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?

It is an unusual mode of communication. Is he frustrated with you? What do you consider nagging?

OP, how do you usually discuss/come to a mutual understanding and agreement over stuff?

Yes he's the nagger and I'm the more relaxed one - role reversal of "traditional" norms.

I hate the fact that repeated requests are required and that is then deemed to be 'nagging'. Repeated requests are only required when the person being asked can't be arsed to do what's been asked.

YY Joysmum - couldn't agree more. Just be a grown up and do the fecking thing.

Flipside, why doesn't he also 'be the grown up' and fucking talk about what's bothering him?

I say the same thing to women, by the way, who are bitching about untidy husbands and their lack of psychic powers.

But Jassy we don't know that he hasn't. OP describes him as the 'nagger' which implies that he does try to talk about it, no?

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!! Exactly. Whatever the tensions are about the right and wrong place to hang something and who is the untidy one and who has been nagging who or being passive-agressive or whatever - surely the action of a normal, sane individual when they knock something off is to pick it up again, not just leave it lying on the floor.

It is odd behaviour, because it suggests that your job is to clear up everyone's mistakes rather than everyone doing their bit to look out for each other.
BUT, DH has a really annoying habit of using his ipad in bed and then dropping it onto the floor next to the bed instead of putting it on the bedside cabinet. Every sodding week I tell him it will get stepped on and cracked. Every sodding week he ignores me and guess what! I stepped on it and cracked the screen. And then refused to take it to get fixed because it was his fault.

So I guess that is the same thing :-/

5Foot what is the action of a normal, sane, married individual?

But really, I make a serious point. Because the key part of this story is the repetition of the event and who has it in their power to prevent it.

On a slightly different note, OP is illustrating why the advice just not to do things for lazy partners is daft. They are usually utterly oblivious ("I never knew and have been wondering why I often end up picking up things unexpectedly off the floor") - that's the bloody problem!

The OP's DH is to be commended for finding a solution that works for him and quietly getting on with things imo. As opposed to the shrieking, ranting and raving that echoes round casa rooty!

Her post implies that he's been taking the PA approach rather than tackling the underlying issue directly.

sorry - what's PA?

Passive aggressive.

Oh! I don't know what's more direct than putting up hooks. But without a return of the OP it's all speculation eh. I just think reversing the genders, an OP in the DH's position would be advised not to pick up the bloody coat. So I am finding the thread more unreasonable than anything else

It's a control issue.

He's justified to himself the fact that it's OK to knock coats off (and all the other unrelated things I'm sure he's doing too) because he likes the fact he's making you pick things up off the floor.

Submission, control..... he sounds absolutely horrible. You know it will only get worse and spread to other things don't you?

But if OP just put her coat on a hook there wouldn't be an issue.

Why would you use the newel post rather than a hook?

I'd probaly walk on the coat in mucky shoes to make a point if I hadn't already taken them off!

YANBU.

There are loads of you talking about newel posts like you've all heard of them.

Is it just me that hadn't?!

It's just the bottom bit of the bannister with a knob on Where, I'd never heard of it either pleb

'Repeated requests are only required when the person being asked can't be arsed to do what's been asked.'

Or maybe the person being asked doesn't agree with what they are being asked to do, and doesn't think the asker gets to make all the rules?

I wouldn't be so odd about it but I can kind of see where is is coming from, we have 4 pegs on the back of the door and there are 4 of us, I have just thinned out our coats because I don't think anyone needs 3 winter coats and we all had a peg each, then the next day I find my husbands coat on top of the kids. Most people I guess wouldn't see it as a problem but it really annoyed me when I am trying to get the kids ready for school and I have to move his coat out the way first, its things like that add up.

Well, actually he sounds like the woman who expected her husband to help in the house but refused to give him a list of jobs, or the woman who didn't see why she should cook her husband's meal in the evening because she didn't/couldn't go out to work; childish but it is perfectly reasonable to him.

Bloody Hell!

I see his point. He put more hooks up. you still use the newel post. things get knocked off the newel post because that is what happens. If you put them on the hooks provided it wouldn't happen.

But 2 years of this without telling you why he was doing it? Again and again. Over and over. Seeing his cunning plan fail for two years. Loonspuddery!

"He said he saw it as a contract"

Do people like to sit next to him at parties?

I can see his point, but I would have lasted about 2 hours before I was coldly glaring at DH and telling him to pick his bastard coat up through gritted teeth.

2 years? That takes stamina. Petty? Yes. Abusive? No.

Why is it, on threads like this someone often ends up diagnosed with aspergers? Can't he just be annoying? How can anyone bet money on him having aspergers simply over one thing?

OP YABU for not hanging up your coat. DH is being unreasonable for talking like a wally.

Whereisegg -I had never heard of a newel post until this thread - despite owning one for thirteen years in our last house!

And, as I mentioned in a previous post, If I hung things on it, they fell off! Which is why I sympathise with the OP's husband.