DP, mental health and cleaning... help

[queenstownlovin]

We've lived together for a year, I'm 24 he's 27, both work full time, no DC.

He has recently been struggling with MH quite badly, on medication now but has good days and bad days. I tried to bring the cleaning up and it turned into a huge thing of him having a proper breakdown about his MH in general. He cried, haven't seen him cry in 6 years of being together. He has lots of things going on which I'm trying to be supportive and sensitive about.

He says I'm being 'negative' but I know that's because I'm beginning to really resent how little he does in the house, I'm trying not to get him down with it while his MH is bad but also, it's driving me mad. It comes out in little comments or jibes every so often.

Basically I do all the cooking which I don't mind as I enjoy it. But I also do all the pots, all the kitchen cleaning, all the food shopping/ordering. I do actually do everything in the house except he takes the bins out one a week and once in a blue moon he'll throw the hoover around the living room, note, not the whole house, just the living room🤷🏼‍♀️

What is the solution? I've been on strike this week, he's done nothing, the house is vile. He cooked us pasta and chopped tomatoes (was awful, but he tried at least) on Monday, kitchens not been touched since. All food waste, pots and pans left out, fruit flies everywhere, it's disgusting. He doesn't know it, but got a friend popping in for lunch today so I'm going to have to blitz it all.

What can I do to be sensitive to his delicate MH but also not be taken for an absolute mug.

He's not a total dick btw, he's loving, caring and considerate in lots of other ways... just not with this. It was also like this before his MH declined.

Frankly? I'd leave him.

Realistically - meh. I'd leave. He's leaving everything for you and he knows you'll clean it. Can you meet your friend somewhere else today?

His mental health problems are for him to sort out, with support from you if you decide to stay, but he has to be in the driving seat and he has to pull his weight at home.

If you don't want to leave him (I would) then you need to have a proper sit down discussion about this.
Write a list of all chores - every single one.
Washing, cooking, hoovering, dusting, bathroom, shopping, bins, dishes, clothes drying and putting away, present buying, literally, everything!
Then sit down with the list and go through it and assign chores to each of you.
He needs to agree to do 50% of all household chores.
He lives there too and it's up to him to do his share.
MH issues or not, he does not get to opt out of daily life.
Unfortunately, that includes household tasks.
If he won't even do this then he has to understand that it's a deal-breaker for you and you are prepared to end the relationship over it and he either shapes up or he ships out.
And when living on his own he will have to do 100% of his own chores.
His choice!
Be prepared to follow through on any threats or ultimatums.

Get out now! This will only get worse. You do not want to.have children with this man.

At your age, with no ties and after such a short relationship, I just wouldn't be signing up to deal with this. It's different when you've been together years, but at this stage, why stick around?

It's odd that it's always cleaning that gets neglected in cases like this. It just happens to be the one thing people dislike most.

Just leave him. You aren’t his rescuer.

My parents were like this when I was little and my dad was depressed but their compromise was mum did all the day to day stuff like cooking and loading dishwasher and he did 1 and 1/2 hours overtime every week which paid for a cleaner for 2 hours every week to give the house a once over and help with laundry as he found it too overwhelming. they were happy with this arrangement and carried on this way for years when he was better. He was putting in the extra effort and she hated deep cleaning and preferred the cooking/washingup.
He said he didn't even notice the overtime as he was already at work and convinced himself every week that he had just been given more contracted hours that were non negotiable. Maybe your partner could contribute in some way like this?

If you feel he is just lazy or doesn't care about the state of the place that is a different story tho op

My dh too busy to do his share of cleaning in the week so he found organises and pays for a team of men to come every Friday and clean the house. That works for me. Would your dp do the same?

Leave him. You're wasting your precious time and youth on being a domestic servant to someone who'd rather live in filth than do even the minimum of housework.

I’ve known situations like this change, but it does take a little time. Only you know how much time you are prepared to give it. If I were you I would:

1. Make links between positive mental health and being an active part of a household. He probably knows he is making you do it all and feels bad about it (just not quite bad or motivated enough to change). Maybe you pointing it out and suggesting that he will probably feel better if he contributed more might give him a push.

1. Find a good moment, not in jibes or off-hand comments to explain the wider implications of joint responsibility for a house. It’s not just you whining or nagging, it means something. Will you want to buy a house or have children with someone if you can’t rely on him to help with these responsibilities? If not, tell him. Make it really clear.

1. Don’t facilitate his lack of effort if you can and if it doesn’t inconvenience you too much. Laundry is good for this - don’t do any of his.

Clear, calm and sensitive communication should be able to yield some results, even if you have to point out gently the position that him getting upset puts you in. If it can’t, there might be more going on than mental health and you might have some decisions to make about the future of the relationship.

Sorry for disappearing I've had a really busy day with work.

So many responses! Thank you all.

So we already own the house, didn't mean to drip feed but didn't want to waffle in my OP. Also, it's not a short relationship we have been together for 5 years, kind of half lived with each other 3 years between parents houses and now this year in our house.

