I have two issues:
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My husband (29M) does not feel like he needs to communicate his whereabouts or update me while he is out of the house. I (30F) do not care about having his location to track him in any way but I feel like it’s reasonable to receive updates seeing that we are married, have two toddlers and they are not just my responsibility. I feel that if we were just BF and GF, I can see how that may be seen as an invasion of privacy but we are married and his well-being is my concern and I would just like updates as I navigate my day while taking care of our kids.
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On days that he finishes work and goes to the gym, he comes home and complains he is tired and doesn’t help me much but when he has plans with friends, he doesn’t complain to spend time with them. This really rubs me the wrong way and makes me feel crazy for expecting help with the kids. When confronted, he of course does not see my perspective in any of this.
Am I asking for too much??
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Are you a stay at home mom by any chance?
It’s not asking too much to expect your husband to play an active role in parenting HIS OWN KIDS. If you are a SAHM and he works outside the home, he’s unlikely unable to take on an equal share of the childcare. But he should at least be willing to spend a few hours in the evening with HIS OWN KIDS and help you (or take primary responsibility) in getting them to bed, and also care for them on weekends so you can have solid 3-4 hour blocks of adult “Me Time” to do whatever you want outside the home, just as he takes those recreational blocks for himself during the week.
It’s also not asking too much for him to let you know when he’s going out with friends or coworkers after work, and when he expects to be home – and to check in again if he’s running late. If you’re asking him to keep you updated throughout his workday, it somewhat depends on the nature of his work and when he is able to take breaks, and also whether they are company-scheduled breaks or personal breaks that he can take after completing a certain segment of work. Some employers are very lenient about allowing personal cell phone use throughout the day; others, not so much.
No. He doesn’t want to be tied down to his wife and kids. He wants the freedom he once had, he now has different responsibilities.
He’ll keep doing it as long as you let it slide.
Start doing same to him. Tell him you’re running to store, then go do other things instead, come back and complain about being tired and needing rest. Act surprised and you don’t understand how this is problematic, especially since he does it to you.
Your question is a normative moral judgement request, which is not allowed. That said, there is an implicit advice need, so I’ll bite.
1: You have an anxiety disorder. The odds of anything bad happening to anyone on a given day in any area that isn’t a war zone, an active natiral disaster, a sweatshop, or a gangland is essentially zero, which means that any anxiety that is interfering with your daily life is disordered. If the issue is childcsre logistics, set a schedule beforehand – but it is categorically invasive and impractical to track someone else’s locatikn and activities when they aren’r around you (whether you’re doing it with GPS or text messages or phone calls).
Get psychotherapy to work on that.
2: This may be more of your core relationship problem. He doesn’t see caring for the children as his responsibility at all. If you are also doing most/all of the housework, that is not at all an equitable division of labor. If he doesn’t want to handle the kids at all, then he must do ALL of the non-kid housework outside of working hours (preparing breakfast and dinner, cleaning up the kitchen and all dishes after dinner, any trash/recycling nighttime routine, fully decluttering the house, any laundry changeover/sorting/folding from loads you started earlier, any pet care, etc.) in order to be equitable.
For this, you need to set some boundaries. You are not going to be in a relationship where you do most of the labor: if he’s not going to do an equitable share of the labor of your family, you enforce that boundary by leaving the relationship.
I don’t think it’s at all reasonable for him to be giving you updates on his whereabouts unless it’s due to change of time he will be home. What you’re asking for is stifling, controlling behavior.
You said he works nights. So when he gets home, isn’t he supposed to go to bed not help with kids?
All the benefits of a marriage without the responsibility of one…
Sounds like you’re a little domestic utility that runs quietly in the background.
My bf and I aren’t married, we live together and are older, but we touch base during day, usually text cause of work