DH obsessively closes windows all year round. AIBU to be annoyed about it?

[SomeLikeItWhat]

This is non-heat wave specific. This is a year-round problem.

DH is obsessed with shutting all windows and doors. As soon as I walk through a room, he is trying to shut the door behind me and gets grumpy if I say how weird it is. Saying about conserving heat blah blah blah.

Even this morning - when we finally we got some more cool air outside, I went to open our big back doors onto the garden and he said - "Oh the air is a little cool, let's just keep them shut and the house will cool down naturally throughout the day" (The house is still 30 degrees this morning)

WHAT???

If I open a window, he closes it. It feels infuriating. He says our house is cold and I'm being weird.

I mean - it's really bloody annoying but I guess he has the same right to have it all closed as I do - but this morning was evidence I think that this is psychological rather than him being cold.

He's quite anxious and can have depression - and I think it may be related. It feels like he's trying to keep us all in somehow.

Anyone ever had this with a partner? And am I stretching it somewhat to think closing windows is about mental health??!

I do understand why you feel so stifled OP. I wouldn't say I'm an especially laidback person but just sometimes I really really wish my DH could be a bit more relaxed about life in general.

@EverybodysALebowski Yes - so it's not him buying the cheapest products in supermarkets - honestly, i'm not bothered what he buys but the lecturing behaviour does my head in. He's probably right about kitchen roll, or that tinned tomatoes taste the same, or whatever - I just don't need to hear about it all the time.

But yes, he's worried about money. But I feel frustrated. He found his job very stressful - So he has reduced his hours and changed role, and I worked hard and got promoted - and my increase in salary has offset his reduction in salary so we still have the same household income but he doenst' work full time.

But now he goes on about not contributing less than me - and that it makes him feel less of a 'man'

But he wanted to do less, so I made it work. And now he's upset about that.

Can't bloody win.

I think I might just be getting to the end of my tether about all the effort I'm putting in to make his life better. Windows, work, food, whatever.

I've read all your updates, and when you put all that stuff together, I really don't know how you've survived so far. I would honestly have to leave.

If this continus, not only is your world stifled, but so will your children's be. At the moment they're very young and accepting of life being what it is. But your DH's controlling nature will really limit them.

You need to have a serious conversation with hiim. You're looking for ways to tell yourself that maybe it's you being lax. And it absolutely isn't. All the things you do/want to do are absolutely normal. So when you speak to hiim, don't look for ways to minimise his behaviour and blame yourself.

He needs to get help, or you leave.

This would piss me of. I’d ask him what he thinks is a reasonable temperature inside and buy a thermometer so he can see what it is actually is inside when it’s hot. My living room right now with all windows open is 27 degrees.

even if it was cooler inside, if I personally felt
hot and wanted to open a window to be told basically no, ermmmmm yes we would be having a massive argument about it. Tell him to put a jumper on.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow Does you DH get frustrated at you and DD closing them all?

I do get what you're saying. I don't think it should trump it. I just find it really weird to not want some fresh air in the house. Don't you find it stuffy? (I'm talking about normal weather - not last week of course). I'd rather have a jumper on and get some fresh air, each to their own but we are at a stalemate.

No l don’t find it stuffy at all. 10 mins is fine for opening a window.

And he’s given up fighting us.

DH does the keeping the shower room window closed thing. He says the extractor fan won’t work properly if the window is open!?
I have the extractor on and window open at the same time and it clears the stream quicker than his method.

My dad was always obsessive about keeping windows closed when I was growing up. It was only years later that my mum told me that he was terrified of insects. I had no idea!

He’s deflecting. He sounds obsessive. And utterly irritating.

My DM is like this. Never ever opens windows. Ever.

it’s because she has a spider phobia..! Yesterday I had to really push to get her to open the windows first thing before it got hot. She hates it. Drives me mad

He doesn't a phobia of insects. Though if he sees a bug - he does tend to jump up in the air and demand I sort it out. But I don't think it's about that.

Your DH has an untreated mental health issue. His anxieties are concretising his thoughts, emotions, and behaviours, and as a result his - and your - world is getting smaller and smaller.

I'd be compassionately but firmly suggesting he deals with this head-on, because this will not get better by itself.

If he doesn't, I'd then be thinking about what changes I'd need to make so that I wasn't taken down into the morass with him.

I think I might just be getting to the end of my tether about all the effort I'm putting in to make his life better. Windows, work, food, whatever.

This is pretty painful to read, @SomeLikeItWhat - your unhappiness comes through.

Do you really think this ungrateful man is worth sacrificing the rest of your younger years for? You'll split up with him the end, so why not start planning that in your head sooner rather than later? Never hurts to have a Plan B. Or Plan C.

Another way to see this is that it is a mid-life crisis. Except in this situation, it is an implosive rather than explosive one.

@SomeLikeItWhat seems like my DH sometimes... knows the cost of everything and the value of nothing...

why don't we take a packed lunch? why can't we go home and have ice cream there?

because SOMETIMES we want one from the van FFS

My husband does this too. It's not natural to have stale air 24/7 surely I try to encourage him to appreciate the windows being open and see how having fresh air is good. But the phase "fresh air" sets him off and he will rant for over an hour about why the windows should be shut unless it's an emergency or extreme situation.

@SomeLikeItWhat Stalk away! I do moan a lot on here, and often get recognised and rightly admonished for my lack of action. Yep, the irony of Ben Shapiro not realising he's supposed to excite his wife during sex, and he's a hero to DH who hasn't bothered with his own wife for years and years..... funny that.
I did lose it with him once (yes, once) and asked him if he'd ever noticed how his watching BS on telly in the living room when we're all there actually drives us away. Me and the kids leave the room to go and have some fun, or just peace, elsewhere, while he sits there on his own, festering in the airless vacuum........

Oh, now I'm annoyed at myself for incorrectly using the phrase 'airless vacuum' See! It's always me in the bloody wrong 😩

LTB

@LaingsAcidTab has expressed my opinion in a much more articulate way than I managed.

You cannot let yours and your children's worlds continue to shrink. It happening so gradually that you're just drifting into it without recognising the scale of it.

OP, why does his MH, trump yours?

Every window in the house closed in the heat sounds so completely claustrophobic.

I think you need to have a long hard think because your relationship sounds awful, and you are jeopardise your MH living with this deeply irritating man.

Good god, OP, this is no way to live. He's patronising and a total bringer-downer.

If it were me I think I'd point out to him how he's changed, and how unattractive it is to always be telling you off and whingeing on. Everyone can get stuck in a rut of negativity and being a pain in the arse to their partner, but if after being told about it he doesn't sort himself out then I'd have to get out.

@SomeLikeItWhat And shuts every bloody window in the house. At christmas - he tried to persuade me to not put presents under the tree in case someone saw it from outside and robbed us.

In fairness, in December police round here told people not to put presents underneath their trees if they were clearly visible from the street due to an increase in burglary and present pilfering. Depends where you live I suppose.

Send him to the nearest pub with a roaring fire!!

How have you not had an extension built with very deep footings??