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?

I have a family member diagnosed with ADHD and you're description of him made me think the same OP. But in a way, you've also enabled the behaviour by taking over?

34 years of learned helplessness.
I am sure you have had enough.
In your place I would pack a bag, disappear to a hotel without a word to him. A short sharp shock. He either steps up and does the work or you aren’t coming back.

Lazy is what he is.

If it is ADHD what does this mean in terms of him getting the jobs done that need to or does OP just accept he 'can't' now due to this?

It’s ridiculous I agree. What a stretch this really is. Being ADHD - IF he is and he probably isn’t would not make him sit surfing the internet for 7 hours incapacitated!

That's pretty much exactly what ADHD does to you! These are pretty classical ADHD paralysis and PDA behaviours. I realise it's incredibly frustrating for everyone else but meds might be miraculous. Many people find their ability to function vastly improved.

There you go then. He doesn’t need to do things because you’ll do them. The trade off for the ‘nagging’ he receives from you is that he still gets to enjoy sitting on his arse doing sweet FA because you will sort out all the stuff he finds tedious and beneath him.

He’ll never change. Why do you stay with him?

For goodness sake some people are just lazy. You might have good reason to struggle with your life, but you can’t confuse pure laziness with ND. There is absolutely no indication that he is ND, just that he can’t be bloody bothered, and he has an active can do wife that he relies on to do nothing!

OP, everyone is telling you to do it yourself and when you give them a list of things you’ve already done, they’ll tell you to stopping playing a martyr 😐

I don't know why you expected anything different from him when he's been like this for 34 years, so yabu for thinking he's going to suddenly become Mr DIY just because you've moved house

Leave a list, hide the router, do the list get the router back. Do you have a landline? I'd hide his phone too.
Seriously though you should not have to. Ask him why he wouldn't pull his weight. Tell him he needs to sort himself out or leave.

I went YABU because you know exactly what he’s like, so I’m not sure why you expected a different outcome in this house to the last.

But the general helpless attitude would massively put me off him!

I can hardly believe all these responses telling OP (basically) she just has to work harder! Tough luck, OP, you’re a woman, don’t you know you live to serve?

It's time you realized you're flat mates and not partners in anything. As others have mentioned, do the basics to get both ready for sale, see a solicitor with your divorce application started and papers together before you tell him what's happening. He's going to wait for you to do everything on what is going to happen and in all of these years you've become a mum, not a wife. Live what bit of life you have left and the sooner you end the relationship and begin making yourself happy, you will feel so much better for it. You cannot keep spending so much time worrying about him doing what he should be doing.

Where does it say she's controlling and emasculating him by opening his post etc.. She has to do that because the useless twat is sat on Youtube all day and does fuck all round the house.
If he doesn't want her to have to do everything he could, you know, step up?

It's always a woman's fault if a man is useless.

And the men are always 'depressed'. 🙄

Not sure why you seem to be getting such a hard time OP. Granted I'm not sure why you bought a doer upper with someone who doesn't take part in your marriage or the daily grind but he's letting you do everything and posters call you controlling and emasculating for it.
As ever you can't win!

I'm guessing it's the usual band of men on here sat waiting to stick the boot in to the women-folk.
At least I hope that's the case otherwise the bar for women has been set pitifully low yet again.

You need to divorce him op, or accept him for what he is, he isn’t going to change you will exhaust yourself trying and end up hating his guts.

Yes, I got the sense from your original post that he is generally lazy, it’s not just DIY. I guess this recent move is the straw that broke the camel’s back but if he is depressed it will rely on him doing something about it, which seems unlikely. It seems a shame to spend the rest of your life feeling resentment towards him: have you thought about the practicalities of going your separate ways?

Presumably he was aware that this new house would need fixing?
Did he say he would help?
For me the issue here is that he is taking no responsibility at all for a building that he lives in.

It doesn’t matter whether he doesn’t like DIY , the issue is that he notices things need doing but is not taking responsibility for getting them fixed in any way , shape or form, even if it is mentioning that to you.

He not being a partner to you.
Yes, newer builds are less likely to need work, but house always need work or some sort because things break.
Men like him are a serious drain.

I'm 68 and won't do DIY. I'm retired, time is precious and fixing the toilet isn't how I spend my time. We've just moved into a bungalow that needs nothing doing. The bit that does need doing is shared. Otherwise we are out walking the dogs in the forest or on the beach as or drinking coffee at a favourite cafe. Why on earth have you chosen a situation in which you are destined to make each other miserable?

I can't really understand why you bought the house in the first place when for over 3 decades your husband has shown no inclination for DIY or anything else. It sounds like you have a parent/child relationship, with you being the mummy. Give him a list when you're at work, disable the internet. He'll never be able to work out how to reset the password. That or leave him be.

I had one of these - had being the operative word. After banging my head many times I realised that trying to engage him and share the load was like asking a deaf person to hear or a blind person to see. We are divorced. Interestingly he has not starved to death and now manages to adult himself so really he was capable of doing those things all the time he just couldn't be arsed. Free yourself from any more resentment and leave! It's liberating.

I have a friend who has been married for almost 50 years to a man she never stops complaining about. I can't listen to it any more because she has had the option to leave him for decades since the children left home but she'd prefer to stay with him than lose half her assets. I have told her she has a clear choice of living happily on her own in a smaller house with a smaller income or choosing to be better off financially but miserable with her husband. She always says she has no choice but it's just not true. The topic of her husband is banned when we meet up now because it drives me crackers that she'd rather be a moaning martyr than actually change things for the better.

You know exactly what your DH is like and you bought a 1950s house that needs DIY so what's your issue? He's not going to change after 34 years and you already knew that. You either get on with it yourself without whining or leave him.