What would you do? Partner who doesn't share the load

[SlowLoris88]

We have a 1 year old daughter and my OH cannot and will not learn to cook for us as a family. I am having to cook and be responsible for every meal, planning, shopping, cooking it and serving it. He cannot seem able to organise himself enough to do a single meal. I've tried everything - I've delegated days of week he's responsible for, I've put up a meal planner, I've given him shared shopping lists, I've sent links to quick and easy recipes and cooks to follow. All of it just falls on deaf ears. Today is his turn to make dinner (once a week, that is all), and it's 2 hours before our family dinner time and he's announced he's going to Tesco to buy us all a ready meal because he hasn't given it any other thought. I'm at my wits end with it. He's always been like this with food. It was never such an issue before we had a child because we just ate separate things and it didn't matter, He's previously lived on a diet of pizza, cheese sandwiches, chips and sweets if left to his own devices, and I've always hated it and been clear about that but he's never been able to change, learn to cook or done anything about it. I do not particularly enjoy cooking and am not happy doing 100% of the work to feed our family as I do not feel this is fair, particularly given I do everything else (the money, the appointments, the clothes, the toys, education, etc). What would you do? I don't want to leave him because he can't and won't cook, but it's causing huge tension between us and resentment from myself because of the inequality of it all.

Cool. So he's chosen to not be shown by watching the millions of cooking videos online, or booking himself in for basic adulting lessons.

Not to jump on the ND bandwagon but any chance he has ADHD OP? From what you say: he can’t start tasks, is blind to the passing of time, doesn’t notice things around him, can’t follow instructions (like a recipe) - he might be thinking it’s not on him, it might be weaponised incompetence, but it might be an actual thing. This doesn’t mean he gets to get away with not doing it, it just means he might need help to get things organised- more than you would expect from an adult. Together you could try: recipes with pictures, teaching him step by step a few simple meals, creating cards with ingredients for those so he knows what to buy, breaking down the steps in other recipes. And same really with everything else - a task can feel undoable if you cannot see it as separate steps or if reading the steps gets overwhelming.

Yes, we've discussed him having this as a likelihood and I do understand how that will make it difficult for him, but I struggle to see where that leaves me realistically as I'm so stretched already that I really don't have capacity to do these things for him. By the time I've done all that work to assist him, I feel like it would've been easier just to get on and do it myself.

Stop fixing his problems and he may improve, but if you go round cleaning up after him and taking over in the kitchen things will never improve for you.

My sis has one of these, she's spent 20 years keeping their house immaculate, she does everything for the kids, all the cooking, cleaning, chores and all the decorating/gardening etc.. she also works full time and earns more than her DH.. his response to her working late is to get himself a pot noodle or cereal, and make fuck all for her and the kids, doesn't even make her a cup of tea when she comes in.. absolute selfish fucker who will never change, you've been warned.

quality breaded fish or chicken kievs in air fryer
microwave new pots /jacket pot and baby veg
Coleslaw

Something like this doable surely?

Quality sausages
microwave mash n peas
instant gravey ?

It sounds like you knew he didn't have cooking skills and decided to have a family with him anyway. It might be one of those things you just have to tolerate

@SlowLoris88 does he work? What does he do?

he works in IT, works from home with infrequent trips away

My mum has diagnosed ADHD (late diagnosis so not medicated when raising children, in fact she was given anti depressants for 20 years instead) and she still managed to cook, look after 4 kids and manage a household plus work. It’s not an excuse for failing to cook for your family once a week. I’m sure he can manage time and tasks in his job just fine!

Then he’s having you on… he is more than capable of cooking a dinner. He’s using weaponised incompetence here. If a man can hold down a job and travel with his job and communicate with people on a daily basis and learn how to work in a workplace, he can cook a fucking dinner.

Tell him that if he wants a wife who does everything like it's the 50s, you'll be giving up work so he can be responsible for bringing in all the money you need, until she's 18!
And actually, my grandad did do some stuff round the house, so even then, men didn't just have everything done for them. But these days, when mum and dad are both working FT, it's not fair you're doing everything. Draw up a list of tasks, and if he hates cooking, maybe you do more of that, and he does something else. But explain how he can do eg bowls (a protein, which could be tuna from a can/sliced chicken, something like butterbeans from a pack, some salad which could be bagged, and other bits and pieces like nuts, yoghurts flatbreads etc really easily).

What would you do?
Well the first thing I’d do is make sure I didn’t have another baby with this waste of skin, and given he’s so pathetic my contraception would probably be abstinence, because really, how can you with him?

This obviously isn’t a change in him, he’s been like this since before the baby came along. So I
guess you can

1. Carry on doing everything, after all, you went in with eyes wide open.
2. Cook, wash, shop, clean, etc, for yourself and the baby and make him sort himself out.
3. Tell him to leave.

I hope he’s at least being the main financial contributor in the relationship because apart from his sperm it’s hard to see what he brought to the table in the first place.

OP you knew he was like this, thinking he will change seems like a vain hope. If you aren't prepared to leave him you're going to have to find ways to work around it and live with it. Can you throw money at it? Get a cleaner/housekeeper, use a meal prep service, laundry service, handyman, etc.?

