to ask who is in the wrong here?

[bringincrazyback]

Perspectives on a row DH and I just had would be appreciated. I'm beyond frustrated at this point.

Context is housework that needs doing before a few days away. (Further context: DH's mother is a dyed-in-the-wool traditionalist who never taught any of her sons how to do housework, because their wives would do all that kind of thing.)

DH never takes the initiative with anything housework-wise, literally doesn't seem to know how to do certain things, and unless directly asked by me, does none apart from doing the bins, a bit of cooking and washing up. No actual cleaning unless asked a million times. Arguments over housework, and the need to do more of it, are frequent because he doesn't care what state the house is in and thinks I should stop being uptight and do next to no housework. Not happening. (For info, I have ME and various pain issues which mean I have to pace myself carefully where things like housework are concerned.)

Earlier this evening:
Me: Will you have time to give me a hand with the housework over the next couple of evenings?
DH: Yes, of course, just text me a list. (I always get this 'text me a list' business, even when I tell him verbally what needs doing. He seems incapable of seeing for himself what needs doing.)
Me: Well, W, X, Y and Z need doing. I don't like texting a list, it makes me feel like I'm issuing orders.
DH while I've been telling him what needs doing: several repetitions of 'yeah, yeah,' which usually means (and I think this time is no exception) that he isn't listening.

So I get cracking, do as much as I am able, but not the stuff I'd already asked him to do, stupidly thinking he'll come and do it as he appeared to have agrred to do.
DH spends the whole evening in his man cave.

Conversation at bedtime:
Me: You will be able to help with the housework tomorrow, right?
DH: You didn't text me a list.
Me: No, but I told you what needed doing.
DH: That's not my recollection. I said to text me a list.
Me: I didn't need to, I told you what needed doing.

A bit more verbal ping-pong and he's claiming he's 'always' cleaning the kitchen worktop and the area where the cats' bowls are. By 'cleaning' it transpires he means sweeping his hand over the surfaces, catching bits and binning them. Possibly passing a damp cloth over them at most.

Me: You need to use the anti-bacterial spray as well.
DH: (makes a contemptuous noise) No one needs to use anti-bacterial spray unless they're Michael Jackson.
(There's a whole list of things normal sensible people do, which he deems unnecessary and neurotic, apparently this is one of them... a few years back he sneered at me for saying toilets needed cleaning under the rim and said didn't I know how gravity works?)

A bit of further quarrelling and he huffs out of bed and stomps to the spare room with the words, 'I'm an adult, I make my own decisions.'

AIBU for expecting him (as an adult, as he's so at pains to tell me) to use a bit more initiative, to not just weasel out of keeping promises on a technicality, and... to actually listen to me?

Send a link to a book about housekeeping.. He can tick off which he deeems suitable each day..
Or maybe you forget how to cook and have sex or do laundry.. Surely he can see what needs doing?

This thread is nuts! Poor lamb can't be expected to do anything without a list?Really? And what if the OP can't do anything without a list someone "in charge" has texted her? He can make his own bloody list.

Is he doing it deliberately @bringincrazyback ? Making it easier for you to just do everything yourself than to do your share and also hold his hand and talk him through his share?

I normally agree with the sentiment that you shouldn't 'have' to text him a list.

But in this case I would text him, along with when it needs to be done by.

Then when he doesn't do it, he has no excuse.

I wouldn't be writing him a list.

But I also wouldn't have married someone who was so disgusting that you had to tell him to clean his home before you'd move in there.

You picked him. You knew what he was like.

This is an infinite wishes situation I reckon.

Yes, her DP should bloody pull his own weight (and yes, I sometimes just sweep off crumbs/use a damp cloth - but I also sometimes use a spray so it's actually clean.. hell, I have shiny tops so when I'm really feeling it I use a second, special cloth to wipe up the moisture so they are sparkly - and I suck at housework!), BUT, if he's going to be an arse (the ignoring her/not writing down the list she said himself is definitely arse-like behaviour) then write him a list.

