearly all of the household chores and the lion's share of cooking. We're not talking about ramen noodles and frozen pizza. We're talking about complicated, time-consuming home chef style meals that I provide expensive ingredients for and prepare myself.

Over time, I started to feel as though he was taking advantage of the situation. He stopped making any effort to make these tasks the slightest bit more manageable. He throws his underwear and dirty clothing on the floor, leaves dirty dishes just laying around, leaves his beard trimmings in the sink, etc. He has begun asking me for very specific meals at the last minute, right when I already have my ingredients together and am about to start cooking. I have tried as best as I can to keep up with everything. Still, it honestly feels overwhelming at times.

He does not include me in any of his financial decisions. He recently remortgaged his house, then used the pay out to pay off credit card debt .... only to immediately turn around and start racking up more. In the past few months alone, he has purchased a $4500 fridge, a $5,000 mattress, a new gaming PC complete with new monitors, as well as a virtual reality headset. Every payday, he heads straight to Amazon and starts loading up his cart. He says he needs his "retail therapy." He has also become a miser about seemingly innocuous thing

“In different-sex couples who have young children and both work a full-time job, mothers are estimated to do an average of roughly five more hours a week of paid and unpaid labor than fathers.”

Where's the social Justice angle: The reduction of the traditional family to “different-sex couples”. The reduction of motherhood to “unpaid labor”.

UPDATE: We've had a few scattered talks through the day and we're mostly on the same page. He admitted that maybe his anger isn't really about the chores. His one sticking point is that I took off early yesterday and didn't try to make it up later. I had already told him multiple times I just needed to be done for the day because I didn't feel well and was burnt out. I don't know what's so hard to understand about that, but he can't understand it. But he also said that's "on him", so we're moving on from all of it.

*Also of note, my husband will take a mental health day on occasion during the school year which I have NO judgement of, so I don't know why I'm not allowed the understanding of TWO HOURS off my 8 hour work day to reboot myself (trying to prevent using a whole day of PTO).

shrug it's done for now and I don't have the mental space to keep stressing about it. Thanks again to all for your feedback-- it's a huge help.

Good morning!

My husband and I are struggling a bit right now with balancing housework. For reference, I'm 22 weeks, and we have a 2 year old. My husband is a school teacher, so he's home for the summer. Our toddler goes to child care 4 out of 5 weekdays (so my husband only had full-day toddler care once a week).

I've had a rough couple weeks with extreme exhaustion/fatigue, and then this week, some mental health issues have been catching up with me (stress-anxiety, primarily). The exhaustion itself has been mentally taxing.

The first week my husband was supportive. He could see how out of whack I was, and told me to take my mid-day naps and not overdo it. This week, apparently, has caught up with him.

He's upset that I took off early from work yesterday because I wasn't feeling well (like, 2.5 hours, total). I think he's see it as, he'll do housework, I'm doing work-work. Oh, and I work from home. So usually I'm working from home, but he's at school teaching, so when he's home for summer, that changes the dynamic.

Anyway, he's feeling overwhelmed with housework, and feeling put-upon. I would say that's valid to an extent, but we literally talked about this last week. I was crying, feeling guilty that I was so useless because I was only tired. He told me not to worry about it, take care of myself, etc. So now I'm taking care of myself when I feel I need it (edging on a panic attack, so took off work to catch my breath).

In any case, apparently I've hit my limit, or his limit of how often I'm allowed to feel badly.

Anyw

What is the most equitable division of household labor you‘ve been able to achieve with a male partner? My best was probably 80/20, although in most cases it has been more like 95/5. One of the biggest issues is that most men can’t cook. I’ve tried to get my non-cooking boyfriends involved in the kitchen by trying to get them to help me prep dinner. To me, this could be a fun activity for us. But they’re usually not interested. How do you try to even up the division of labor if your partner can’t/won’t cook? Do you require him to buy dinner (takeout/restaurant visit) two nights a week so that he also “helps put food on the table”? Or do you assign all the cleaning/shopping to him so as to help even up the chores? Looking for fresh ideas here...

