To think I maybe just have to lower my expectations and realise that DH will never change?

[confusedlots]

Numerous conversations about similar issues have been had over the past few years, but it’s clear DH never thinks he’s done anything wrong, and usually turns the conversation around to being about me nagging him, and we never get anywhere.

Dirty plates left on the worktop right on top of the dishwasher (why not just put them in the dishwasher?). On the odd occasion he might empty the dishwasher he leaves half of the clean plates on the worktop instead of putting them away in the cupboards which are right beside him.

Empty milk cartons left on the worktop instead of being rinsed out and put in the recycling bin.

He took DS out recently and they ended up getting soaked heading back to the car. They came home, DH got dried and changed and made himself a cup of tea and sat down. I was sorting laundry and just asked where DS was and he had left him in dripping wet clothes to play in his room and hadn’t thought that he should maybe make sure he got changed into something dry. DS is 7.

DH takes the kids to breakfast club 1 day a week (after I insisted on this) but this still involved me sorting out the uniforms, lunches, getting kids and myself ready etc. DH just got up and showered, had his breakfast and dropped the kids on his way to work. So I asked that on his one day, he sorted everything out for the kids too, like I do every other day. It was a disaster and the mornings were so stressful for everyone that I have had to intervene for everyone’s sanity.

The final straw was when I tried to calmly bring this up again recently and he actually told me that he didn’t think I did that much in the home, and I could tell that he actually really believes this. I do all the laundry (his included), the majority of the food shopping, a lot of the cooking (he does cook 2 or 3 nights a week due to our schedules to be fair to him), all the life admin, kids admin, sorting birthday parties/presents, booking clubs and lessons, etc, you know what it involves! So trying not to antagonise the situation I calmly said that if he felt I didn’t do very much around the home that he wouldn’t notice if I continued not to do it for the next month, and then he accused me of being petty and not trying to do the best for our family.

I honestly don’t know where to go from here. It’s the fact that he can’t see my point of view that upsets me the most, despite me trying to talk about things calmly and not be accusatory. He’s definitely got a degree of neurodiversity going on, although never diagnosed, so I’m sure that’s a major factor in this.

Help! I really think we should be able to make this work but I’m struggling to see how when he can’t see my point of view.

This one is a bit different from the infinite number of similar threads on here. What stands out is:

1. the lack of care for his own children
2. the relentlessness of his pushback against any idea that he may be less than perfect, or even that his wife could have an acceptable way of doing things.

Im really struck by the nastiness of what he is doing. My late Dh was not a perfect husband (God knows I was not a perfect wife). I could have posted dozens of threads and had MN advising me to LTB, because there were some really extreme moments in our marriage, and I never did LTB and I’m glad. But I knew he would do his best to care for ds, and he respected me. He would always have got ds dry, warm and fed before himself.

Of course 7 year olds can dress themselves, just like they can pack clothes and make cakes etc. Bit at that age you’re going to keep an eye, aren’t you? You’re going to make sure they’re out of those wet things because it’s easy to get distracted at that age and not think it matters until you are really cold and tired, and you’re going to hand them the oven gloves and just check they put the baking powder in etc etc. At 7 they aren’t caring for themselves in that way, or at least I hope they’re not, or they’re being neglected.

Id start pushing back yourself. Ask him, in a spirit of interested enquiry, how on earth he expected anything but chaos if he did such a shit job of the drop off? Is that how he acts at work? Never planning, never thinking ahead? Who does the planning at his job?

Know, deep in your soul, that it’s not you. Listen to what he says, for sure, in terms of his life and feelings, none of us is perfect. But don’t internalise it. He’s not even listening to you or seeing what you do, so his comments on your life are irrelevant.

I don’t have a solution, but I empathise and am sorry. I get upset when we are going away (like tomorrow) and my husband hasn’t thought of anything we need to do to prepare. If it was up to him, he’d suddenly be ready to go, without appropriate children’s clothing, birthday presents, our clothes, packing, preparing the car, even checking tyre pressure (all mainly me) etc. A short straw came this summer when we were getting ready to go. He was impatient, ready to leave.. because he’d packed his things.. and was saying ‘let’s go shall we??’ And I was like, what?! I am packing everything from our baby and you are impatient? Do you know where their dummy is? No? Well then we are not ready to go, are we.

