Sick of fun DH

[StressedNeedCoffee66]

I'm at breaking point and need some advice on some coping skills.

We have an 18 month old DS. DH is great with him. He loves playing with him, he's super patient and fun and caring. Except....that's all he does. Pretty easy to be fun when you have NO other responsibilities. I do and think of everything else.

DH works in a very easy low paying job that is also his passion; he really does not want the stress of anything better paid or a promotion (although he is highly educated and has potential).

So I am the breadwinner, by far. I work in a very stressful job and long hours and I will never be able to take a step back. I handle everything - bills, DYI, house stuff, DS' clothes, shoes, nursery stuff. Just everything. Even organizing a cleaner is my responsibility.

I tried delegating things, for example:

• cooking, he says he loves cooking. But he cooks the same 3 meals on repeat (heavy on meat and carbs). DS went for weeks without seeing a vegetable and got quite constipated. The kitchen was a bombsite.
• car stuff. Car ended up undriveable and I had to arrange service and MOT as he just "forgot" to do it in time.

There's more examples but you get the idea.

I don't want to break up, not yet anyway. I don't want to see DS less. But I'm so tired and stressed and just not "fun". I don't know what to do. I am trying to see the positives but at the moment he gets all the upside and I get all the downsides.

The only way I found to make it work is set jobs each.
so I do-
50% cooking
laundry
pots
dusting/cleaning
bathrooms
sweeping

dh does-
bins
50% cooking
hoovering
garden
walks dog

but I don’t nag him or expect him to do the jobs on my terms nor do I do them for him. Cars we sort our own. Bills are direct debit. Shopping is delivered. I generally deal with DD’s appointments/clubs. Dh does vets .

@EnjoythemoneyJane I love our minds went to exactly the same place. I commented about this film earlier in the thread. Agree with all you’ve said!

This . Has he morphed into a different person .

👏👏👏 @Letterfrack

OP I don’t see him as just a bit lazy. He’s a lot lazy, not in the least engaged.
I’m not surprised you feel extremely exhausted, low, vulnerable and unloved right now.
None of this is your fault so why should you give it a better go? Stop being so responsible; no wonder he’s exploiting you. What better go is he giving? Here’s the answer: FA.
Noticeably this is bothering you at 2.32am. How many more nights sleep are you prepared to lose because of him?
This isn’t just a situation which occurs in the home. He’s apathetic and coasting at work too. This is who he is.
You’ve appealed on here for advice. Take it from those who have been where you are. They’re trying to limit your future heartbreak.

Sorry, missed your comment - would have tagged you! Great minds and all that …

My guess is that all fun DH will take from Mrs doubtfire is that the bit when he has to put the fake boobs out with the saucepan lids is amusing.

What makes you think he doesn’t have ADHD? I am in a quite a few “partners of people with ADHD” support groups and your husband is currently ticking lots of boxes, except the ones for short term thinking and no ability to see long or mid-term impact and the more Narcissistic traits such as perceiving things as criticism in order to make himself the victim.
but your posts do read like a lot of posts in the support groups. I am not arm chair diagnosing. I’m asking why you say he definitely isn’t nuerodiverse.

My husband actually does have AuDHD more than likely (our daughter is diagnosed) but he's not an arse about it. He does household stuff because he knows he should and he's always made a fair contribution to the finances.

It's not a great idea to give a lazy sexist person additional excuses.

A fair division of labour, but if your H just didn't do his jobs, what would you actually do? If he sat there, refused to help?

That is where OP is now, she has tried - he JUST WON'T DO IT

‘I need to give it a better go and I don’t know how.’

the ‘i’s there should be ‘he’s.

im afraid there’s nothing you can do op.

you already do everything.

your ‘family’ (it’s already broken by the way as one of the parents doesn’t function as a parent) has only one chance of being fixed. If he does better.

since he’s not going to do that ever, your decision is whether you leave now or wait till you’re completely broken.

the option of a happy family of 3 isn’t one that’s available to you.

that’s the harsh reality, but you’d be best of realising that, then working out the best route from there.

There are times when I think the floor needs hoovering but I just accept it and wait for him to decide it needs doing.
I get what you mean though dh would never not walk the dog or not cook but the other stuff he does when he wants which may not be when I want. He may have initially left it to see if I would jump in but I don’t. So it ends up a harder job for him if he leaves it

So why not sit your DH/DP down, show them the evidence of how much you do against what they do & discuss. This is what I did &, having been presented with the evidence, DH changed his ways.

