Hook-gate - is this downright odd behaviour from DH?

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DH is a rigid black and whitetype of guy.

Apologies - I know the following is trivial but it really pissed me off.

Yesterday he brushed passed some coats that were on the vertical bannister pole thingy at the bottom of the stairs (I think it's called a newel post) and knocked off my coat accidently onto the floor. He carried on walking past and didn't pick it up. When I asked him to pick it up he said no, that he had provided more hooks in the porch 2 years ago for coats so if I choose to put it on the newel post and it got accidentally knocked off (by him) then no he wasn't going to pick it up.

He said he saw it as a contract - he'd provided more hooks 2 years ago, and if I chose not to put the coat in the correct place then if it got knocked off then it was tough. He then admitted that he'd been taking this type of approach for years about all sorts of things. I never knew and have been wondering why I often end up picking up things unexpectedly off the floor (I assumed kids had knocked them off and then lied that it wasn't them!!).

He also said that he adopted this approach out of respect for me (!?!!). Because if he was to pick the coat up then he would feel that he was treating me like a kid, and so our relationship would be unequal.

Everything he does is linked to an underlying principle, so this behaviour is not borne out of laziness (he is not at all lazy - the opposite) - he will have thought it through!

I can not for the life of me understand this odd approach. It seems a bit passive aggressive / aspergery to me. I guess it does have some strange logic to it, but it's not really in the spirit of marital team work!

AIBU?

Two houses joined by an interconnecting door.

They live next door to each other with an inter connecting door. Genius.

To say the least. I should think that being minted probably helps with questions around the division of boring labour (bins/recycling, cooking, laundry), I could totally see the arrangement creating two lots of certain types of work. But just to be able to retreat in your own space of sanity, serenity and peace.... Such is the stuff of dreams. Not bloody coat hook drama!

It sounds to me like he has been knocking your coat off on purpose just to make his point. He sounds incredibly annoying.

He's not "picking up" after me - he's the one knocking it off by accident and then choosing to leave it!!

But it's much more likely to get knocked off if it's on the newel post rather than a hook, isn't it?

I write as one with a track record of leaving things on newel posts, and I can testify to the fact that they do get knocked off there much more easily than the things on hooks. However, as the whole family does it, we all routinely pick the stuff up. (Our excuse is the coat hooks are pretty fully occupied anyway). I suppose if DH were in the habit of leaving stuff where it is constantly getting knocked down in preference to somewhere more sensible and convenient, I too might reach a point when I would refuse to pick it up.

I would take his coats off the hooks and drop them on the floor. And I'd pile so much stuff on the newel post that it would be difficult for him to get upstairs.

I'd put money on him having aspergers, rather than him being passive aggressive.

The way he's phrased it, all that stuff about contracts and teaching you a lesson, is annoying and overthinking. However I can understand that he would get tired of picking up your coat if you have put it in a position where it is more likely to get knocked.

Surely if you are a party to a contract you should know its terms?

It's a bit twattish but to be fair, it sounds like he is getting annoyed by your possible untidiness too? I am messier than DH and I wouldn't expect him to put away things that I had not put away in the right place and which he then knocked off. I don't put anything of DD's away either. If she leaves them lying around, it all gets put at the bottom of the staircase that leads up to her room (and which is hidden from sight of the main part of the house).

I think this has to be one of the funniest posts I
Have read for a while.

Sorry OP but I think you sound like the more annoying one. Hang up your coat on a hook ffs! Not sure why your DH didn't just say that though. The contract thing is a bit odd.

Are there enough hooks?

If so, why are coats ever hung anywhere else?

It's perhaps not about the newel post/hook specifically though. That is just an 'indicator'.

It sounds like a rigid rule-base mindset that is applied outside of normal behaviours.

Another one wondering if you have explored Asperger's?

It annoys me intensely when dh leaves things on the newel post too so YABU for that!

But your h is being VU for being so passive aggressive, and waging a silent war against untidiness all by himself for so long.

Think you need to talk to him!!

He's not being passive aggressive. He's not taking responsibility for something that he feels you should do better, which annoys him; he explained this when you asked.

I can't believe that people here can't see the double standard with the advice so frequently given to women about housework. I myself have been told by an enormous number of MNers that the solution to DH not doing certain things around the house is simply not to do them myself.

I mean!!!

The more I think about this the more I am with your DH. My DH does the annoying leaving stuff everywhere thing. I am much more likely than your DH to just say something, but doing so makes me (and him) feel as though he is being treated like a child. So sometimes I just ignore them and leave him to sort out his own resulting messes/losses.

I find it staggering that people are suggesting Asperger's Syndrome on the basis of this. I think he's just pissed off with living with an untidy person.

I don't like things hanging on the post either, but if I knock it off, I would pick it up. (and probably hang it on the hook) It is common courtesy isn't it?

Yes I am at the diagnoses of Aspergers and OCPD on the basis of what most people think is the apex of functional behaviour for women in a marriage.

The contract part is a bit but I'm guessing this is just his way of saying an agreement, with obligation on each side. He put up the bloody hooks, so use them. This would also drive me insane, I wonder if I have OCPD

On a separate note, this had reminded me of a long forgotten feature of my own childhood - the ever growing mound of coats at the bottom of the stairs, that would eventually collapse under its own weight and be returned to the hooks, only to build up again....

I have no particular view on the reasonableness or not of where the OP leaves her coat.

But for fuck's sake, if something your partner is doing is irritating, TALK TO THEM ABOUT IT. OP's husband's talk of unspoken contracts and 'accidentally' knocking her coat and leaving it on the floor FOR TWO YEARS without mentioning it is totally twattish.

What a ludicrous man.

I take it you do lots of little things, without even thinking, which could be construed as helping him out, absorbing the small things he might have forgotten or got wrong? You know, like people do to make life in a partnership run smoothly?

Stop doing them. And point it out to him. Laughing.

He then admitted that he'd been taking this type of approach for years about all sorts of things.

Sounds like the OP has been driving him crackers.

Didn't you know about the coat hooks?

I'm just wondering why you wouldn't use them.