I would show your husband the article about the dirty dishes. It did actually get through to hy husband somewhere. He bought the book. There was a little improvement. But we still have these problems. I should read the book too, perhaps it has info on how to cope! xx

So he was like this before you both had children, then after the first child then the other child/ren, so why would he change now?

We only have you side to this and he could be lazy you could have impossible standards to meet or something lin between but he must be good enough for you to have multiple children with, sometimes yes people do have this attitude of if it is not done to 'my' standards it is wrong

And yes of course people will go 'well he should do xyx' but life is not a tick box exercise of what people should do, and yes there could be come martyring going on

He may be useless but there may also be things you do wrong also no man or woman is perfect not matter how much MN carries on about poor woman and they always do everything

Apparently the happiest group of people are married men (because they don’t do anything) and the second happiest group are single women….

Never marry man expecting him to change. They rarely do.

But women have a choice they dont have to marry or stay married to what they call useless men

Men have hit the jackpot, their lazy, selfish ways have now been medicalised as having ADHD, what a great get out of doing the dishes jail free card! and so many women are falling for it, this isn’t the only thread about incompetent husbands where ADHD is mentioned within the first two responses. These men can always magically hold down “big jobs” but the poor lambs really struggle with putting plates in a dishwasher 🙄. Funny isn’t it that women with ADHD manage to not leave their child in soaking wet clothes and can rinse out milk cartons, only men appear to suffer from this form of ADHD where anything remotely domestic is beyond their capabilities, it’s a medical mystery for sure 🤔.

A bit close to the bone for you, is it?

I have absolutely no patience for this shit anymore. You’re a grown up, I don’t need to explain to you the difference between rinsing the milk carton and expecting the skivvy to do it for you. The difference between we’re both knackered, I’m leaving the plate on the counter and I deal with it unprompted in the morning, and I’ll leave it and wait for you to put it in the machine for me.
A 7 years old can change his own clothes. A 7 years old who is left to his own devices in another room whilst his clothes are still wet is being neglected. The behaviour of that 7 years old old is normal. A 30-40 years old displaying the same behaviour as a 7 years old is not normal.

He took DS out recently and they ended up getting soaked heading back to the car. They came home, DH got dried and changed and made himself a cup of tea and sat down. I was sorting laundry and just asked where DS was and he had left him in dripping wet clothes to play in his room and hadn’t thought that he should maybe make sure he got changed into something dry. DS is 7

words fail me. This is neglect.

he treats you like a skivvy @confusedlots

please don't fall into the trap of explaining his behaviour as ND. He's selfish, simple as, and you should seriously consider your future.

You can lower your expectations if you want to keep living with him - but you won't like him much at the end, let alone love him. How could anyone love a person who treats them so contemptuously and behaves so selfishly? You can put up with it while the children are small but what will you have left at the end of it?

This was me five years ago. Except he did read it and I think it opened his eyes a bit. That coupled with me being deadly serious that this wasn’t how I was living the rest of my life and that it would be less work for me if we separated. I’ve told him a few times over the years “I don’t want to live my life like this” and we have a serious conversation about what needs to change. In the beginning it was harder, so I told him to make more room on my mental plate I would opt out of things that didn’t directly impact me - his laundry, his food, remembering things for him, sex if I didn’t have the mental capacity for it after feeling stressed all week, etc. He also does have ADHD but he went on medication to combat this.

Five years on and it’s completely different. He puts in his 50% and with the children (we have 5!) he probably does more like 60/40. I’m still often the person who has to implement a homework strategy etc, but once he understands how it works he employs it completely.

I’m much happier. I haven’t had to use it with DH, but I do recommend it to couples I counsel - there’s a card “game” called Fair Play that lays out all the tasks in a marriage/household and you each see what the other does. It’s a bit more eye opening.

This is why I was a lot happier as a single parent. Ex was largely working overseas but at least I didn’t have someone to resent. The kids are grown up now, youngest in final year of A levels and ex DP does tell the kids a lot that i’ve done a lot for them and they should be grateful etc. He will also say the kids are so successful (academically) thanks to me etc, but that’s also just an easy cop out too isn’t it. He doesn’t say I buggered off overseas to work for half your childhood and your mum had to pick up the slack. But still, I guess as a woman I should be grateful he at least acknowledges I did it all (and worked) hey!

Does it matter? I’d be on a steepening slope careening towards divorce in your place so he could react however- one path leads even faster to divorce and one path earns the marriage some time. I’d tell him that too. The leaving a 7yo wet while he’s thought to dry himself is just neglect, and being so incapable with housework is a big fuck you every day to you. I can’t stay married to either.