Is he better at doing stuff if you do it together? Can he become your prep chef? When you clean up can he go ahead of you doing the main clean and you just follow behind catching the details? Do you trust him with the baby? Could you get him to do a lot more of the childcare to balance out the time you're spending on other things?

What are his good qualities? Can you focus on those and play to his strengths, to soften the resentment?

I know you say you don't want to leave him over the cooking, but it doesn't sound like it's just the cooking, and if you are finding you're getting resentful and can't change that, eventually you're going to leave him but just a lot further down the line when you've been miserable for years and wasted a good chunk of your life.

People don’t change, unless they want to and are able to. For the OPs DH, it’s definitely a case of the former and possibly also the latter.

@SlowLoris88 how does he respond when you tell him the impact his lack of involvement has on your life ? That you are having to take on the load of everything that he won’t do. Doesn’t he care enough to want to fix that ? Doesn’t he care enough about your child’s health to want to feed her well and teach her healthy habits ?

if not, stop trying to change him. But you get to decide if you want to stay with someone who doesn’t care enough to show it in a real, significant way. I know what I would do.

What a fuss about nothing. It’s one meal. Why can’t you have beans on toast if neither of you CBA to cook. When I see some of the fuss and drama on MN over minor things, I think no wonder you’re all divorced, single, and have multiple kids with different men and strings of failed relationships.

I mean divorce him then you’ll have to cook all the meals by yourself anyway as well as provide financially and bring your DC up alone.

It sounds as if she divorces him her work load reduces by 50%. He’s a man baby and he’s playing into this “I can’t cook” shit. OP must feel like she has 2 kids. Ew

Where did you see it's about one meal? She wrote she does the money, the appointments, the clothes, the toys, education, etc and food.
She doesn't have a husband.

It’s not one meal.

It’s every meal every day.

Your home is already broken because a useless man child who doesn't care about your needs lives in it.

I'm married with a 3-year-old, so I know how relentless the food side of things feels, especially when you're the one doing all the thinking about it as well as the cooking.

One meal a week really isn't a big ask, and I don't think 'I can't cook' holds up when he can read a recipe and follow it step by step. What helped us was making it much more specific than 'your turn to cook' — one dish, same night each week, with the ingredients already in. No planning, no choosing, just making that one thing until it becomes routine.

I'd also be honest with him that it's not really about that one meal. It's that you're carrying the whole mental load for food on top of everything else, while he does the kitchen clear-up and nappies. That split might feel fair to him, but if you're still the one planning every meal, it isn't. Worth a proper conversation about the total load, not just the cooking, and see if he'll actually commit to that one night properly.

How long were you with him before you had a child and did he actively say he was going to change once you had a child? My husband can’t and won’t cook. We done hello fresh when I was postpartum with my first and a 20 minute meal took him 2hrs and breastfeeding hunger and postpartum hormones meant he barely survived it 😅. But I love to cook and was under no illusions what I got into and things are split very fairly in our house I’ve not changed a bedsheet, done anything for my car or taken a bin out in 10 years. I rarely iron or do a washing and he pays a cleaner for everything else. Is it frustrating that he even messes up making pasta for the kids? Sure. Sometimes I work a full time senior management high pressured job that can sometimes over run and while I always try and have homemade meal prep in the fridge / freezer sometimes it doesn’t work like that and I know my kids are getting a takeaway 😂

@ByTipsyShark Some people have ADHD as a condition - for others it's a disability. With some presentations of severe ADHD you absolutely would not be able to do all these things - with many people you would struggle to do even one, eg plan, prepare and cook a meal even occasionally. Also, executive function is both contextual and depletable so some people can function at a higher level at work than in the home.

@SlowLoris88 OP, I think you should definitely get ADHD looked into - if it is ADHD, medication can make a massive difference. But yes, you would likely still be having to do more than your 50% of the load. If you can't face that it's obviously your choice as to whether or not you ultimately decide to stay.

So it’s now the OP’s job to cajole him into having potential ADHD “looked into” even though they’ve discussed this and he’s aware that it’s possible/likely he has this, and as yet he has seemingly done nothing about it.

Should she wipe his arse for him every time he goes to the toilet too?

I didn't say it was the OP's job - I said "you should definitely get ADHD looked into", with you being the OP and her partner. However, if OP's partner does have ADHD then yes, he will probably need a lot of prompting at the very least if not a lot of actual help, as this is exactly the kind of thing that someone with ADHD would struggle with (or not manage to do at all if symptoms are severe enough). This is because the process involves a huge amount of executive function and severe ADHD typically involves massive impairments in executive function. Either way, it is in both of their interests to get this investigated unless OP is ready to walk immediately. And as I said in my last post, it's obviously up to the OP whether she wants to stay, regardless of whether or not these issues are caused by ADHD.

Stop doing his laundry. Arrange for a cleaner to come in once a week and tell him he's paying for it as he is incapable of doing anything in the house, it'll take some of the load off you. Cook for you and your child, let him sort his own meals out.