Pissingcontest-itis... Hate, hate, hate it

[iMoniker]

Married with three kids. DH and I both work full time. He works from home, I work out of the home.

We are both busy, ALL the time. We share the load but DH's contribution is often substandard e.g. he'll wash the dishes and stack the dishwasher but he won't clean out the sink-hole. Means I have to double back on him to ensure that it's clean. Another example is laundry - he'll happily put it on, but will often not sort it properly, or will tumble dry things which shouldn't go in the dryer.

This causes a lot of what I call pissingcontest-itis. We argue over who did the dishes on what day, who has emptied the bin the most... blah, blah, blah. Now as DH does help, he doesn't get my point and feels that I am a nag.

I adore DH and this is not a thread meant to bash him. Just checking to see if we are the exception or the norm and how other people manage it.

Lots of food for thought here. Thank you.

Totally take on board that I should not impose myself and my way of doing things. To be fair DH and I can communicate - sometimes this ability is compromised in the general day to day madness of our busy household.

This isn't a huge deal - he's been gone all day and I'd prefer to share a glass of wine with him rather than a grizzle about chores. I am going to take the divide and conquer approach suggested by Thumb.

"Your dh is an adult and he gets to choose whether he cleans out the sink hole or not."

Well by that argument as an "adult" he gets to choose whether he does any housework at all.

Although leaving jobs you know need doing to someone else because you don't want to do them isn't really what adults do, is it?

DH and I went through something similar, so we sat down and looked at what we were doing, what needed doing and what we could do to make it all easier.
As a list maker, I sat and made a list of things that we could not get out of (ironing, cooking, recycling etc)

We do have a cleaner, but at the weekends, there is a list of jobs and they get divided up. DH does ironing and child ferrying to activities while I do tidying and cooking.
During the week it turns round with DH doing cooking and me doing child ferrying.

I'm also making moves to change my job as I realised I was pissed off and bored, and DH is taking his leave in small chunks to get regular breaks.

Also, I don't nag, I issue executive orders...DH has the right to do this as well when something needs to be done such as I work next to a dry cleaners so I take in his dry cleaning and he works near a shoe menders so gets to do the shoe mending run.

DD now also has her jobs, such as clear the table stuff, pack her own PE kit and keep her room tidy and polish her own shoes...which she loves and polishes all the shoes in the house. !!!!!

I'm the one in our house who gets told I'm doing stuff wrong by my hyper-efficient husband.

It does my head in at times.

But him pointing out that I had left the sink hole full of gunk would not leave me feeling hard done by.

Clearing the gunk out of the plug hole is obviously part of cleaning the sink. Not doing it is leaving a job unfinished. It's got fuck all to do with doing it the "right" way.

I might as well argue that not bothering to hoover under the table is just "my way" of doing it.

DH and I have had this.
We now play to our strengths with each of us having exclusive responsibility for the things we are anal about and sharing the rest. We are very frank about what we each hate doing and what we don't mind doing. Mostly, we don't argue about it any more, but when the killer tiredness kicks in anyone can argue about anything, really.

My partner and I have exactly the same problem, not helped by his long hours and the fact that I have depression so it's not always easy to figure out who should do what.

We're giving up and getting a cleaner. I can't stand the arguments any more.