@confusedlots there's a long running thread on being married to someone ND here, so id recommend taking a look at the posts there and how they have managed. I think it depends on whether you think he intentionally is lazy or whether you think he genuinely hasn't a clue and needs real guidance. I have no real answers but I had an ex who was ND and I could totally see that our life would have headed this way. Super smart yet his living style was in disarray, could just about look after himself, but can't imagine how it would have been with kids. I loved him dearly but whenever I read these threads, I always think that this would have been way too much for me to handle.

Hey OP, my husband was like this. I couldn't confront him either (he just avoided discussing it, and just kept saying he did his fair share when he ABSOLUTELY did not). I stopped doing anything that didn't really HAVE to be done (including but not limited to his laundry, cleaning the cars, gardening, cleaning the outside of the house, any spring cleaning, picking up anything he left lying about including socks/shoes/papers - at best I tidied them all into a pile, anything to do with his family, cooking time-consuming meals he likes, finding his keys/wallet, shopping or doing errands for him) and when he complained or noticed I very kindly with a smile said 'Oh, I'm leaving that with you' or 'Oh, I'm not doing that this time' or 'I did that last time, it's your turn' and skipped/slid away from any discussion about it. I also told the children to go to him to arrange it every time there was a birthday party invitation or non-essential activity they really wanted to do. It has been somewhat successful. YMMV. Your husband knows what he is doing. Don't let him get away with it. (edited for small typo)

Just down tools. You don’t do anything in the house anyway, remember? Nothing less sexually appealing than a man who wants you to be their mummy.

I started charging my husband. If he was going to treat me like a maid, then he could pay me like a maid (our finances are split due to separate spending habits, we have a joint account we both contribute to to cover all bills, food shopping, child expenses etc but then also retain our own spending money). He totally agreed, as he knew he was doing it but after years of having the same arguments, we always came back to “I’m sorry, I’m forgetful” or “you’re just better at remembering that stuff” (totally weaponised incompetence but he’s convinced himself now that this is the case).

He now pays me a bit of money each week and pays for all take away/ meals out/ coffees out. To be honest, the effort it was taking to try and change him was too much for me so this is quite a happy outcome. Luckily, he doesn’t take the piss and still “tries” to “help” when he “remembers”.

He's always been useless and selfish.
Leaving a child in wet clothes while he changes?
Arsehole and weaponised incompetence.

Whats your housing and financial situation?
Life can be much better without such men.

You shouldn't do a single thing for him at all.

He calls it petty?
I'd call leaving a child in wet clothes abusive neglect.

I couldn't look at such a loser.

I have a husband like this. We're midway through a divorce. Don't live together anymore. It's bliss

I have ADHD. It doesn't mean I leave my dc in wet clothes or don't put dishes away. It means on the way through doing the dishes I see a mark on a cupboard so I wash the cupboard, then all the cupboards, and while I see that I look outside and see the to grass and then mow that and during that I think of a birthday party I need to buy a present for so I order that..I go back inside and see the dishes on the side, they go back away and then I worry that we broke a plate last week and we have guests next week so we probably need a new one so I search where to buy a replacement etc etc.

He's just a dick.

People who ‘get their knickers in a twist’ about the dishwasher situation usually do so because the men involved also tend to throw their dirty clothes at the wash basket instead of putting them in it, leave rubbish right next to the bin instead of putting it in the bin and think it’s their partners’ job to clean the toilet.

He knew well to change his own clothes but couldn't be arsed to see to his own childs comfort.

He couldn't give a shit about anyone but himself.
Time to seriously rethink your life, in your own time.

This.

OP I wouldn’t say lower your expectations, more raise your bar of self respect.

I would not be with a man like this. He can’t even put his DC first FGS!
He doesn’t do his own washing?

Are you his wife or his mother?

Drop the rope.

Until he pulls his weight properly - no more clean laundry, no more cooked meals, no more tidying up. Tell his family he has taken over gifts and cards and do not buy or arrange anything else. Yours and dc things should be done. No more intimacy. Nothing at all.

Be clear this is the moment he steps up permanently or the marriage is over.

He is trying to force you into being his mother and wife, he doesn’t want to do the grunt work so he is passively resisting being a competent adult. I would not indulge this for another second.

Everything would be dumped on his side of the bed or move him into the spare room.

You have been too nice for far too long.