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SEX ~ DRAMA ~ MARRIAGE & MORE

Why do Moms get the provider role by default and dads get to start over?

I want to start with the good, because he’s not all bad. When I got an opportunity to move for work, he quit a six figure job to come with me, after doing long distance for 6 months. We ended up buying a fixer upper together, and he did all the research to get it fixed up. I got pregnant, so I couldn’t help with the physical labor, and once our son was born, I was the one watching him full time while he worked on the house. There were real good years, and I don’t want to pretend there weren’t.

Once he got here he landed a job and worked from home. I was on maternity leave, so I hung out at home with him with our newborn. During his lunch break, he’d come out and turn the TV on. So I started asking him to hold our son while I made us lunch, just those few minutes so I could cook without a baby on my hip. A few weeks in, I noticed he seemed grumpy, so I asked him directly if he resented me for it. He said no at first, but after some back and forth, he admitted he did. I told him that felt really unfair. I don’t get a lunch break from being a mother, there’s no clocking out for me, and he agreed it was unfair.

Then we both got laid off around the same time, which is why we ended up taking a 5 week trip to Asia.

During that trip, pumping had mostly fallen apart with all the moving around, so it was just me feeding our son directly most of the time. On week 4 I started pumping again and told him I’d like help feeding our son. During the last week, he got sick, so I let him sleep in and took over so he could rest. Our son was also teething, so some nights were genuinely brutal on me, barely any sleep, on top of already being the one feeding him around the clock.

On the flight home, I asked him to hold the baby for a stretch so I could keep my 10:30pm sleep schedule and actually get rest. The plan was so I’d be able to wake up early and take over in the morning. He was already awake watching TV anyway. He did take the baby, but every hour or so he’d hand him back to me. I’d have to ask again, and again. When I brought it up about a week later, he said “I did take the baby,” like that settled it. I had to explain, yes, but I had to keep asking every single hour. That’s not actually a break.

We’re both recently employed again now, about 2 months out from that trip. He started this week and I start in two weeks.”

But I told him directly, more than once, that I didn’t feel like he was helping enough. And now we’re broken up, and our son is mostly with me. He’s staying at his cousin’s place right now, 40 minutes away, because he doesn’t have the money to move closer, which honestly makes the whole schedule harder on both of us. He does morning pickups, I do evening drop offs, and he’ll cover half of daycare once our son starts in two weeks (when I go back to work). We still haven’t figured out who’s doing daycare pickup and drop off once it actually starts, which is one more thing sitting on my plate to sort out. Meanwhile he’s back on dating apps, starting a new job, moving on with his own life, while I’m the one up every night, handling everything, still doing this basically alone, just now without even the illusion of a partner.

And to top it off, his family’s gotten a version of events where I’m the one who isolated him, because I once told him I didn’t want our relationship problems shared with everyone, and somehow that turned into him cutting off contact with his whole family, which he’s now blaming on me.

I don’t know. Some days I still think about what it would take to fix this. Other days I’m just furious that I was the one carrying the mental load of the baby, and he’s the one who gets to walk away lighter. We’re currently separated but sometimes flirt at pick up/drop off.