Can you pay my bills?

If she made that kind of money, fuck yes I would quit working in a heartbeat no questions asked. While I will never quit actually doing the types of tasks and research I enjoy doing in my spare time, I would quit doing it for money and stay at home doing housework and taking care of shit at home. I would definitely gain a sense of accomplishment from doing stuff at home because I know how much effort goes into maintaining one first hand.

 

I go away from my computer for an evening and then y'all start having the best Grown-Up Talk I've seen on this board in ages. Go figure.

I didn't say that I had to have a job in my preferred career...just a job. I'm not proud- I'll work at Target as a checker. Or at Starbucks as a barista. Or at a local hospital as a candystriper. Obviously, I'd much rather work in my preferred area of expertise but if the job market doesn't offer any opportunities in that area...then fuck it. Employment is employment. I refuse to (again) be put in a situation where I am dependent on his paycheck for all of my day-to-day needs...I need to have some sort of income of my own, no matter how small.

Also, I think you'd find that putting on the apron is a lot harder than you realize. It seems nice at first, but it could very easily end up with your partner screaming in your face about how your lazy ass can't even scrub the kitchen grout correctly and how dare you not have every piece of ironing finished before he/she gets home because GODAMMIT AFTER WORKING ALL DAY NO ONE WANTS TO COME HOME TO AN IRONING BOARD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE LIVING ROOM. Oh, and you're getting fat. You don't do anything all day, so why the fuck aren't you ripped as shit from working out while your partner is at work? Honestly, after everything that your partner does for you, why can't you just be thin/keep everything spotless/cook gourmet meals/have absolutely no needs of your own to take care of during the day? You ungrateful slacker.

Yeah...no thanks. Even menial employment allows you to approach arguments/potential issues in the relationship on an equal footing. Having the option to leave ("option," in this case, meaning financial ability to make a choice) matters so, so much. When you don't have it, all you can do is frantically look for a way out. Feeling like you have to stay because you quite literally can't afford to do anything else is a terrible, terrible thing.

 

Call me naive, but if your partner is screaming in your face about this sort of thing, there are problems that go way beyond the division of work. It's one thing to be pissed, and not understand all the work your partner puts in. It's another thing to show that by screaming in somebody else's face, which is extremely problematic behavior.

If he would scream on you for that, he would scream on you for something else.

 

In the scenario given, I don't think I could not work, despite the millions of dollars that my husband raked in. I sort of did this while I was in school, although I continued to work one day a week (granted it was usually about a 13 hour day since I worked as a nurse). Plus I was using up more of the household resources with stuff like tuition, books, etc, then my husband who was the one making all the money. I could never get over feeling like I wasn't keeping up my end of the bargain and was just spending somebody else's money. And I was so busy with studies and clinicals it wasn't like I had the time or energy to be the ideal wife either, but I felt I should be since I wasn't providing much of a financial contribution. It was a weird thing for me.

In this case, I was at least working towards the future and knew it would all come around. If I knew that the future held nothing more than keeping house, pilates sessions, and volunteer work to keep me occupied, I am afraid that I would slowly lose my mind. I know my strengths and those aren't them. I am one of those people who derives alot of self worth from what I do, so take that away from me and I just wouldn't know what to do with myself.

 

That's my point exactly, though. If you have even menial employment, tolerating someone screaming in your face is much harder to swallow. You want to yell at me about kitchen grout? Fuck that noise. Imma take my minimum-wage paycheck and go live in a shithole rather than share airspace with you, asshole. Oh, and go fuck yourself too.

But when you have no money of your own because you've chosen to stay at home instead of working outside the home, you have to swallow it down and deal with the behavior. That isn't right.

I'm not at all insinuating that everyone who holds the purse-strings will become an abusive jerkface. Not at all. I genuinely believe that it can work well for some people, and I respect couples who can make that dynamic work. But sometimes, controlling the purse-strings will bring out horrible personality traits. I won't take that chance ever again.

