Totally fed up with my husband!

[Sam9769]

I am totally fed up with my husband!
We have been married for 34 years and in all that time if there is work to be done in the house, he has to be hounded to do anything.
We recently moved house but before we moved, we needed to do work on our old house to get it ready for sale. He would wait to be told what to do by me even though it was patently obvious what had to be done. If materials were required for the work, it would be left up to me to sit him down and ask him what was required and I would order them. When I would ask him why he didn't order them, the response was "I don't know!".

Fast forward, we are now in our new house which is a 1950s house and nothing has been done in it since the 1990's. Husband who is 65 and in good health is retired. I am 61 and partially retired working two days per week.
Lots of work to be done in the house and here we are again in the same situation. We hire tradespeople for the work we can't do and you've guessed it, I have to google them and find them, phone and arrange for them to come to the house. For work that we can do, he will not initiate ANYTHING!. He has to be pushed to get on with jobs in the house.
At the weekend I realised that the downstairs toilet wasn't working. It transpired that he knew about it but hadn't done anything about it.
Today, I was out of the house for 9 hours at work and doing the grocery shopping after work. Before I left I asked him to mind the two dogs and clean and tidy the kitchen.
When I got home, he was sitting on his computer with a half arsed clean of the kitchen done. He hadn't looked at the toilet and when I went out to take one of the dogs for a walk, I noticed that the outside light wasn't working. He knew about it but had done nothing. It transpires that he spent at least 7 hours today sitting on his backside on his laptop on Utube and the like.
I ended up shouting at him and he clears off upstairs, won't accept responsibility. His response today was that he was minding the dogs even though he had told me that one was outside lying in the sunshine and the other was in the hall sunning himself in a shaft of light so no real minding to do there.
I really don't want to spent whatever time I have left, pushing, cajoling and hounding a grown man to get up off his backside and do jobs in the house that need to be done.
We can't afford to have all the jobs done by the trades and even if we could it would be a free pass for him to do sweet FA.
He knows what to do and is capable of doing it but just doesn't do it!

AIBU to have had it with him?

To me he sounds like a sufferer of ADHD in adults. Forgetting to pay bills etc, badly organised, "I don't know", it's not just laziness in my opinion but I may be wrong. Ps: I've read a lot about ADHD and I've been diagnosed recently. I don't mean to sound to use ADHD for his lack of productivity but it could be that.

I think the real problem is that your not seeing any compensatory features in your DH .
You'd get round this problem together if there was affection between you.

I think your DH has a mental health condition. I'm not qualified, so I'm not going to venture an opinion on what it is.
Definitely not ADHD, though.

It's quite simple really. He's a manchild.

Haven't read the whole thread and no advice, just empathy. He sounds a bit like my husband who I suspect has inattentive ADHD. Procrastination is one of the issues. He might have all the time in the world to do stuff but never gets round to doing anything. Time blind as well. He also can't make decisions so I end up planning and deciding everything. It's exhausting tbh.

Sounds like ADHD to me. My DS is the same. I think at this stage you need to accept that unless you manage and organise everything yourself, it's not going to get done. Sadly.

Firstly, I did not and never have opened his post. The solicitors letter was left lying on the kitchen table.
Bills can't be left unpaid. He would have ended up with a county court judgement against him if I hadn't intervened.
As for the DIY, it should be a joint effort.
I thought it was clear from my post that the last thing I want to do is control him.
I want him to control himself, to be proactive, to fix things that are broken if he is capable of doing so. The last thing I want to do is hound him to do his fair share of the maintenance and upkeep of the house.

I have considered this in the past and even asked him about it. When we've had to pay a big bill, to say a tradesperson, I'd ask him to sit beside me and watch what I was doing on the laptop to ensure that the money was going into the right account and that I wasn't making a mistake. Often, when I would look at him, he'd be sitting there yawning! On other occasions, when I talk to him about important issues, his eyes glaze over or his attention will move to the cat or something other than what I am saying!! It's like he's totally disinterested and just wants me to deal with the issue and not bother him with it.

I would be tempted to change the internet password or take the modem out with me to work.

I think you have hit the nail on the head there. I had this, and then an adult ADHD diagnosis.

What is the test for this like?

I had the same problem.Hard to understand why he wouldn't be motivated to improve or fix his own living standard. And yes I did all the admin, organising, parenting for years but that was a fair trade as he worked long hours. Nice to be retired and you wouldn't mind if he had meaningful hobbies like fishing or walking but sitting on his arse on YouTube ?! Fuck that. However at this stage he really is not going to change . Too choices either Accept it and just do whatever you want or Get Rid . I chose to ignore and spent his money on handymen as and when and did the rest myself . It did shame him into doing a bit more. Good luck.

Perfectly put. I'd have left him long ago. I advise the OP to do that ASAP and prioritise a peaceful retirement looking after herself rather than spending it with a petulant, lazy manchild who's happy to sit and watch her do all the work. He doesn't love you, OP, so don't prioritise him at your own expense. You'll regret it when you're too old to leave and have missed out on a fun, active retirement spent with fun, positive people.