I filed for divorce 2 months back and moved out of rental apartment. 3 yr old marriage. After I left, STBXW also moved out and took all the expensive furniture/ electronics with her which I had bought during marraige. I have receipts for some. Entire stuff is about 5-6 k at current value. While we have equal incomes, I fear that I lost the stuff.

I am wondering if I lost the equity? Is there any way I can recover it? (I am just getting started with divorce in NJ)

Hi, We have 5 kids, ages: 8, 6, 4, 2, and 3 months. I am a stay at home mom and doing all the nightly feedings with the infant, plus all the child care for all the others. I do all the household chores, including picking up after my husband (clothes on the floor, dishes in the sink, messy room, etc). I do all the grocery shopping and a majority of the cooking for the 7 of us. He might order a pizza in once a week, and maybe cook a dinner once a week. Nothing regular. It just depends on how he feels. I'm the one taking out the trash a majority of the time, too! He's very disorganized and his stuff is everywhere,and he's a bit of a slob, too, leaving dirty dishes in his room, trash, (he has sleep issues so he has his own room in the 3 bedroom house). It often feels like I have 5 young kids and a "teenager - husband!"

He tells me he works hard at his manual labor job as a shop foreman mechanic. If I want it fair, then I'd get an evening job and we'd split the household chores. Until then, he works his job, and my job is the kids and household. It feels like the 1940's. I feel devalued and unappreciated. I also feel like he has zero concept of how hard I work running a household for 5 young kids and doing all the housework. He works from 8-5, then comes home and does whatever he wants. I tell him my job never stops. I work all night with the infant, and if any of the other kids have needs during the night. Plus, if I "clocked out" at 5 pm, my work builds up (laundry, dishes, etc). His work area stays the same from 5 pm until he returns to work the following morning at 8 am. His work area also stays exactly how he left it at 5 pm on a Friday until 8 am Monday morning! There is no way I can take off like that! I can't even get a sick day to spend in bed. But when he gets sick he can stay in bed for 3+ days.

I've approached him regarding the imbalance of household chores. We went to couple's therapy and the therapist said he should step it up quite a bit. And he did, for awhile. Our relationship seems like it's always on the brink of divorce and he doesn't seem happy. The things he says, and the way he acts, it feels like it's not a question of "if" he wants to break up & move out, but "when."

Sometimes I feel like it would be less work if he did move out because I wouldn't be cleaning up after him or dealing with the volatility of our relationship. I feel it's trivial to split up a family over something like this, but I don't feel respected or valued.

I'm 54 and an older GenX, and I find it interesting that household chores tend to fall along traditional gender lines between me and my husband. It's not a rigid distribution. Laundry is about 50/50, for example. And for the most part, our philosophy is that whoever cares the most about X gets to do it, so there have been times I mowed the lawn and times that he dusted. But generally speaking, the chores we tend to gravitate toward are the ones traditionally associated with our gender.

I'm curious what other married people's experience has been. Are your household chores delineated by gender? If so, is it by individual choice or because of real or perceived social expectations?

Hey guys!

I'm Robyn (re387@bath.ac.uk) and I'm currently conducting research for my undergraduate dissertation on the division of physical and cognitive household labour in student households.

I'm struggling to get enough responses at the moment so any help is much appreciated!!

My survey aims to record the perceived distribution of housework in student households and each participants' satisfaction with this split. There are no known risks and the survey is completely anonymous. You can withdraw from the survey at any point. The link will take you first to a consent page, followed by the survey.

The study is aimed at current students aged 18-25 living in student households.

Please find the link here: https://forms.gle/uFsDJh2XqAxVPfB18

Hey all! I hope this post finds you having a happy Tuesday. Have a question for those of you who have a significant other.

I (25f) am a full-time infant nanny and work outside our home for 48 hours per week. My significant other (26m) is a middle school teacher who works from home and does online school for his masters in education, averaging 35 hours per week actively working.