 

My sister was in this type of "relationship" until the last couple of weeks. The guy was a major control freak and slowly but surely stripped her of every little bit of independence and self confidence that she had. She stopped work because he wanted her at his beck and call, when somebody is offering to "take care" of you, it is pretty easy to cut and run when you have a bad day at work. My sister isn't exactly the strongest person in the world, so she fell for it hook line and sinker. It wasn't too long before his demands included "woman, go make me my breakfast" and "woman, come and relieve me". Plus the emotional abuse, I am quite sure there may have been some physical, but my sister denies it. In the end she was totally reliant on him and wanted to leave for quite some time, but was just ....stuck. Exactly how he planned it of course.

She is out now (thank goodness) but is really concerned with how she is going to make it alone.

 

I'm in this situation. My wife is a pharmacist. Anyone who knows about that profession knows they get paid really well. I, on the other hand, have a psychology degree, and will eventually be a teacher, which means I'll make just over the good side of crap.

I have zero qualms being a house husband. I will stay home with the (eventual) kids and do the cooking, cleaning, and yard work. I've told my wife this. If one of us has to stay home, will it be the woman with the doctorate that can make six figures, or the guy with the B.A. who can make about $25 to 30 grand a year? No brainer.

SHE does NOT want that. She wants me working, and that is it. I mean, if I can't find anything, that is one thing, but if I could be working and I quit to be a stay-at-home husband, that wouldn't fly.

Case in point: I work at a video store. I don't work this job because we need the money. One paycheck at my wife's job is, literally, 20 to 30 times bigger than one paycheck I get at the video store. The money is shit, and the hours aren't great either. I work this job because my wife would divorce me if I didn't have a job this summer when I'm not in class. She would be pissed and resentful day and night that I wasn't working and she was, and that would be that. We take my meager paychecks and dedicate them solely to paying for gas. What is left over goes into savings, and given gas prices at the moment, there is usually very little left over.

Edit: I felt compelled to edit this and add the following: I, for all intents and purposes, control the money. She makes it, and she tried to keep the checkbook and pay the bills, but she hated it, so she told me to do it. I keep track of everything, I pay the bills, and for the most part I control the money, despite the fact that she makes it. I'd say that, at any given moment, she has no idea how much money is in our checking or savings accounts, or what the balance is on our credit card (we only use one), or even how much she still owes on her car or we still owe on the house. She is not just okay with this, she encourages me to do it, because she doesn't want to think about it. This is why, ultimately, I don't worry about our marriage, because that is an unbelievable amount of trust she has in me.

 

I wouldn't do well on either side of this scenario. I don't like asking people for money, but I also feel really weird when people cook and/or clean for me. I'm starting to get over it, but I wouldn't want somebody to do all of the cooking or cleaning in any event.

The one thing I would enjoy about it is grocery shopping. I'm irrationally proud of my ability to grocery shop.

 

If someone can't appreciate what his wife is doing while he's at work there is something very wrong and it isn't about her, especially if she is parenting the crotch droppings.

Mr P. and I didscuss very openly when things are not going well, any small resentments are discussed, explained and understood. Example: up until recently, he was not working regularly. He would stay home with the kids, and he has become a great male figure in their life(Hooray-cuz the sperm donor is quite worthless).

He is proud of his castle and keeps the home very clean. Til I get home. He began perceiving me as a bull in the china shop, my keys are dropped here, my purse there, my jewelry on the bathroom counter instead of in the jewelry box, which is buried under a pile of clothes....not to mention my hair being everywhere. Sidenote: Girls shed. the longer the hair, the more noticable it is. Get Over It.

So we had a talk, he explained how he felt, how he wanted things to be a certain way and had thought I was on board with that. It came down to me not thinking. I had just worked ten hours, I was tired and lazy. We talked it all out and we both make it a priority to consider how the other one feels.

Now that I'm down to 30 hours a week and he is working, I have started taking on some of his tasks to help. I also make sure I cook him a fucking killer dinner, something about having some deliciousness ready when he gets home makes him so happy.

