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Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

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Original poster

Stopped being angry with MIL and started being angry with DH

41 replies

TropicalHorse · 04/11/2014 13:51

My DH is shit at doing his share of the housework. There's no escaping or excusing it. I unwillingly, furiously, do way more washing, dishes, cooking, cleaning, home admin, DIY. He has all the "typical" excuses we have read 1000 on MN. He doesn't think to do it. He doesn't 'see' messes. He was raised by a neat-freak who spoiled her boys and they never lifted a finger around the house. (She told me this quite proudly once. The myriad of possible sarcastic replies that rose to my lips were stifled with difficulty into a jokey "Lucky me!")
We have argued, sought professional counselling, made lists, kept score, he's read (or claims to have read) Wifework, I've nagged and not-nagged but his behaviour just never changes. Or it changes for 2 days, then reverts.
Recently, I've started placing the blame with my rational, adult DH who has not lived with his mother for 20-odd years.
I'm about to tell him this is breakup-worthy shit. I'm fed up with it.
We can't afford a cleaner and really, the amount if effort required from him is minimal.
We have a 16mo DD who was recently hospitalised, I stayed overnight too. Got home the next afternoon to an absolute pig stye, when I suggested he could have done some washing or pushed the Hoover around he looked astonished at the suggestion. He'd been watching films and eating the contents of the fridge, by the evidence.

I'm not going to mitigate this rant by claiming he's a lovely, loving husband because I'm too angry. His behaviour is not the behaviour of a respectful, equal partner and I am over it.
Anyone else??

OP posts:

Theorientcalf · 04/11/2014 15:24

*bit

TheHermitCrab · 04/11/2014 15:27

I'm completely with Joysmum here.

they can change, and mine did too. (That sounds kind of sexist and ignorant towards men, but I don't mean it that way!!)

My OH genuinely didn't see the mess/dirt/clutter I was seeing or the urgency about it. It's not that he expected me to be his mother, or do all his jobs, he was just doing it in his own time, which didn't agree with my time.

Few compromises later and he now does the things he knows really rile me up (i.e. washing up being done as and when, not when there's no where to prepare anything in the kitchen!) and I now chill the hell out over the odd toilet roll tube and dirty sock I find lol.

I also agree with Ragwort's comment at the top too, a very good point....

TheHermitCrab · 04/11/2014 15:30

I guess in the end it isn't about the cleaning, but how much they value what things mean to you. My OH appreciates how much a tidy house means to me as much as his football means to him, even if it makes no sense how I can be more bothered about the living room carpet than the footy! :)

Thurlow · 04/11/2014 15:32

Well done!

Maybe he can change. But it sounds as though he needs a spectacularly enormous kick up the arse to do so and really, the only thing you have left to try is to say you can't live like this, and so you are leaving.

That will tell you how he really feels.

Fairenuff · 04/11/2014 16:38

Are you really going to do this OP or are you just venting?

He is choosing to live like this, even though he knows how much it upsets and angers you, you have every right to tell him enough is enough. But I'm not sure if you'll see it through iyswim?

MexicanSpringtime · 04/11/2014 16:41

It sounds like dh moved straight from home to live with you, am I right, OP? He is totally used to having a clean and tidy house, so I reckon that if he had to live by himself for a year he would learn how to do it himself.

So, only you can decide, but I would live separately for a time until he learnt good habits and all the work involved in keeping a house tidy.

Somethingtodo · 04/11/2014 16:42

My husband is such a passive aggressive hostile twunt that during my dirty protest, where I have downed tools he is "stepping up" by banging around around the kitchen, slamming the dishwasher door, trowing things in the sink and slopping dirty wet cloths across the top obs making it worse in his deliberate "studied ineptitude" way.....this is what he did this morning - tonight he will come home and complain about the state of the kitchen - not realizing (or ignoring the fact) that this is how he left it and no one has touched it since....

