Dh keeps breaking my stuff

[DimidDavilby]

Dh has just broken the butter dish, which was a gift from my stepdad, who had it from his great aunt (sadly departed). He has form for breaking my precious possessions by not treating them with care. He will then say, oh it was an accident, its a clean break but makes no attempt to ever fix.

He shouted through from the kitchen that he had done it and then came through about 5 min later to the front room. I was a bit off with him- didn't have a go, just a bit quiet - and now he's annoyed at me.

AIBU to not be instantly over the breaking of a precious thing?

@JoysOfString - so much stuff here that I recognise!

The problem with a man like this is that the harder you try to make it easy for them not to be a dick to you, the more frustrated they get, because they need to be a dick to you. If you act as if their "mistakes" are mistakes, and you really want to try to help them not to make them, and you invent all these systems and conventions to help them not fuck your stuff up, you are making them more angry deep down and things worse for yourself long term.

I feel an intense relief reading this thread from seeing the basic understanding.

In my case it wasn't so much about breaking things - though things got broken a lot. It was about putting things out of reach, or where I could not find them, but a different place each time; resenting me having personal, rather than household, possessions, and getting cross with me for expecting them to be treated as such.

I would attempt to combat this by for instance having duplicates of things, which I didn't care where they wandered off to, but that wasn't the point - the point wasn't that he could always put his hand on anything he needed or wanted; the point was that I had nothing that he didn't have access to.

A lot of it was about tools, which I think is funny as it is so Freudian. My having tools was a direct challenge to his masculinity. I didn't attempt to keep them from him at first - only when I could never find them, or if I could, reach them. So I did things like buy "kitchen screwdrivers" in other words, leave my stuff alone so I know where it is when I want it. In the end, the last line of defence was my swiss army knife, which my parents bought me for my 21st birthday, and was in my knicker drawer. I was not supposed to keep that from him and it was to be called "the swiss army knife" not "the swiss army knife". I was SO busy doing EVERYTHING and I spent an insane amount of time a week looking for stuff he had taken and perhaps broken or at least slightly damaged.

I was not supposed to be able to find my hairbrush and it was considered unreasonable for me to expect him not to allow the 3 year old to run off with it and lose it in the garden - when I was working full time and trying to look good every morning and he was a "SAHD".

There were so many things wrong but this thing was on paper the least really - I can see "reasonable" people dismissing this - of course things get moved in families! - but not having to deal with this is among the biggest reliefs of no longer being with him.

OP - put everything you care about away for now and get it out when you've got rid of him.

sorry, not "my swiss army knife"

I hope your use of the past tense means you dumped him, @SenselessUbiquity?

This sounds like my dh. I know he doesn’t mean to break/lose things, but he always manages to! Latest was today, our dd’s birthday scooter new last week, from my parents, left by the car in the car park & drove off and left it-never to be seen again. My parents are cross, dd distraught & I can’t believe how many times things like this happen to him!

@mathanxiety yes! 4 years ago now. haven't had to replace random objects that I thought I had for ages :)

senseless yes it is such a great relief! - to be able to unpack it all with others who’ve been through it. One of the hardest things is that doubting yourself, thinking you must be paranoid or imagining it when he keeps doing the PA behaviour and insisting it was accidental.

It’s also such an intimate, invisible kind of thing that I feel no one else who knows him could possibly believe that he isn’t Mr Lovely underneath. I’ve only been able to vent about him with friends who don’t know him. Once or twice I’ve tried to talk to friends who know him and I realised I was just coming across as a bitter old trout and stopped. One friend said “but he has so much respect for you” because that’s how he was presenting to them.

@Happymum12345

This sounds like my dh. I know he doesn’t mean to break/lose things, but he always manages to! Latest was today, our dd’s birthday scooter new last week, from my parents, left by the car in the car park & drove off and left it-never to be seen again. My parents are cross, dd distraught & I can’t believe how many times things like this happen to him!

And does he immediately apologise and replace the item? Or do you Have yo insist he replaces each and every one? Has he replaced the scooter?

My husband used to do this. I don't think it was conscious but there was a clear lack of care with my things. Over time this resulted in several things I loved being marked or ruined. One day I accidentally put a pair of his precious basketball shorts in the dryer, which is bad for them apparently (it genuinely wasn't intentional, they were caught inside a pillowcase) and he got quite upset. I pointed out that we all make mistakes and then when he remained cross I (somewhat heatedly) listed the half a dozen things of mine he had broken recently. He got it after that.

I understand that you don't want to break something of his on purpose - as that would be very mean spirited. Maybe just stop taking special care of his things?

