To be totally hacked off at DH’s refusal to do any housework?

[SoLittleTimeToday]

This is a longstanding bone of contention in our marriage. He simply will not pull his weight. If challenged he becomes incredibly defensive, and either claims to be doing loads, says the kids should do more, or says my standards are too high (believe me, with four DC and doing everything on my own, they are not!)

We had another row about this yesterday. He said that to ‘show me that he is doing loads’ he is going to stop doing anything for a week. AIBU to think that this is incredibly immature for a grown man and not very supportive in a marriage where we are supposed to be working as a team?

(For context we both work FT, children aged 4 - 11. One cleaner once a week for 2.5 hours which frankly doesn’t scratch the surface of the mess, laundry, cooking and general chaos!)

"D"H should be modelling the behaviour. Are any of your DCs boys, OP?

Get the cleaner twice a week, have her doing laundry as well as cleaning & tidying. Or leave him and go 50/50 with the kids.

model less sexist jobs for your DCs
You deserve all the flack you're going to get for this.

How about, revolutionary idea i know, you "learn" how to do the "pink" jobs? without input from your lady-wife?

Outsourcing his share of housework?

Wow.

So he gets a whole team of women looking after him, both unpaid and low paid. What a king he must be!

A strike is not "toxic". It's the last resort when talking, reasoning and pIeading has all fallen on deaf ears.

I used to beg my exhausted mother to withdraw her labour just for a week, to stop running around after my dad who insisted that bringing in a higher wage meant he could just sit on the sofa after an 8 hour day, while she worked and raised us kids and ran the household singlehandedly.

She wouldn't though and I still resent him a bit for how he treated her. Put me off marriage for years too if I'm honest.

*Yes, but I'm an electrician, and it would be professional suicide to be seen using a vacuum cleaner - if the other trades got wind of it they would expect us to clean up on site too!

I've not been allowed to do anything in the house since I washed the lawnmower engine parts in the dishwasher - she says no, what can I do!*

You could do her a favour and leave?

also, not sure where you are, but where i am tradespeople clear up after themselves.

Get yourself some garbage bags. When he leaves his laundry on the floor, pick it up and put it in the a garbage bag, collect it until he notices that things have gone missing, and return it to him when he is desperate to be somewhere (golf, cycling, etc.)
I would also point out that you are undoubtedly far too tired for sex and feel far too unappreciated to be emotionally intimate with someone who considers you to be a set of functions to facilitate his own life without any responsibility to return the favour.

Ahh so you mean she does the daily grind (pink jobs) and you step in with your cape a couple of times a year to do your blue jobs 🙄 How perfectly sexist.

@CuriousMoo

'Outsource his share of the housework' is not what I said.

And nowhere did I specify professional expertise should be female.

Have another read.

complicated stuff like laundry, hoovering, washing up is her domain

easy stuff like washing the car, mowing the lawn, putting in a new kitchen, re-hanging the front door etc

I think you need to swap "complicated" for daily and swap "easy" to once in a while/every 10 years

YANBU. You also shouldn’t need to point this stuff out. Get an app like Spotless. You input chores / frequency and it reminds you when it’s time to do it. Create two separate accounts. Sit down and write down all of the chores which need doing and the frequency. Divide them up. Add his to his account on the app so your partner has absolutely no way of not knowing what needs doing and when. Then let him crack on dealing with the reminders as they pop up. It will be a shock for him.

In fairness it is going to change soon DW is a solicitor and now a partner in her firm, so as I'm hitting 45 next year, and in quite a physical job, the plan is for me to retire and take over childcare for DS (14) holidays and weekends when he is home from boarding school, which should be good, lots of fishing and camping planned.
Dare say I might drift over to the pink list in the weeks when nothing else on, but I've got plans with DS to do a proper full on Hornby railway round the loft with all the landscaping etc. so that will take time.

I think it's really easy to pile on and call him a lazy arse - especially if you've ever been blighted with one of these specimens yourself!

However, in the spirit of fairness, can you describe what he does do around the house OP? Is it that he doesn't do it to your required standard, or just that he doesn't do anything at all?

