AIBU to be this upset about OH being so messy?

[MaximumHoldMousse]

I'm so frustrated by the mess my other half makes and I can actually see this causing the end of our relationship, as ridiculous as this sounds. I'm not the tidiest person by any stretch of the imagination but the amount of mess he makes, and then doesn't tidy up for days (if at all) is really getting me down. Our house is constantly messy, he never does anything without me asking him. I honestly think we might split up because of this. Has this happened to anyone else?

Do you have separate keys? or share? DH and i have separate keys and he has his to leave all over the place and constantly lose put where he sees fit and i have mine to keep in a zipped compartment in my bag. Sharing things doesn't work for me as he loses his stuff then loses mine.

When he is running round the house looking for stuff i just say a sympathetic 'oh dear' and leave him to it. I do not get drawn in to looking for things or offering mine as a replacement.

He's got you well trained. He does zilch because you will do all the housework, washing, tidying etc.

My DH and I have very nearly hit the skids because of this recently, except its me that's the messy one.

I like art & books so I have lots of stuff, and if I'm in the middle of a project it's a pita to keep putting it away. I'm also rubbish in the morning so rarely get round to unstacking the dishwasher or putting out the laundry he's stuck on to wash first thing. If I find a pile of clean clothes on my bed just before I'm getting in it, I'll stick it in the corner rather than hang it up and it often stays there .

Unfortunately DH is not good at communicating his displeasure and tends to sulk (often about things I'd consider to be nitpickingly insignificant), and if he's stressed about anything else he strops around in a foul mood for days, sometimes weeks, at a time which then makes me resent 'toeing the line' because he's being such a shit.

Since the last bad patch I have made a bit more effort with dishwasher, laundry & generally not leaving a trail of devastation in my wake and he is turning a blind eye to my neater piles of books and art supplies.

I just left a man who's domestic life was like this. He was also rude, emotionally unavailable, a fucknut with money, unsociable and generally unkind. If you feel appreciated and supported in other ways then perhaps the compromises as people suggest.

I don't believe that men don't "see" mess or have genuinely lower standards. I just don't.

I do believe that some people will put up with mess for a long time if they know someone else will clean it up for them if they leave it long enough. I believe that many people deliberately do a shit job of things they hate if they think someone else will do it for them.

I have known a fair few men who never "saw mess" when they had a woman living with them but have immaculate places when they live alone.

I believe that if a life partner knows mess really really bothers you (and your standards are not crazy) they would make some effort to do a bit more tidying than they might naturally be inclined to do.

Mousse it doesn't sound to me like you have ridiculous standards: you don't expect him to polish the hob with baby oil every time he wipes it. Doing your own washing up when you have been in the house for the day is a pretty basic standard. Washing your children's clothes is pretty basic too. He doesn't do those things.

I can't believe posters are saying you should be the poor man's housekeeper and stop moaning about it. Poor love doesn't waaaaannntttt to wash his children's clothes so get on with it OP. He doesn't mind there being no clean plates, so that's fine then.

It takes a lot of effort to run a household. In a modern marriage you share the work especially when you both work outside the home. It is not 1950, he doesn't get to choose to opt out because his dangly bits are located lower down than yours.

He watches TV while you clear up mess he made or his own children made under his supervision. In what world is that OK?!

The problem with the 'different standards' argument outlined above is that sometimes, the messier person's standards are objectively wrong. So for example, keeping the fridge, bog etc clean enough not to be radioactive is a non-negotiable because you could get ill otherwise. This is particularly so if one party is vulnerable in some way: pregnant, immuno compromised etc. They don't have to be scrubbed in a prescribed Special Way 3 times a day, but they do have to be safe. The person who doesn't want to ever clean the toilet even when you've all got the epic shits is the person in the wrong. Similarly, if you have small children, you need to keep the house in a certain state so they have floor space to play and aren't always falling over stuff. The person who prioritises their desire to leave shit everywhere instead is the person who's being a shit parent. And you need to do enough vacuuming, sweeping etc to prevent a mouse infestation, but that doesn't mean it has to be done every day. BTW when I say 'do this' that would also include paying for a cleaner or leaving it to the other person in exchange for equal consideration.

There's a place for the different standards argument, but it's more suited to things like whether the bed needs making every day. Things that are genuinely a matter of opinion.

runrun i have met loads of people who live alone and live in squalor. They have no one who they think will eventually crack and clean up. They genuinely prefer it like that to the prospect of what they consider the waste of time that is cleaning.

Mrs K - the only single people I have ever known who lived in squalor were chronically depressed, the house reflected their self esteem.

Nope, none of the ones i know. Usually just didn't care or worked long hours and er, still didn't care. It is possible to not care at all and still be happy.

in my experience messy people who live alone keep a pretty messy household, then again a very small sample size so neither here nor there!

And to answer your initial question, it was the dysfunctional day to day mess that really compounded my decision to leave. I did a rough calculation once that I had spent at least an hour a day picking up after him, every day. I worked it out in terms of hours spent over the years of relationship and how many hours it converted into in terms of working days, then working weeks and years. It came to 8 working years of my life had been spent picking up after him. Gobsmacking. Nothing I could say made any difference, and he simply felt entitled not to do it. It had to stop, so I left.

And when I say picking up after him I mean exactly that - not the general upkeep a house and children takes. Simply cleaning up a trail of mess that would otherwise remain where it was, in the way of everything else. Fucking horrific. Hope your OK op

perhaps it is not the case that anyone is wrong, rather that the problem is one of irreconcilable differences....a fundamental incompatibility?

I feel your pain my husband is so messy unclean in our home I want to kill him a lot of the time example drops all clothing everywhere I have found socks on my bedroom floor with snot on them vile because he couldn't be assed to get up and walk to the bathroom