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.

@@Luxell934 I agree.
OP, unless you have clothes made by small elves in a far flung country because you have particular needs, this is not something I could get het up about.
Firstly: how is it possible to ruin clothes on a normal wash? Unless you are doing a 90/60 degree wash, then most things are pretty safe.
To the rest of people forbidding their partners from helping out because a material item is more important to you than them trying (may be failing) to put a wash on. Get a grip.
If you have super fairy items of clothing that need a special wash (I own a few, DH owns a few), you put them in a bag apart from the laundry basket and do a hand wash/dry clean/sprinkling with unicorn dust.
I get that it's about respect, but it's laundry. Laundry can be replaced.

Yes, this.
Also, my husband is three decades older, possibly autistic (no tests in his time) and although it's not an exclusive female skill, I wouldn't give him the laundry to sort.
Car, roof fixing, DIY, hedge trimming etc but not
delicate laundry 🧺 😂

This.
He's a nasty PA prick, who has found a way to really upset you.
His lap top would definitely have not survived the SECOND TIME, this occurred.

I don’t think I’ve ever separated whites and colours. I’ve never had an issue.
Is it genuinely making your clothes gray?

@Whothefuckdoesthat That entire article is about how the 'little things' combined create a picture of disrespect.
The OP made it sound like her husband is brill - apart from this one thing.
It turns out he isn't that great after all ... but she should have said it at the start!
The context is really important here. If it's a power play it makes no sense to only fuck up this ONE thing and do everything else perfectly since he supposedly does the lion's share of the chores.

YANBU.

It’s bigger than laundry. He’s doing it on purpose, and it’s not even weaponised incompetence to get out of the chore, it’s a deliberate show of contempt. The big picture is the disrespect, and the deliberate defiance.

Clearly there are many people out there happy with their griege whites, boiled cashmere and 20 degree dishcloths, but you aren’t. All he has to do is leave your washing- but he doesn’t. The simple answer is to hide your clothes washing from him, but a) that signifies a pretty poor state of a marriage, and b) he’ll find something else to spite you with.

The only teachers I know doing 8-4 days are leaving a hell of a lot of work for their colleagues to do, so I have every sympathy for your 14 hour days.

Start using colour catcher sheets.

Wow.
What does this possibly give him, if on purpose??
😳

Yeah he doesn’t WANT to seperate clothes or wash up properly. And he is angry about it. Because he says so we should listen.

Does omitting a word then editing before posting make you a prat? Like you did in one of your posts?

Take a lover.

We have hammered it out in couples therapy that it’s not an exclusively female skill-set
Maybe this is a big clue as to your sex?

It sounds awful OP and you’ve tried everything. I don’t know what to suggest because he seems hellbent on doing your laundry regardless of what you say. It’s really bizarre. Is he purposely getting it wrong or incapable of learning?

I'm a bit bamboozled by all the PPs asserting that he's fucking up the laundry due to patriarchy/misogyny etc.

I'm a woman, couldn't give a fuck about separating laundry - I buy clothes that don't require additional care. Luckily married to a DH who thinks similarly, but if he did care about his laundry I'd just simply leave it to him and not do it (which I think OP's husband should've concluded years ago).

I think it's interesting OP said in her initial post that her husband does the lion's share of domestic chores during the week (so 5/7ths of the time then), but in later posts tries to portray him as not pulling his weight (NB is Christmas really such a momentous task each year??).

I have done my own washing since I was a teen. I simply do not trust anyone to care as much about my clothes as much as I do, particularly not your DH.

The thing I can never really wrap my head around, it’s just so infantilising. Does a grown ass man really want to be defeated by the laundry?

YABU. I've washed a mixed load, all clothes at 40 always. White school shirts, black school trousers. The lot. Nothing ever runs. Nothing is ever ruined.

Occasionally I'll put on a white wash, if I have enough.

I wash bedding at 60.

But he sounds like an incompetent twat. So why did you marry such an idiot?

Your sister or daughter come to you. They're distraught because they've been doing the "lion's share of the housework" while working a full time job, and while doing so, have twice mixed their husband's clothes up.

In repsosne, he has angrily smashed up her laptop so she can't work.

Do you call her a nasty prick?

😂

I would just do my own laundry and he can do his. I just couldn’t be bothered with the constant battles over it and it seems to have become some sort of battle of wills (even if unintentional or subconscious).

You're in couples therapy so there's more shit going on here besides your knickers being turned grey! Presumably because your dh keeps your knickers dry being one of them with all this deep rooted hatred.

All your responses are quite aggressive so you either need to accept your dh is twat who can't do laundry correctly and give him another task or you just do your own.

OP, I think a lot of posters are responding to your initial assertion in your opening posts that

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

And you did you put it in AIBU, which is notoriously unhelpful.

If you put something in Relationships asking about his infuriating and undermining behavior (which it is), you would get a focus on that rather than wash cycles.

My fault for marrying him is it?!

Gotta give (most of) you your dues, you definitely know how to make EVERYTHING the woman’s fault. Blindly schooled by the daily mail.

What a life.

Cos you said you do all of the bed and bath stuff and all the other shit that lands on females shoulders….

if you weren’t arguing about laundry, what would it be about? Because it’s insane to me that this has become such a terrible issue when it’s so easily solvable.

My husband and I don’t share washes. His are predominantly dark. Mine are mostly pale. I chuck my colours in with DD’s. He’s also a naturally sweaty man so I prefer to avoid risk of musty smell.

Anything I need to hand wash I keep separate and do in one go at the end of the month. He sorts out his clothes, he irons his shirts. He was a functioning clean man when I moved in with him and I let l him crack on.

You’ve got yourself into a bit of a state over this but it doesn’t mean you’ve lost if you change your ways rather than forcing him to do what you want. Live in harmony!