Strategies to get dh to help at night

[ray7694]

I am a busy body and like things done. I work full time and we just moved so that now I have a 45 min commute each way. The condition of my commute was that dh would help more. I do not want to be in charge of dinner every.single.night. When he says he will take care of it or I tell him he is in charge he still doesn't do it. I say what's for dinner and he says I don't know what. Even if we have takeout I am the one that has to go get it.

I know the issue is that I resent he can just come home and sit on the couch. I am tired of getting so mad about this.

[boolady]

I just wouldn't do it. If he's not at least feeding the kids before you get home, I'd come home, make them something quick, and then make yourself something-- an omelet, a salad, a sandwich, whatever, but I would not make or get his dinner. He can either help out or make his own dinner. I get home a good hour plus before DH every night, and it would be ridiculous for me not to make or at least start dinner. You need to do this and keep it up for a while until he gets tired of eating a sandwich or running out for himself and realizes he's got to step up. Yes, I get that it still leaves you preparing for the kids, but they've got to eat either way.

[egoldber]

Are you planning a menu for the week together? DH will execute, but he has NO idea how to plan a menu.

Does he say why he isn't helping?

[AnnieW625]

:yeahthat: (to what Boo Lady said) I think that makes the most sense. My DH does the dishes nightly and during the week takes our dog for her 2 to 3 mile so I don't give him gruff about not making dinner often. I also get home about an hour to 90 minutes before DH so I think it is fairly stupid/un productive to not start dinner either.

[boolady]

Are you planning a menu for the week together? DH will execute, but he has NO idea how to plan a menu.

Does he say why he isn't helping?

This is a really good point. DH doesn't either. I'm going to amend my answer to this-- what I said, but if there is no planned meal or ingredients discussed ahead of time, then I'd try menu planning together first. At that point, if he knows he needs to come home and open a jar of sauce and cook a box of pasta and doesn't do it, I revert to my original suggestion.

[wellyes]

Give him a meal plan with recipes. If you aren't into that, maybe sign up for a service like the Six O'Clock Scramble which sends you a weekly menu and shopping list.

I also wouldn't use the term "help" to refer to him making dinner. It was an responsibility he agreed to take on.

And I, too, wouldn't cook family dinner for a man who's been lounging on the couch for all that time waiting for you to feed him.

[ray7694]

I don't want to be in charge of dinner at all. He should be able to figure out something to make. I don't care if it is a frozen entree. Just figure it out. He will just wait me out until I do it. He does that for everything.

[dhano923]

My DH will do everything like vacuum, laundry and dishes, but he can't figure out dinner to save his life. I have to give him direction: "there's frozen lasagna in the chest freezer you can heat up or you can grill some chicken with the Mac and cheese." if I just told him "take care of dinner", I'd get a call asking me what to do, or I'd get home to find him waiting for e because he didn't know what to order from takeout.

You have to decide if this is worth making a big deal over. I don't get home from work until 6:00 usually but I come home and cook dinner most nights because DH has already gone grocery shopping, picked up the kids, done their homework with them, emptied the dishwasher, and loaded the dirty dishes. I can't complain about dinner when he's already done so many things, KWIM? If I tell him I'm tired, he'll order and pickup takeout after asking me what I want but it won't be waiting for me when I get home.

[boolady]

I don't want to be in charge of dinner at all. He should be able to figure out something to make. I don't care if it is a frozen entree. Just figure it out. He will just wait me out until I do it. He does that for everything.

Has he ever planned meals on a consistent basis before? I'm not trying to make excuses-- I have frustrations of my own in this area, but I do think that if he hasn't, going cold turkey from not ever planning meals or cooking to being 100% responsible for that every night is a lot. I'm not trying to make it about gender, but my DH wouldn't be able to "figure out something to make" to save his life, except for DD, and he would make her something like nuggets or grilled cheese. He just never really did menu planning. Not saying it's right, but in discussions with him, it's the "what to make" that's overwhelming.

Can you start by figuring out a few easy meals for next week together this weekend, and then you know there's no excuse? If you know that he knows that the ingredients are in the house and he knows what to do with them, then you know there's no excuse for him not doing it. I would try that for a week or two, and if you still come home to nothing cooked, I'd go scorched earth policy.

[niccig]

My DH doesn't cook. He can do scrambled eggs for breakfast and grill meat and that's it. If I told him to do dinner w/o guidance, he wouldn't know where to start. Sad, but true and I'm teaching DS to cook.

DH is home too late to do dinner (8pm), but her does other things, so we've worked out a balance. He was on a diet that required more prep. He would grill 4 days worth of chicken/steak/pork on Sunday night. Then I just had to do the sides. It worked so well for menu planning that we're going to start to do it again as it makes the days I'm home at 6pm much much easier.

So my advice would be to menu plan together and things he does know how to cook. If that doesn't work. Then yes, just take care of yourself and the kids.

[BunnyBee]

Go out to dinner and make a plan for dividing up chores.

Then, if he's still weaseling out of it, as Boolady said, scorched earth. Grab dinner for yourself and don't come home until 10.

[kellij]

Have you asked him if he remembers the deal you made? I would say, "hey, remember the deal we made where you said you'd cook at night? What happened to that?" You should be super-specific in what is expected of him. For example, "DH, you have to cook dinner Monday, Tuesday, etc," not just if he can get to it before you, etc. If you've already done all that then you just might want to ask him why he's being a giant D-bag.

[ray7694]

I guess I just want him to do SOMETHING besides sit on the couch.

[queenmama]

Like PPs have said, if you will plan out the week's menu (with or without him) and maybe even go grocery shopping together on the weekends, then he might be more likely to get it done. You may just have to get him halfway there, like it or not.

