To think I maybe just have to lower my expectations and realise that DH will never change?

Apparently the happiest group of people are married men (because they don’t do anything) and the second happiest group are single women….

So he was like this before you both had children, then after the first child then the other child/ren, so why would he change now?

We only have you side to this and he could be lazy you could have impossible standards to meet or something lin between but he must be good enough for you to have multiple children with, sometimes yes people do have this attitude of if it is not done to 'my' standards it is wrong

And yes of course people will go 'well he should do xyx' but life is not a tick box exercise of what people should do, and yes there could be come martyring going on

He may be useless but there may also be things you do wrong also no man or woman is perfect not matter how much MN carries on about poor woman and they always do everything

I don’t have a solution, but I empathise and am sorry. I get upset when we are going away (like tomorrow) and my husband hasn’t thought of anything we need to do to prepare. If it was up to him, he’d suddenly be ready to go, without appropriate children’s clothing, birthday presents, our clothes, packing, preparing the car, even checking tyre pressure (all mainly me) etc. A short straw came this summer when we were getting ready to go. He was impatient, ready to leave.. because he’d packed his things.. and was saying ‘let’s go shall we??’ And I was like, what?! I am packing everything from our baby and you are impatient? Do you know where their dummy is? No? Well then we are not ready to go, are we.

I would show your husband the article about the dirty dishes. It did actually get through to hy husband somewhere. He bought the book. There was a little improvement. But we still have these problems. I should read the book too, perhaps it has info on how to cope! xx

This one is a bit different from the infinite number of similar threads on here. What stands out is:

1. the lack of care for his own children
2. the relentlessness of his pushback against any idea that he may be less than perfect, or even that his wife could have an acceptable way of doing things.

Im really struck by the nastiness of what he is doing. My late Dh was not a perfect husband (God knows I was not a perfect wife). I could have posted dozens of threads and had MN advising me to LTB, because there were some really extreme moments in our marriage, and I never did LTB and I’m glad. But I knew he would do his best to care for ds, and he respected me. He would always have got ds dry, warm and fed before himself.

Of course 7 year olds can dress themselves, just like they can pack clothes and make cakes etc. Bit at that age you’re going to keep an eye, aren’t you? You’re going to make sure they’re out of those wet things because it’s easy to get distracted at that age and not think it matters until you are really cold and tired, and you’re going to hand them the oven gloves and just check they put the baking powder in etc etc. At 7 they aren’t caring for themselves in that way, or at least I hope they’re not, or they’re being neglected.

Id start pushing back yourself. Ask him, in a spirit of interested enquiry, how on earth he expected anything but chaos if he did such a shit job of the drop off? Is that how he acts at work? Never planning, never thinking ahead? Who does the planning at his job?

Know, deep in your soul, that it’s not you. Listen to what he says, for sure, in terms of his life and feelings, none of us is perfect. But don’t internalise it. He’s not even listening to you or seeing what you do, so his comments on your life are irrelevant.

Yes. Because somehow my husband holds down a full time job, earns the same as me, cooks, cleans, stacks the dishwasher, changes bedding, works around our child school hours half the week and does laundry, all without wanting a medal

So yeah, OPs husband is useless based on the milk cartons and dishwasher, buts he's a complete fucking failure of a man when you take into sccount the other two paragraphs of stuff he doesn't do either.

Yes you probably have to lower your expectations of him. But you don't have to accept the current situation.

You can leave. You'll have one less person to sort out. The alternative is living with someone who doesn't respect you, who you grow to resent.

You can also decide to live as separately as possible. No laundry for him. No dinner for him. No reminders for him / his family. Do exactly what he does for you.

Or you can accept this is your life and make peace with tying yourself to someone who takes advantage of you

He reminds me of my DH who is (I think ) both autistic and ADHD. I’m not just diagnosing him from nothing as our child has both, and DH’s traits are worse. The wet clothes thing would be exactly the sort of thing he would do but his autism finds a way to argue that it’s all fine then we have a big argument about it. It drives me mad. I think the thoughts genuinely don’t enter his brain but it is sooo maddening.

FWIW, he is very intelligent, as is our DS. He has a degree in maths and works with large contracts worth millions. I couldn’t work out why he is called the “Rottweiler “ at work and is so utterly dense at home but my son pointed out that work has a sort of flow chart to follow mentally but home requires multiple different responses and his brain can’t do that.

OP, I’d get a book about how to cope with ADHD then give him a very specific list of tasks and how to follow them. If he still doesn’t, then he’s being a dick.

