If you ask your DH/DP to stop doing something, do they?

[IHate]

Not the big stuff, just the everyday “please don’t do X, it’s annoying” category of domestic crimes.

A friend was recently ranting about her husband using her very expensive face cream. Abandoning his usual pleasant and reasonable persona, he apparently goes in like a man digging trenches, scoops out half the pot, and leaves the lid off so it congeals into some sort of luxury spackle. I said, “Have you asked him to stop?” and she looked at me as though I’d proposed witchcraft. Then she said, quite seriously, “That wouldn’t work.”

In our house, if one of us does something the other dislikes, we say so, the offender stops, and life goes on. But it seems this is not how all relationships operate.

So:

YABU: I wouldn’t ask and/or they wouldn’t stop if I did

YANBU: It really isn’t that complicated

My OH would stop if I asked him. Couldn’t live with someone who didn’t care that they were upsetting me.
My father was a selfish twat who deliberately upset my mother.

Of course he would. And so would I.
He would never use my stuff without asking.

My husbands an arsehole and barely ever stops anything I ask unless there’s a reason for him (eg stop dripping water down the back of the sink it’s making the wortop mouldy, he would stop because he doesn’t want the cost of a new worktop)
But if I ask him to stop leaving shoes by the front door because I can’t get the pram out the door with them all in the way. Nothing happens.
I spend my life putting his shoes away.

also he’s an arsehole and when he’s feeling particularly mean he will do all the things I’ve said not to do on purpose to annoy me/ hurt me/ punish me. So telling him stuff to stop often becomes ammunition.

He wouldn't start in the first place

Maybe she’s seen this and doesn’t want to face the truth?

That’s abusive. LTB

That sounds really hard. I’m sorry.

Yes, unless it's putting the sharp knives sharp blade side up on the draining board. That for some reason he simply will not stop doing.

Yes he would stop. I have asked him to stop doing things and he has. He also apologised if he forgot. He would leave his folded damp towel on the bed, he now puts it on the heated towel rail and has done for the past 28 years.

Or he finds a solution, he squeezes the toothpaste from the middle so now we have one each, he can squeeze his from the middle and I have my separate tube as it costs nothing extra.

Using your expensive face cream, he can buy you new ones when they run out. Ds1 didn't realise how expensive my moisturiser was because he had never bought it (teenager) but when he realised he asked if there was a cheaper one he could use but I said I was happy to keep paying for it. It is £30 a pot, he started to use less and realised he could use less.

He's abusing you.

I'd put his shoes away permanently - in the bin. I'd bin him off too. Asshole.

Yes, he’s extremely well trained

Yes because he's not 5

Well I don't have a partner but the ones I had (not at the same time!) would have stopped without a problem. They're grown ups, not toddlers or puppies.

And likewise, there were some stuff I did they didn't like, they told me and I stopped, et voilà, another case solved by communication.

Unless its abuse like a PP, in which case we need to call the LTB intervention squad.

My ex wouldn't do anything I'd request him to - which usually related to things that were basic consideration and should have been second nature (think - please don't leave puddles on the bathroom floor after you have a shower, or please can you use a toilet brush after you use the toilet etc). He refused to do anything that would mean he'd be changing his habits, and it would be a concession. He'd just say - why don't you use the other bathroom or lets have separate bathrooms. It was hugely passive aggressive. One of the many many reasons he's an ex.

My current DP is a sweetheart and a good sport - most of these things he does without my even asking him, and when I do ask him to do something, he will laugh and do it. It is just basic consideration when you share space with someone you love, no?

I think it depends what it is - not using someone else's stuff seems easy to achieve. The myriad of specific ways that my DP likes things to be done I try my best but sometimes I don't have the time or I forget because I have a different way of doing things/don't particularly care because somehow despite my 'terrible' way of loading the dishwasher it still manages to clean stuff

No and I am single now. My ex would not tidy up after himself and it was literally sole destroying to pick up dirty clothes off the floor everyday, to have to ask him to put away his clean clothes, not leave shoes on the floor or wrappers / duty cups or anything else he couldn’t be bothered to put in the bin! Similarly we had lots of conversations about what tidying up after dinner looked like (not leaving dirty dishes, condiments on the table, the pans to ‘soak’ or dirty stagnant water in the sink)

I feel your pain @Nonameagain31! I had a similar ex. I vowed after we separated that I would never pick up another man's socks off the floor ever again 😂. It is just ridiculous that grown men behave like this in shared spaces.

With my ex-husband it was more a case of asking him to START doing things, like cleaning out HIS fish tank, running the hoover around the house, cleaning… well anything actually. The two times I asked him to stop doing something - well I told him NOT to put a tow hitch on my car because he wanted to tow his jet ski. I went away with work and when I came back he’d cut into the body-coloured bumper and got a parking ticket to boot. Oh and he deleted files off my computer because there wasn’t enough memory for him to play Medal of Honour. Oh that’s fine darling, you only deleted the novel I was working on… as I say, ex-husband. My last boyfriend however was a total lamb…

Is ex husband now residing under a patio somewhere for deleting your novel? You're a bloody saint if you didn't kill him😂

Aw that’s a real shame. Are you planning on leaving him? Life’s too short for that pettiness and disrespect. What a pr*ck

That example you gave really shocked me. What a nasty spiteful thing to do.

Mine still doesn’t put the toilet seat down despite me asking him repeatedly for years. He claims he forgets but I think he’s just being an arse.

Kind of depends on the 'thing'.

There are some things we do different ways and I find it annoying when he does something one way but he finds it annoying that I do it my way. In those circumstances, no he wouldn't and neither would I, because we both think our way is best. Just because his way annoys me, doesn't mean I'm right anymore than me doing something that annoys him doesn't make him right.

In your example about the face cream, that wouldn't happen because we respect each other's things and wouldn't use something that wasn't ours in the first place. I'm talking more about things like dish washer loading or pegging clothes out on the line or not putting fresh water in the kettle when you've emptied it, or not switching things off in the car before leaving it, type things where we just do things differently.

No

No, my ex wouldn't ever stop anything I asked him to stop: randomly using my toothbrush instead of his, even after I labelled it, for example, and plenty of other much more serious things that tanked our relationship. One of the main reasons he is an ex, and he was warned many times. If he was doing something I could see was about to cause an imminent/urgent problem - about to cut through a wire or dislodge crockery etc - he would still not stop, even if begged, until he saw the problem himself. He would also be angry with me for asking him to stop.