My partner and I have been dating for a year and a half, living together for a little over a year, and he’s an amazing person. He’s done so much for me since my diagnosis of Hashimoto’s disease a year ago. The fatigue at points before my diagnosis was so severe that I was sleeping from 16-18 hours per day, had constant sciatic pain from endometriosis flare-ups aggravated by the Hashimoto’s, and was really struggling with depression. Since then I’ve been seeking treatment and have progressed a lot, though I still struggle a lot with fatigue.

To my main point: my partner and I have had a lot of discussions on what is “fair” in terms of division of household labor. As it stands now, since I work more and have a chronic illness, I do about 35% of the chores (concentrated to only on the weekends) and he does 65% (throughout the work week). However, this leaves me feeling guilty, because even though it takes 100% and then some of my energy to get everything I need done every week, that doesn’t mean he should have to cover an extra 15% of the chores and also exhaust 100% of his energy.

I don’t know. I feel conflicted about it and sometimes we argue about it and frequently rearrange how we split up the chores. Have you guys ever gone through something like this? How did you resolve it?

Throughout the pandemic, my share of household labor has increased dramatically. Whereas previously my boyfriend and I bought our lunches at work and went out to eat on weekends, I have cooked all of our breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for the last 6 months. I also do all of the meal planning and shopping. I also have been doing 99% of cleaning the dishes. Last week, I asked him if he could take responsibility for washing the after-dinner dishes. He really resented this request, and now when he washes the dishes at night he makes angry comments at me like “I better wash the dishes now so I don’t have to listen to you complain about it”. I don’t think I was bitchy about my request, but he clearly viewed it that way... I really don’t like the nasty attitude he’s been giving me because I asked him to do 10 minutes of work per day in the home, as compared to the several hours of work I do in the home each day. I also work full-time at a demanding job. My boyfriend comes from a very traditional culture where women do ALL the cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc. He never learned how to cook. But when he visits his mother, he does the dishes without complaining. I feel that he has come to view me as “the servant”. I feel that most of my boyfriends have viewed me this way, because women are still expected to do all of this no matter how many other demands there are on our time. Have any of you succeeded in getting your male partner to help with household chores without having to endure his resentment about this?

https://umich.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_a9JRFcqp11kt1t4

Hi fellow moms, we are a university team working on the gender-based division of work at homes and would love for you to fill out this anonymous survey about how household work/ childcare activities are divided between couples. The point is to help working moms with a more equitable share of work at home so that we could command more time to professionally and personally grow. We are building a product to assist in having productive conversations between couples about the division of emotional labor and your input would greatly assist in that process. It only takes a couple of minutes and would help me out greatly. Thank you :)

https://umich.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_a9JRFcqp11kt1t4.

Me (29M) and my wife (31F) have been together for 6 years, married for 3. We have a great relationship and she's an amazing person that I'm lucky to have in my life. However, there is one issue with our relationship that has persisted since we moved in together 5 years ago. She is extremely "on top of it" when comes to chores and does them before I can get to them. For example, last week we had guests coming on Saturday so I told her that I would run the vacuum through the house and clean the bathroom when I got home that Friday night. When I came home from work she had already done it, I felt it would be ungrateful to complain that she had done it, so I just thanked her and began cooking (it was my night to cook).

She works from home and I work in an office with a 2-hour commute, I leave at 7 AM and return around 5:30 PM every day. Since my wife works from home and she has downtime from her job, she'll putter around the house cleaning while she is bored or on a break. On an average day, she will usually do 2-3 chores on her breaks and by the time I get home, there are very few household tasks remaining. This issue blew up when we were having a Christmas eve brunch with her family today and I went to go take dishes into the kitchen and her mother sarcastically says, "Oh so he can help around the house!". I asked her what she meant and my wife was visibly uncomfortable when she explained that my wife told her how I don't help her out and let her do everything for me.

I disputed this, I told her I cook on my nights of the week and I do whatever chores need doing when I see they haven't been done, but my wife is so on top of everything its hard to get to anything before she's done it. We've tried chore lists and she always ends up doing my chores because she's bored and then she's angry that I am not helping. I don't understand how I can win in this situation, she's not allowing me to help, then getting mad at me for not helping. On top of that, I understand venting to your family if you need to, but I think it's a super unfair version of events she's telling her family that is damaging my relationship with them.

