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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To leave DH over ruined underwear?

583 replies

Sprinklestar · 18/11/2017 20:16

Ok, sounds dramatic, right?
But... We have been together years, known each other forever. Today, yet again, he washed my hand wash only underwear in the machine and ruined it. I have lost count of the number of times he has done this.
It is just such a waste and will need replacing. We must have had this scenario every year for the past ten.
It's like that thing on the internet about the man whose wife left him over a cup left on the side, its the constant drip drip drip effect and never learning.
I can't stand his incompetence anymore. How hard is it to check a label? And not mess with the stuff in the separate handwash only basket?!
I am so angry.

OP posts:
Ecureuil · 19/11/2017 19:22

Oh and DH had a full time housekeeper growing up. Never did a load of laundry in his life. Still managed to pick it up when he moved in with me. What with it not being fucking difficult.
We’ve had 4 different washing machines since we lived together and he’s managed to work out how all the different ones operate too. Just like I have.
Jeez.

Lweji · 19/11/2017 19:24

Also, I bet all these men have managed to work out how computers and smart phones work. As well as their cars.
And various numbers of gadgets.

Seeingadistance · 19/11/2017 19:24

When my ex and I were still together he refused to pay a painter and decorator to do our hall/stairs/landing. He would do it himself - why pay someone who knew what they were doing, eh?!

He and the pal who helped him were heading for the pub as I was parking the car, having picked up our toddler from nursery. I opened the front door and discovered that not only had they not bothered putting away paint tins, trays, rollers before they went out, but that there were pools, actually pools, of emulsion paint all over the floor! I had to find a neighbour to watch my DS while I went back and cleared it all up. The carpet was ruined, there was paint all over the lovely woodwork which I had spent hours covering up, he had missed bits, and there were what looked like paint covered caterpillars at the top of the wall above the radiator - this is what happens when you use a roller to apply emulsion to a dusty wall. The last thing I said before I left that morning was to dust the wall above the radiator.

Fortunately we had accident damage cover on our insurance. Ex was insulted that I was going to make a claim on this. What, did you do it on fucking purpose?!

Insurance sent out loss adjuster who looked at the mess and asked why he hadn't used dust sheets. Believe it or not, he had, but still managed to fucking pour paint on the carpet.

Insurance paid out.

Ex husband said what was I pissed off about?

After all, he'd painted the hall, hadn't he?!

I should have been grateful.

Minaktinga · 19/11/2017 19:25

YABU. If you don’t like how he washes your laundry wash it yourself.

Lweji · 19/11/2017 19:25

hough I have to laugh at myself putting a load on within a couple of hours of giving birth (hb).

I wouldn't have laughed at myself. I'd have called him a spoiled brat.

Ecureuil · 19/11/2017 19:26

YABU. If you don’t like how he washes your laundry wash it yourself

SHE WAS GOING TO!!!

Lweji · 19/11/2017 19:26

YABU. If you don’t like how he washes your laundry wash it yourself.

R T F T

RaspberryOverload · 19/11/2017 19:31

The OP had the hand wash items separate, so this DH had to deliberately go and get them from a separate baset to wash them. Despite having been told on multiple occasions NOT TO TOUCH THEM. He wasn't being asked to wash them, but to leave them alone.

Any man who can hold down an average job, is competent enough to do the washing correctly. There are some men out there who simply don't want to, and feel it's beneath them. Hence the acts of incompetence, or claiming not to know how to do it.

That the OP's DH had to go into another basket to get the handwash items out is just so deliberate, especially after many similar occasions and after the OP has told him not to touch those items, that I wonder what else is going on.

Oh, and I'm another who hand washes bras. I can't afford to keep replacing them, and I have H cups. Decent bras that are comfortable cost, and it doesn't take much effort or time to do.

MrsHathaway · 19/11/2017 19:35

I wouldn't have laughed at myself. I'd have called him a spoiled brat.

He was spoilt in many domestic ways, but that wasn't an example of it. It was an example of how dedicated I am - our downstairs loo is by the washing machine in the utility room so when I was having my first postnatal wee I thought ooh I'll just put that load on (prepared the previous night, before labour started).

Tbh I'm reasonably proud of getting him from not recognising a washing machine if it bit him, to putting his own load on after a trip without even asking me which cycle. Work in progress. Maybe by 2020 he'll put the towels in of his own volition ...

WiseUpJanetWeiss · 19/11/2017 19:36

YABU. If you don’t like how he washes your laundry wash it yourself.

