AIBU? Or is my DH?

[user1492637408]

I am not sure if I'm being precious here so please do tell me

DH and I have been together 5 years, married for 2, all good, the usual. Nothing to worry about - I would say we were really happy, we have no DC and no plans to, we're just enjoying our lives together. But in the last 6 months he has just thrown the rule book of our entire relationship out of the window. We have always done things a certain way - or more specifically, I take care of things, which I am happy to do so it's not like I've complained!

For example I like to meal plan (I am coeliac so have to be careful) so every Sunday I make all our meals for the week, put them in Tupperware and label them so we know what we are having... I don't make them repetitive or boring thanks to Pinterest and it saves us cooking all the time/spending loads of money on takeaways. This has always been the case and he used to be appreciative of it but recently it's like he is trying to test the waters and saying he wants to cook or get takeaway all the time, even though he knows I have spent hours prepping balanced meals for the week. I wouldn't mind but he could burn cereal! And when I asked him about it he just said he wanted some variety...? I tried to explain I make a very varied selection of food and if he wanted something specific just to ask me and he just huffed and puffed like I was being inconvenient

There are lots of other examples (moving where we keep the spare keys, from the designated spare key pot I have, to a random shelf - why?, purposely bringing up issues like having a pet (he knows I don't want animals in the house, full stop, we decided years ago so why is it an issue now), he even pulled all of his summer clothes out of storage boxes the other day and started trying to wedge them into into drawers because he decided it was time for them - when again, he knows that every year I get the winter stuff washed and vacuum sealed up and into the storage boxes around springtime and get our spring wardrobes out?). I know it might sound as though he's trying to be helpful but honestly it feels like he's just doing it to wind me up - I do a lot and again, I'm not complaining, I like things a certain way! But when I ask him why he's done something he just goes all vague and hasn't got a reason which to me suggests it's just done to make a point and he doesn't want to say what that is?!

Please help me decipher him because I am getting sick of feeling like he's rebelling against our routine and I have no idea why

While I agree that OP's routine sounds like hell on earth for many people, her H initially agreed to it, and now he is objecting by being sulky and childish. If he sat her down and said, look, can we try and loosen up and be a bit more sponteneous from time to time, it might have been possible for them both to make changes.
Unless he's tried to have a civilised discussion and OP has just gone, don 't be silly Nigel, you know trying new food will make your bottom runny, and you need your vest because it's April, even if it is 90 in the shade...

"our routine" is not that but "your routine". He has put up with it for so long while you are in that honeymoon phase. Now it is just too much for him. When you ask him what he wants then is the huffing and puffing because of the way you are asking him? eg. Are you really asking him what he wants or are you being condescending and patronising?

If this was a thread where a woman OP was on here saying my husband does this, won't let me get my summer clothes out etc etc everyone would be saying he is controlling and EA the same way they are saying it to you.

You will need to give and take on some things. Perhaps read "Don't Sweat the Small Stuff". If you don't I can see him making one very big decision of his own - leaving!

It sounds like you really love your DH, but that love reads as if it may be quite strangling.
Please take a few steps back, there are plenty of coeliac options.
If coeliac is what I think it is, how about you order a dominos? I'm sure they have a coeliac option.
What about when DH comes home, you say, lets go out for tea? What do you fancy?

Be less regimented all the time. I understand you feeling the need to. I've recently been diagnosed with hypertension, which has spurred me to start a low fat, low sugar, v low salt diet. The first two weeks my husband and daughter were well into it, now they are bored. We've been out for dinner a few times, they are quite happy as they are given a better choice when out.

when I asked him about it he just said he wanted some variety...? I tried to explain I make a very varied selection of food and if he wanted something specific just to ask me and he just huffed and puffed like I was being inconvenient

I am sorry but your behaviour would upset me. What is the issue here? Is it that he wants to eat food that you can't because you have coeliac? It's not fair that his diet should be restricted by your illness to eating your cooking only. Or is it more that you don't trust your DH to cook food you can safely eat or that you will enjoy? In that case tell him your food rules and give him free rein a couple of time a week. He will probably cook different things from you and at times you might even enjoy his cooking!

