Anyone else’s ‘D’H pissing them off today?

[Pureshores11]

Solely a moan thread. I pull him up on everything and all the time, I don’t suffer in silence, he doesn’t get away with things. But some days I just want to scream.

DH has been nothing but an absolute pain in the arse, as he usually is on ‘event’ days (Easter, Christmas, Halloween, birthdays).

His entire ‘contribution’ to Halloween has been: inviting his friends and their DC round for a picnic tea and trick or treating, and carving the pumpkins (while I supervise chaotic toddler and older child).

Mine has been: sourcing costumes (from Vinted and in advance as I don’t want to spend £40 on costumes to be worn once by growing kids). Finding a pumpkin patch, checking the opening times, just small things like pointing out DC needed their wellies on and not trainers, all the organising and sorting. Finding old towels for the pumpkin carving, making sure we have the picnic food in. Actually cleaning the house a bit before everyone arrives. Buying tickets to a Halloween disco the kids are going to this afternoon. All the shitty grunt work.

At every turn I’ve had to remind him of the most basic things, and reminded him of starting times, and pointed out you can’t invite friends round to a house covered in crumbs, an overflowing nappy bin and kitchen floor covered in dog hair, made him get involved with cleaning up. He’s muttered under his breath and rolled his eyes and snapped at me the entire time.

The final straw has been he has ‘lost’ my Halloween costume, so now I have nothing. He’s denying losing it but I put it somewhere v specific because I KNEW this would happen, and somehow he’s managed it. After losing my costume, he moaned about me breaking into the pile of junk food he just brought back from the shop (I ate 1 Halloween themed Jaffa cake bar out of about 15 bags of crap).

Before everyone asks what he brings to the party, he religiously does the same tasks every day (walks the dog, cleans the kitchen, unstacks the dishwasher, takes the bins out, hoovers etc). He isn’t ‘lazy’ as such, it’s just like anything outside this core of repetitive tasks just doesn’t occur to him, then he flails at last minute. If it wasn’t for me all special events would be an absolute let down.

Just needed a vent. From a costume-less witch, who feels tempted to put a hex on him.

This. OP is minimising the DH actions and maximising her own.

The OP says herself this is birthdays, Xmas, Easter - all the "big days" - which sounds shit?

I think some posters are missing the gist of the thread.
The DH wants the special occasions. He is the one who invited a crowd to come over. However, he then didn’t do the work involved in hosting Halloween.
It wasn’t OP who wanted Halloween to be a big deal - it was her husband. But she gets lumbered with making it happen because he has a vision and then doesn’t follow through with the work involved.

Possibly true but it’s crap when a grown man has to be told that toddlers need wellies in a muddy area.
We actually solved this by agreeing that if they didn’t wear wellies, he would be responsible for rescuing the shoes afterwards.

But some of your list is your choice - the children dont NEED to go to a pumpkin patch or Halloween disco, youve chosen to that. Equally wearing trainers instead of wellies is fine.

Maybe fanfare wasn't the right word. Lets swap if for effort.

Mine has been: sourcing costumes (from Vinted and in advance as I don’t want to spend £40 on costumes to be worn once by growing kids). Finding a pumpkin patch, checking the opening times, just small things like pointing out DC needed their wellies on and not trainers, all the organising and sorting. Finding old towels for the pumpkin carving, making sure we have the picnic food in. Actually cleaning the house a bit before everyone arrives. Buying tickets to a Halloween disco the kids are going to this afternoon. All the shitty grunt work

None of this is needed. You could have easily cancelled the get together if you knew he wasn't going to pull his weight?

It sounds like a pattern of behaviour from him and by doing "it all" and the extras, he is never going to change his ways? He knows wifey will do all the work.

It doesn't sound like a happy or healthy relationship.

Send him out with a detailed list for everything that will be needed for a party. That will give him something helpful to do. As he has invited people he could pay for it and he might realise why only a few people actually get invitations.

I suspect he is scared of his own shadow.
Do you ever wonder what he thinks of you ?
I hope a lot of this wasn’t too serious.

@Pureshores11 YABU. If he is anything like my DH, then thanks to a SAHM who never made him lift a finger, he is oblivious to things that need doing.

You need to MAKE A LIST! The put tick boxes next to everything that needs doing, allocate an initial to each task, then cellotape a pen on string to the list so things can be ticked off! That way he knows EXACTLY what he has to do.

You are aware he invited the friends?

This is all your own doing.

He hid your costume? Where was it?

It's very odd behaviour, it reminds me of some past friends who would go out of their way to sabotage each others birthdays. No enjoyments to be had.

Can you imagine the outrage if a man wrote ‘I pull her up on everything, I don’t suffer in silence, she doesn’t get away with things!’

Seriously OP stop being such a bloody martyr 🙄

If your dh invites people over he needs to take charge and organise things. Leave it all to him.

This is all a big problem over nothing isn't it

"Sourcing costumes" on Vinted is not a job

Hmmm, whilst your post could absolutely have been made by me a decade ago….i do actually think there’s a lot to be said for chilling a bit. Friends don’t care if a house isn’t tidy. Just buy scary masks, job done, wear the same every year. If he invites people over for picnic food, then he goes to get the picnic food. I’m afraid I think the hardest thing in your list is the pumpkin carving, that is a pain in the arse and unavoidable. With the benefit of hindsight I can see that I put a dampener sometimes on events like this by stressing about things that just don’t matter.

If my DH invited friends round we would just divide the jobs ie cleaning, sorting the picnic tea, who's wearing what and just get on with it.
But then we don't do Halloween and I don't really know what to make of all the social media created excitement over "boo boxes" et al.

Oh you have invited people over? Lovely. What time and I will make sure I get home in time to enjoy your treats. Oh, the kids have outgrown last years costumes so they'll need new ones if you are going trick or treating. Then leave him to it.

What's all this-you tell him off all the time and don't let him get away with anything. What a way for him to live.

I think he sounds as if he does quite a bit more than you and you have exaggerated your tasks.

You found a pumpkin patch-I guess you looked that up on the internet-5 minutes.
You checked opening times-that is normally on the opening page and you would have just seen it
You told him to make the kids wear wellies-a 5 second sentence/

And so on. It's like saying "I washed up"- I turned on the tap, I made sure there was enough hot water, I put on rubber gloves, I put washing up liquid in the bowl, I swirled the liquid about a bit. I picked up a plate. I lowered the plate into the water...and so on.

You say he lost your Halloween outfit-maybe he thought you didn't need to dress up.

A little bit this, OP. For example, you didn’t mention in the short list of things he had done that he had gone out and bought all the treats to hand out at the door - but then let it slip later. That’s a much bigger job than either ‘finding towels’ or ‘checking opening times’, to be fair.

But I do get the frustration at a partner who just doesn’t see all the little ancillary jobs that are necessary to be done around the central event, like tidying for visitors.