To change places with DP

[Anyname123]

Things have come to a head with DP not pulling his weight at home, and I'm desperate for a resolution before I have to LTB.

I plan to switch roles for a month. So I won't do any thinking or anything proactive. I will however "help" if he asks me to. But I'll tutt and roll my eyes and be a bit obtuse about it.

So if he asks me to go food shopping I'll ask for a shopping list. If he asks me to make dinner I'll ask what to cook and how to cook it. If he asks me to clean the bathroom I'll do a half arsed job and leave shit stains in the toilet. If he asks me to put clean clothes away I'll claim not to be able to put his away as I won't know where they go.

Is this the most childish plan ever or might it work to get him to understand how absolutely fucking exhausting it is carrying the mental load? And how do I keep strong and overlook the inevitable mess and dirt that he "doesn't see", and the missed birthday cards etc for his family?

For context I work one day less than him, but on my extra day off I'm looking after DD. I accept the blame for a lot of this as I've inadvertently enabled his lazy fuckery up until now, but no more!

Has anyone successfully trained a DP...

Yes. Last Christmas I showed my DH my bullet journal detailing everything I do. Gave him a copy of wifework. Gave him a year to make changes and explained the consequences if we could not equalise things. Also made it clear that things had to be to standard, no strategic incompetence would be accepted.

Just one example- gift buying for his family. Agreed it was his responsibility to keep note and notice when a birthday on his side was coming up, his responsibility to ask about gifts for kids, buy and send them on time. If he was unable to do this (as I do for my side of the family) I would ask his side to stop giving gifts to me and the DC with a full explanation (as I would feel uncomfortable not reciprocating).

He has stepped up over the past 12 months, keeps a bullet journal too and is on it. This Christmas was so much easier.

I think, having spoke about it frankly, he did actually get how this stuff can kill a marriage and he didn't want that.

I have to admit I have been surprised that he can do this stuff just as well as me. I have had to let go of stuff too.

*Had to be up to standard

It will probably take more than a month for him to notice ...

and the missed birthday cards etc for his family? - why are you doing this anyway? HIS family, his responsiblility.

I've never done cards for DHs family. If they don't get sent, the family members need to express their hurt to him.

I worked with a women who had a fulltime, very stressful and full-on job. She complained one christmas that she didn't have time to write her DHs cards to his large family. I said she shouldn't be doing it. She said 'if I don;t, he won't send them'.

I haven't fully trained DH, but he does take turns with both cooking and washing up.
This started when I had DS1, as he used to be a very slow feeder and I was exhausted from it - DH used to cook every day and we'd take turns washing up, although I usually did more of that.
Then we changed it to taking turns to cook and to wash up - but we don't do each other's washing up, necessarily, couldn't stand that! I'm not a "it MUST be done at the end of every meal" person, and DH certainly isn't - we have a dishwasher for most of the crocks and cutlery and so on, but pans are non-stick and don't go in.

It doesn't stop him saying sometimes "I've done the washing up for you" - no, you've done it because you're a grown man, part of a partnership, and it was your bloody turn.

He doesn't do laundry, but he does put his clothes in the laundry basket or they don't get washed. He doesn't clean much, except he's expected to sort out his own shitstains in the loo and he has to clean his own office because I refuse to.

He does do the lawn & tree/shrub maintenance, and the bins though.

But as to the mental load thing - that's ALL mine. I've said to him many times before, "I'm not your thinking-brain dog, you know!" (we're in Australia, they call guide dogs "seeing eye dogs" here) because he seems to think he can just switch his brain off as soon as he stops actual paid work. Nope - but my god he tries it at every opportunity.

Does he know that you're swapping, or are you just going to do "his" stuff and see when he notices?

some of these stories......jaw injury alert....

Can you not just have set things you do each?

Like my dh does all diy and decorating and assembling new furniture as I'm useless and haven't a clue. He also does any gardening stuff and deals with car issues, takes them for mots and fixes them etc and does about 50/50 cooking plus chucks on the odd load of washing for me.

