Am I too picky?

[PeriMumEndofHerTether]

No contact for this one.

I'm sat in my car after having a blood test. I just don't want to go home. I figure I can do some food shopping to justify my absence. Got a DD at home and DH who is self employed and works from home.

Met him 11 years ago and he lived with his mum having never lived alone except for uni shared house. He told me he did 50/50 housework with his mum at the start, but there were some signs early on that this was bs as he used to come stay at mine and not lift a finger until I asked him to wash up seeing as I cooked 100%.

Fast forward to us having a baby and him promising he would step up. But really, I've been kidding myself because he just does not see dirt, crumbs, splashes, mess. He takes 3 x as long to do the same task as it takes me. (I've timed him). He is undiagnosed dyspraxic and he blames this. His mum is the same, very slow doing chores. (But she is house proud).

The housework has been the number 1 reason for our arguments of late and it is me starting them. Poo stains in the toilet that he doesn't clean, limescale round the sinks and bath because he doesn't wipe up. Kitchen counters left with old food. Carpets don't get hoovered, bedding doesn't get changed. You get the picture. If I don't do these things, they don't get done unless I ask him to do it.

On top of that, I do all the DIY, gardening and car cleaning. He doesn't drive though is taking lessons. (I had to book them.) I even have to book his hair appointments and style his hair for him as his hair is so thick and plentiful, he looks like Worzel Gummidge without products in.

I also research everything for DD.

In his defence, he puts DD to bed every night, but he is inconsistent with routine and timings.

I brought up the 50/50 thing he told me at the start of our relationship and he said he didn't lie, he was deluded and didn't understand what mental load was. He thought doing what he was asked, was enough. The only job he has 100% responsibility for is bins. I have started doing bedtime for DD because he isn't consistent. He does also cook but trashes the kitchen.

If im ill he looks after me but i have double the work to do when I'm well as he prioritieses me and nothing else.

I'm peri and I lost both my parents this year. I also found out I am AuDHD and the process around getting a diagnosis was gruelling and caused me a lot of grieving as life has been very difficult. (Now I know why).

I desperately need routine and peace in my home at this point in my life. I see the mess around me and I get a twitch in my eye.

DH went to stay at his mums cat sitting for a week recently and my house was clean, tidy, I was going to bed early and my eye stopped twitching. Within 24 hours of him being back - back to chaos and mess. I just can't keep on top of it all and the mental load is killing me.

Am I being unreasonable with my house standards, with him being dyspraxic?

Am I not unreasonable in my requests?

ND aside, what does he actually add to your life? Does he have any redeeming qualities? Sounds like your life would be easier without him TBF.

I wrote a list of things thatI I know he is aware of and I've seen him do. Then I made a list of all the invisible jobs - jobs I've never observed him doing or mentioning.

The former was half an A4 page and the latter was 2 and a half pages.

Last night he looked at the lists and said he has never ever noticed any plants at all. We have 8 house plants. He didn't have anything else to say about the invisible list. I think he was a bit stunned.

At the moment he is reading to DD and before that, he was playing with her. He never needs reminders or encouragement to do that.

He isn't a bad person. He said he had never heard of invisible/mental load till I mentioned it.

Today I want to go through the list with him and we shall assign ticks to the ones I do vs he does and see on paper where the problems are. I suspect I'm going to find out that it never occurred to him that fridges and ovens aren't self cleaning. He has never cleaned the oven and yet it looks spotless. (I despise oven cleaning!)

I would love to spend more time playing with DD.

Not the point of the thread but how often are you cleaning ovens and fridges?! We don't do it very often so I wouldn't think to add that to a job list. I do know what you mean about him being oblivious and that being stressful though. Do you love him still? Does he add to your life in other ways?

I'm sure there are Mumsnetters who have husbands who genuinely do 50% of the housework- but I strongly doubt it is a high proportion. I am older (63) but I have genuinely never seen a friend or family member whose husband does 50% of the housework (to the same standard as the wife). Men, in my experience, tend not to see dirt and chaos as a problem- and wonder what on earth you are complaining about. Find chores he is good at, don't necessarily split tasks 50/50. also you can't expect to react well if you come along with your metaphorical white cotton gloves and check for dust-he's not in the army.