Intentionally broad question. I’m wondering where people go with it.

Do you find that there are fewer assumptions about who does what when it comes to the kids, because gender is less taken for granted and therefore less of an available heuristic?

Or do things still kind of settle neatly based on masculine and feminine, falling into roles you're more comfortable taking rather than being based on male/female birth assignment?

Or do you just kind of divide the labor based on totally non-gendered things?

Etc.

Curious!

My husband is a very messy guy, he doesn't steam his own clothes or pick up his own wrappers or wet towels on the floor, fills the car with trash constantly, etc. That's part of his personality IMO- his dad is the exact same way and his mom never made him change his habits. He's "eccentric" if you want to give him the benefit of a doubt- he has a PhD and he's intelligent, he's book smart but lacks all the common sense. Ok, so I've established he's messy and lazy when it comes to menial household cleanliness.

While we were first dating, I told him I wanted to have kids one day and if I had them with him I'd want to stay home with them while they are little because in our relationship I did all the household tasks and he enjoyed working super hard on his goals and work. For example, he was the messiest member of a 4 person dorm apartment so I'd go over and wash dishes and clean up the trash and bathroom in exchange for him letting me nap and study there (I lived far from campus). He thought that was cool- seemed like we would complement each other.

We got married, we both went to grad school- he went for a PhD and I went for my Master's, then he got a job offer and I got pregnant.. we both graduated and moved back home and he started the new job.

After baby came our car unexpectedly suffered total engine failure (I don't know what else to call it lol..) so we had to buy a new car that we pay $277 a month for now. Then I had to have my gallbladder out as well as a second surgical procedure and we reached our $5k out of pocket max. On top of that we've both had dental work since getting dental insurance and it has still cost more than $1500. So even though he has a 60k per year job and can rake in $5k teaching an online class, I am working about 30 hours a week and taking the baby to work with me.

This is totally different than what we planned and I know it's out of necessity and I should just suck it up because TIS LIFE but this new situation is making me want to move in with my parents so bad and leave my husband behind... not because I don't love him, but because of the WORK it takes to live with him. (AKA being the only person who lifts a finger in my house and the person who takes care of baby except for once in a while he can feed or play with her)

Each time we fight about this stuff he says he will change and start doing more stuff but he procrastinates til the last second when I have no bottles that are clean or the trash is overflowing

My husband gets back tonight from a week long work trip so I've had to solo parent my ~1 year old. It's been pretty hard cause we both work full time and DH and I split baby care and household chores 50 - 50. He's truly my equal partner. When I went to pick up my kiddo at daycare yesterday I was chatting with his teachers (3 of them) casually and mentioned how it's been a tiring week cause I've had to do everything myself. I mentioned that DH does every single thing for us in the morning, change him, dress him, make him breakfast, make me tea and play with him until I come downstairs and nurse him. I said we trade off duties - he does breakfast while I do dinner and the teachers were SHOCKED. They were like, "Whoa you got a good man there, I can't get my husband to do half these things. Hang on to him." Obviously these women aren't SAHMs, they are teachers full time at the daycare, but it looks like they are bearing the brunt of child care and household chores.

That's when I realized that literally every time I speak about our chores ethics and all the stuff my husband does, I've been met with awe and wonder. Everyone is borderline jealous. Everyone says, "Oh I'll be lucky if he does anything I ask him to do." That breaks my heart cause it took me back to when I was growing up, when my mom worked full time but did 100% of child care and household chores. My dad wouldn't lift a finger, whether to parent or to contribute his share to the house. I understand that was a different generation, but what excuse do we have now? We need to start taking this seriously and eliminate this gap.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2017/09/27/women-chores-home_a_23224733/

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2018/feb/17/dirty-secret-why-housework-gender-gap

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-206381/Working-women-housework.html

I'd also be interested to hear the reasoning behind it

From the beginning he has known, I don't cook. I can't cook, and have anxiety over cooking thanks to OCD. I made the deal that I don't cook, I'll clean ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING if I don't have to. Even being told I need to cook brings me anxiety.