I do the washing, putting clothes away, paying bills, food shopping, xmas and birthday organising, 50/50 cooking, most of the cleaning in the house.

It works out we have a good balance having set tasks each but if it's been a heavy week of washing he will help out or say if there's lots of stuff to do in the house I'll help as much as I can with a paint brush or hoover out the cars.

It's no good doing it your way as some men will happily live in a shit top

‘Train’ a person? An actual fully grown adult?

Oh, god, I feel old.

If we do the swap it won't be a proper swap, I'll just do nothing (except the very very obvious, e.g. feed DD) unless expressly asked to by him. At the moment he does bins, recycling, sometimes dishwasher. I'll do anything he asks but in an awkward and clumsy way, exactly as he does to me. His argument is that he's not lazy, just doesn't "see" things, so I should just ask him to "help". I want to leave him with the mental load, and make him see how hard it is.
I'm starting to think it's a bit of a silly plan though and we should sit and write a list and divvie up the tasks more fairly.
He's senior and capable in work, so fuck knows how he could possibly think wet wiping up dried in vomit off a carpet would be adequate and the whole house wouldn't stink of sick (just the latest example of his "fuck it" attitude).

I have done something similar. Not with the eye roll etc.. But I just stopped doing a lot of things (granted I had no choice I was too ill to carry on!)

What has happened is

• H did stepped up on some of the things such as cooking dinner or pushing the hoover around some of the time
• things were never done as they need to be done. So light cleaning was done but that was it. Move on a few months/years, and the more heavy stuff had never been done. I mean cupboard doors stained with food in the kitchen or mould on the windowsill (as dust and damp got together)
• he didn’t see a lot of the dirt (See skid marks in the loo) but he did get resentful that he had to do all that (bearing in mind I couldn’t do it due to illness unlike you)
• he still didn’t learn anything about mental load because he didn’t take it on. Eg my latest ‘trial’ has been to leave him organise the hols (as he refused the look at it in the summer).we are now in January, we are supposed to take our family hols at Easter and nothing has been organised. We don’t even know where we will go.....

So my conclusion is that doing that can work up to a point. But you won’t get him to really get it. Unless maybe you are just not there at all or do nothing at all (impossible for me to do as we have dcs and they would be the ones to suffer from it)

Let me know if this works. Currently on day 3 of not talking to DH after he let the kids get me out of bed to cook their dinner. I had been sleeping on and off all day with sweats, high temp, sore throat and generally feeling like shit. I never get myself off to bed when I'll but apparently I should have made a big song and fucking dance that he took the Xmas Dec's down whilst I was sleeping. Putting the Dec's up and taking them down is his only contribution to Xmas I do EVERYTHING else. So annoying as he is more than capable but I mother him he just sorts himself.

sorry Op that rant took over.

The ‘I don’t see it’ is blocks though.

I have been know. To say to H that he would kick off the be treated like a stupid subordinate that needs to be told everything step by step.
As a manager, I would have though that was an insult to have to be treated like this.

And it is tbh. If those men are clever enough to get those high level management jobs, they can do a bit of HW. They just chose not to.

I think the problem is a lot of the 'man jobs' (hate that term, I live alone and do ALL the jobs) are things that only need doing occasionally. Bins, once a week. DIY, unless you live in a doer-upper, only every so often. Decorating and gardening, similar. They aren't the soul-destroying EVERY BLOODY DAY jobs, like hoovering, washing up, laundry, cooking.

But they are more visible. Nobody can see that the hoovering has been done, especially if it's done every day. Everyone can see that new shelf, wallpaper, mowed lawn and trimmed shrubs.

I tried every trick in the book with my ex and it worked for about a week and then went back to the old way every time. Washing was the one exception where i left all his stuff and eventually he did his own along with the ironing.