He’s ND too, both being nervous of strangers in the house isn’t really normal for adult males unless there is trauma or something ND.
My ADHD DH is similar in terms of housework, he does all the DIY and gardening but most of the housework is completely invisible. He doesn’t see the mess he makes, walks over things dropped on the floor, he’d never think to do washing only his own when the massive pile topples over. He has to prompted constantly about dates, appointments, birthdays. They live in their own world most of the time

Bollocks to all of this. Does he work?

If he is ND he might well find a lot o fthis stuff difficult. I get that. But <sad eyes> and "but I don't know how" is a child's response, not a grown adult man.

The reality is that nothing will change because much as he claims to care, he ovviously doesn't as otherwise he'd be trying harder to fix it. My ND Dh and DS absolutely have the skills to work on solutions to things that they find hard and that they care about.

One thing that I have learnt to let go of is this idea that if he's doing it slowly, that's my problem. So most of the time, I clean the kitchen after dinner. I can do it in about 20 minutes and the kitchen is spotless. DH takes an hour to do it and the kitchen is only sometimes spotless. I no longer take that on as my problem. If I am watching TV and he is slaving away, that's because he takes so long, not because I need to be helping him. Ditto laundry. I can do a load of washing and find a good moment to hang it up between things. He doesn't. So when he does laundry he's hanging it up at 10pm. Again, not my problem. And if he is resentful that he's doing chores late at night.... well, that's on him.

Interestingly, DH now has to get up before me a few times a week. We sort of have an unwritten rule that the person whogets up first has to unload the dishwsher. I have noticed he has mastered the art of unloading the dishwasher very quickly when before it took him ages. He has been incentivised to get it done, and so he does.

Oh, and if thi sis the main issue in your rleationship, you both have to get over the issue with gettinga cleaner. It might well be that that is what saves you both.

I'm dyspraxic.

It's really not an excuse not to pull his weight in the house. It just isn't.

I can't drive and I'll almost certainly never be able to, but being dyspraxic doesn't mean you're incapable of seeing mess or wiping a worktop or realising when dishes need washing. It might mean someone is disorganised in the way they approach these things - I certainly am - but it doesn't mean they don't realise these things need doing.

I don't fail to see shit stains in a toilet because I'm dyspraxic, not fucking blind.

Honestly, this isn't really about his dyspraxia. It's about him not caring about this stuff and thus ignoring it.

I would actually say that while a lot of dyspraxic people struggle with organisation, life is much, much easier for us when things have a place and we know where to find them and our environments are well-organised, so it's actually quite common for dyspraxic people to have extremely rigorous processes in place to handle this.

The only thing I would say is that you need to lighten up a bit on the fact that he does things slowly, or doesn't do them they way you'd do them. Provided he does them, don't sweat about the way/speed with which he does them. I cook dinner every night for my partner and me, and the kitchen looks like it's been hit by a bomb every time, but I clean it up afterwards. Someone looking over my shoulder getting stressed because I don't clean as I go, or don't do things in the order they would, is incredibly annoying and would put me off doing things at all.

Both of you will have to come to terms with this, especially if he isn't going to improve on his cleaning.

"Lighten up"? I'm autistic and ADHD. I have MASSIVE struggles with the desperate need for routine and the contradiction of wanting diversity and spontaneity in my life. It has caused anxiety and depression in my life and now there is peri thrown in which is like puberty but much worse!

Telling me to lighten up is unhelpful and ablist. I've spent my life struggling because I was undiagnosed till just last year. Having a clean and tidy home is number one and central to my life. It causes overwhelm and meltdowns if things are messed up. I can tidy as I go, so it isn't much to expect the same from other adults in the house.

I think your expectations of HIM may be unreasonable, but your yearning for a clean and organised house is not unreasonable. You will never have that while living with him though. I have adhd and autism and know your pain of needing order and control but also spontaneity and change - it’s hell - and menopause was the final straw and I left my DH then.

so you need together to find strategies that minimise things: can he work outside the home to at least minimise his impact in the house? Can you DD do more? Can you agree to 2 “safe spaces” maybe loo, kitchen surfaces, which.have to be clean? Make a game of it? Use the pomadore technique? It’s a nightmare living with other people even when you love them.

Dyspraxia is part of the aND umbrella.

Sounds like you both have ADHD

Yes I agree. He is perfect in every other way, just this issue of tidiness and being organised. We have a spare bedroom and it has taken about 6 months of clearing and sorting, but it is finally a work room for him and he just had his first work day in there. Before this he was in the living room.

Thanks for your kind post.