Seeking advise to help for my husband

I am a 33 years old working mum of 2 son, 4 and 2 years old. My husband is 30 this year but he is very lazy.

I met my husband through a common friend 5 years back when he just returned from studies in the UK. We hit off pretty well as he’s witty and humorous plus he secured a very good career in an MNC company and decent family.

I’m comfortable with him taking the lead and planning for everything so I usually don’t have any inputs for his decision despite him always asking me for it.

I got my legs swept off by him and agreed to marry him after 1.5 years of relationship. But things start to change much after marriage.

He became very lazy whenever I asked him to do stuffs. Like when I asked him many times to get a driving license, he said that he never actually needed one as he has someone to chauffeur him around and taking PHV or cab is cheaper than owning a car in Singapore unlike UK.

I was pretty upset when he said that as a car would be convenient for checkups for my gynae visits and meeting up with my friends.

He does not help out much in housework except for washing of clothes, windows cleaning and fans as there are much more things to do apart from these. He will usually lounge around or sneak off to go for exercise once he is completed with those chores while I need to look after the kids. I told him there are many other chores to do but he always said that he will do later but never did.

His working hours are pretty hectic as he will usually reached office by 8.30am and will only reached home by 8pm. As I finished work earlier, I will usually picked up my kids from childcare and buy dinner, which is quite tiring when my cab doesn’t arrived on time or when the food delivery doesn’t come early and need to tend to hungry kids.

Travelling can be pretty tiring even via taxis. I always tell him to cab home but he likes to travel by MRT as it helps to save cost. Cabbing home can reduce an hr of travelling time which he can help me to tend to kids when i’m tired and he’s earning a high 6 digit figure per annual, I can’t figure out why he is so petty on money when I’m only earning  1/3 of his salary. Although he pays for all the cab rides and food but I just want him to share the load of actual parenting.

I felt so overwhelm by the fatigue that I actually quit my job to take care of the kids when my 2nd kid was born. I told my husband that he should spent more time to take care of the household but he often use work or a need to exercise as an excuse. I don’t understand why he needs to choose timing to go for exercise.

For weekdays, he has free time from 11pm onwards, but he can choose to go straight after work. For weekends, it’s even worse, he can opt for timing like 1 to 3pm where the kids are usually sleeping or 10pm onwards but he choose timing like 6am in the morning or 5pm in the evening when the kids are awake or going to be awake.

Things start to have a strange turn of events when he mentioned that he wants to quit his job and spend time. I felt very happy and relieve when he said that. But the downside is that, he told me that I may have to look for a job as he could have difficulty finding a job that has work life balance and decent salary. I was happy and disappointed at the same time, but I guess that’s life.

So I agreed and he quit his job and he’s taking care of the kids at home while I went back to the workforce after 2 years of being a housewife. Things are doing great for me as the workplace is good and the pay is much higher than my previous job, but not for my husband.

He has difficulty finding a manager entry level job as he is over qualified, having armed with an Imperial College degree and INSEAD MBA, he has difficulty finding a job that support work life balance and decent salary when he is willing to take up to a 75% pay cut.

Despite being at home, I find that the status of the house cleanlines is not up to my standard when I can find small peck of dust on the window grill when I do my spot check and he still has the tired feel when he doesn’t even need to work.

I don’t understand why can’t he take care of the house when I’m earning the dough. When confronted, he said that he is making pretty good money while being a day trader and suggested that we should get a maid to do the menial work while both of us earn the money but I don’t like strangers to stay with us.

I also urged him to be more active on job hunting as we have expenses to pay for. I need his contributions for my parent housing loan and our utility and my cab expenses. Luckily our 5 room is fully paid thanks to his investment.

He’s pretty lazy as his day trading can fetch about 5k for good months and 3k for bad month and has a emergency savings for 10 years without working, but it can be embarrasing for a guy to be unemployed for long time.

I asked my friends for advise but their responds are pretty mixed and I’m also dried up for solutions, which is why I would like to sought for more options to get my husband to help out more.

Editor’s note: You clearly don’t see the sacrifices that he is making and all you can think about is yourself, you don’t deserve your husband.