I (31F) am the sole breadwinner and feel like my STAHW (30F) does not do enough

I (31F) am the only one who works (albeit WFH) and my wife (30F) doesn’t work by choice at this point. My job is very demanding mentally and I constantly have a stream of projects to do everyday and even sometimes the weekends. I do 90% of the cooking, grocery shop, clean up after our cats, do the laundry, run any errands, take out the trash, tidy our patio and help my wife with any other cleaning if she needs it. My wife does handle everything else like vacuuming the living room, dining room and kitchen. She also occasionally mops and cleans the bathroom. She’s also been stepping up in helping me prepping the ingredients before I cook. But I still feel overwhelmed and exhausted. She recently brought up to me that it is exhausting for her that when she asks me to do something I will either procrastinate or completely forget about it. While I understand that it must be exhausting for her to deal with my forgetfulness but I also feel like I’ve been stressed about work and everything else I do for the household that I have a difficult time remembering things. I’ve brought this up to her and she said I am not acknowledging that she’s stepped up in helping me more in the kitchen like washing the dishes and prepping ingredients and coming with me to grocery shop but honestly I still feel like it’s not enough.

I love my wife and don’t want to divorce over this because I believe we can work through this. I wanted to seek advice from others in similar situations and how you handle the division of labor in the household when one partner is working and the other isn’t. With no kids in the mix of course. How can I either change my mindset on this or how can we divide the labor more fairly?

Posted Apr 29, 2026, 6:49 AM UTC

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