When I say he is good in other ways, I mean he is incredibly supportive of me emotionally. He builds me up so much, I know he loves me a lot, he shows me and tells me all the time. I'm going back into education in a few weeks and he offered to pay a higher % of household bills straight away as my income will be dropping for the next 3 years. He knows I'm pursuing something I've always wanted to do and has encouraged me so much to go for it. He's lovely, loving, supportive and funny.

He is lazy though! He isn't motivated, for example he doesn't drive, he says he hasn't got around to it, but I know he's anxious about the lessons and won't just push through the scary feeling and get it done.
His work situation is getting better lately but in the years before now he's been in very low paying jobs and seemed happy there. Whether it's all linked to anxiety and depression I don't know. He's been on medication for 4 months and I am seeing a real positive change in him, he's so much nicer to be around now. It feels like the 'cloud' has lifted from over him/us.

I think I compare him to myself, I'm not perfect by any stretch but I'd say I have pretty high standards of myself... Good job, going into my second degree, car, active social life etc etc, I want that for him too - but he just doesn't have that itch for it all like I do.

I want to support him as much as possible. His mum is not good, their relationships is strained. She had PND after he was born and is really effected their bond. Me and his mum have also clashed in the past, she is really uncaring towards others. She didn't do much of the parenting for him and his bio dad wasn't around much either. He was brought up mostly by grandparents and his lovely step dad who loved him beyond measure it seems, but he doesn't have much confidence or good life skills.

Re the comments about children. He will be a fantastic dad. He's brilliant with children and has all the time in the world for them, it's nice to see him around his much littler brother, they have a great bond. Children won't be any time soon for us but I am confident we will be fine. I realise I may sound naive here, but this is my field, I understand more than most childless 24 year olds what it takes!

Lots of things have struck a cord with me here. I'm going to broach it again. I just wish I didn't have to, I'm not his mother. I think a rota is probably a good way to go. Cooking is my thing, I enjoy it, and am better at it than him! But I haven't given him chance to learn and practice. I may write down some basic recipes for him to try to make for tea and build it from there.

Thank you all

Sorry to say, but he will not be anything approaching a fantastic dad if he's as you describe regarding cleaning.

It's obviously a positive quality to enjoy playing with and interacting with kids, but one thing virtually nobody understands until they have small children is just how much drudge work they create, how much mess there is to clean, how much food prep, washing and what relentlessly hard work that is to keep on top of. It's going to be much harder than now, because when you have little ones in the house you keep having to do the same cleaning over and over again because they've just spilled something for the 8th time, they've been sick, they decided to fill the potty and then have a bath in it while you went for a very quick shit. They're mess making machines. The presence of even one child in a home will inevitably create a great deal of labour that someone is going to have to do.

And that's tough even for those of us with husbands who do their fair share. It's infinitely harder when the man you've procreated with just won't do it, refuses like yours is doing even now when there's just the two of you and barely any housework to speak of. These boards are littered with women who were broken by the sheer idleness of male partners who simply wouldn't do what was needed to keep the home at a level of safety and cleanliness that wouldn't endanger a toddler. Don't sleepwalk into that because he'll enjoy playing with them.

You can't broach it from now until the world ends, this is how he is. He won't change. He thinks life work is women's work, there will always be some excuse. You're 24. FAR too young to put up with this for hte rest of your life. He's not going to make a 'fantastic' dad; training is for dogs and rotas are for children. Does he need a rota at work? Does his mental health act out at work and he skives at his job because his mental health is poor? Let me hazard a guess.

You're flogging a dead horse, like legions of women who shackle themselves to a sexist lazy manchild (and usually do this when they're young, you were 18 when you got with this man), but hopefully you'll realise this long before you find yourself doing the work for him and kids plus juggling a FT job whilst he uses his mental health as an out for being an adult.

He's 27, not 17. I don't put up with behaviour like this from my son and he's nearly 13 and has special needs.

Sorry, you can broach it from now until the world ends.

It does sound like you’re being very naive, I’m afraid. If he’s struggling with his MH now, what on earth will he be like when he’s sleep-deprived with a newborn? I’ve dated or seen friends with these bone-idle men before and they rarely change.

He has poor mental health, not two broken arms.

It's easy to be loving and caring and supportive - it basically means saying some nice words and patting a shoulder. It means nothing in the long-term scheme of things. When you've got a baby sobbing with colic, you haven't slept for four days straight, the house is turning into a midden because you have to hold the baby ALL THE TIME - what good are those supportive words then?

You need someone who is practically supportive. He can talk the talk but he's really not walking the walk, is he?

@ThirtyAndASmidgen

It does sound like you’re being very naive, I’m afraid. If he’s struggling with his MH now, what on earth will he be like when he’s sleep-deprived with a newborn? I’ve dated or seen friends with these bone-idle men before and they rarely change.

Yep! Women in these relationships are a dime a dozen. Even more so are the ones who didn't call time on it all (fuck the rotas and chats and support), continued enabling the person in some hope to hang onto him/change him/rescue him and wind up on their knees with exhaustion doing all the work for the family whilst he claims he's tired, poor mental health, etc. (I say this as someone who has PTSD and depression myself). The 'lucky' ones have not given up their financial independence and so are able to split with the layabout relatively unscathed.