Put all the stuff you don't want to do on it, and make the last element 'write my list for next week' so that he can't say that you didn't give him a list, and he can't say that he's done the list without writing his own for next week.

Of course, he's an arse so it won't get OP anywhere - he has to want to change to make a change.

OP I could have written your post five years ago. I got totally burnt out holding down a job as our main source of money whilst doing most of the housework, house management, mental load and emotional labour. I’d finish work and cry at the state of the house that I’d then have to organise, tidy and clean.

DH doesn’t see the mess and dirt. Thinks I’m OTT. When we first moved in together I said I’d only agree if he became more tidy as I could live like he did. He said he prefers it tidy so we went for it.

This is what has helped (but we started from a point where he doesn’t believe being a man is a reason not to do it);

1. Getting to a point where we both agree that any personal characteristic doesn’t absolve you of domestic responsibility. If you live in a house with others you all should share that responsibility fairly.
2. I made two lists of all possible household tasks from washing up to cleaning the windows and cut them up and made two identical piles of them. I then put bits of paper in a line on the table with lots of timings from ‘twice a day’ through to ‘never’ and everything in between. We then both silently put each household task in the area relating to how often we think it should be done. Where there was a difference we met in the middle. That’s then our shared ‘gold standard’. We then set this up on an app - this captured it and we would tick when done and who had done it. It made everything more transparent and avoided too many conversations (arguments) about it.
3. That didn’t sort everything- just the housework. The Fair Play cards and book have helped with the mental load stuff.

It’s not perfect still but anytime there is that ‘I’ll do the housework for you’ or ‘but it’s your standards’ I remind him that we mutually agreed the standards that we BOTH want to aim to keep.

Setting up the TOM system also helped - half an hour on one room each day - with allotted days. So, for example, if I notice the bedroom needs cleaning I don’t have to hold it in mind because I know it’s bedroom cleaning day on Tuesday and that’s his day. If that makes sense? Cuts out the holding it in mind.

good luck. I feel your pain!

My xdh used to drive me mad like this.

Dc are like this.

All of them are now disgnosed with ADHD. I would be requesting a referral.

YANBU to be frustrated because you sound utterly incompatible when it comes to housework/cleanliness.

YABU to expect someone who can't/won't change, to change.

You found his suggestion to do less /no housework ridiculous and you won't consider it because it's not how you are and you don't want to be living in filth, which is quite reasonable. However, you expect him to change. This is who you married. So you either leave him, do him the bloody list or suck it up.

Yes can he not see what needs doing ?!

I need a list texting to me for all sorts of requests, shopping etc so YABU on that front.

The issue is that you want things doing that he wouldn't notice. To him things are fine and don't need your standard of cleaning.

My DGM had a saying for my DM which was 'them as sees it can do it'. She would insist that jobs needed doing that nobody else would recognise. It was her issue to deal with if it bothered her so much.

So in your situation, you want stuff doing that he doesn't see, he doesn't mind doing it if you point it out, so just text the blooming list.

You absolutely shouldn't have to do this but what I would do is put together job aids, including taking pictures of how you want things to be done.
Kind of like compiling your own version of a Haynes guide or Ladybird book, except yours is all about housework.

How to dust.
How to clean the toilet (including under the rim)
How to vacuum
How to wash the floor
How to stack the dishwasher properly.

Put each of these together and put them in a folder that he can consult every time.

Then put a huge list on the back of the kitchen door with a column for jobs that you'll do and the ones that he'll do.

Just keep referring to that list and the job aids that you've taken the time to do.

Shame on his mother for being so backwards in her teaching of her son. Shame on him for being so ineffective and disrespectful to you by not listening to you and also for not 'seeing' what needs to be done.

Thanks all for the responses. Will come back to this after work.

Absolutely this, easy fix.

I'm reading this wondering how on earth you then married him. Is he amazing in bed? Did you have a head injury causing loss of senses?

