To be annoyed with DH about all of the following:

[legacy]

1. He offered to do an online shop to arrive today, but didn't order any fruit, or anything for Sunday Lunch when we've got friends (he invited) coming over

2. He has walked past a small pile of kids' dirty clothes on the landing ALL DAY without bringing them downstairs to put in laundry room

3. He moans about the kids not being very good or enthusiastic about football/ cricket, but NEVER goes outside to play these with them.

4. He got angry with me because I wouldn't tell him what I wanted to do for my birthday (er.. I don't know, surprise me?)

5. When he does something he considers domestic chores he makes a point of telling me i.e. "I put the milk bottles out"

6)If I tell him I need his help tidying the house (before friends for Sunday lunch) his solution is to just shout at the kids for making a mess, and then blame them (not help them tidy up)

7. He keeps buying unsuitable (IMO) PG/ 12 DVDs which scare DS2 (5)

8. He reads DS2 (5) books like Harry Potter because he (DH) wants to, rather than hear DS listen to his school reading book (which NEEDS to happen, as DS is behind on reading)

9. He makes a tokenistic contribution to the household by putting a load of laundry in the machine, but NEVER takes it out, so I end up doing all the hanging, tumbling, folding etc which is the time consuming bit.

10. He always finds a job in the garden or garage which is 'urgent' at weekends, thus leaving me to entertain the kids indoors
    OR he says they can come out and play, but doesn't encourage them with anything, so they're back indoors within a few minutes.

11. He won't listen to me trying to explain nicely why all or any of these things annoy or upset me, but just gets angry and tells me to stop nagging him.

Oh, and to put it in context, we both work the same amount of hours per week, and I was under the misguided impression that we were meant to be sharing all the household responsibilities....

Perhaps I Should divorce him - it may be the only answer ?

MAY be??? It is!!

Mine does number 8, which makes me laugh as the children dss (6,5) ask questions that are nothing to do with the book.
I would arrange a day out, alone, one Saturday or go and see a friend for the weekend and make him do the things he won't.
Perhaps you could have a mini strike, not do any of his washing for a week just to make a point?

OOO and as for the DVDs say your child mentioned it at school and the teacher had a word with you with concerns!!

I have just been through all this with DH. After 15 years of asking for help and being ignored it was literally coming to the point that I was going to divorce him. However I have now told him that he has to do his own washing, I still do mine and dcs and I have written a list of jobs that need doing upstairs and downstairs every weekend and told him he can choose whether he does upstairs or downstairs and I will do the other but that I am not doing both. Seems to be working so far.

"10) He always finds a job in the garden or garage which is 'urgent' at weekends, thus leaving me to entertain the kids indoors
OR he says they can come out and play, but doesn't encourage them with anything, so they're back indoors within a few minutes"

Gah, mine does this too. It drives me insane.

oh i feel your pain.

my dp does 2), 4), 9), 10) and 11). But goes even further:

For my birthday he even gets annoyed at me for not telling him what i want him to buy me. I said last year that i wanted a surprise he said I was out of order putting him throught that much stress!!!! Guess what!! I got nothing.

He never puts wasing on but does hover sometimes and then says " I have done all the housework this week, and none of it is my mess as i work all day" . I do work as well but not as many hours but still a full time mum.

Men!!!!!!!! If only you could get buy sperm at boots it would be a lot less stressful.

Legacy, Are you perchance married to my husband?

that's funny...i'm sure i don't remember starting this thread

i'm sure some of the more rampant feminists intellectual MNers will be along later to explain how it's our fault for allowing them to do it to us, and how being male is not an excuse in itself.

you should've joined the strike action yesterday (fat lot of good it did me, i can tell you!)

hmph

petet has wise words of advice. My ex husband was alwasy at least 590/50 with me on the house things - we both worked full time. I would never have let it be otherwise but he was quite good anyway at keeping the place tidy, putting on washing, taking it out etc. We used to find the cleaner would put on the washing and we'd have all that dealing with it etc so we changed things around and made sure we put it on before we left for work and the dishwasher so she had to do the emptying which worked well - may be you can do the same.

I think you need patterns and routines. If he always does the shopping every week on line nad it's his job he'll remember what to do. It's when you suddenly have to help the other out with their job there's a problem.

Tell him you will be out tomorrow morning for a start so he will have to mind the children and put off any outside jobs. Try to share the child care 50/50 at weekends.

May I tag on a complaint? Just to vent (pretty please?)

It's gloomy clouds, windy, cold & damp feeling outside.
H. insists clothes can dry in 2 hours on the line in these conditions. He clears the outside drying line, folds items neatly and compactly ... and puts them in the airing cupboard.
Where in the hot damp conditions, they quickly go mildewy ... because they are nowhere near f*ing dry when they come off the line!!

He's in a very pissy mood because I put some things like cloth nappies over tops of the doors today, rather than straight out on the line. Hey, we only have 3 large loads today & 2 more tomorrow to get thru, & the line isnt big enough for more than one load.