Your DH has every right to want an occasional change from your cooking, whether that is him cooking or getting take away. No matter how good a cook you are most normal poeple do like a change now and again. And even if he's not a very good cook he's never going to get better if you refuse to give him a chance and are endlessly picking at him for not doing it the right way. My DH has smiled kindly through a few burnt offerings of mine.

There are lots of other examples

So there are. You do sound unusually controlling in these little things. Sorry! Do you have anxiety issues?

he knows I don't want animals in the house, full stop, we decided years ago so why is it an issue now

Most likely it's become an issue now because he wants an animal now. Maybe he didn't want a pet before but has changed his mind. Or maybe he did want a pet but thought he could be happy living without a pet if that was what you wanted, but now realises that a whole lifetime without any kind of pet would be miserable for him.

You ask for help in deciphering him. It sounds as if your inflexibility and your "once for all" attitude to life are increasingly grating on him. And that the routine is becoming less and less "our routine which we both feel comfortable with" and more and more "my routine which I rely on but he is getting tired of".

I stopped reading after "rule book"

If OP has posted that her DH does all the cooking, won't let them have a takeaway, insists on certain clothes coming out on a set day, kicks off if the keys are put anywhere other than where he says they should and they have hit rock bottom with it and are trying to make small changes, they would have been told that they are in an abusive relationship.

I understand anxiety and the need for control but treating your husband like an errant toddler is fucking awful - I just hope he manages to gain some control over his life.

And I'm sure you will be back to say you have spoken to him and he's totally happy about the routine and that he will try to live by th rule book from now on

I honestly could not live like that OP. Much too controlled. You've treated him like a toddler and now he's rebelling like one. I think you need to loosen up and get some spontaneity in your lives!

Op, when your dh realises that your behaviour is not normal, he will either leave of his own accord, or you will tell him to leave because he can't do anything right or follow the rules. And some time after that, he will meet someone like me. Someone who encourages him to have his own opinion, not my opinion, but one of his very own. Someone who spends a lot of time encouraging him to cook, get a pet, wear what he wants, when he wants. Someone who spends a lot of time re teaching him that he is a person in his own right, and then he'll start to wonder what he was doing with you in the first place.

You sound very similar to my dps ex, and she was financially, emotionally and physically abusive. She was and is still trying to be very controlling. You need to see someone and work out why you need to have this level of control.

solid. I've had a look back at your previous posts and when it's a woman posting you are very clear this sort of thing is abuse. No mention of 'well you agreed to it, you should ask permission to change it'.

I Hoover most days. Always have done. I still don't need DHs permission to stop.

YABU so controlling. Its your routine, not his. Only one he has been forced into by the looks of it.

It does sound rigid but I have some sympathy with the op actually.

My ex couldn't cook and my commute means I am out of the house fourteen hours a day. I don't want to spend money on Pret every day at work.
So, I make all my lunches for the week on Sunday. And I buy pre made fresh soup for the evenings.
And it annoyed me if he, out of the blue, decided to 'cook' a something as it was invariably inedible and I'd either have to pretend it was OK which only encouraged him, or tell him it was shit which pissed him off. And either way I was left hungry.

And the keys too. I don't actually care what he does with his keys. But when he puts them in random places he loses them then takes mine or goes out without them and gets locked out when I go out and lock up, not knowing he's not got his keys...

I didn't care what clothes he wore though I always found it odd that he would wear his outdoor coat and bobble hat all day long in the house, and go to bed in the clothes he'd worn during the day. I didn't pack up his clothes for winter!

OP, you are clearly getting a slating for this and I am afraid I do tend to agree with most of the previous posters, but I'm trying to see this from your point of view.

It can be annoying if someone changes the way you have done certain things for a very long time if you yourself cannot see any reason for change. For example the key pot - it might seem a bit strange to change the place where something important like spare keys are kept if there seems nothing wrong with where they were kept before. Something like this might make me slightly annoyed, but I think I'd get over it long before I felt I needed to post about it on MN.

However, I can't see anyone being happy with their weeks' worth of meals planned out and cooked for them on a Sunday, or being told when they can change their clothes from winter to summer. I think you have probably taken your routines to the extreme and it sounds like your DH has had enough.

