DH is a lovely man; but he gets carried away entertaining and hosting leaving me as the kitchen drudge and I'm sick of it.
My DH is the same way. Lovely person and quite the extrovert so he loves loves LOVES to socialize. While I don't, by a long shot, find working in the kitchen a drudgery, I know when something is going to be too labor-intensive and choose not to do it. I've sat back and watched DH run around, all frazzled, trying to get something ready because he wanted a particular thing for his family and didn't plan in advance the time to get it done without having to break his neck doing it, and I've told him it's up to him to get it cooked/baked/completed as it's way more work than I am willing to expend.
I did have another hill about 1.5 years ago and, boy, would I not budge no matter how much DH (then-DF) huffed and puffed about it!
BIL and SIL were getting married, and BIL is DH's only sibling so I said let's get them something special, rather than just off the registry. DH agreed so I set about coming up with ideas for their wedding gift. I looked at their registry, came up with an idea, talked to DH about it then spent a bit of time online trying to find items that matched their fancy china wedding pattern (they were toasting flutes and a cake cutter, in case anyone's wondering). I even came here to get feedback about having them engraved, shopped a couple of engravers to see who I liked best, blah blah blah. Essentially, I handled everything to get the wedding gifts and get them engraved.
The moment arrives that the gifts need to be wrapped. DH has done NOTHING at this point, except answer my questions and go with me to the mall once to check out one engraver (so, no spending time online locating the gifts/ordering the gifts/finding discounts and no running around town to get the gifts to/from the engraver I selected, which he did not go with me to check out -- in all, I made three trips to that engraver, plus a few phone calls).
I told DH that since he did not do anything else and that this is HIS brother, that he needed to do wrapping. You would've thought I'd ordered DH to go kick a puppy, he was so upset! It was far more important to DH that the wrapping look "perfect" (meaning I do it) than the fact that if *I* did the wrapping, then that would mean DH expended no effort. I flat-out refused. I don't think I made the wrong choice, and I thought DH was being incredibly selfish (he never once volunteered to do anything like take the gifts to/from the engravers for me). DH's excuse is that he's terrible at wrapping. I told him it didn't matter how nice of a job he does -- what matters is that he actually have some part in the process and do the only thing left to do, which was wrap the gifts.
DH ended up wrapping the gifts, albeit being very angry the whole time, but I just didn't care. I knew I had done all the work while he did what he usually did at that time (pursue his interest of all things Catholic) so I wasn't about to let him off the hook this time.
Months later we talked about it, and DH agreed that he was being quite unreasonable about the whole thing. I still do the bulk of anything regarding shopping for gifts (DH doesn't expend the effort trying to find a deal so he'll spend more money than we'd actually need to if I don't do it myself). It's okay; I like shopping. This year, I was fine with doing all the wrapping (except for my gifts) and had him just do the ribbon since, by the time I was done, I had no interest in dealing with ribbon and bows; DH has picked up other household tasks so I know work is actually more even now.
Topic: Your holiday hill to die on. (Read 1042523 times)