DP has no initiative in housework?

[Whydidittakesolong]

I'm sure this has been done to death but couldn't find anything on the first page.... sorry if it's a repeat. Please be nice.

DP and I have been married for 2.5 years. There have been times where its been great and we'd pull together as a team and both do our fair share of housework but recently (2 months+) it feels like I do everything except clean the hob.

Weve talked about it numerous times, sometimes really nicely and sometimes arguing. Nothing has changed.

They finished for Christmas on Monday, except for an all day meeting yesterday. Monday they spent slobbing out watching films which I sort of expected so didn't get annoyed at. But today they went Christmas shopping at 1 then called me when I'd finished work at 5 to inform me they hadn't done any housework. I'm livid.

I'm the main breadwinner and work 40% more hours than them which makes it sting just that little bit more. Plus they're talking about wanting children.... I'm not going to be left doing all the parenting so that's not happening any time soon.

'He's a lazy wanker' posts not welcome. Im here to get a different perspective and hear some success stories or way to help. I 100% believe they want to help but just stumble and I want to know what to do other than get annoyed?!

Your DP doesn’t want to do it and doesn’t care about / respect you enough to do it. If they are otherwise a good DH/W you could try agreeing responsibilities, sending them articles on fair division of domestic work, and / or couples counselling.

Stopping any domestic work you do for them.

If they wanted to do it they would.

If you think of it as “help” you are making the assumption that it’s your job, as well as being the higher earner and WoH more hours.

“Mental load”.

What helped us was having a list of jobs that need to be done every week. We didn’t allocate specific tasks to each of us but knowing that every Friday night we’d review what had been done was enough to get both of us cleaning more often.

Has something changed in the last two months?

Cheers all. I've printed out a few blogposts for us to discuss tonight. Let's hope for the best!

Has he ever lived alone and so known what actually goes into running a household?

What about if you asked him to think and make a list of everything he thinks needs doing and how often. That then gives you a starting point to discuss expectations/standards which may be different.

You might choose to divide up areas of the house so that one person is responsible for one thing? Or another approach is to pick the job you each hate the most and swap - and then the job you mind the least and swap. With anything that you agree on taking turns.

Unless this is sorted under no circumstances have children with him. It will get worse.

Printed out 3 blogposts and asked them to read them before our chat tonight. It was really positive and ended with them writing a list of chores and who/when they'll get done and laminating it. So now it's official!

Thanks for the suggestions. It enabled me to approach the situation differently to me talking about how i felt like I'm treated unfairly. Which I am- but those conversations never resulted in laminated job lists!! Happily they agreed to be responsible for the majority of the day to day! Really positive. Thanks all.

Yay! Hope it continues to work well :)

Lamination is good news

It may well be sexist but I think DP is a woman: have never heard of a man laminating domestic chores.

They should though!

I don’t have initiative with housework either: DP just reminds me whenever I need to do something.

Who's they? I thought it was one person, your partner, you were talking about. Is there more than one lazy git?

I found giving choices that aren't really choices worked. Instead of 'will you clean the bathroom?', I said 'do you want to clean the kitchen or clean the bathroom?' This worked the first time and he automatically defaulted to the kitchen from there on (he did lots of other stuff too, I'm not daft).
By sheer luck all the jobs I hated turned out to be the ones he liked.
He was good at cleaning but piss poor at fidelity, so I'm quite happy cleaning my own kitchen these days.

ark i assume OP just doesnt want to inform of us the gender of DP, for whatever reason

Did I miss something, I didn’t realise that lamination made documents legally binding!

If ‘they’ have the wherewithal to call you to tell you that they haven’t done any chores, it’s unlikely that they aren’t aware that they should be doing them. This isn’t about housework, this is about respect and disrespect is rarely confined. It’s time to have a wider conversation about expectations surrounding your partnership.

I’m off to laminate my Amazon wish list.

I tried a list, it didn’t work. It just showed how much I did and how little he did

I just got told he had less time (despite me working more hours) and I was better at doing it so could get the jobs done faster

It won’t surprise anyone to know we are now divorcing