He was an unhygienic pig then and it should be no surprise that he is still one now.

I’m another one here who needs written lists.
me and DH have shared WhatsApp lists for everything-shopping, cleaning, dates to remember. Drop him a list.

Also, I do think that if you ask someone to do something you do have to accept that they will do it to their standard not yours. Don’t worry to much about the antibacterial spray and let him do it his way.

If he’s still not doing the housework after the list, I would be having a very serious word. I also would frame it as “helping me” with the housework. The housework is everyone’s responsibility.

Fuck me, I'm a slattern when it comes to housework, but even I anti-bac the worktops. And clean under the rim of the toilet - they have nooks and crannies where limescale builds up and shit sticks to it.

Your DH simply doesn't want to do it, OP.

OP at the risk of sounding bouji- can you not just get a cleaner in a few hours a week once a week? If affordable of course.

This stress can't be good for your health and you're both going round in circles.

Thanks to those who get where I am coming from re this and made constructive comments. (And I don't mind the YABU-type responses, otherwise I wouldn't have posted in AIBU.) I've had 23 years of this manchild, 'you're the one who cares about it so you do it' attitude to housework, and yes it is making me question the marriage. I am looking at getting a cleaner in (as we have had in the past), but going by past form he will expect me to pick up the cost because, quote unquote, it only benefits me because he isn't fussed.

But I do feel some of the YABU-ers might have missed some of the key points here: yes, you might argue that I should 'just bloody text him already', but I do wonder if posters who were of that view have missed some of the wider context, which I did set out, in terms of the levels of his basic slobbishness and also the selfishness he is displaying given that I too work full-time, and have health issues, and for the most part expect very little from him housework-wise as I understand it matters less to him than me. To me these things are relevant to the fact that, no, I didn't think I should have to spoon-feed him with a text as well.

And yes, I do think it's completely bloody pathetic and juvenile that a man who will be 57 next week is still behaving like a student and would be living in a Young Ones-style hovel if it wasn't for me. And yes, at times (like now) it does make me question whether the good points are worth it, and I can understand why people are advocating LTB. Sometimes I do consider it.

However, as the thread seems to have brought the 'you knew' brigade out in spades, let me clarify that a) of course he has plenty of redeeming qualities or I wouldn't have stayed with him all this time, and b) I don't 'magically expect him to change' as a few posters put it. But my willingness to baby him through the whole process of keeping our home fit to live in is dwindling.

Even when they say to their daughters-in-law, in their sons' hearing, that 'it's still a woman's job to keep the house clean, even if she works' and that 'feminism is the worst thing to have ever happened to women?'

Given that sort of conditioning, I almost feel like giving him some credit for going the 'no one needs to clean, including women, messy is fine, dust doesn't matter' route rather than the 'women should do it all' like his mum. And yes, that's messed-up thinking, but I'd have been gone years ago if he expected a clean/tidy house and for me to do most/all the work on that.

Also meant to say re the 'you knew' responses that it's not unreasonable to expect a person to grow up a little, over the course of nearly 25 years, in terms of 'adult work'. That's not the same as expecting someone to 'magically change.'

I'm sorry, I didn't think half-term was this week?

Maybe the solution is to stop doing anything for him.
Stop cooking for him - after all that only benefits him. Stop washing his clothes, buying his deodorant etc.

yes it’s annoying but he doesn’t see what you see and can’t remember the list. If you want it doing that badly just text him the list

I should probably have clarified before now that he has an excellent memory when he feels like using it, and can remember verbal lists perfectly well most of the time - when it's his turn to shop I can give him a verbal shopping list and everything usually gets bought - that's partly why I see this 'text me' business as disingenuous.

@bringincrazyback "Even when they say to their daughters-in-law, in their sons' hearing, that 'it's still a woman's job to keep the house clean, even if she works' and that 'feminism is the worst thing to have ever happened to women?'

Even then. He's a grown man who can observe, think, read,listen......