For various reasons, travel, work. My husband and I only lived together a couple of months before our marriage two years ago. Huge mistake. We were friends for a decade and dated nearly three years before marriage, so we thought it would be fine. I’m now in a position where I’m literally about to divorce the man I love over housework. He identifies as a feminist. He claims to understand concepts like the mental load, yet every single day, I am the one who does the dishes. He leaves them indefinitely. I went away for a weekend once and found the plates we’d used on Friday still out and dirty. On Monday, I do laundry. I remind him to take the trash out, usually repeatedly and often do it myself when it’s clear he has forgotten or isn’t going to do it. I vacuum. I dust everything apart from the cooking, which I do about 70% of, partly because I hate how when he cooks, he leaves the kitchen looking like a bombsight for me to clean. I asked, nagged, begged, give gentle reminders, and took us to a couple’s counselor about this. The counselor suggested I adjust my expectations since, as my husband pointed out, men don’t typically notice these things. For what it’s worth, I’m also the primary earner. I’m a paralegal and work long hours, often coming home exhausted to find him playing video games. He works in a restaurant where, ironically, many of his duties involve cleaning and hygiene.
He used to say that he had to do the cleaning at work so he shouldn’t have to do it at home too. He recently started a conversation about having kids, something I’ve always wanted. I said a flat no and told him the reason was that I was already exhausted from doing our current housework and the thought of single handedly doing it for A child too made me want to die. He seemed truly shocked, as though he hasn’t seen me sobbing about my exhaustion or pleading with him to just do the laundry when he says he will. So I have clean clothes for the morning. The shock of this seemed to kick him into gear. And suddenly he’s doing housework. Still not as much as me, but a lot. Those dishes he couldn’t see are suddenly visible. Laundry is done without 10 reminders. But I still want to leave. I was quietly consulting a divorce lawyer when he raised the issue of children. I feel like now I should be happy. I still love him. He makes me laugh and he does thoughtful, romantic things for me, but I’m actually angrier now. It seems like he can see the housework that needs doing and step up for it. He just needed to want to enough. And apparently seeing me crying and exhausted didn’t motivate him at all. I’m sick of feeling angry and resentful. Would it be crazy or stubborn of me to pursue a divorce anyway, or should I try again to heal things? My family loves him and would think this is crazy, but my friends would be supportive. They’ve heard me literally crying about this already and seemed to care more than he did.