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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To wish I could remain married but live in separate houses?

41 replies

JeanBodel · 27/12/2011 13:33

I know IABU really.

So DH has been off work for a week and is driving me mad. Overall he's a good guy, a good father, we're married and he's done nothing to warrant me breaking my vows and leaving him.

I just can't live with him. I've struggled with this for the eight years we've been married. We've been together 15 years but didn't live together at first. We've talked about it, had counselling; he always promises to change but I believe he just isn't capable of it.

The problem is his laziness. He has to be begged, cajoled, threatened into every single piece of work he does. He would never look at a dirty child/pile of washing up and think, 'I know, I'll wash it'. He just steps over it. And he won't undertake any task unless he can be persuaded that this is the last available moment in which to do it. If he can put things off, he will.

He just seems incapable of self-motivation. I know he's the same at work. So I have to do all the thinking, planning, mental work, then bully him into his meagre share of it. And I've had enough.

I am committed to this marriage. Also, our children are very young and I want him to be an equal parent. I dream of a scenario where we are separated - live in different houses - but are still friends, maybe even lovers, we just don't have to share the same living space. I suppose like when we first went out, where we lived in different cities but visited each other at the weekends. We did that for 7 years and it was good.

Does anyone else feel like this?

OP posts:

architien · 27/12/2011 15:51

Frida & her El Peron lived like that for a while. 16thc. Palladian houses are set up like this too. I've often drempt of it myself. It is bloody hard when two in a relationship have vastly different tolerances for untidiness etc.

slowburner · 27/12/2011 16:02

The only issue I have with my gorgeous DH is he is lazy. Bone bloody idle unless, HE wants to do something. I can beg, plead, deny sex, offer sex, cook favourite meals etc and yet still, he will not do as I ask.

Last week at the end of tether I utterly lost the plot and in my rage managed to r ecall at least a dozen things I had asked him to d which I had ended up doing. Additionally i took a day off work to blitz the house while DD was in nursery, seven hours i cleaned and tidied! DH agreed the house looked lovely and so we have agreed to create a rota of chores and tasks, he can see then what needs doing.

Although I too need to start on the two junk rooms, aka the nursery and my study. And I need to start on the meal planning and budget for the new year, I asked DH to print out our incomings/outgoings and he hasn't done it, sigh. Oh and catch up on the two weeks of phd work I missed while cleaning and dealing with a D&V bug. Eugh.

slowburner · 27/12/2011 16:04

Oh, but OP I would only ever leave if he became violent or unfaithful, his laziness might drive me insane but he is a great dad and my best friend.

FetchezLaVache · 27/12/2011 18:31

I would live in a different house from my DH in a heartbeat- he is a compulsive hoarder. Not quite Richard Wallace standards, but give him time...

EtInTerraPax · 27/12/2011 18:46

I know just how you feel JeanB. I have to do something, but don't know what to do. Sadly I do not have the means of HBC.
I was going to post a thread asking how skandi-style shared care works...

Flubba · 27/12/2011 18:53

Oooh I would love it! :o Think how lovely it would be to have your stuff where you left it, not to have to wash step over and try to ignore smelly running clothes and damp towels or get all stressed because you're asking sweetly nagging-- all the time :)
Nobody to nick the duvet. Nobody to finish the cheese or tea bags and not bother to tell you.

then again, I'm here on MN while DH is putting all three little people to bed :)

Binfullofgibletsonthe26th · 27/12/2011 18:53

I would love to have the two house scenario too. My dh is a nightmare for cleaning and is a sahd at the moment.

Yes the mum is left with the dc and all the work, but it isn't ds that causes a mess just dh! When he was away in the forces the house was sparkly. He took it all for granted, and i don't know who he assumed did all of this.

I now work full time with lots of travel, and dh is struggling. I smugly enjoyed the role reversal for 2 months, watching him flounder as I pointed out that he never lifted a finger while he worked, apart from emptying the bin, which I duly did. Sounds infantile I know, but he needed to wake up to the fact that I did so much.

He does clean now - for a whole day once a week. What gets on my tits is the tidying, not the cleanliness. He won't fold and stack towels and sheets, he just rams them into cupboards, pans fall out eveytime you open a door because he balances them dangerously etc and refuses to sort things out. When we left the UK my company paid £3500 to move our belongings, 30 boxes from his shed which were "essential" turned out ot be old dirty rags, empty cans of wd40 and rusty screws ffs!