Weaponised incompetence is the only thing men are good at. They condition you to do the day in day out stuff then say we do fuck all.
Perhaps you need to catch COVID and isolate in bed for 5 days?

It was an attempt at humour on my part. Of course he won’t change see second paragraph.

How do these men hold down jobs ??

😂

Your definition of a "useless man" is based on rinsing milk cartons?

If the OP's 7 year old son is incapable of changing his own clothes, there's something wrong with him.

It's utterly toxic to label someone useless because they don't dispose of rubbish in the "correct" way, or leave a plate on the counter in their own house. The OP is abusive to her DH. If a man had written this about his wife the responses would be vary different.

A controlling and abusive person will.always find a way to blame others.

Do you do those things? Why are your standards so low for someone else's son? Because if her son follows suit, he will end up alone because young women won't put up with useless men, hence the rise in incel vulture.

This is great. It’s so much energy & so constantly disappointing & draining. Like you say why try & make them when they don’t want to/ only want to when it’s organised by someone else for them to (& even then it’s not right blah blah blah).

This sounds like my husband. Not the exact situation with cleaning (although he is guilty of similar) but organises nothing with/for the kids. Mine are getting bigger now and eldest can sort of manage himself but still needs help. DD still needs supervision with almost everything. He does nothing, organises nothing. Takes responsibility for nothing. Totally sick of him. I feel for you OP!

I have ADHD and I buy all the birthday presents, do the kid admin, laundry, shopping and most cooking etc. But then again, I'm a woman.

My husband is really good in general, far better at cleaning than I am (although I do my fair share, it's just that he actively enjoys it) and he's great at paperwork, which has been a lifelong battle for me. I've actually got a bit better at that too, because having a family has made me want to do better for us all.

My husband is always supportive and bigs me up when I think I'm crap at stuff but we also divide jobs according to preference/ability. I wouldn't just leave him to do everything. So yeah, it's not necessarily adhd or all adhd. Some of your husband's issue is being a selfish twat.

Who cares how he takes it? Seriously.

You're already doing everything, don't add managing his fragile ego to your list.

It can't get any worse.

He's disrespectful and actively telling you he is more important. Its just sad that he doesn't care.

Have you tried being less controlling.

Dishes not put in the dishwasher . . 🙄

Rinsing milk cartons? . . WTF!

Why at 7 is your DS incapable of changing his own clothes?

You realise that in few years you'll have two men in your home who "won't listen to you" . . . you need to climb down from that high horse and chill out a little.

You'll give yourself a coronary if you keep this up.

Exactly this. And yet again we have women on this thread making excuses for their lazy useless husbands because they allegedly have ADHD and/or some form of ND. It makes me really angry. You’re doing a huge disservice to those of us who do actually have ADHD (and have a diagnosis to prove it) rather than a bad case of bone idleness and learned incompetence.

Your husband is lazy. It has sweet fa to do with being ND.

No disrespect meant here but this approach is often suggested. It might work if it’s the case if a decent guy who’s a bit rubbish domestically. Men like OP’s H? Nope.
he’s been told. Not only is he refusing to change, he’s minimising OP’s level of work.

if she did this, she’d return to carnage. It would not be worth it. And anyway, why should she have to leave her home to teach this asshole a lesson?

I read the OP and though exactly of this article but @teawamutu has beaten me to sharing it.

Just go on holiday to a lovely retreat for at least three weeks (or if you work, find somewhere to secretly stay locally) Go during term time and leave on a Friday with the weekend laundry popped just by the washing machine and some dishwasher tablets. Bonus points if there’s a kids birthday party one at least one of the weekends, or one of his relatives.

His appreciation might increase a bit on your return but from the sound of it, you probably have to choose between divorce and putting up with it.

Not speaking for OP but most of us who end up in this situation don’t know it’s going to happen.

my ex was capable, competent at most household chores, a great cook. Pre-kids there wasn’t much responsibility for either of us. Once kids arrived, and other life challenges, it became clear he only was able / prepared to do what he wanted, when he wanted to. And life with DC isn’t like that.

I do. He’d either not read it at all, or completely refuse to believe he was in that situation.

"He’s definitely got a degree of neurodiversity going on, although never diagnosed, so I’m sure that’s a major factor in this."
Neurodiversity is not an vaccine against being an arsehole. He can be neurodiverse AND an arsehole. It sounds to me as if it is his arsoleness that is the major factor.

Sounds like he was useless from the start. Why did you marry him? Not being rude, but why get together with someone lazy and incompetent?