If you cave and make dinner when you get home, you're just reinforcing his behavior, as with a pet or child. So I agree that if you do the preparation ahead of time and he STILL doesn't get it done, you should eat before coming home. Enough nights of not eating and he might catch on.

You can't back down and reward his laziness. Be strong, woman!

Lara

[boolady]

I guess I just want him to do SOMETHING besides sit on the couch.

Well, my DH does do things, but I have come to realize (after 10+ years of marriage and 13+ years of togetherness) that a lot of the gap between my expectations and DH's have to do with our upbringing. DH came from an extremely father-centric (I really can't emphasize this enough), very traditional home where the idea of his father cooking, cleaning, ironing, bathing his sons, or anything considered even remotely traditionally female or domestic would have been considered insane. Really, anything associated with the house was not his concern, in his mind, so he also didn't cut the grass or help with the yard or fix anything. So, while I'm not making excuses, my DH didn't exactly have the kind of partnership I had in mind modeled for him growing up.

I actually found out the other day that until my MIL became unable to do so because of an incapacitating illness, she made the man's sandwich for him every day, even if they were both home and they were going to sit down to lunch together. She would set the table, make his sandwich, pour his drink, get chips and fruit on his plate for him, and call him out to lunch. Silly as that example may sound, every time I find out something like that, it's like a little window into DH's psyche. When I consider what he does do, viewed in the context of what he was brought up to expect to do, it's actually rather amazing and he's come a long way.

My upbringing, and therefore my expectations, were/are very different from that. My parents had a business and personal partnership that due to scheduling required them both to do domestic tasks, and my father was often home alone with my two younger sisters and I all day or all evening; thus, my model was of a family where my father was just as likely to have ironed my shirt or made my dinner or helped me with a diorama or taken me prom dress shopping as my mother. Not kidding.

I don't know if this is the case with your DH, but it just might be that you essentially have to teach him (1) what you want him to do, even if you think you shouldn't; and (2) how to do it. Once that's happened, there's no excuse, but I find that sometimes when I am steaming mad about something that in my mind should clearly be on his radar, I realize that it's not and that we have to find a way to get there as a first step. I can't undo some of what's been done to him, but I can try to get things the way I think is healthy for our family.

[scrooks]

I just think you have to remind him of what he agreed to, give him specific tasks and probably at least tell him what to make. If none of the above works....make food for you and your children and let him fend for himself.

[TwinFoxes]

Clearly he should be helping. But given the way you describe his behavior, it does seem a little unrealistic to think he was going to start cooking dinners no matter what your deal was. I don't think this is just about the dinners. I think maybe a marriage counselor could give you tools to work this problem out. Good luck.

[wallawala]

I agree with the previous posters. If you need him to do more you're going to have to spell it out:
I need you to cook dinner tomorrow (**) night
I need you to decide what is for dinner.
Go the grocery store and buy anything we don't have
That means double checking we have salad dressing that isn't scunky, etc...
Figure out if the oven needs to be preheated so dinner is ready before 8pm

And I need you to plan on doing again. In the near future, like the next day!

I think guys really do check out when wives have been doing it (insert task here) and don't realize it's a lot of effort and juggling until they are doing it. And the reverse can be true to. I try to drop a little honey in the convo like... "I know how you've been really getting the driveway shoveled first thing every am..... "

I could have written you post though, so please don't feel like I'm preaching. We are a long ways from solving this in my household. We both WOTH, but I am still VP of purchasing, Department manager of the enviromental services (ie cleaning) Dept, Sole Chef, and Laundress. I've got 3 kids, but one is over 40.

I think the biggest thing for me some times is I'm just soooo tired of trying to juggle all the details. What I really need is for him to be able to just do it, without me having to figure it out for him. So I get why it bugs you so much. Makes you feel like you have an additional child.... when you really want the partner you married. Hang in there and keep repeating specifically what you need him to do. Including the being able to plan, shop ahead, etc. The good ones will come around!

[rin]

Ugh, I don't really have much new to add (I think PPs offered some great suggestions), but that's so frustrating.

I can offer a parallel example. For the past several years, DH & I have had the agreement that when I get up with crying babies in the night, he gets up first with the girls in the morning and I get to sleep in until 7. (This is the luxury I miss the most when he's out of town!!) For the longest time (like, until about three weeks ago), he would get up with them, but that was it; he would basically lie on the couch and try to doze off, and wait for me to get up to start the whole diaper change/breakfast making/coffee brewing morning routine. A few weeks ago he started trying something new, and he's started getting DDs dressed, changing DD2's diaper, starting breakfast, etc. It's been very noticeable how much nicer our mornings are, and how much less rushed everyone is once I get up.

So . . . you might have to think of something that you would genuinely be ok with doing long-term if it takes him ages to step up to the plate. I think the idea of offering to help him with meal planning is great. The key is that if this is going to be his task, he needs to figure out his way to do it. That might mean cooking different kinds of things than you would have made. We have a general house policy that whoever makes dinner gets to plan the dinner (with the overall rule that every meal needs to contain protein and vegetables). I also agree that this should not be framed as him helping YOU, it's you helping HIM, since this is now HIS responsibility. If you get home and nothing's done, then I would 100% just get something pulled together for yourself and the kids.

[123LuckyMom]

I would sit down when you are calm and discuss again the agreement you made. Ask him how you can help him fulfill the commitment he made. If you can't come to an agreement, or if you come to an agreement but he fails to follow through, I agree that you should not do it for him. If he knows you will do it if he just doesn't, why should he do it? If you come home, and he hasn't prepared anything, just make something for yourself. I might even go so far as NOT to make anything for the kids. I'd make something for myself and go up to my room. Let him deal with cranky, hungry kids asking where their dinner is. Either he'll get off the couch or not, but either way, it doesn't need to be your problem.