Good god. What is the point of this post? Aren’t you (and all the other pp who have come on here to make the same vacuous comment) able to read even the OP’s first post where she said the underwear is put in a totally separate basket for her to deal with?

Ecureuil · 19/11/2017 19:37

Tbh I'm reasonably proud of getting him from not recognising a washing machine if it bit him, to putting his own load on after a trip without even asking me which cycle. Work in progress. Maybe by 2020 he'll put the towels in of his own volition ...

I despair.

Lweji · 19/11/2017 19:37

Tbh I'm reasonably proud of getting him from not recognising a washing machine if it bit him, to putting his own load on after a trip without even asking me which cycle. Work in progress. Maybe by 2020 he'll put the towels in of his own volition ...

Is he 5?

mybestfriendisadog · 19/11/2017 19:38

i have to confess, i've ruined, well, must be approaching 20 jumpers at my age by tossing them on too hot a wash - sometimes when i've not been paying attention, sometimes they say washable at 30 but I must've spun them too fast.

I've got a fairly responsible job, not flakey in many other respects but I do make mistakes when I'm in a hurry. Doesn't have to mean anything.

Maybe you need counselling to see why otherwise you don't feel he listens to you.

PoorYorick · 19/11/2017 19:39

Tbh I'm reasonably proud of getting him from not recognising a washing machine if it bit him, to putting his own load on after a trip without even asking me which cycle.

Such a clever boy!

Ecureuil · 19/11/2017 19:40

MrsHathaway you do realise he doesn’t do the washing because, quite frankly, he doesn’t want to. Why would he, when he’s got wifey to do it for him? It’s nothing to do with his ability to work a washing machine, or to understand care labels.

DameFanny · 19/11/2017 19:41

Such a frustrating thread to read, so many Stepfords and people who think you shouldn't be allowed to have nice things Sad

OP, YANBU

To leave DH over ruined underwear?
Seeingadistance · 19/11/2017 19:43

FFS - what he did was the equivalent of quite deliberately stuffing paper tissues into the hitherto empty pockets of clothes, then washing them!

It wasn't an accident, it wasn't an oversight, it wasn't a hurried gather up of laundry.

He went out of his way to get the hand wash items, which were kept separately and which he had been told not to touch, and he put them in a hot wash!

brabenot · 19/11/2017 19:48

Mrs.Hathaway why is it funny that a grown man couldn't even put a wash in just after his wife had given birth?

Seeingadistance · 19/11/2017 19:50

Maybe you need counselling to see why otherwise you don't feel he listens to you.

Why the fuck should the OP need counselling?!

He clearly does not listen to her.

RagingFemininist · 19/11/2017 19:58

H tried to do the ‘But I don’t know how to use this washing machine’
It was new, the instructiinleafkte right in font of him.
He is also an engineer working in things much complex than a washing machine.... And he is designing them!!

He was told very clearky but to take me for a mug.

That’s exactely the same th8ng for those men who go from mum to wife. They can learn. It wouod be thinking that they are totally stupid tothnk they can’t learn someth8ng as simple as using a washing machine. If I was a man, I wouod feel insulted tbh.
Or for those who have lived in their own and then suddenly can’t do it on their own when they get married or have a child....

hidingmystatus · 19/11/2017 20:05

I thought I'd ask my own DH what he would do. His answers went as follows: I wouldn't go near your stuff; and if I mistakenly did I'd (a) expect my ass handed to me and (b) be writing you the cheque to replace it all before you'd even finished the first word.

He also added that everyone has the right to have nice things that make them happy and not have them ruined by incompetence.

brabenot · 19/11/2017 20:15

Seeing I'm frustrated for you. Wine

LipstickHandbagCoffee · 19/11/2017 20:17

Did your dh have any deeper to say,perhaps that op posts clearly about more than laundry?

brabenot · 19/11/2017 20:18

mybestfriend I don't understand? Why should OP need counselling when it's her dh's problem?

MrsHathaway · 19/11/2017 20:20

Router just rebooted and ate my long considered post Angry

Mrs.Hathaway why is it funny that a grown man couldn't even put a wash in just after his wife had given birth?

To this and others: no, it's funny that I enjoy laundry so much (genuinely) that I'd think to put in a load in those circumstances. DH was busy emptying 41 weeks' worth of bodily fluids out of a birthing pool at the time. He then did everything for the entire family for four days before I got out of bed again.

He used to be really shit. He is now much, much better. Which actually proves that they can learn, these clever men with white-goods-blindness.

Unless actually it isn't white-goods-blindness but asshattery and deliberate disdain. Which brings us right back to the OP ...