EDITED to add that I have ADHD and it doesn't make you incapable of considering the well-being of the people you love. I may be less organised and more forgetful than I'd like, but my husband sees me making an effort every day to be a part of the team, and he's happy to pick up the parts of life that genuinely defeat me.

He doesn't seem to be shamed into doing it. At the weekend, he had done some DIY prep during the afternoon. I was on a stairwell scaffold painting a high ceiling. He knocked off and went to watch the Grand Prix leaving me to carry on painting for the next several hours. If I had fallen off the scaffolding, he would never have heard me. He did come out later in the evening to say how nice it all looked!

What you're describing is weird. I'm sympathetic to you both - I'm a procrastinator, have always done acres of groundwork for any project but actually put the project together in an 18-hour frenzy starting the day before deadline. I am almost completely time blind. I definitely have some kind of ND, but there's no point chasing it up at my age and I managed a great career, social life, etc while younger. Had to get jobs where punctuality didn't matter, though, and have missed almost as many flights as I've caught. Plus exams, surgeries, and all those things time fiends say "I bet you wouldn't miss ..." as if it were some kind of triumphal gotcha. Yes, yes, I would and I have.

I'm also extremely sympathetic to my partners, friends and family, who've had to work around my failings with varying degrees of success and goodwill. 35 years of this must have taxed your forbearance pretty heavily!

I'm not very sympathetic to your DH's attitude. From your telling, he seems to be doing what the Army called Dumb Insolence: stubborn, passive resistance. In wartime, this was a court-martial offence. I'm not recommending the firing squad, but am baffled as to why he's not more constructive. Does he respect you - as a partner, as a person? Is he scared of you? Is he afraid of fucking up, of doing the thing imperfectly? (This is a huge mental block of mine. Childhood ishoos.)

Wrt the home improvements, the glaringly obvious solution is to follow Plan A and hire competent professionals to do what you need.

With the issue in general, I don't imagine you're too enthusiastic about living with Mr Won't full-time for a further twenty years, with old age creeping in to make things worse. I think therapy is called for: ideally for him but, if he wont go (he won't), for yourself to help create strategies that may improve your quality of life.

One last word - Do you hold to the tenet that "If you want a thing done well, you have to do it yourself"? If so, drop it now. It's a lie. Many things are just fine done badly, many others sort themselves out if you do nothing, and things can be done well by other people.

Wishing you peace

ADHD affects people differently though. You sound like you have a mild case or else struggle with other symptoms. The effort it would take me to do some of the things the OP is talking about and other daily living tasks that are easy to others, sometimes even others with ADHD is immense and not possible for me on any sort of regular basis. It was briefly possible when I trialled ADHD meds - I still wasn't normal but it was insane the difference in the effort levels required for me. But I had to stop them due to palpitations.

He sounds very annoying to live with, why should you have to do everything especially when you're the one still working!

I have quite severe ADHD and have recently received an ASD diagnosis too. I know perfectly well what the struggles of neurodiversity are. It's almost broken me at times. But even before my diagnosis and medication, I did my best to show my husband I loved him and made every effort to be the most equal partner I could. This man just can't be arsed because he loves himself more than his partner.

Your symptoms on this aren't that severe though if you're able to do this kind of thing on a regular basis. Some of us can't do these things on any sort of regular basis at all and it has nothing to do with how much we love our partners. No amount of effort is enough to overcome the executive function defects for some people. Hence some people are far higher functioning than others. Which isn't to say that maybe your symptoms aren't more severe in other areas but it's unfair to say that it's a lack of effort. We fight this stigma enough from those who don't have ADHD, it just makes it worse when we have to explain this to people who have it but don't struggle with some things to the same extent.

Why buy a house that needed work doing ..that doesn't make any sense at all

Dude.... The man is a senior. You've lived his entire life with him and now you're complaining about being fed up? If this was such an issue, you shouldn't have put up with it for 34 YEARS!

Old dogs don't learn new tricks. Leave him alone.

DIY is not something everyone wants to do. Getting a house with less potential upside but better suited to a couple of people who either can’t or don’t want to do electrics and plumbing would have been a more sensible choice in your situation.

However, he does sound lazy in a way that I think is reasonable to be frustrated with and would have me wondering about the relationship. Ignoring the broken toilet and the blown lightbulb and letting you do a full day’s work and then the grocery shopping while he’s sat at home on his arse - those things would make me want to leave unless he pulled his weight in other ways. I don’t think I’d change my mind if he had an ADHD diagnosis (or any other) if he hadn’t shown any concern about the inability to get things done or the impact on me. It would feel like there was no love there.

Weaponized incompetence. He knows if he doesn’t do it, you’ll do it. :(
I wouldn’t be able to stay, I’m afraid. You’re working so hard. :(

of course it’s annoying but presumably he’s always been like this so why do you think it will change? His brain just works that way and he waits for you to harangue him before doing stuff. I do sympathise but i also suspect it’s not something that’s possible to change!

Youv e been together a long time ,he's not going to change now
The time to whip him in to shape or leave ,was in the early days .
Obviously you can leave if you want to ,but having put up with him for so many years ,it will be a huge disruption for you op ,to end things now .
Knowing what he is like ,it would of made more sense to buy a house that needed less doing to it .
Your retirement will be miserable if your constantly on his back about things .