My boyfriend of 4.5 years is a self employed plumbing and heating engineer. He’s installed my new shower and never asked me for any payment. I didn’t even have to ask, when I talked about getting someone in to fit it, he told me not to be daft and he’d do it for me.
I work in recruitment and over the years I’ve been asked by that many friends and friends of family to help them do their CV. I’ve never once expected any sort of payment. Some people will buy me a little something as a thank you.
Does it take time out of my day to do? Yes. Is it frustrating at times doing my day job in my free time for a friend/family? Yes it can be, but I have the option to decline if I really don’t want to do it.
End of the day if I care about someone, then I’ll help them, even if it’s of an inconvenience to me.
It’s not my place or anyone else’s to tell you to end your relationship when we don’t know either of you. But I would see it as a bit of an indication that he could be a bit of a tight arse. And given you do things for him - cooking, washing and ironing etc and he doesn’t see helping you as a return favour, that makes him sound quite selfish.
Personally, I would say to him:
“Don’t worry about the decorating, I’ll sort it myself. But I won’t be able to see you all of this week and weekend as obviously I’ll be painting etc and no point you coming over whilst I’m decorating as I won’t have time to spend with you or do your washing/ironing/cooking etc, so I’ll catch you when I’m all finished”.
And if he says “I told you I’d help you with the decorating though”, I’d say: “Well I wasn’t really expecting you to charge me nearly £300 for helping your girlfriend, especially given all the things I do for you (washing, cooking, ironing etc). I can’t afford to pay you that kind of money so I’ll just do it by myself”.