I also got a cleaner, although he was fanatical about a clean bathroom so that helped. Shopping I did online and if he didn't tell me he needed anything it never came.

Anything related to his family was his responsibility - if it didn't happen then up to him

I have to say though one of the reasons he is my ex is because he was a lazy git!

Oh yes, I let DH do his own ironing. I wash all the clothes, I hang them up to dry, I put his shirts on hangers - and then it's up to him whether or not they need ironing.
He also organises holidays because he won't decide until the last minute when he's taking time off work - I can't be doing with it, so he has to organise it. To be fair, he's pretty good at finding last minute deals, decent hotels/motels etc., so I have no complaints! He's tried several times to get me to take this task on but I refuse because of his work schedule and refusal to commit to dates.

I did this with an ex once- refused to wash anything of his, unless it was in the wash bin. Then refused to put clothes away for him. He ended up with a mixed pile of dirty and clean clothes on his side of the floor int he bedroom. Moaned that he didn't know which clothes were clean etc.

Apparently this was my problem?

Like my dh does all diy and decorating and assembling new furniture as I'm useless and haven't a clue. He also does any gardening stuff and deals with car issues, takes them for mots and fixes them etc and does about 50/50 cooking plus chucks on the odd load of washing for me.

I do the washing, putting clothes away, paying bills, food shopping, xmas and birthday organising, 50/50 cooking, most of the cleaning in the house.

For that to be remotely fair your house must constantly stink of paint and be completely stuffed with the furniture being endlessly assembled, you must have the perfectly landscapes and manicured gardens of a country house, and you must have about twenty cars. Assuming that's not the case you're either being completely screwed over and not noticing, or you don't work and he does, which isn't the case for OP.

What a depressing thread.

I really hope I am raising my sons to be better partners than some of the men you write about.

Yes, I realise there is a light-hearted tone, but still....

And how do I keep strong and overlook the inevitable mess and dirt that he "doesn't see"
Take a before and after photos of all relevant rooms/bits both for posterity and to show him the difference at the end of your strike action.

and the missed birthday cards etc for his family?
Why are you taking responsibility for this anyway?
Don't be a martyr and leave the cards and present buying for his family up to him - forever unless he becomes physically and mentally incapacitated.

My DH also doesn't 'see' a lot of things that need doing.
I have let him know what jobs need doing while he's looking after DD (aged 2, his school hasn't started back yet) and he's just about managing to get washing on (but not hung up) and washing up done (sometimes) and look after DD!
He's just agreed to shadow me for at least a day to see what I do on a normal day when we are at home so he can see what needs doing and what 'little' jobs I do wandering around the house.
We also have a jobs list that we can each tick off when we have done something (split into daily, weekly & monthly) and this seems to be working better than a rota where the days are specified but will see if it works once he's also back at work full time.

I have done this and it did work to a certain extent. BUT

1. It took a lot longer than a month to work

1. I had to do quite a lot of things because otherwise my children would have suffered eg missed dentist and hospital appointments , homework. . It might work better if your child is younger.

1. I had to be prepared to live in a pigsty. I spent a lot of time hiding in the bedroom because the state of the kitchen made me seriousy upset. Things like the food growing mould in the fridge, worktops covered in dirty dishes and the overflowing recycling bins.

4.I hated going into the kids rooms because they were knee deep in dirty clothes / dishes / rubbish.

1. I had to make a mental note of the perishable food he had left lying out on the worktop for a day so that the kids and I didn’t eat it.

1. I felt guilty because he fed the kids on nothing but pizza and MacDonald’s.

1. I had to do washing for me and the kids as they ran out of school uniform .

I did this, caused MASSIVE arguments, the house looked like an utter shit tip BUT, I feel I won! DH now does all his own washing and ironing (small victory) and largely owed to the fact that he knows I won't touch it! He will also do the food shopping when he realises there's FA in the house for him to eat! He makes our eldest DD go with him though!

Good luck!