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.

I am baffled by the amount of people who think this is the solution. He can’t follow basic instructions on what to wash with what. Why do we think he would / could remember this additional step too??!

What a bullshit sweeping generalisation. You're a teacher earning a good wage and saying that is an insult to women truly stuck in financially abusive relationships with no job or independence.

You can blame the patriarchy for your own choices and marriage issues all you like, but there is so much more going on here.

To be honest, reading your replies has made me want to chuck your crisps whites in with a red tea towel too.

I once watched my ex boyfriend flick bleach onto my new clothes that were drying on the clothes horse in the lounge room.

I don’t know why he did it. I watched him do it. I think he might have been about to put the empty bottle in the outside bin (the lounge led outside). I ‘think’ he flicked straw part that goes into the bottle to remove the residue that was in the straw or the remaining remnants from the almost empty bottle. Again, I don’t know why.

It made zero sense why anyone would do this. It was bleach and my black clothes were clearly drying on the rack. The room was otherwise immaculate.

Years later I watched as he stood next to the outside bin as he emptied broken glass from a very large photo frame into the garden where our animals would play. He did this while standing right next to the bin. I still don’t understand his thought process on this one. It took me hours to clean up all the glass because he refused to clean it up himself.

This man was lazy and selfish. He cared only about himself. I also suspect he was autistic.

Do you really believe that he’s doing it on purpose to hurt you? If so why is he apologising and replacing your clothes. Why do you think his motives are so negative? Are you usually good at reading other people’s motives?

Teachers on good money! Out. Of. Touch.

And reading yours has bored me to death.

Stop blaming stupidity on autism! Fuck!!

You won't have to worry about your washing any more then.

He's replacing the clothes because he knows he's pushed it too far.

Have you always been this angry? Is my point. If it’s him, leave him.

You give the impression you’re really angry. It’s not healthy.

Does he destroy "accidently" any of his items?

Have you always been this sanctimonious. Seriously, I’m very concerned about you breaking your back when you fall off that high horse.

Bloody love how MNetters focus on 'I washed mixed in clothes all the time and MY whites have never gone grey'.

Rather than the clearly fucking annoyance of a grown adult being incapable of following what is really a very simple process.

OP, it feels like a bit of a power play - is he trying to prove a point (much like many PP on here) that he THINKS you don't need to separate washes? Like a little bit of arrogant passive aggressiveness?

My blood is absolutely boiling reading a lot of these replies! Firstly, it’d be weird for a teacher not to be absolutely at the end of their wits at this time of year: she’s patient with children all day for a living, why does she need to be patient at home with a bloody man-child too?

It’s also not about colour catchers or any other laundry tips, it’s not even really about the clothes, it’s about the absolute lack of respect, repeatedly. I can’t believe that all the people bring so harsh on here would put up with the same.

I am exhausted for you OP, I’m not surprised you’re imploding. I hope the end of term goes well for you and that spending his money on relaxing your ruined stuff makes him think twice!

The laundry isn’t the problem. It’s the fact that this idiot man doesn’t care enough to listen to his wife. He believes that because it’s not important to him it shouldn’t matter to her.

I am not the person seeking advice. You’re clearly very angry which isn’t healthy. I was only offering advice - if you’re so angry and he’s making you this way leave him. If you don’t want to good luck with couples counselling.

The outcome will only be, be kind, considerate and thoughtful to each other. If you’re always angry that won’t happen. You’ll be stuck in a vicious angry circle.

Because his intelligence levels are high in many areas of his life, I believe he is sabotaging my clothes to hurt me.

If this is what you really think (and I think it’s a reasonable interpretation) then surely the only sensible course of option here is leave him?

I’m still interested in how the frequency of ruined items is so high though 🤪
I’m pretty haphazard with my laundry and can only remember one colour run incident ever.

How dare you have clothes OP. It’s obviously all your fault for going around parading yourself in clothes, I mean it’s all your poor husband is doing is trying to stop you parading yourself around fully clothed. I mean you should just stay home naked ffs. 😒

Seriously though, he’s a twat who seems to deliberately doing this.

It's not. The glass is just the headline.
Direct quote.
"If he KNEW that ― if he fully understood this secret she has never explained to him in a way that doesn’t make her sound crazy to him (causing him to dismiss it as an inconsequential passing moment of emo-ness), and that this drinking glass situation and all similar arguments will eventually end his marriage, I believe he WOULD rethink which battles he chose to fight, and would be more apt to take action doing things he understands to make his wife feel loved and safe." I’m not really sure what your point is. The author of the article was a dickhead who lost his wife because he didn’t think it was important to listen to his wife’s issues within the home. The OP’s DH is a dickhead who doesn’t realise how close he is to losing his wife because he doesn’t think it’s important to listen to her issues in the home. What else needs saying?

You're also completely wrong about power plays. They do make sense. It's about control, deliberate decisions to undermine the other party. And it will always, 100% be more than one thing. They don’t make sense to any normal, rational person who wouldn’t contemplate using them. And I didn’t suggest it was a power play. I was responding to another poster who felt that it might be. Also, as you’ve pointed out, there are lots of things we don’t know. It’s clothing right now. A couple of months ago, it could have been something else.

You also don't know anything about his clothes - like many men, he may own stuff that can't be ruined. So what? It’s irrelevant even if he is ruining his own clothes and he just doesn’t care whether his clothes aren’t the same colour they used to be. This is about him ruining the OP’s clothes after she’s told him and shown him how not to ruin them, and has subsequently asked him to leave alone.

Anyway going by the OP's replies she sounds batshit quite frankly. I have no idea why she even posted in AIBU but it's impossible to trust anything she says really. Like you said, there are bigger issues if counsellors are involved but why the fixation with the clothes, and why the need to make her DH sound amazing in the OP? Perhaps she didn’t realise a load of MRAs would be having their AGM on Mumsnet this evening?

Also (I've said this on loads of posts!) I'm a software developer. I'm laughing at the idea of him having a 'good programming job' that pays less than a teacher. Even if it's only 8 a.m. - 3 p.m. I’m laughing at the idea that someone who is clever enough to be a software developer isn’t able to get her head around why the OP is upset or why she might not be ready to admit that her DH isn’t perfect. Just goes to show that technical intelligence and emotional intelligence don’t go hand in hand.

If it was described as the woman taking on the mental load and the lion's share of domestic chores while working full time, and the husband was complaining about how she did his laundry, the responses would be very different about him to the agreeable sympathy she's getting!

This has to be the weirdest post I’ve ever read, talk about over reacting, it would be impossible to ruin clothes to the degree you state, very few clothes leach colour these days, even so washing everything at a low temperature or even on cold is perfectly acceptable and reduces colour run even further (if it was as possible as you say) Stop being so fussy, so what if your blouse isn’t gleaming white like a TV ad, do you have such a high opinion of yourself that you think people actually study what you’re wearing.
I wholeheartedly feel sorry for your OH I bet he’s glad you’re out working those long hours.

He doesnt need teaching how to use the washing machine. He knows. He just doesnt give a shit. It doesnt matter what he says in therapy, his action show he isnt arsed.

the laptop would indeed be going in the dishwasher.

I’m in charge of all the washing. Just how I like it

Some people are massively missing the point.

This isn’t about how your clothes don’t get ruined if they’re mixed or washed at a certain temperature.
This isn’t about you.

This is about OP and how her clothes have been ruined by DH doing the laundry in a certain way.

They have discussed it many times but he continues to do the ‘wrong thing’, even though he knows how upset it makes his wife.
Yet he manages to do the ‘right thing’ when it comes to his own stuff.