'AITA for not letting my husband shower before dinner every day?' UPDATED 2X

"AITA for not letting my husband shower when he wants?"

Mostly SAHM of two kids here, ages one and three. I work two days a week at most, usually only one. Most of the time I'm home with them. My husband is a blue-collar worker in construction. He works long days, his job is pretty physical, and he works really hard. He gets up at 5am and gets home by 630. My days are usually around the same, give or take an extra hour in the morning.

Every single day my husband gets home, he wants to go to the bathroom and take a shower the second he gets in the driveway. This would be one thing if he was quick--but he takes at least 25 minutes on the toilet and 25-minute showers, and I cannot start dinner with the kids hanging off my legs.

They just scream and cry every single time. I've started to ask him to wait until they go to bed, given I really only have a 2-hour window to get dinner ready, eat, clean up the dishes, clean up their chairs, get them ready for bed, get them baths etc. He complied at first, but he's now telling me it's very unfair to ask him to sit in dirty clothes and be a sweaty mess for two hours until they get to bed.

Which I understand it's uncomfortable, but you know...I've just been alone with the kids for 13 hours straight. Every day. I have stuff I still need to get done, too. My kids are in their tantrum phase as well, which has been really hard. He got really snippy with me today and said I was being incredibly selfish when I asked him to wait.

I said I felt he was being selfish by running to the bathroom for almost an hour every time he gets home when he knows I have stuff to get done, too.

So, AITA here? Or is he?

People had a lot of opinions.

Safe_Initiative1340 wrote:

Stick the kids in a play pen or child proof area. Even if you have to turn the tv on so they have something they want to watch. Then cook. My partner has to take a shower when he comes home too — I won’t even let him touch the kid until he’s clean and he wouldn’t want to. ESH but him because he doesn’t have to take forever in the bathroom every day, but you for trying to overly dictate when he showers.

Ziffolous wrote:

ESH but an easy fix.

Get some fiber and agree to 10-minute showers.

As George Carlin said, "AH, armpits, crotch, and teeth, and you can use the same brush in all spots!" Get in, scrub hard, get out. Scrub, not rub. Not sure what the hell you can do for more then 10 minutes anyways. If it takes 25 minutes to poop then maybe there are other issues you need to consider. Let the man shower but let's get this event down to 20 minutes total and I think it would work better.

Sweater_weather_grrl wrote:

I don’t this either of you are the AH. Can you prep food early while your kids are napping? Put together freezer meals on weekends? Can he take a shorter shower?

aikidharm wrote:

As a blue collar worker- ESH.

You need to take more action to separate yourself from your children instead of allowing them run of the house and you.

Many commenters have given good advice about that, so I won’t pile on. Your hubs needs to take shorter showers. However, I cannot say anything about his toilet time. A lot of men who work construction end up with “construction belly” which results from them not pooping at work if they can avoid it due to the conditions there.

It retrains your body, but at a relatively high cost. I don’t do that, but damn, I do understand why it’s a thing. Those sites are nasty. You need to stop comparing being a SAHM to being a blue collar worker. No one is more or less tired or struggling here. You both have difficult jobs, but for very different reasons. It’s not a competition.

All these comments suggesting he is hiding from you and the kids, that he shouldn’t have gotten married or be a father are absolutely heartbreaking. People are f#$king cruel. I hope you don’t have this impression, at least not without more evidence that you may not have shared with us.

After receiving a lot of different takes, OP jumped on with two updates.

Edit to Add for INFO: I see so many comments about decompression time. None of this is about decompression time, it's about getting the kids to bed on time because they wake up even earlier if I don't get them to bed by 8pm.

We have plenty of time after they go to sleep for ourselves, and I don't mind him doing whatever he wants to do at that point. I have exactly 1.5 hours to get dinner done, clean up, clean them up (and no, I can't give them a bath before dinner--they're messy eaters), read them a story and get ready for bed. If you take 50 minutes away from that, I have no time left.

I also want to add I am very much just saying construction as a general term. Some of all are acting like he's covered in mud, filth and fiberglass--he's not. He's a very sweaty person and his job is not "dirty." I don't want to say his job title as there are people in this sub I know.

Edit 2: some of you are also misunderstanding what I'm asking--I'm not asking him to wait two hours to shower, I'm asking him to wait 30 minutes so I can get dinner done, get him and the kids fed, and then he has the rest of the evening to himself to shower, decompress, play his games etc. I take care of the rest of the night.

This was, without a doubt, a heated one.