Hi everyone, thanks for coming to my TED talk! My bf (34) and I (29) met 7 months ago and became official 6 months ago. We met at my aunts wedding and sparks flew and it’s been a pretty great relationship. He lives across the country finishing up his pediatric residency and I work as an organizational consultant on the west coast.

My job is fantastic in the sense that my bosses allow me tons of independence to work remotely as long as we bill our clients with enough hours and I meet all our deliverable deadlines. I work 40 hours per week and have a good work life balance. His job is incredibly demanding (obviously) dealing with medical emergencies and terminally ill/abused children all the time. Probably 75 hours per week.

We have met each other’s families and he is really proud of me. I love that he is a bit dominant and a good leader, so when we split a plane ticket every 3-5 weeks for me to come visit, I stay for a week at a time, working remotely. During these visits I do all the cooking, leave him some meals frozen, keep his gas tank full, do our laundry, make coffee/breakfast, make the bed, tidy, drive meals to him at work, clean the bathroom etc.

However, this past trip I thought was great but we were both working and I have a huge amount of work due soon so I was very occupied during 9-5 hours although I still did all the chores above and made sure to have a face full of makeup and full attention ready for him when he got off work. We had mindblowing sex 1-2x per day. He said that this time I “was doing my own thing and didn’t understand how much he is going through.” I ofc asked what he meant, and he said I did less cleaning that time and fewer chores for him. I reminded him I had work and still tried to do breakfast/dinner/laundry/cleaned the bathroom, in addition to making a fancy Sunday dinner, and he cited that I waited until the second to last day of my trip to do the bathroom and I suggested he use TurboTax instead of having me go print out his tax forms, so he “had” to pay $50 for the software.

My feelings are a little hurt. I fly out to him every time and do my best to be fun and sexy and play housewife but I scaled back a little since I had a lot of work (I have an MS and work for a very serious firm in the bay). I still did a ton and can’t help but feel upset it wasn’t enough, given that we aren’t at the cohabitation stage, not engaged, split most of our date costs, and I work FT.

We are going to discuss this further later. He also had his house pretty gnarly when I arrived so I didn’t want to launch in right away. He also alluded to liking that he did a bit of his own folding/tidying one night, since it’s “a good routine” and he “assumes I’ll do everything but that’s not great.” (His words.)

He is sweet, fun, intelligent, smoking hot, supportive, shows me off, and I could see a future with him. If we were married I’d be happy to work PT to be more of a homemaker, and if we had kids I’d be happy to stay at home and take care of everyone FT. How can I express gratitude for just how hard his work is but also explain that I feel these expectations are a little out of pocket? Or are they?

tl;dr Wwyd guys? LDR criticized me for not doing more of his chores & housework though I do a fair amount while also working FT.I want to approach this conversation in an appropriate way. I cried when he first brought this up since I was surprised and frustrated that I disappointed him.