Isn't that the point of a relationship? Working together to make each other happy? Ten years ago I had no perspective on making a home with someone. Now it is critical as it's ours.

note: I think i may still be drunk, so I hope that makes some sorta sense, haha.

 

Spoilered for those who don't give a shit:

Spoiler

One of my former coworkers was like this. I don't know if the dude was a sociopath or what, but he used every little bit of power he could find to control other people. The thing is, he's a very charming, intelligent guy, and you don't realize what he actually is until you know him better. It took the command seven months to figure out that he was using his appointed billet to bully people (Don't kowtow to him? The parking lot stripes need to get repainted this weekend. Guess who's doing it!). It wasn't that they were lacking evidence... people were always talking about him. He was just so good at manipulating people and getting them to either believe whatever he said or be completely indifferent to his actions.

He met a girl who was getting medically discharged from the Navy. They started dating, and got engaged after about four months. Her parents were really pissed about it; they flat-out told her, "You're an idiot if you marry him, and we don't support you at all." She blew them off and said "Fuck you, I'ma do what I want."

So she moves in with him, and his real traits start coming out; this is apparent by the fact that every time we had a break, he would be on the phone calling her and demanding that she do stuff. And then he would openly boast to us about how he was "punishing" her for not doing what he said. I feel bad for saying this, but we did nothing about it. Yep, LCpl H is abusing his wife again. Who wants to go to Chili's? We even joked about it a couple times. Hey H, you still beating your wife? Har-har-har-har-har.

We're at different bases now, so I don't know how it's unfolding. But she's freaking stuck. She's in a military town with zero jobs, a vindictive family who is probably happy that she's miserable, and stuck with a dude who openly brags about how he's scheming to break her spirit.

She's not exactly the nicest person in the world; she definitely has her own issues to work through. But no one deserves that.

 

I am really shocked at the near unanimous opinion of the guys here (at least those who are posting) that they would become a "house husband" in a second if they had the opportunity to. The sweeping generalization is that guys are supposed to be the ones who are career-oriented and girls are supposed to be the ones who like being at home, and all. I have a feeling you're romanticizing the situation of not having to work a lot more than what the reality actually entails, because you've been so used to working all the time for your whole lives (I'm assuming), and right now since you're so busy and stressed the idea of not working sounds incredible.

All those hobbies and chores and side businesses you're so eager to have time to work on? I'd give it about a month, if not less, before you get bored with them or run out of things to do or find them not satisfying enough to dedicate your time to. I'm not in a relationship, but I work from home, and don't work very often, so I'm well aware of what living like a housewife is like and it makes me fucking miserable. There are days when I don't leave the house because I have nothing to do, or I just sit there. I have some hobbies, I can organize little field trips for myself around the city, I love to cook (and it's partially why I'm so interested in it, because it gives me something to do for an hour or two each day), I have my chores and errands, but does that at all equal enough stuff to fill up my time and live a happy little life in my apartment? God no. I would kill for someone to give me a full time job with even a meager salary just so I can fucking get out of the house. And there's always the factor to take into consideration that if you don't have your own money, and your husband/wife can't exactly dole out tons of money for you to just spend on whatever for either financial or psychological reasons, well, then, you don't have any money. And it sounds so obvious, but you guys don't seem to realize that you kind of need money to do a lot of things. Sometimes I can't afford to leave my house, which I would guess would be even more likely when you have to rely on gas and not the subway and/or if you live in the country where nothing's in walking distance. So I just have to hang around and watch TV or read all day, just like I did yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that.

I can only imagine, but if I was in a relationship, and I knew my boyfriend/husband was out working every day and getting the chance to get out and do something and make money and have some kind of purpose while I was just sitting around the house all day, I think I'd start getting really jealous and even resentful about it, especially if he was asking me to stay home. I think the only situation where it wouldn't be so bad is if I had a kid, because it would keep me busy. But even that doesn't sound too great, because I'm not sure if I want kids. I have always preferred to be busy rather than bored. There's a reason that there's a whole history of women going insane from being stuck in the house.

