I cannot stand this lack of common sense anymore

[magicmarker11]

I have nc for this but I'm a regular, Sistine chapel, penis beaker, snapped and farted etc..

I am at the end of my tether with Dh. I actually shocked myself earlier because I really saw red and I don't know what came over me.

I've been with Dh for 7 years, we have 4dc between us but none together, they are from previous marriages. I love Dh very much and we get on great at a basic level. He's kind and caring.

BUT.. he has literally no common sense. In 7 years he has not made one edible meal. He even ruins tortellini. He thinks it's funny. It isn't.

His dc, my dsc, come for tea every Tuesday, and stay eow. I feed them entirely. Today, I had a headache and went for a lie down. He asked what he should make for them, I said chicken and chips. After half hr I go downstairs, and check the oven. For some reason known only to himself, he dumped a load of grated cheese on the chicken breasts before putting them into the oven. Then, he randomly decided to put a piece of bacon on each of them. Not wrapped around, just sitting on top. Of course, the cheese had all just burned away and was smoking everywhere and the bacon had stopped the chicken underneath cooking at the same rate as the rest of it so there were patches it was still raw. And the chips! For some reason he'd dumped a huge pile of chips on a tiny oven tray, in a pile, so that the top chips were burned and the ones at the bottom still raw. Most of the meal in the bin. I lost it. I'm not proud. I yelled at him. I crashed pans about.

I am just so sick of feeling like the only adult in the house. It's not just that he can't cook. He never tries to learn. He just takes it for granted that I will cook for him and his dc constantly.

It's other things too. He won't drive. He has a licence, but he refuses to drive, says he doesn't like it. So I am having to learn on top of everything else.

He's a weak father. He doesn't look forward to his dc coming. He interacts with them but interacts with his phone more. He would never ask for more time with them. I take them out places as he just can't be arsed.

He wouldn't go into the pet store today to get some food that our cat badly needs, he'd gone to pick up his dc from school and taken my ds with him, he said he couldn't face going into the pet store with all 4 dc in case they played up. They're not babies, they're 12, 10, 9 and 7. They probably would have just waited outside.

He never plans anything for the future. His ideal day would be him, alone, with his PlayStation.

We're financially dependent on each other, we both earn but we wouldn't be able to live in this house without each other. I don't want to split up. I just want him to care enough to learn to cook some basic recipes, to not make me feel like he's another one of my dc. Is it so much to ask?

Am I being a nasty cow?

He will never change.
You are his servant, not his partner.

I wasn’t really made up until you said the word PlayStation. I can’t get my head around grown men wanting to spend hours on a PlayStation.

Exactly - teenagers maybe but a fully grown man.... just why?

I'd try going to relationship counselling, and make it clear that it's not OK to opt out of parts of family life he doesn't want to bother with and not bother to engage his brain because he thinks he can push it onto you.

You're supposed to be a partnership. I'd stop picking up his slack wherever you do. Chores and household stuff, like getting food for the cat, are not optional. He's not a kid and you're not his mum. Tell him how very unsexy it is and how you're losing respect for him.

Did he not ask you to drive him, for his flounce? 😄 are you not mortified at having had such low standards for years? Tolerating that just for the sake of...what? Any man at all is better than no man?

His youngest kid is 7, but you’ve been with him for 7 years?
You find a shit father and failure of an adult acceptable, attractive? How depressing.

He's a shit dad. How can you fancy him?

He's your DH, so have been together quite a while, there must of been some signs. Did he never cook for you while dating? You're not happy, you want him to change, if only people would WYSIWYG when you first meet, it never gets better from there and usually worse from honeymoon period.
What to do now? Tell him to follow instructions and if he can manage that he won't go wrong -oven chips say on the pack single layer. Make him parent his own kids? You've got your work cut out, but the more you take up the slack, the less he'll do.

People can learn to inject themselves, adapt to living with a stoma, to life without one or more limbs. You would cope and adapt just fine to moving house and building relationships with people who actually respect you.

Describing that as devastating is a bit dramatic. Mildly uncomfortable for a short period of time, maybe.

It's not possible to genuinely love someone you don't respect.

Google Executive Function Skills and see if he needs some help with his.

Some people genuinely cannot plan tasks and need help, others screw things up on purpose so they don't have to bother.

Give him the benefit of the doubt and look into it?

God that's so unattractive.

He can change but only if there are real and present dangers to him if he doesn't. You need a calm icily cold conversation with him where you tell him exactly what the problem is and just how bad it has become. You have to make it clear that things change or you split and the hard part is you have to mean it. He has to be shit scared. If he doesn't get scared you know where his priorities lie.