I clean the bathroom, toilets, floors, mop, tidy and dust and do all the laundry every week. If I don't empty the garbage, or wash clothes, it doesn't get done. He doesn't clean up after himself particularly often. He leaves dirty clothes everywhere and our house is filed with pockets of random crap (filthy rags from polishing the car, etc) that I have to deal with. If I let the house go, it looks like hell. He just doesn't bother. He does turn the dishwasher on sometimes but I can't fully depend on him to do it

If I take time away from cleaning he starts to nag "ok! Let's clean!" If I clean he leaves me to it to do his own thing. His weekends are purely recreational and he keeps to his own hobbies while I scrub the shower and fold his underwear.

If I don't find time (say I'm busy on the weekend) I'll get clothes for the week washed at bare minimum. Sometimes I don't have them folded and they're in baskets. I'll hear for as long as it takes that it's not done and he can't find socks or this and that. He won't fold them himself and feels he doesn't have to because it's my job.

That would be fine but he doesn't cook everyday. Some weeks go by without a single meal that isn't take away. He does cook but it's not that frequent. Now he has started to say "ok! Your turn to cook! Go and buy food and do it!"

I'm not sure how to communicate that I do enough and I don't want to deal with my phobia after sorting his dirty undies and still being criticised for not doing enough.

tl;dr: My bf is nagging me to cook, I do nearly all of the housework as it is and thought we had a deal with regards to who cooks. Feeling very one sided and still not good enough for him. Like I'll never be marriage material.

First a quick background: my husband and I have been married 7 months, and moved in together about 9 months ago. I work in finance at a large company, and have for the last 4 years since college.

My husband went to seminary for 3 years after college, and now works as a minister at our local parish. He does a lot of good work and I am very proud.

Our marriage has been very happy, but our worst arguments by far is the division of labor. Because he works on Sunday, he gets every Friday free, and has designated the day to pursue his free time and hobbies. I have frequently joked that I dont know where my "fun day" went, as after I work all week, I'm left with chores and other duties during the weekend. My "day off" (Saturday) is spent meal prepping, grocery shopping, cleaning, laundry, etc. Then Sunday is a busy church day even for me because my husband is a minister.

This has left me completely exhausted. I am a fitness freak, and I try to go to the gym 4x a week. By the time I commute to work, stay at work 9 hours, hit the gym, and arrive home I have been gone 11 hours. My husband will want to know what is for dinner, as he only cooks on rare occasions. After dinner, I shower and get ready to do it all again the next day. I don't even have kids yet, and I'm fucking tired.

I feel like I am the one who has to notice we are out of hand soap and paper towels, and we need a birthday card for so and so's birthday. My husband still does a LOT around the house, probably more than most men, but I still feel like I have the "mental load". Is this even real or am I crazy?

Last night I had a mental breakdown of sorts. I had a terrible day at work, and by the time I had come home, my husband had already been home for an hour. Of course, he wants to know what is for dinner, and I ask him why he couldn't make it himself as he got home an hour earlier than I did.

I finally start dinner, then fold laundry from the weekend while I wait for dinner to warm up. My husband is on his phone. I ended up crying most of the night and not being able to sleep, so this morning at work I have felt like a zombie (on lunch break now).

We have been talking about the new division of labor, and I feel like I am complaining. Has anyone else been here?! I need help.

I would like to know how you do it, what is fair and what isn't in your opinion, what is practical, etc.

I filed for divorce 2 months back and moved out of rental apartment. 3 yr old marriage. After I left, STBXW also moved out and took all the expensive furniture/ electronics with her which I had bought during marraige. I have receipts for some. Entire stuff is about 5-6 k at current value. While we have equal incomes, I fear that I lost the stuff.

I am wondering if I lost the equity? Is there any way I can recover it? (I am just getting started with divorce in NJ)