Doing things badly to avoid being asked to do them

[Justajot]

I asked DH to do something because he can fit it into his schedule more easily than I can. I have had umpteen "you'll have to remind me"s and "how do I"s. Whether consciously or not, he seems to be avoiding it and making it my problem again. How common is this?

Mine does it. I am vague in my responses. I mumble and walk off. Or I’m blunt and tell him I had to work it out so I’m sure he can.

DD makes shit tea

Very. It's called 'Strategic Incompetence'. The following came up on a Google search:

metro.co.uk/2017/11/01/male-incompetence-is-a-subtle-form-of-misogyny-7046248/

I had to teach my ex three times how to work the washing machine as he ‘forgot’ how to do it three weeks in a row. Cheeky git. Thought I’d do it. Er no mate.
But it was one of the reasons I split with him as he expected me to carry the weight of everything and it wasn’t fair.
I wonder if he takes his washings to his mum to do it if he finally worked out how to put powder in and press start....

'Strategic incompetence' is the art of avoiding certain tasks by pretending you don't know how to do them. Masters (and it usually is masters) of this art also infuriate the living daylights out of you so that you give up and do it yourself and / or purposefully f^ck up whatever you've asked them to do so you don't ask them again. I could go on...

When my family are strategically incompetent I tend to make sarcastic comments like 'If only there was some kind of search engine where we could look up how to do things.'

And 'If only we had some kind of device we have to hand almost all of the time that we could use to set an alarm to remind ourselves to do things.'

I'm not sure if I feel better or worse knowing it has a name.

It doesn't have a name, it is a metro article, metro being under the daily mail umbrella.

It is a plain situation where your partner could offer up similar examples and on mn be considered controlling.

It's a simple rubbing along together scenario, bring it up if it annoys you, don't be offended if you also have he also brings up things, it's just petty living together stuff

@Justanotherlurker. Oh fuck, there is someone out there who doesn't see every single thing as a deal breaker

I take the 'if you cant do it well you need more practice' strategy. But I do admit I stack the dishwasher really badly so dh always does it now 😊 he does know my game though- he 'pretends' to be rubbish at stuff too, we can laugh about it but if it was something serious I really would say he needs to do it more to learn how to do it well. I do this with my dc.