Hi ladies, I'll try to keep it brief.

Ive been married what will soon be for 6 years. We have two beautiful boys, 4 and 2. My husband is old fashioned and thrilled that I'm a Stay at home mom while he works a high pressure tenure track academia job in STEM.

Over the last many years I'm struggling more and more with feeling like I'm caring for 3 children rather than two. He views the household work as my domain. He's a very hard worker at his job which extends past the usual 40 hour week, and he's an involved loving father when he's home. My gripe comes from zero involvement in looking after our home together.

The amount of "I'm going to get to this" projects he states and has zero followup on is frustrating and I find myself doing all the yardwork and maintenance around the home because I'm tired of seeing the same broken things for weeks on end. I do all the cooking, grocery shopping, yard work, laundry, banking bills and investments, activities and appointments for our boys, care for our cat. I told him I felt overwhelmed and his suggestion was that we sit down and he helps me get organized rather than taking over any of these duties. I feel majorly burnt out and underappreciated. He's a great provider but my male role models have always been so active, doing dishes, fixing things around the house, landscaping etc.

I don't know how to approach this without totally emasculating him or coming off too harshly. I find it really unattractive to feel like I'm his mother. I've read The Surrendered Wife and when I tried to implement her suggestions things got so much worse as many tasks fell to disrepair and deadlines were missed. He simply made no effort to pick up the slack when I told him I could not do a task.

I know the fault lies with me doing too much too early in the relationship, I wanted to be the perfect wife who made his life a breeze, but this many years later I feel desperate for some sense of equal ownership and responsibilities in our home.

We've tried Honey-Do lists, we've tried "set chores" that belong to each person, but oftentimes they get terribly neglected and I have to do them for my family's health and safety (ie. Cats litterbox does not get cleaned or garbage does not get taken out). We did hire a monthly house cleaner which I'm very grateful to help lighten the load.

Help, please!