Break something of his.
Ir just dump him. He sounds like a twat.
There have been a few threads like this on MN over the years with many people suspecting that actually, it was deliberate. Do you think it could be?

@Happymum12345

This sounds like my dh. I know he doesn’t mean to break/lose things, but he always manages to! Latest was today, our dd’s birthday scooter new last week, from my parents, left by the car in the car park & drove off and left it-never to be seen again. My parents are cross, dd distraught & I can’t believe how many times things like this happen to him!

I hope you've made him replace it out of money he would otherwise get to spend on himself.

@Techway and @JoysOfString I must join you! My stbxh Mr Lovely epitomized by the time he received an Unsung Hero award at work before coming home and abusing his family.

@JoysOfString, I completely get the idea of only being able to talk about the ‘real’ him with people who don’t know him. It really bugs me that even after I have left, I can’t be honest with mutual friends because the public him and the actual him are nothing alike.

@alfagirl73 - that smile you're describing has a name: duper's delight. There's quite a lot of stuff been written about it.

OP - this doesn't sound like a healthy relationship at all. His deliberately breaking your things (both passive-aggressive and gaslighting because it's so plausibly deniable as "I'm just clumsy"), plus the fact that you feel you have to act all the time to cover up your true feelings so as not to antagonise him - I honestly don't think this is a relationship which can be turned round. If you were my RL friend, I'd be trying to support you in getting out.

This all sounds horribly familiar.
Even my mum stopped buying me breakable things as Christmas presents as she knew my ex would accidentally break them. I never thought anyone could be so mean spirited as to break things on purpose so I kept believing they were accidents. He would never let me put shoes in with the children's shoes in the shoe basket area and would chuck them out yet when I once chucked his out the back door so I could mop the floor, he went out for a cigarette and came back and threw them across the room calling me a fucking cunt

He doesn't sound very nice.

If he broke your possession by accident then I'd expect him to be apologetic but it sounds like he doesn't care.

@alfagirl73, I assume you had similar parenting so do you think genetics/innate personality has a factor in her behaviour?

@SonEtLumiere *When you know someone is hyper sensitive to My Stuff/My Precious Possessions then it is so so stressful. It makes everything awful, and you know how much energy they will put into being so hurt & disappointed and angry on behalf of the damn butter dish. It feels like they are waiting for you to drop it so they can unleash any nastiness they choose on you.

It’s quite obvious you’ve added this to the list of ways in which he is a bag of shit compared to you. And the reason he is angry/ and defensive is that no-one with a shred of self esteem wants to agree (with the person who is supposed to love them) that yes they are indeed a bag of shit.

This has gone way past “If you could just be careful”, and seems to be about “If you loved me and cared about me, nothing would get lost or broken”.

Do you enjoy the contempt you have created?*
Thats utter bullshit. Complete fucking rubbish. I am exceptionally clumsy & can imagine getting worried about breaking someone elses stuff and yet I manage not to. Ever. And theres no way I would even think something like this.

You must be a man. Talk about projection. RTFT. He doesnt care. Its a PA thing. Clearly a PA thing that you practice - shame on you for being such an arsehole.

I understand you’re disappointed, and I don’t know whether you are just venting, but as the Clumsy one, he should dump you for the contemptuous way you speak about him.

When you know someone is hyper sensitive to My Stuff/My Precious Possessions then it is so so stressful. It makes everything awful, and you know how much energy they will put into being so hurt & disappointed and angry on behalf of the damn butter dish. It feels like they are waiting for you to drop it so they can unleash any nastiness they choose on you.

It’s quite obvious you’ve added this to the list of ways in which he is a bag of shit compared to you. And the reason he is angry/ and defensive is that no-one with a shred of self esteem wants to agree (with the person who is supposed to love them) that yes they are indeed a bag of shit.

This has gone way past “If you could just be careful”, and seems to be about “If you loved me and cared about me, nothing would get lost or broken”.

Do you enjoy the contempt you have created?

WTAF are you going on about? Have you actually bothered your arse to read the thread. He’s breaking ONLY her stuff, never his own. That is not the act of a clumsy person. That is spite.

If you break someone’s stuff, do you apologise or do you get angry with them, because you refuse to take responsibility? Do you push at them because they’re quiet, then get angry with them for being upset? If you do, then it’s you that needs to take a look at yourself and start treating others with kindness. Being clumsy does not absolve you of all responsibility and if you’re that clumsy, then don’t touch other people’s delicate items, if you can’t trust yourself and know that it’s special to them.

You obviously know nothing about this type of manipulative abuse.