It does affect life when he stashes bills to pay in carrier bags and Shoves them into random drawers and then I get super stressed when the overdue bills with fines arrive that could have been avoided. It means I can never quite rely on him completely and always have to be on my guard. He never really has this problem with me....but on the other hand i am a control freak that only opens her mouth to tell him to do something.

You have to reach a balance, think of jobs you really don't like that he does, and although it may seem childlike, a list or email does help. The problem is he will never find it important enough in the scale of things as you do and you have to let him know how stressful that is for you. I would defo say a cleaner makes life more bearable though!

RainboweBrite · 27/12/2011 19:02

OP, we have been LATs for 7 months now, as my DH took a temporary job in London after being made redundant, and my DS and I have stayed oop north. At first, I loved it, but after a while, the novelty wears off. The freedom is great, but then the responsibility of having to do everything really starts to grind you down, and you get to the point where you'd quite like a bit of help, even if you have to write detailed timetable/list/nag, nag, nag.
From September to December, DH was only coming back every other weekend, so DS and I have found that very hard, and DH misses us too.
So we're going to see how it works with him coming back every weekend. I'll let you know how that goes!

Xmasbaby11 · 27/12/2011 19:13

I can't recommend a cleaner enough. Cheaper than running two homes!

dirtyhair · 27/12/2011 20:40

I live apart from my DP although we've been in a relationship for 8 years. The underlying reason is a range of financial issues, but I'm also quite fussy about my own space, decor etc. (lived in my own flat with DC from previous relationship for 5 years). It works well for us, I am more like the OP's DH in that I can happily ignore mess and I like to collect things as well, I get annoyed having someone tell me to clear things away! So we do things our own way in our own homes and I am often amazed at some threads on MN when women complain about household issues with their DHs, as it just doesn't occur with me and DP.

stuffedauberginexmasdinner · 27/12/2011 20:56

Have you read wifework yet?

Your problem is not unique. It is our generation's 'feminine mystique'.

foreverondiet · 27/12/2011 22:03

As others have pointed out a cleaner would be much cheaper than running a second house. I think you need to explain how you feel put this to him as an ultimatum -

either a cleaner coming 3 times a week so you feel the cleaning isn't all down to you (although this may not be enough) or
he does the following tasks each week
or he moves out...

AllGoodNamesGone · 27/12/2011 22:32

I don't know about separate houses but what I would not give for my own bedroom with en-suite that no one ever entered except me!

eurochick · 27/12/2011 22:39

I would love the HBC/Tim Burton living arrangements. To me, that is perfect. My husband knows that I feel this way. Failing a large inheritance, I shall limit my ambitions to separate bedroom suites in the next house!

marriedandwreathedinholly · 27/12/2011 23:23

My DH is uber tidy and likes to come home to an immaculate house. When the children were tiny we used to say that if the house next door came onto the market we would put ourselves in hock and he could live in one tidy palace of perfection (covered in dust) and the dc and I could live in untidy cleanliness - a la Bonham-Carter-Burtons - with an interconnecting door.

He's much happier now the dc are teenagers and he doesn't have to tread on lego, small cars or polly pocket any more. He still complains continually about my lack of ordered domestic neatness, the fact that my bedside cabinet is heaped with feminine crap knick knacks, that I always seem to have discarded a pair of shoes in every room or hallway and that ds's pigstye bedroom could be neater much much neater and much much cleaner.

Having said all of that he doesn't know where the hoover is kept (well he does but not how to take it out of the cupboard), which way round to use the iron, how to turn on the cooker (honestly), where the supermarket is, or not to leave the toilet seat up.

He has never, ever complained about paying for a cleaner to come twice a week or for me to have help with the ironing. Although neither he nor I will be a domestic god or goddess - he does work very very hard and I always have (for 23 years now) loved him to bits.

EtInTerraPax · 28/12/2011 00:10

The problem is that a cleaner will not do all the actual 'work', just the cleaning!
If the 'cleaning' alone were the issue, then it would be very simple to throw money at the problem.

Having to organise everything for a family is draining when it is done by one person, who also works full time. I appreciate that lone parents have to do this, but I am supposedly not a LP.

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