Feeling both resentful and grateful - can’t tell if I have a good lifelong partner?
My husband and I have been married for 5+ years, both 32yo. We rarely raise our voices at each other, generally try to tackle problems as a team, and are in the best place we’ve been in since getting married. We are not planning to have children.
The issue is, I don’t know if this is enough for me. I hear of women whose husbands are serial cheaters while they’re home pregnant and looking after children, we’ve never been disloyal to one another and it’s not a concern, but that seems like the bare minimum. He almost never complains when asked to help with chores and tasks, but that also seems like the bare minimum. However, I feel like I still end up with most of the mental load, and most of the work. To be fair, he works a lot (50-60h/week) and he brings home 80% of our HHI. I also work a full-time job in the same industry, but my hours are more reasonable (40-45h/week), and I work from home.
I’ve communicated to him that I would like to prepare for job search/interviews because I’m not growing at my current company. He verbally supports me, but I don’t feel supported by his actions.
When we planned our annual vacation this year, he picked the destination with less than 3 months to our vacation dates, I reminded him that we have little time remaining to plan our itinerary and book accommodations. I ended up planning the whole itinerary. I asked him to book rental cars over a month ago and he just booked them last week after reminders. I told him that hotels need to booked sooner than later because the good ones that are also affordable will run out of availability, I ended up booking all the hotels and he blamed my anxiety for it.
Similarly, he blames my anxiety for most things that I tell him need to get done because he always prefers to leave things until the last minute. Take filing his FSA claims - he will be using a chunk of my FSA credits this year, I told him I wanted to file them together a few Saturdays ago, he said he has until March, and then blames it on my anxiety that I wanted to get it done early. It ended up not getting done because we disagreed on timing.
When I plan gifts and vacations for my family, I do it fully on my own, he happily helps to execute (driving them around mainly). Planning gifts and vacations for his family, I handle most, if not all, of it.
I asked for a Christmas tree over a month ago, nothing got done until I shopped for it this week. I voiced my complaints and he said we could’ve just went to Costco to shop for it when we get back from vacation on Christmas Eve. We’ve needed a new robot vacuum for almost half a year and I did most of the research over Black Friday, and communicated which model we should get. Nothing has been ordered because I haven’t ordered it.
We both lost our wedding rings over 2 years ago and I asked for a new one immediately, I still don’t have one and I’ve stopped caring, and don’t plan on wearing it even if I get it in the future.
I am exhausted and resentful. I used to love to travel and now I dread going on vacations with him. I’m tired of meal planning and grocery list planning and reminding us when we should have dinner at a reasonable hour. I used to love the idea of living in this fancy apartment with my dream kitchen that his salary affords us, but it’s so dirty and messy I no longer want to go into the kitchen.
On the plus side, he’s faithful, hilarious, intelligent, hardworking, and oh-so patient with me. We have wonderful sex, he is wonderful to/with my family, he has provided us great financial security, and he is generous with me (he doesn’t care how I spend our money even though I am a self-imposed miser). I’ve also never had to file taxes once, he takes care of it all without a word.
We’ve talked about getting a cleaner for a long time, even somebody to help us meal prep, but who is going to do the work to find these people to help, and coordinate with them?
I don’t know if this is about as good as it gets for us women, and I’m just taking what I have for granted? Or is this just the bare minimum, and I should be asking for more?
Posted Dec 6, 2025, 6:27 PM UTC