Whilst you might have done things a certain way for a number of years, or made decisions that you haven't changed your thoughts on, you have to accept that things change, people change, and that's just the way life is. For example the pet, maybe he didn't think he would ever want a pet, but now he has changed his mind and thinks he would like one. He's not necessarily doing it to upset you, he's just changed his mind! Maybe you will change your mind on things you want/the way things are done in the future, who knows.

Good luck OP. If you do decide that you want to be a bit more flexible this is obviously going to be difficult for you because you see no reason to change how you have lived your lives so far. Hope it works out for you.

Omg I'm glad i don't live with you. Let the guy breathe and do what he wants it's not 1950 anymore. Yadbu

I feel 'stifled' just reading this! Almost like you want to treat him as a baby. It might be worth getting a pet so can invest some time mothering that instead. At least it won't rebel

Please help me decipher him because I am getting sick of feeling like he's rebelling against our routine and I have no idea why

He doesn't need deciphering, it's not semaphore. He's not waving, but drowning.

OP, if you were my other half, I would mix up your DVDs/CDs (do people still own these) just for the hell of it!

See the niceness has continued 😕😕😕😕

I was trying to think of the person you remind me a little of OP. I hope you aren't too upset, and apologies if so, but I think it's the ubiquitous Liz Jones minus of course the menagerie. She - if it's true - has been so focused on organising and managing her life and the other people in it, in respect of certainly quite similar details .like diet, clothes, order that she is constantly unhappy, disillusioned and above all disappointed. No way to live your life.

I also think you have been quite brave to put your yourself up for the slaughtering you've had on here.

Instead of doing all this stuff and trying so hard just stop. Let him make his own meals, sort his own clothes and find his own keys. Use that time for yourself and you might find all this other detail isn't so essential anymore.

I just have a mental image of a sad, little man who wears a lot of beige and takes a limp cheese sandwich and an apple to work every single day forever.

OP, why not do half and half with the food? So have a few meals frozen and then plan a few other things that can just be chucked together and don't take much cooking - like a risotto or stir fry. Then have a take away evening and a film (please let him choose sometimes).

You must spend most of your weekend doing all the prep for the week ahead. Time to live a little.

I'd be considering committing a crime I'd be sure to be jailed for in his place as I'd be longing for the freedom of prison...

I'm guessing this is the DH's favourite song - in secret, of course:

Do you think he huffs and puffs because actually you're difficult to talk to about a change in your routine (and it is yours).

I mean, who cares if he wants to wear t-shirts from his spring wardrobe. Really OP, why do you care? It's such a non issue.

Who has a winter and spring wardrobe anyway? I just have clothes.

I don't do spring, summer and winter wardrobes.

As for cleaning, packing and vacuum sealing, the only item I have ever had that done to was my wedding dress 24 years ago.

Just wash and dry stuff, shove it into a drawer or wardrobe and don't get it out again until you want it. Job done and no need for any further faffing.

I am afraid if I were your DH and you tried to organise me in any such way I would be more likely to wear my summer clothes in winter just for the hell of it and to wind you up.

All clothes should be available all year round. I often wear t-shirts in the winter as an additional layer under my jumper or sweatshirt. Also, on a cool summer's day I might like to pull a jumper on over my "summer wardrobe" as you seem to call it.

You are far too rigid in your outlook, and life is just too short to live it like that.

Let him have autonomy over his clothes. Let him sort his own meals if he wants to, or go out, get the odd takeaway. Hell, I regularly wing it over what to have for dinner every evening. I make it up as I go along more often than not and guess what? Nobody has suffered for that.

I do get your coeliac issues. You don't have to impose your diet on him though. I like vegetarian food along with two of my three DDs. DH and DD2 prefer some meat, so they have it.

Some of these responses are horrible to read. Imagine being bombarded with 300 posts just laughing and taking the piss out of you. Saying that you need therapy and your sex life is shit.....poor OP.

I used to pack away clothes when I still lived in my home country where there's a massive difference in temperature between summer and winter (from 45C+ to -20C), but UK weather is a lot more even. Also switching wardrobes should be done depending on weather and temperature, not date.

What's warm/ cold for you might not be for your DH- my DS is often warmer than I am and has been since he was a newborn so he's dressed with less layers than I am.

So work with your DH, involve him in the decision making process and relax a bit, it'll be OK.