I dislike these kinds of replies because it blames women for not having the foresight over something it’s impossible to understand pre-kids.

I had been with my DH a decade and lived together for 5 year before we had kids. And we weren’t that young when we met either. I thought I had considered very carefully our dynamic and how it could and would work.

In reality: the stuff I found attractive about DH has proved a huge problem with the added workload of family, having kids has exposed emotional damage from his poor parenting I hadn’t seen before, he is ND and that didn’t affect our partnership before kids but with the extra responsibility it’s a nightmare. And that’s really only the start of it.

Some couples work brilliantly as couples but are not good co-parents and until you’re actually a parent it’s sometimes impossible to know this.

Of course one option is to separate - but that’s not the only solution. And this OP needs support and ideas, not to just be told she fucked up by not having been in possession of a crystal ball.

It sort of doesn’t matter if he does or doesn’t though, does it?

My DH has ASD and of course I tick all these boxes too. But just like OP’s partner he isn’t going to change and the impact on me isn’t going to change. The same workarounds that save (or not) our relationships may be helpful for her. Even if with a diagnosis she’d be more understanding of his challenges, she’d still be doing all the damn work and heading towards burnout.

The best thing that ever happened for my marriage was a hospital stay for me. My DH had always been hands on with the DC and housework to an extent.
I was in hospital for a week, he came to visit one afternoon and he looked like crap. He apologised and said he didn't know how I managed.
He is still not perfect, I still deal with 99% of the mental load but he tries. He also took on more jobs.
Maybe book yourself a few days away to de-stress and give him a chance to experience parenthood without you holding his hand.

In my experience, having been married for nearly 45 years, marriage is about talking through any problems & keeping the lines of discussion open, even if it means a difficult conversation, being honest when feeling neglected or taken for granted. If you feel that, you need to say so & evidence the problem.

A long-term marriage depends on talking to each other honestly & openly.

I was tempted to have an affair when things got difficult. I didn't. I talked to my DH about how I felt taken for granted. I confessed that a friend had been giving me compliments & I was flattered & tempted to have an affair. DH took this on board, we discussed our problems. I've said, he started to help out more in the house, the DCs etc-helping to get DCs ready for school/nursery, making lunch boxes, collecting them from school/nursery, ironing etc..

We didn't look back.

We're about to celebrate 46 years of marriage. I love the very bones of him but doubt if we'd still be married if I hadn't been so honest with him & addressed our issues when we had young DCs & when we were in the early days of our marriage. .

Edited for spelling.

Thank you for your patronisation. My point was to suggest a way that the husband here could improve their cookery outlook with a bit of planning and take that responsibility on properly. It was not to be attacked by you.

This is such an odd response. If you know how someone’s brain is wired, and more importantly they understand how their brain works, there can be massive improvements.
at the moment he is being labelled lazy. Maybe he is. But the approach for somebody who is just lazy and entitled is completely different to the approach needed for possible ADHD.

@WhatNextImScaredfantastic post - thank you. Much of this resonates with me.

Well said !

It’s also true that many men change once they know their partner is committed to them and even more so when they know she is trapped and would find it hard or even impossible to leave .

Eg pregnant, has small children, on maternity leave, SAHM , working PT , living in his house and unmarried, moved overseas for his job where she can’t work or leave with the children.

So many men seem to feel that being a functioning adult is the entrance fee to a committed relationship with a woman . A role or performance that they do for a short while until they have trapped and domesticated their own house slave. A bit like an extended job interview or a probation period at work.

Then they can drop the mask and revert to who they really are.

It’s really not a woman’s fault that they didn’t know he was going to do this. No doubt she thought he was one of the good ones 🙁

This is exactly right, OP. What more can you do? Time to start making a proper plan now.

My husband is a bit like yours, lazy and doesn’t “see” tasks. He’s also not ND - I can say that confidently as I have ADHD! It’s incredibly frustrating.

Have you tried the fair play cards and book? They’re great for starting a discussion about the division of household labour and the mental labour that comes with those tasks. The book helped my DH understand then we used a free digital version of the cards to establish who’s responsible for each area and what’s in scope for them.

Its not a magic fix all but it’s massively helped us and made me feel like my labour is better seen/appreciated.

I had similar issues - because DH worked abroad in the week and then did what he thought was a fair share at the weekend but it really wasn't. I ended up in hospital too and it was a massive shock to him to have to do everything.....

I second the advice to go away for a week and leave him to it.