Her pleas for understanding and support go unheard as her husband’s inattentiveness chips away at her already fragile endurance. Sleeves left inside out, chores ignored, and loud music blaring against her migraine create a storm of isolation and despair, pushing her to a breaking point where her physical pain is matched only by the emotional weight of feeling utterly alone.
I suffer from migraines, and type 1 diabetes – we were advised not to try and get pregnant due to my lack of control of my blood sugars, it happened and it sucks (although I’ve been monitoring it so much better and been doing much better).
1) I ask my husband constantly to turn the sleeves of his tops the right way in, he wears 2-3 tops a day (if he goes gym it’s 3, 2 if he’s going out which he 9/10 does) and he doesn’t, so I’m ironing 10 tops each week at minimum and it just gets so annoying to constantly be turning in the sleeves.
2) I ask him once a week to unload the dishwasher and get rid of the rubbish, I do it the rest of the time…rubbish wasn’t emptied and when I opened a cupboard a few plates fell out and one fell on me which hurts more than it sounds like!.
3) I had a migraine, I asked him to keep the lights off and keep it quiet and he insisted on a) playing loud music and b) turning the lights on.
I just lost it, I’m so uncomfortable and it’s like I feel like I ask the minimum? So I told him I wouldn’t be having two children and asked him to leave, he wouldn’t so I texted my brothers and they came and made him leave.
He’s texting me, I since calmed down, and saying I’m the AH because I overreacted, went nuclear and can’t do that when I have the baby – he’s insisting I apologise.
Edit; noticed the error in title…should say making him stay at a hotel
Conclusion
The original poster (OP) expressed extreme frustration due to feeling unsupported in managing household tasks and health needs while pregnant, leading to an immediate, high-stakes reaction where they demanded their husband leave. The central conflict lies between the OP’s feeling that their requests for basic help were ignored and the husband’s perception that the OP’s reaction was an overreaction that showed poor judgment regarding future parenting responsibilities.
Was the OP justified in escalating the situation to forcing their husband out due to chronic unmet requests concerning simple domestic tasks and immediate health needs, or was the response disproportionate given the ongoing pregnancy and the need for stable co-parenting?
Here’s how people reacted:
Just for reference, I was raised in the 1970s and 1980s in a midwestern farming community where everybody was religious and had clear gender roles, most of the women were SAHM/SAHW, submissive types who definitely did 100% of the housework as their regular division of labor. So just imagine that scenario, right out of the movies. Patriarchal, confined, women served men. Now here are the facts from that time and place:
1. They/we made life easier on ourselves while pregnant.
2. Those patriarchal farming and blue collar men HELPED when we were pregnant. Cook something easy, iron their own shirt, pitch in with dishwashing and the care of older children after work. (And if the man was injured or ill, the wife would earn some money, whether working from home or getting a job. Partnership.)
3. They/we ironed the men’s shirts, but that would be button-downs for work or church, not athleisure, and definitely not 2 to 3 per day!
As a middle-aged woman, I absolutely hate to see the young women working harder to serve men, and having less gumption and self-respect, than women actually from the era when they couldn’t even have credit cards in their own name, etc. These days, I see a lot of young women fearfully putting up with controlling, inconsiderate, childish or weak ass men.
You deserve a partner in life. If he needs his shirts to be ironed, he can do it or hire it out. Not allowing you to rest with a migraine?? Normal people are more considerate of strangers than he was to you. That was really cruel and hateful as well as harmful. It was abusive.
I went to my pharmacist when I was pregnant and she explained that meds are rated something like: ok, not recommended but probably not too bad, or absolutely never do you want to give your baby thalidomide arms?
All* migraine medications are in the last category. They’re on the omg never list. (*This was over 10 years ago, it might have changed, please talk to your own pharmacists, I’m not a medical anything I’m just a mom who gets migraines.)
Your husband is such an asshole for many reasons. Honestly your life will be so much easier if you only have to take care of one baby at a time.
Also, being pregnant is a very common time for abusive partners to start this behaviour. Loud music during a migraine, especially an unmedicated migraine is absolutely abusive.
I hope you are safe and I don’t know if therapy will help. Therapy is actually really toxic with an abusive partner.
Please do therapy for yourself though, if you can. And stick with people who support you. Not your relationship with your husband. There’s a difference and your husband hasn’t earned that support at all.
~~INFO: Where does staying at a hotel come into it? Are you referring to your husband now staying at a hotel, or have you forgotten to include something?~~
I’m not sure how many months pregnant you are (the further along you are the more potentially awkward those jobs some of those he is not doing like unloading the dishwasher would be for you to do when he fails to) or whether you work or are at home full time, but he’s being inconsiderate to your health.
I don’t understand why your husband can’t iron his own shirts or get headphones. Depending on the size of your place, and/or whether it is open plan, lights off when you’ve got a migraine *might* be harder to accommodate at night, so that may need a compromise of adjustable lights (so it can be set at a low level) or sleep mask for you to wear if he can’t use a different room at those times.
You’re pregnant under less than ideal health circumstances. Migraines aren’t go for you or the baby (hightened blood pressure isn’t good for either of you).
Husband is going bare minimum in chores, not assisting you with the chores you’ve taken on, knows your health issues, and is intentionally making things worse.
STOP IRONING! He can send his things out if he can’t iron himself.
He needs to pick up more chores. He needs to assist in your health care (ie, quiet and dark when you have a migraine). He needs to apologize to you for his recent behavior and commit to reforming his behavior. The dude is the a h in this situation.
Honestly, him calling you the asshole, telling you you overreacted, and that you “can’t act like this” when you have the baby… it all reminds me of my abusive ex-wife. These are the sorts of things she’d say to me, to keep me under her control. It worked for years. Just food for thought.
STOP IRONING HIS SHIRTS GIRL!!!!!!
You are pregnant with a serious, life threatening, medical condition.
He isn’t even doing the bare minimum to be a decent partner.
Do you have family close by that you could stay with for a bit to get a mental break? (If he insists on coming home and being so rude).
I’m sorry you’re going through this.
He is making your life worse by being with you. Without him, you will have less work and be happier. You were right you would have 2 children. Playing music when you have a migraine/pregnant(high-risk)diabetes is just cruel. He didn’t do the bare minimum and then went out of his way to hurt you.
Why are you doing his laundry/ironing? Seriously. Why? Just start with that single question. When you come up with an answer, you can move on to the more difficult questions in this Nightmare of a relationship.