AIBU to challenge my husband using the same excuse over chores?

Are you an elderly man?

Your overall perspective on the topic is self-righteous, wrong and I think it’s damaging to women.

I am well aware that any woman can be victim to violence and abuse. I’ve supported friends, family, and colleagues through male violence and abuse and I’ve never once blamed them or thought they were stupid. Of course not.

OP and others are not being abused because they have chosen to be with lazy, pointless arseholes who can’t put a sheet on a mattress.

I once attended an event to help raise money for women experiencing domestic abuse. The speaker was a woman who’d run a related organization for decades. She said the most harmful attitudes to women in these situations were ones like your own. No intelligent woman would ever find herself in such a situation, surely.

She said endless comments were made to her like “What are they, stupid?”

She then described her career, her life, her wealth and her family background. It included two PhDs from Ivy universities. It was incredibly impressive but I was confused. She seemed to be bragging.

Then she told us all something she said she’d never actually admitted to anyone before.
“Do I look stupid to you?”

If you don’t have any experiences with this type of situation from any angle then you will do more damage than good with your attitude. “It couldn’t happen to me”.

Your ignorance can be forgiven but some humility or a little empathy might go a long way.

He sounds completely useless. Can you find something for him to do that doesnt require lots of thought. Clean the bathrooms? Men like routine. They cant think beyond the task in hand.

I would ask him how he proposes going forward with parenting when he frequently does things that make more work for you. If he’s not learning from his mistakes then he is either stupid, doesn’t care about you or doing it on purpose. Which does he believe it is?

I haven’t experienced it because I simply would not stand for it. No matter how handsome, wealthy, intelligent, funny a man was, I simply would not enter or stay in a relationship with a man like this. I’ve dated men who showed signs of this, so I ended it.

So my advice to women is to leave, or accept the behaviour if they won’t leave. These men aren’t going to change.

I voted YABU, as you say you don't want to split, and I think that you should consider it as what does he even add to your life?

I told DH that if he didn't up his game when the kids were little I'd leave him, as I'd prefer to know it was all on me, rather than hoping he'd do more when he didn't. He soon sorted himself out!

Do You have any helpful advice for someone that’s already in the midst of it? Or just want to shame others here for issue you haven’t experienced and therefore can’t understand?

Why are any women in relationships with men who would do this?!

If I suggested we sleep on a bare mattress, my partner would ask me why I thought we lived in a doss house all of a sudden.

If I’d gone home with a man who lived like this when I was dating, I wouldn’t have seen him again.

Unfortunately I think a lot of men would sleep on a bare mattress and barely notice

He knows you won’t leave so has no reason to change.

I've made it clear to mine that if he keeps threatening everytime I won't stop him leaving- I'll usher him out. Normal adults don't threaten to leave with every argument and I won't abide by that in a relationship.

As far as either the weaponised incompetence- or perhaps general incompetence- we have a useful phrase in our house:

Use your eyes

Now that DS is 5, he also uses that at his father. And he seems to have stepped up more over the years.

You taught English and yet you think the plural of party is party's??

And that thankyou is a word?

I would call his bluff and suggest a temporary break with him moving out and fending for himself.

I had one of these OP - possibly he was even worse because he would also have berated me for there not being a sheet on the mattress.
Funnily enough when I met him, his flat was immaculate. The weaponised incompetence happened after we were married & had DC.
We were together over 20yrs and it was awful. There were great times, of course, but he simply thought it was my job as a woman to do everything remotely domestic - to the point that he could barely put his plate in the dishwasher, or put his rubbish in the bin. It caused endless arguments.
Life was a lot easier after he moved out. It's incredible how much extra work a man-baby like this creates.
I'd call his bluff - next time he threatens to leave, take him up on it. Start packing a bag for him.

I’m not disagreeing there are men like this, I’m saying they’d need a complete personality transplant if they suddenly started being incapable of picking a shirt to wear, going to the dentist, and buying their sibling a birthday card. If I moved in with someone who’d had such a personality change, I’d move straight back out. If I moved in with someone previously capable of a reasonable discussion, who suddenly could not resolve disagreements, I’d move straight back out.

Anyway, OP said he’d always been like this so he has not had a personality change. She has prioritised whatever else he brings to the table (earnings? willingness to have children?) over his ability to do basic chores.

Yep, no.

I’m not just talking about housekeeping.

I’m talking about how they handle conflict or disagreement. Ability to repair and reset.

How they divide chores.

Things they did quite well while single they suddenly think are the tasks of mummy and that’s now you, the wife.

Life Admin, social agenda, remembering commitments, picking up the greeting cards, what time to leave for the commitments. What to wear.

I am sure I’ve seen a thread about a DH with OCD who thinks wifey must now perform all of their compulsions, too.

Emotional labor.

Fuck, I could go on.

Threatens leaving me with ‘the way I am with him’.

Ask the useless arsehole ’What the fuck are you still doing here then?’.

"I agree! But WHY can't you do anything right? Don't blame me for pointing it out!"

But, you know, why bother! He lazy and doesn't care. That isn't going to change.

Weaponised incompetence is a very powerful technique and works every time when you don't want to do something. Ive used it myself with great success to avoid caring for someone else's child.

It’s very easy to spot if a man is capable of keeping himself, his clothes, and his house clean and organised, by observing him doing so for a period of time before even thinking about living together and having children.

It’s quite unlikely a man who can do all this properly for himself will suddenly become incapable of putting a sheet on a mattress.

Both words exist, together they’re a noun phrase. Language is constantly evolving and if people find it a useful term to group a set of sub optimal behaviours, let them.

You shouldn't have to change your approach but as you want it to work you could try changing. Instead of getting mad just be polite about it and take it at fave value that he forgets. "You've forgot the mattress protector, could you just go and pop one on please? I know you've already put her down but she's been leaking and I'd hate her to be on a matress soaked in urine and it's really hard to clean it off the mattress".
Do it every time so it gets instilled in him, a bit like raising a child. "Oh, you've left your boxers on the floor, just pop them in the wash basket please" "just give that floor a sweep please, it's looking a bit dirty and I need to do x".

Tell him to bloody go then! You're solo parenting anyway, it's easier without an overgrown teenager who can't just bloody THINK for himself.