You say he works long hours in a tough job during the week - what hours are we talking about, exactly? Too long to load the dishwasher at night or take turns with the dinner?

A few more specifics would be helpful about what he does and what you want him to do.

Could you ask him to write down every chore he does for the house for a week, and you do the same, and then compare lists? Would that make it clearer to him?

Oh even better, she gets to pay all the bills from a high stress job AND do all of “her” daily housework, unless you find yourself with nothing better to do.
What a lucky, lucky woman.

There is no magic wand for this, is there was a way of making useless men pull their weight the divorce rate would seriously plummet.

If you both work full time and you have four kids, you need some more help. This can either be from him, which doesn't sound likely, or you can buy it in.

Don't waste your time and energy trying to come up with a list of tasks for him, or break it down in to man sized chunks which he can handle. That is not your job either. He knows what needs to be done and he is very aware that it's much easier to opt out and not to do it and just defend the flak when you get to the end of your rope and deal with a row every so often.

Double your cleaner hours, so they're in twice a week. Get someone to take away your laundry and bring it back ironed and folded etc. Whatever you can outsource, do it and this gets paid for jointly. Alternatively you can keep pushing against the closed door that is your DH and drive yourself barmy in the process and send out four more people into the world believing that women are hard wired with the capability for neverending drudgery and a love of the smell of flash, or you can leave him.

How do you know the cleaner is female? Oh let me guess - sexist stereotyping.

Team clean on a Saturday morning?

e.g. ALL of you do the housework together from 10am til 12pm?

That way everyone (including kids) can be allocated tasks and no one gets to stop until everything is done. A reward for those who pulled their weight when it's finished.

(and if he doesn't join in, then no reward for him!)

Let him stop for a week, then you stop for a week. Compare and contrast.

I know it's not the best answer but I'd have the cleaner come twice a week.

I voted YABU because it clearly wasn’t a big enough issue to put you off having 4 kids with the selfish prick. You’ve really only got yourself to blame.

When I had a similar problem with my DH, I threatened to quit paid work. I said I wasn’t prepared to earn more than 50% of our household income while doing 99% of the housework. I said that as he didn’t do any housework, he clearly wanted a 1950s housewife, and I’d be delighted to oblige - I could spend more time with the children, go to the gym more often, which would be nice for me, and he wouldn’t have to lift a finger round the house, which would be nice for him. But he’d need to get a second job to make up for the lost income, and I’d want him to invest a good chunk of his earnings into a private pension for me to make up for the loss of my contributions.

It worked like a charm. Scared the hell out of him. Oddly enough he suddenly became a lot more interested in housework and it’s mostly been plain sailing since then.

I didn’t actually intend to quit work and I wouldn’t advise someone with a lazy husband to quit work, but it might help make the point.

Men can’t treat us like 1950s housewives AND cash cows.

🤣 you took it too far

Washing the car... maybe once a week.
Ditto mowing the lawn.
putting in a new kitchen? Once in what, 10 years, maybe longer? Re-Hanging the front door?

Jeez another one who doesn't do anything because he has a penis.

he is going to stop doing anything for a week

I wouldn't be able to resist asking him for a list of the jobs he is going to not do this week. Then keep track of those jobs the following week.

But then I'd be pretty petty if I thought someone wasn't pulling their weight.

And/or significantly up the cleaners hours and make sure the additional cost doesn't impact you.

In our house, DH has significantly reduced mobility so just can't do lots of things. We agreed to up the hours and start using an outside laundry. Why should it be me who picks up the slack.

Your belief that your children will be harmed if you relax in any way and let him manage (maybe poorly) says that there is some rigidity on your part. Sure the house may be a little messier and the clothes a little wrinkled but it is doubtful he will starve the children. With kids that are 4-11 and a cleaner - they can do a lot of chores and the cleaner will keep the house in some slight order even if he does almost nothing. You should go away for a full or long weekend and leave him and the kids. If you can't do that and have decided that no one can function without you and your standards - then you are both part of the problem that needs to be fixed and maybe it is more the dynamic of interacting that has become the issue.

Have you ever gone away and left the kids with him for an extended period of time?