I've reviewed several threads, and I appreciate how open all of you are to questions from moms. I would appreciate y'all's input, because I could really use some perspective from guys in my husband's shoes.
Here's my family's situation, in brief: My husband and I have two kids, age 10 and 7. I work full time (including some travel); he has a part time (<10 hours/week) job that he can do from home for the most part. So, my husband is essentially a SAHD. This is not so much by choice as by necessity; H has mental health issues (bipolar controlled with medication) and simply cannot handle the stress of full-time employment. Switching roles (him as primary breadwinner, me as primary parent) is not an option.
H does all of the stuff that he *must* do--he picks the kids up from school and supervises homework, gets dinner on the table, handles Dr./dentist appointments (I also come to some appointments if they are non-routine, and I am the designated ER person b/c I can function in a crisis). He does laundry. He cleans the bathrooms (though not as often as I would like), and sometimes he will even vacuum or sweep the kitchen floor (though most often, he sweeps the crumbs to a spot at the base of the kitchen island and leave them there). He will arrange the occasional play date for my older son and will take the boys to the pool or a movie on days they are out of school.
The problem is (from my perspective, at least), he only does the minimum he has to do to get by. For example, the meals are the same every week (including McDonalds on Tuesdays and take-out pizza on Thursdays). When I encourage him to try different things (I've bought him "easy" cookbooks and suggested dishes he might look into), it's always, "the kids won't eat it." Any deep/thorough cleaning is done by me; any yard work (except for mowing the lawn every two weeks) is done by me; I organize anything social we do with other couples. He has no hobbies, unless you count Facebook games (and inappropriate online chats with his female opponents) as a hobby.
Basically, his average day is as follows: I take the kids to school (I do most of the work to get them up/dressed); he spends the morning on the computer and/or he'll go to work for a couple of hours and maybe work out at the Y. He picks the kids up from school and supervises homework (I suspect this involves yelling to the kitchen from the computer room), then the kids play or watch TV (mostly the latter) while he's on the computer. I get home, we have dinner; he gets back on the computer (are we sensing a theme?) and I handle post-dinner playtime and baths.
I genuinely appreciate all of the things my husband does, but at the same time I am incredibly frustrated on a number of levels:
- How he parents the boys, and how I would parent them if I were the at-home parent, are very different. I've tried to talk with him about things like limiting TV time, but he will not engage in a back and forth conversation ("This is how I feel about things, but I'm not the one who has to enforce the rules, so what do you think? What's reasonable?" gets no response, or he'll say he agrees with me and then not follow through). Our older son has ADD, but he will not attempt any nutritional interventions (like avoiding foods with additives and dyes) that might help. I understand that I can't make him parent exactly as I would, but he won't even discuss issues with me, or if he does he'll give lip service to what he thinks I want to hear and then go back to the usual. So, I end up feeling that I have no say in how my children are being raised.
- I get tired of doing most of the cleaning and all of the yard work.
- I don't expect him to become a gourmet chef. If cooking is not his thing, that's fine. But my mom hated cooking too, and she still managed to feed us at least a minimal variety of meals and to keep the junk food to a minimum.
- The excessive amount of time he spends on the computer. He tells me he does get bored, but he won't actually do anything about it. For a while he was interested in woodworking and I encouraged him as much as I could. I made a special effort to get home early so he could go to a meeting of the local guild--and then he decided not to go and has said nothing about it since then. He won't play with the boys because he's "busy."
I am trying to be fair, and not to impose upon him the expectations I would have of myself if I were the stay at home parent. But at the same time, I resent him for (a) squandering the opportunity to be home with his boys, and (b) making me work 60+ hours a week *and* do the heavy lifting when it comes to household work.
I am on the verge of asking for a divorce because I am so angry and miserable. But what if I'm being unfair--what if I am making myself angry and miserable over nothing (or at least, nothing worth divorcing him over)? Am I expecting too much?
Thanks in advice for any input you may have.

Joined: 2010-08-13
Dad Points: 5