I (40F) have been married to my husband (37M) for 13 years. In those years, we have built a family and a beautiful life together. (Children are 11F, 8M, and 6M). We’ve definitely gone through good and bad times, and I feel like we are currently at a mostly good stable place where we try to understand each other and strive to have a healthy well balanced marriage as we raise our kids together. Throughout our whole marriage, one of the “themes” of our disagreements is household responsibilities and work (and the definition of “work”). Specifically, I feel the need to ALWAYS be actively and physically doing some sort of project (that can be seen) and am generally pretty busy all the time. Even my “down time” usually involves some sort of project, whether that be cooking, crafting, organizing rooms, rearranging rooms, etc. his down time is spent mostly on his computer (coding…he’s VERY techy, and really driven right now to learn what he can about computer automation, partly for his job, but a lot for his own personal amusement), or playing games on whatever game console he has. (I’m not a gamer, so I can’t be specific about games, but he plays on his steam deck most of the time, but also has a Nintendo switch that he plays with our kids.) I was raised (by example, not by what my parents said), to put value in things that you can see the end result of (for example, my dad is a carpenter by hobby and has built beautiful cabinets, bookshelves, chests, etc, and built the house that I grew up in basically by himself. My mom, even now, is always in the kitchen, cooking, baking, and cleaning.) For a long time I really thought my husband was lazy as I saw him on his computer constantly, and he doesn’t have the “DIY handyman” skills that I grew up thinking was just ingrained in a man’s persona.
In recent years, due to my mental health, I quit my full time job (I worked as a school counselor for 9 years, starting when I was pregnant with my 1st child), and have worked mostly inconsistent part time jobs just to bring in extra income. I am easily overwhelmed, and my 3 kids overstimulate me at times. (And wear me out CONSTANTLY 😀). A lot of the time, I honestly feel like I run the household by myself, carrying all the responsibilities of maintaining a household and taking care of our kids. I am the one who does all the grocery shopping and meal planning, and most of the cooking and clean up of the meals. I am the one who takes care of all the academic and extracurricular activities of our kids. I know the kids’ schedule of activities, and mostly if I don’t shuttle them around, they won’t get to them (unless I have specifically given my husband the responsibility of that particular activity for that particular child). I make sure the bills are paid, and keep track of our finances. I try to help the kids with the responsibilities of helping with the household cleaning and day to day activities (as much as each of them is capable of) and pick up what they aren’t able to do. I mostly plan all of our family activities and outings. (My husband is an EXTREME introvert and would probably never leave the house for anything if it were possible, and his preferred “family time” is watching a movie or gaming together, where I prefer to go out and “see the world”.) My husband will help out with household things when I ask, or when I point out something that needs to be done, but I honestly think he just doesn’t understand what it takes to run a household and keep everyone happy and healthy, and he doesn’t notice all the little things that constantly come up (like light bulbs burned out, the kids’ dirty clothes all over the floor in their bathroom, spills and disorganization left from the kids, weeds needing to be pulled in the yard, clogged drains, broken toys that could easily be fixed, food going bad in the fridge, etc.) He claims I do too much (and try to do more than is humanly possible) and run myself too thin when I try to point out that I feel like I do way more to maintain the household than he does.
I want to know what other couples in my same situation (or similar) do to balance the household maintenance. Is my husband extreme on not noticing and helping maintain the house, or am I over the top, like he thinks?