Which actually makes me wonder, since I don't think I've read any TiBettes talking about how they wish they were living with a millionaire so they didn't have to work, how much that history is coming into play with people's opinions. Like, if everything had been switched around and women had been the ones who were supposed to work and men had to stay home and now it's changed, if the men would still be jumping at the bit to be able to stay home.

 

You don't think that you're romanticizing the work experience at all?

Of course work is wonderful. Men don't shamble their way to fluorescent lit, tightly packed cubicles. Nope. It's a magical fairy tale wonderland filled with butterscotch ponds and lesbian forests. No obnoxious, over entitled, bitchy customers and clients. Nothing but easily contented, low maintenance business partners. Long hours with coworkers you can't stand? Never. In fact every coworker is a useful asset that enhances the overall work experience. Yep, the work experience being exponentially better than the stay at home experience has been a closely guarded male secret for millenia. Don't be surprised if you never hear from me again as a result of spilling the beans.

When I'm presented with the woman making mid six figure salary, my thoughts aren't "Sweet! Stay at home dad time!" It's more along the lines of "Financial self sufficiency for my wife and I and possibly our future family? Excellent! I may want to have some small hobbies or part time jobs, of course. But being in a position to never have to worry about money for the rest of our lives....how could I turn that down!"

I guess a lot of the stay at home vs. trudging off to a job may boil down to the old "grass is always greener" thing. The men living in the
Push! Push! Push! world dream of settling down quietly while women who are primarily homemakers fantasize about boldly going out into the working world and both making their mark and leaving their mark. Both are guilty of overly romanticizing the others position in life and instead of properly communicating about it, they just let their resentments build up and build up and build up.

 

I split money three ways, our money (the bulk of our earnings - goes to food, rent, house stuff, doing stuff together and joint savings), my money and her money so we basically each get an allowance. I would shit a brick if 'our money' went towards the multitude of stupid crap she likes to buy, and I'm sure she wouldn't be too thrilled with some of the things I buy, this way we don't fight over things like not having enough for me to buy video game because she just got a new pair of shoes or vice versa. If she spends all her money on something and then doesn't have enough leftover to go out with her friends, too bad, maybe next time but I'm not touching our pot for that.

I love my girlfriend to death but she is a moron when it comes to money, just has no concept of how it works, so yeah, whenever a major purchase comes up she has to ask me for the money. I don't hold this over her as an 'I make more than you' thing, she's just not a good decision maker when it comes to finances, I would still probably be in control of how our money is spent even if she was the bread winner. Similarly I don't make decisions when it comes to how the house looks.

As to who deals with bill paying and all that crap, does it really matter who does this? When I was a kid it totally made sense to have my mom do it because it was a hassle, but in today's society with all the auto-deductions and e-payments, it's just not the time consuming job it use to be. I do it for us, but really only because she was still in Boston when I moved into our current place.

 

I could never be a house-husband. I need to have 100% autonomy at all times and had a hard enough time being dependent on my parents when I was a kid; there's no way I could handle being dependent on a significant-other. Nor would I want to be the sole breadwinner in a relationship. Any woman I end up settling down with has to have her own career.

 

That's a hard thing.
The mindset is what's important to me.
WE have to be working TOGETHER in our life. I'm happy contributing any way I can but my contribution must be valued.
One of our friends and his wife deal with this by him earning the money, and she pays the bills and handles all finances. Then she's not totally dependent on him for everything.

For your question, I would make the sacrifice.

 

I seriously think I'm missing something here, what are people doing where "handling the finances and paying the bills" constitutes making up for the other person being the bread winner? Does anyone spend more than an hour a month (even that seems like a stretch) on this crap? You know you can set up pretty much every bill to be paid online automatically, right? The cold war is over. Now I totally understand cooking, cleaning and (this was HUGE when my GF wasn't working when she first moved here) running all the errands as doing their part, but I'm wracking my brain thinking about how someone could spend a meaningful amount of time paying bills. I'm starting to feel like a moron for not bringing up the fact that I do the finances when we discuss how we do our fair share around the house.

I completely agree with your overall point though, I would not and could not be the lower earner without doing something to make up for it.