To implode about DH ruining my clothes every fucking week.

[Aplatterofpuss]

DH is an Oxbridge educated 50 year old man with a good job in computer programming.
We have been married for 10 years.
He gets the mental load stuff and does the lion’s share of the domestic stuff during the week as I’m a teacher and work longer hours.

I have taught him how to do the laundry 450 bazillion times. I have shown him. I have told him. We have hammered it out in couples therapy that it’s not an exclusively female skill-set to be able to simply wash plain whites, light colours, dark colours in batches, read the care labels on everything and basically treat all the clothes as if they’re his musical equipment.

After thrashing this out in therapy a few weeks ago and him apologising profusely and insisting he does care and is sorry, I came home last weekend to him having washed coloured items with whites rendering many of my things grey and ruined. I was angry. It was not nice.

We again, talked about it. He blamed me because he’s found some bits on the floor by the washing machine and ASSUMED that they were sorted by me so just bunged them all in together.

This Saturday, I woke up, separated ALL of the washing in to separate piles on the landing, put the dark wash on and went to leave the house. DH asked me if the laundry on the landing had been sorted by me and I said yes.

When I returned, I emptied the fucking washing machine to find lots of my white clothes ruined by the fact that he’d put blue tea towels, multicoloured teatowels and white and blue towels in with my pure white knickers and tops.

I told him I was annoyed and that he must be doing this because they’re not his belongings.
I said that he needed to pay me back for my damaged clothes and that if I decided to put his laptop in the dishwasher and insist I did care and I didn’t mean to damage it he would be furious. He said it was obviously not the same thing and was, again, very sorry.

I amso so so angry.

A difficult man.

It does seems strange that he can't/won't figure this out when it's clearly such a big thing between you, but unless you think he's doing it on purpose, is it worth all this strife? There has to be a way around it. Each of you doing your own laundry seems the easiest solution. Or you divide jobs up so that you do the ones he doesn't do 'properly' and he does the things that don't matter as much to you. Sometimes you won't ever fully agree on an issue, but coming to an arrangement you can both live with just has to be good enough at times.

Honestly I never separate colours and nothing ever runs. I even wash things like white knickers and red towels on 60 degrees and nothing runs.
The only time I ever separate is if I have a brand new pair of dark blue jeans or something, then I'll separate for the first couple of washes only.
I find it weird that your colours are running so much.

Buy 3 laundry baskets. One whites, one lights and one darks. Even an idiot can manage to.just put one load in at once.

😂

Exactly.
It really isn't difficult.

This is deliberate sabotage and incompetence, a "fuck you" to the OP.

I think we should obviously know our place and do the laundry in silent contemplation of masculine superiority 😂

That figures. Nice instas of your brunch in all?

Spot on.

The only time my whites went grey was when I washed them with my other clothes in the hall of residence machine all term when I was at uni 40 years ago. When I put them in with my mum's whites in the holidays, they returned to white.

Now, while I do tend to wash whites separately, the odd mix up with coloureds makes no difference. Change your washing machine / powder/ whatever.

You'd think! Apparently he can't!

Yes. Clearly a very difficult man.

If he does other chores just stop him doing the laundry and get him to so something else instead. Definition of insanity - repeating the same thing and expecting a different outcome.

Whilst starving ourselves to make the men feel all big and strong.

Quite!

We already have this.

I can't imagine the women who "spend the weekend"(!!!???) separating laundry, or even think that's a non-deranged weekend plan, are non-incels tbh @Aplatterofpuss @trytofly . Maybe vol-cels I guess.

Given the hours op works her DH must be doing all the school runs and club runs and cooking all the meals

... and not wearing white in case a man can't load a washing machine.
I'm glad I went on those Reclaim the Night marches in the 70s, we've come so far...

OP claims that her husband doesn't respect her but she shows little respect for the "little manny-wanny". Why implode? Why just not tell him very clearly that you are very fussy about your laundry and not to touch it at all?
Op is also quite rude in some of her answers on here. Personally I wouldn't feel relaxed living with her. This doesn't sound like a happy marriage all round and they would probably be happier apart.

I suspect OP doesn’t want to just solve the problem by doing her own washing because she wants to feel heard and this issue has become representative of wider issues in their relationship. What’s come to be more meaningful about the whole washing thing is that he knows it’s important to her, she’s asked him to do something really small that costs him no extra effort, and yet he just refuses to.

I think OP wants to feel confident that she can communicate with her DH and be listened to and respected, and him doing this repeatedly feels like a way of communicating to her that he does neither of those things.

The laundry just sounds like the passive aggressive battleground.

Has he done it deliberately because he doesn't want to do it OP ?

Did you read the part where the OP explained it all, including during couples therapy, @Anonymouseposter ?

Get rid of him or change what you do. Continually raging over the same faults in another person is not good for you.

If you hate him that much, why not just leave?
This doesn't sound healthy. He contributes so little to your life so surely leaving and setting up on your own would be best. Then you can keep your pants sparklingly white. I guess you'll have to figure out how to fit school runs and cooking dinner into your 14 hour day though. But on balance it can't be worth staying in a marriage with this level of hatred in it