You can be incompetent if you pay someone else to do the things you won't if can't, but not if you try to offload them to someone else. That's just rude.

So you do not cook. HE buys the food - either by taking you out or by getting deliveries in. I would go out when his dc are there, and stay out.

Can't drive? He pays for taxis. With his card from his money (that he might spend on his hobbies). This kind of thing can kill sexual attraction and respect in a marriage and if you now do the driving and the cooking he's either seriously making up for it by doing all the housework or he's paying for it all.

You need to read him the riot act, set out very clear expectations and consequences and STICK to them. If you have no rules and don't enforce them what's he supposed to think?

The hassle of you complaining is currently far less than the hassle of doing the thing - change that. Make the hassle of not doing the thing and the consequences far worse than the hassle of doing it.

I wouldn't get into long conversations. State your piece. Tell him the consequences. Then do it every single time.

Oh and smash his fucking PlayStation into a million pieces. Ridiculous man.

He is not going to pull his socks up. He doesnt need to. Youre his substitute mother.

When he ruined a dinner my 8 year old could make, what happened? Did he make something else? Or did you jump in and solve the issue for his incompetent self?

It’s not a lack of common sense that is the key issue here is it? You’re making excuses for him and minimising the awful, abusive nature of his treatment of you and your family.

Please don’t put your love of your house ahead of what your children experience due to your relationship with this man. You might dismiss that comment, but it happens. You and your kids deserve much better. His do too, poor buggers. It sounds miserable.

He has plenty of common sense. He’s lazy and sexist and wants a woman to do his share of domestic work he can’t be arsed to do.

His good humour was conditional on you complying.

As for ‘not seeing the error of his ways’, imagine his ex(es) made their views about his behaviour clear to him! And he chose to persist, because he found another mug.

It is wishful thinking OP. He won’t change as there’s no need to. You have made your bed and need to either lie in it or set fire to it.

I was just going to say the same as BlankTimes . It sounds like he has difficulty with executive function My adult son is Autistic and really struggles with executive function despite on the surface being high functioning. Visuals really help with cooking etc. I recommend something like frame by frame cookery books or even a cookery subscription like Hello Fresh as its step by step what to cook.

If you struggle with executive function you will find it hard to organise and adapt and find multitasking really hard.

Just curious about your Dh's job. Does it involve lots of organising and planning?

Yes wishful thinking. I cannot understand how you got as far as marrying and buying a house with a man who doesn't engage with his own children, can't cook, won't drive and can't visit a shop. What on earth were you thinking?

No I can't live with a baby, he isn't an adult male.
I need someone who is an equal partner or nobody at all, currently living alone.
He does this on purpose so he can get out of doing any further tasks and is basically just bone idle. I've dicoirced husbands for less.
I'm not a servant, I have a degree and a career and my own home so I don't see why I should wait hand and foot on a pathetic male.
My ex husband was told I'm not cooking for him any more as I worked very late so he will have to learn how.
He did and cooked for himself every single night without once, not even once cooking anything for me. It didn't even occur to him I might be hungry when I got home.

What user1965 said about the strategic incompetence. What are the consequences when he ruins dinner or doesn’t do something? If it’s that someone else does it for him, he has no incentive to change.

You sound as though you are losing respect for him and that’s dangerous for the longevity of a relationship. I’d struggle with behaviour like this too, by the way, and am in no way judging you.

Do you get something from being the competent one in relationships generally? What (to borrow Atilla’s great question) did you learn about relationships growing up?

How would it be to shrug at a ruined meal then say it looks like he is buying a take out for dinner? And stick to your guns? Ie not rescuing.

Sounds like he has been enabled to behave like this all his life, including the past 7.

If you want it to change you will have to be tough

OP it's not that he can't see the error of his ways, it's that he won't see the error of his ways.

Does he have any learning disabilities that might hinder his social responses? I think this would be the only reason I'd have so much patience with someone who acted like this.

Because to every one here it looks like he's bagged himself a babysitter who's been silly enough to not speak up, which has reinforced the behaviour in him.

What was it that someone called it the other day? Strategic incompetence.

The strategy is to act sweet and keep you roped in because it's working for him, and he knows that if he does something wrong you'll just do it.

As for the chicken, I'd have taken one look, told him it's either going to set the smoke alarms off or it's going to give someone salmonella poisoning, and then I'd have left him to deal with it.

Can you teach him to make five basic meals over five nights.

No secret as to why his previous marriage failed then?

Why on earth did you think he’d be any different

You’re going to resent him more and more and eventually you’ll hate him.

You need to reorganise your life so you aren’t relying on him.

This has practically no future.

What if you were proper ill? Think about this!!!