WhereAmIGoing · 04/11/2014 16:49

I had one like this too.
I decided he was acting like a petulant child so I treated him like a child.
Eg we finish dinner and I am telling him 'ok now we all clean the table and put stuff in the dishwasher'.
The bedroom is a mess? 'I think we all need to do some tidying up here. DH can sort out your stuff? NOW'
It did sink in. The same way it did with the dcs

SolidGoldBrass · 04/11/2014 16:50

Unfortunately, some men (and probably this one) have an unbreakable, fundamental conviction that women are not fully human. Domestic shitwork is women's work and it is actually what women are for. So talking, arguing, pleading, going for counselling - none of it will work, because he simply doesn't accept that you are not his servant.

WhereAmIGoing · 04/11/2014 16:50

Bye DH did change. It took done time and 'reminders' and me being very careful to to step up when he wasn't doing his share. And being assertive but non confrontational.
But it worked.

kentishgirl · 04/11/2014 16:59

I couldn't live with this again. Did it once, with a man I was very surprised to discover had the belief that this genuinely was 'womans work' and refused to do anything. I didn't discuss any of this with him before it was too late and I'd moved in. It hadn't occurred to me that there were still men around who felt this way, it was so alien to me. Caused huge resentments on both sides and was a big factor in our break up.

Learnt my lesson. DP got a good grilling on this at an early stage and he's not like it at all. Wouldn't have continued with seeing him, if he had been.

DP actually does the vast majority of our cleaning etc as he works shifts and is home a couple of days a week. I make sure I don't take advantage and that I appreciate what he does as I know how rotten it is to be on the other end of it, so I clear up my own messes, and do a share of jobs anyway. But not anywhere near as much as he does. If our work situations change, so will how we handle this.

Men are not babies. If they don't do anything, it is because they make a deliberate decision not to.

kentishgirl · 04/11/2014 17:00

Oh, and DP grew up with a mother who worked and did everything, and still continues to do everything (literally 100%) even though they are both retired, so it's no excuse.

BeGhoul · 04/11/2014 17:03

His behaviour is not the behaviour of a respectful, equal partner
^ you are 100% correct here.

It really is very pathetic.

You have give him so much support and encouragement to change and he is choosing not to deal with this.

Is he as pathetic and helpless in his work too?

Is he outwardly so sexist in his views on other subjects?

Also aren't you angry that by refusing to engage with this massive problem, he is dumping everything, the whole relationship on your shoulders? It's like your options are (as he sees it) A) Do it Yourself or B) Live with the mess of C) spend your days banging on and on and trying to think up ways to cure HIS problem that has become your whole families problem, when he clearly doesn't give a fuck.

That would enrage me even more than his not participating with house work.

Fucking hell Wilkommen - however will I get through life without a man to wash my car, it being such a manly job and all? I don't know how you can go through life pandering to such sexist people, let alone living with them. Just as well you find observing their crafty and successful manipulations of you "amusing". He has really done a number on you.

Personally I have more respect for men than to believe that their inability to participate in housework has anything to do with them having a cock.

Somethingtodo · 04/11/2014 17:45

His behaviour is not the behaviour of a respectful, equal partner.....in my case it is part how he abuses me through his passive aggressive hostile behaviour - never rows with me - just ignores everything I ask him to do.

Somethingtodo · 04/11/2014 18:12

Theorientcalf - yes and this is even more added stress - "women hold the jigsaw of family life in your head"

.... if housework was industry or business then whoever took on all the planning, thinking, costing, scheduling, logistics, contingency, delegating, motivating, checking, reviewing etc they would be the supervisor, manager, leader with the clip board and not actually doing any of the "chores" as "house-hold management" would be a specific role!

Somethingtodo · 04/11/2014 18:16

WhereamIgoing - my children do it with a better attitude than my OH I have 4 to manage/motivate etc I dont need a 5th, petulant, divisive one - making me look like an angry nag -- have no energy for him anymore....so I am out of here....is "not stepping up" extends to ever other standard responsible adult activity.

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