I resort to sneakily redistributing damp clothes on hot rads when he's not looking... except his own clothes, of course. He pulls them out of the cupboard days later & complains they smell -- no shit Sherlock???

Can u tell this argument has been going on for years??? Sigh.

The problem I have is that he won't seem to have any reasonable discussion about it...

Instead he says things like:
"I do more than most men"
"I do more than my fair share"
"We both have too much to do"
and then goes off all huffy in a bad mood.
His other favourite trick is to list all the 'essential' things he does for the family (which I'm not disputing) but which usually only occur once every few months, like gettting the car MOTed, or sorting out holiday insurance etc
Washing, laundry, cleaning etc are EVERYDAY things.

Once before when I got annoyed about how infrequently he was cooking and I made a rota, he got angry and started calling me petty and nagging.

At the beginning of the school year I asked him to take responsibility for cleaning the kids shoes and football books every week. He has done it once. If I remind him, he tuts and gets cross.

I hadn't realised how much this was all getting me down until I started typing it out here

you clean your kid's shoes every week?

God,he sounds like a selfish arse.
Don't have sex with him.

Cappuccino - the kids are at an independent school where the have uniform inspection every week, so we have to!

Moondog - it's strange, but now you say that (the selfish arse bit) I agree with you, but I've always convinced myself that he was a good husband/ father etc.
It doesn't feel like that these days though...

oh, and on the sex front - no change there then...

Message withdrawn

I think a lot of women do persuade themselves that their blokes are okaaaayish really.
It doesn't sound ok to me though. Hell no,I wouldn't put up with it for a second.

Lol at no. 5, DH does that, so I've started doing it too. Now much of our sonversation is juet naming chores.

'I've changed the sheets'
'I've emptied the bins'
'I've cleaned the fridge'
'I've had sexual intercourse'

since it's slag off the Hubbies day, I will pitch in too. Mine's does most of the above but he is very PC orientated when he is on days off from work, so I have to moan and whinge at him (Ok I've admitted I do that!) to help with ds. Everything is such an effort. I feel he should want to help with these things, hinting obv does NOT work.

I feel for you, OP. Men can be right twits at times, for want of a better word.

chquers mine's says that phrase aswell. almost like they are being victimised!

Legacy - your dh does indeed sound very trying. But my dh doesn't do those jobs in the garden/garage or diy jobs around the house and they get left undone and that really pisses me off. We have a broken window in the garage which has been there since last summer . I have called 2 different handymen in and so far they have both let us down (both said they would be back to see to it and then didn't.)

If DS is behind on his reading, aren't you really wasting your money in the private sector? If you didn't pay for private education (which as a privately educated person I think is a waste of money, except for extras such as music lessons) you could afford far more help in the house, or to work fewer hours and thus have more time to do it all and spend time with the dc.

Divorce is a very expensive business. Don't go there. Instead of sporadic help you'll get none.

Oh this type of thread makes me mad! I have some of the same issues with my DH but I don't let him off the hook and nag him a lot. His mum did everything when he was growing up and still does to this day - if she comes to stay and he starts ironing a shirt, then she'll take over and insist on doing it for him.

What I am very interested in is how we are going to bring up our DS's (I have one, and a DD) not to expect this kind of domestic subservience/imbalance.

I'd be really pissed off with this.
Can you leave him with the children for a weekend so he gets it?
very unfair imo.

I can totally empathise - although I now stay at home full time, when we were both working and to a certain extent, now, there is still this divide with the sexes. It is instinctive to a woman...you see some mess and you either tidy it up OR feel guilty / indulgent for not tidying it up. Whereas men just don't see it.
Whilst I don't expect DH to do loads around the house, he has still got his responsibilities - the cars, the ironing and the bins. I do everything else. I think I am rather lucky really in that respect. BUT I do want him to unload the dishwasher if it needs it and I am up to my elbows in dirty nappies, crayoned walls and carrot soup and I do not expect him to walk past a coat on the floor ALL DAY without picking it up. And it would be really great if I didn't have to ask / nag. I'm not asking him to hoover & dust daily and I realise he probably doesn't even know this happens at all!
This really got to me recently and I read this article on resentment in a marriage - it was really inciteful (shamefully admitting my Mail on Sunday readership!). The basic gist was that whilst the little things are just that, there are 'things' that are little to 1 1/2, therefore ignored, but huge to the other 1/2 because they're ignored - thus building up a huge wall of resentment. I showed it to DH and we had a really frank discussion, it helped enormously. We now know that if the other says 'actually, I really resent that' it can't just be ignored or answered with 'stop going on at me'...

Sounds like he does a lot more than a lot of DPs I have read about on this site! The fact he actually does an online shop at all is quite impressive compared to some, i.e mine who would not have the patience to do this). At least he does read to children. Having said this I can fully understand why this irritates! Just trying to be Pollyanna-esque!