Fed up of nagging DH to just be a functioning adult!!!!

[Youngatheart00]

It’s making me miserable and it’s affecting our relationship. We’ve been together year and my share of the ‘domestic labour’ is just rising. We don’t yet have children and I’m worried for that day!!

Examples of what I keep reminding him to do - pay his credit card bill (he’s had 2 late payments in the last 6 months - given I pay half of this and the money is always in his bank account way ahead of the due date winds me up even more), send a lovely Xmas card to his grandpa who’s in a nursing home (been nagging on this for a week - even bought the card!!!), it would take him 5 mins to write it and I don’t even mind posting it. That’s just a couple of examples - there are more - like getting a haircut or booking medical appointments which are a similar battle.

He will do the jobs around the house he ‘wants’ to do (he does 75% of the cooking for eg as he enjoys it) but other things seem to left to me or it becomes so painful reminding him I just end up doing them myself.

I don’t want to be a nag 😫 but it’s getting me down. Any advice?

There IS a lot I love about him though, he does little thoughtful things from time to time and he was really caring when I had health issues.

This is the saddest part of the reply, OP. This is the bare minimum you should expect from a partner. I hope you realise you deserve better soon.

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Just don't have kids with him.

I think you need to take a step back from yourself. Your creating a lot of hard and extra work for yourself...then moaning about it!?

Stop mothering him.

He's a man child and you are enabling him

You are acting like a parent and he in turn is responding like a child.

Don’t accept some bloke choosing to dump everything on to you just for the sake of having a man, you’re literally sabotaging yourself. Enjoy life, marriages are for enhancing your life, it’s meant to be fun. If you picked badly, undo it. Your ‘good points’ about this loser are just base level functioning as a human being, not ‘good’, or special.

Tell him you’re getting a cleaner to do his share and he is paying

Stop being his mother! You aren’t.

Don’t wait around in the hope that the more grown up version of him will appear. This is who he is, accept it or move in.

You’re miserable because you are ignoring a major incompatibility. The resentment over this will only grow and if you ever had a child with this man he would regress rather than improve.

It feels as if you are "managing" him as though he was a task at work. Some of the things you mention like card to grandfather feels like you wanting him to be the nice person who does that type of thing. If I were you I'd prefer my OH to have a less "important" job and be less snappy to me. You've been at this for a long time and have helped to create the routine - you can change it but it might come as a bit of a shock to your partner after all this time...

Let him be in the driving seat of his own life, and you can be a passenger in his.

My mum has been similarly trying to improve my dad for the past 40 years. He's still the same. People change if they want to, not because you want them to.

Unless you want 40 years of this, I'd be rethinking this.

Stop reminding him of everything, he is not a child, let him face the consequences of his non actions, remove yourself financially and leave the man child to grow up.

Don’t have kids with this man. The adulting doubles. Appointments, shopping, organising, packing...

My DH would default to being crap if I let him. I don’t and he does fuck up at times, but he also learns and gets better. Some stuff is never going to improve and I feel regret that we aren’t “partners” in many cases, planning holidays and home improvements for example. We get on very well but I’m not sure we’d have stayed together without kids (it happened quickly).

He can change, if you allow him, but not much. If you are happy with the life he can give you then carry on. If you think you’ll be unhappy, or could be happier with a more equal partnership, let yourself go free. The rest of your life is a very long time. Don’t waste the younger years.

See, what happens is often this. Before you have kids, a woman can unconsciously take on mini-mothering tasks at home, calling it ‘love’ or ‘teamwork’ to herself. She can get a bit frustrated, but ultimately it’s her gift to him, to the relationship. It is reinforced a lot via popular culture that a woman ‘looks after’ her man, is better at ‘that people stuff’ and even that it’s important to practice those skills so when the real deal (kids) comes along, everyone is skilled up and ready to take it to the next level- like it’s the same game, only better.

Only there’s a big problem. Once you are holding an actual baby, you soon realise that that infant NEEDS and DESERVES your mothering. That they are actually entirely helpless. No game. And the big man-baby having a sook on the sofa suddenly looks a whole lot different. Forever. Not cute, not loving or lovable. He looks selfish, irretrievably unattractive and you cannot BELIEVE you were so stupid and naive.

He told you who he was (helpless) but you didn’t have the right frame of reference. Kids are properly helpless and dependant. The adult version gets old very fast (like, lightening speed) once kids come.

Seen it happen a million times. Happened to me.

He does thoughtful things from time to time and was caring when you had health issues? That’s nice.......I do that for my elderly neighbour.

This made me think of a Huffpost article called 'She Divorced Me Because I Left Dishes By The Sink'. It's an interesting read which addresses this issue. Here's a summary which I'm sure will resonate...

"I remember my wife often saying how exhausting it was for her to have to tell me what to do all the time. It’s why the sexiest thing a man can say to his partner is “I got this,” and then take care of whatever needs taken care of.

I always reasoned: “If you just tell me what you want me to do, I’ll gladly do it.”

But she didn’t want to be my mother.

She wanted to be my partner, and she wanted me to apply all of my intelligence and learning capabilities to the logistics of managing our lives and household.

She wanted me to figure out all of the things that need done, and devise my own method of task management.

I wish I could remember what seemed so unreasonable to me about that at the time."

@Aquamarine1029

Don't have a child with a manchild.

This x1000. If you think it's bad now....

@RealLifeHotWaterBottle

Leave him to it. He's an adult and can manage - he just doesn't need to now because you're doing it for him.

Though 1 year in and this is a guy who is financially irresponsible, lazy in the home, lacking in terms of the way he treats other family members and careless about his own health. Why the fuck are you with him and why on God's earth are you even thinking about having children with him? He sounds utterly pathetic.

Good points.

When it comes to children, think hard. It's not just a matter of how much of the workload that you would be doing.

It's do you want to stick those new human beings with a lazy manchild for a dad? Do you want them to grow up with parents who are constantly at odds & bicker about household responsibilities? That's not fair to them. And that is what you are heading for.

I and am sure many others badly underestimated the workload of parenting and additional domestic and admin work relating to DC/a larger household. In the earlier years a lot of this was quite ‘manual’ and physical, and 24/7! Many years on it’s different but still a lot, and very time consuming.

This is with a partner who does a fairer share than the vast majority of fathers I know (though still not a FAIR share).

women used to doing more than their fair share before DC might well underestimate it too. doing another adult’s share pre DC, while inadvisable, is often relatively easy and do-able without affecting work, social life etc. Much, much harder with one or more DC.