I feel kind of stupid even writing this because my husband is not a bad guy. He doesn’t yell or cheat or anything. He does the dishes when I ask him to. But something has been eating at me for months and it all came to a head last week over a backpack.
Our son needed a new one because the zipper broke. I noticed Tuesday morning when he couldn’t close it. My husband saw him struggling with it too and said “uh oh buddy we need a new one” and then just… went back to whatever he was doing. I waited all week for him to do something about it. By Saturday morning the kid was still using a broken backpack and I finally snapped and ordered one myself. When it arrived my husband said “oh great you found one, why didn’t you tell me we still needed that?” I just stared at him. Like I literally couldn’t form words for a second.
This is the thing I can’t seem to explain. He saw the zipper break. He literally commented on it. But somehow his brain filed it as a thing that was now handled. Or not his to handle. Or something that would just resolve itself. My brain filed it as another open tab that wouldn’t close until the backpack was on the kid’s shoulders. And I have about fifty of those tabs open all the time. Dentist appointments, birthday party rsvps, the fact that we’re almost out of laundry detergent, the weird noise the washing machine started making, teacher gifts, what we’re eating for dinner every single night this week.
He once said “just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” And I know he meant it kindly but something inside me just deflated. Because now I’m not just doing the work, I’m the project manager of the work. I have to notice the thing, research the thing, decide on the thing, and then assign the thing to him. He gets to feel helpful for executing and I did like 80% of the thinking. I tried to explain this once and he kinda shut down and said he can’t guess what I’m thinking and somehow I ended up feeling like the bad guy.
I dunno how to phrase this. It’s not that he’s lazy. He works hard at his actual job and he does fold laundry. But I’m the one who remembers that our son’s teacher is allergic to peanuts so the class snack has to be different. Or that his mom’s flight lands at 3:15 not 3:30. Or that the car registration is due next month. None of that is hard by itself. It’s just that there’s so much of it and it never stops and nobody sees it. My brain just never shuts up.
Last night he asked me why I seemed distant and I just said I was tired. Because the idea of trying to explain all this again felt more exhausting than just swallowing it. My coffee has been reheated twice and I haven’t even finished it. I’m sitting here typing this while the baby monitor crackles and I have a work call in twelve minutes. Not sure what I’m even looking for honestly. Has anyone actually gotten their partner to understand this? Is there a way to frame it so they don’t just hear “you’re not doing enough” and shut down? I feel like I’m running a small nonprofit in my head and I’m the only employee. My cat just knocked something off the shelf and I can’t even deal.
TL;DR: My husband does chores when asked but doesn’t see the invisible planning and mental tracking I do every day. I’ve tried explaining but he kinda shuts down and I end up feeling like the bad guy. How do I frame this so he actually gets it? I’m exhausted.