He's 27. The changes of his changing are miniscule.

Love is respect, love is behaving like an adult, love is pulling your weight as an adult as much as you can, love is communication.

He is lazy though! He isn't motivated, for example he doesn't drive, he says he hasn't got around to it, but I know he's anxious about the lessons and won't just push through the scary feeling and get it done.
His work situation is getting better lately but in the years before now he's been in very low paying jobs and seemed happy there.

Sounds fucking fantastic.....
Do you honestly think this is a good basis for starting a family? He's low paid and doesn't seem bothered so how are you going to cope financially when you go on maternity leave? What's your pay like? Do you earn enough to provide for a family if he is unable to work or decides not to

He can't drive and again, doesn't seem that interested in learning. I appreciate not everyone has to drive and I didn't learn until I was in my 30s but this is going to put an extra burden on you as you will have to do all of the driving around which might be all very well now but once you have children that's not going to be fun at all. It means you'll be the one who always ends up doing the supermarket shop.

And then there's the fact he's lazy and does fuck all round the house.

So to summarize:
You're going to be carrying the following burdens on your own:

1. finances
2. driving
3. cooking and other household chores
4. the bulk of the childcare because a man like that is not going to suddenly start motivating himself to take on a lot of the care children need.

I am very skeptical about these men who are going to make "great Dad's" because they are brilliant with children and have all the time in the world for them. Yeah - when it comes to fun things like going out to the park, playing games, that sort of thing and when they can hand the kid back at the end of the day.

Think very very carefully about this but it seems like you've made up your mind anyway. You'll have a "chat" with him. He'll buck his ideas up for 2 weeks and then he'll be back to normal, blaming a mental health crisis.

I'm completely stumped by your naivety.

There's living in hope and there's being so naive that when you finally realise just how naive you've been, you will feel so down and daft.

You've been living with the man for a year, properly, more for longer; you recognise he is lazy, he has a poor work record, he has a long term health problem by the sound of it and you think he's "husband / father of your children" material. Sorry but a grown man of 27 doesn't need to be given the chance to cook an evening meal - unless you've been actively pushing him out of the kitchen. You're treating him like a child. Write out some recipes for him - you're treating him like a child. There are literally 100,000s recipe sites on the internet. I wouldn't expect, correction I didn't write down recipes for my DD. As a standard 11-12 yr old she searched the net for things she liked to eat and cooked them. Just tell him if he wants to eat tomorrow - he's in charge and leave it at that. Oh and tell him take away doesn't count.

I'm sorry but you are fooling yourself if you think a quick chat and writing out a few recipes will change your current situation.

What happens when 6 months into your degree, if he can't hack the job and packs it in? Goes back into lower paid work? What happens in 5 years when your pushing forward with your career and you want a family?

You're on the road to martyrdom if you continue with this man. I strongly suggest you choose a new road

Christ at your age I was dumping men because they had an annoying laugh / lived somewhere I didn’t want to live / had dodgy shoes. You are 24 you have the pick of the bunch and choose him?!? Utter madness. End immediately and upgrade or face a life of drudgery. Your choice.

So in effect he will be a disney dad cherry picking the bits he wants and not doing the rest because of his mental health but as you yourself say this isnt his mental health he is lazy

he hasnt done anything at all - I would talk to him but seriously look at whether this is what you want your life to be

I'm not perfect by any stretch but I'd say I have pretty high standards of myself... Good job, going into my second degree, car, active social life etc etc, I want that for him too

I want to support him as much as possible. His mum is not good...

I haven't given him chance to learn and practice. I may write down some basic recipes for him to try to make for tea

You say "I'm not his mother". But you are acting like a replacement for his actual mother. You're trying to protect him, rescue him, help him reach his true potential, and even teach him things that a child might need help with. Was this your role when you were younger, looking after someone?

The mother role you are playing is a lot softer than the real mother role I had, with my actual children.

I gave my kids this recipe book at about age 8-10, by the way, and it is very good: www.amazon.co.uk/Beginners-Cookbook-Usborne-Cookbooks-Fiona/dp/0746085389/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&s=books&keywords=beginners+cookbook&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&qid=1597343321&sr=1-1

Christ, OP!!!

Run for the hills! And don't look back!!

Ask yourself: why are you putting up with this shit? Why are you trying to "fix" him? Why do you set the bar so low?? Know your worth!

This will not get any better. Depression peaks in mid-40's in men.

He does not respect you, or your home. And you are desperately trying to find the "good" parts of him whilst totally denying the bad reality.

I'm reading all of these and just finding it really upsetting to be honest. I feel so alone. I'm reading it and taking it in but it's like the words aren't connecting to my life.

I'm not ready to hear it. I'm going to dip out of this thread before I have to read more of the same responses and actually cry over bloody mumsnet.

Thanks for the time you've all taken, I do appreciate it. X