DP driving me made with personal hygiene

[RachD90]

Feeling rather helpless hence why I've found myself here for advice.

Both myself and DP have been working from home since start of the pandemic and his personal hygiene standards have fallen off of a cliff. Always used to take care of himself, showered daily and now he showers about once a week. He rarely goes out, never goes to the gym anymore and spends a lot of time gaming. To me there is just a basic need to shower at least every other day. I've tried to raise the issue several times - tried to be nice about it, make a joke of it and then finally just directly said take a bl**dy shower. The last time I brought it up his repsonse was that it had only been 1 day he skipped a shower (lies), stop monitoring when i am showering, I'm an adult and you're not my mother etc etc. So it's created an atmosphere where I now can't raise how I feel.

May seem a bit of a trivial matter but it's got to the point I feel like I can't raise the issue and I'm spending nights upset whenever it gets to the point he hasn't showered for 3 days. Then he will go for a shower, everything's fine and the cycle repeats each week. Obviously it's ruining any intimacy in the relationship and even sharing a bed is difficult to the point that I'm now obsessively cleaning the house & changing the sheets. The fact is that anytime he goes to see friends or family, he will always take a shower but he doesn't seem to give a cr*p about making a basic effort for me.

This isn't something I want to leave DP over as otherwise I'm genuinely happy but just feeling at my wits end and can feel that I'm starting to be quite abrupt to him as I'm just lost for any other way to deal with it.

How can I bring it up again and create some positive change rather than just another argument? :(

I hate wfh and have to make a huge effort to get dressed and not look like a slob which is just easy to fall in to. His gaming sounds deeply unattractive to me especially if he isn't leaving thr house much.

Could you Talk to him about a bigger picture and say you want to see him embrace life a bit ? Set up things to do together to try and get some spark back ? I'm not sure you will still want to be with him if this doesn't change

I think the more you do for him, the more he will feel enabled to behave as he wishes, and the less respect you hold in his eyes.
He's not seeing it as "oh she does x y z so I'll do my end" he's seeing it like "the servant allows me time to game, why is the servant complaining about showering, quiet servant".

@TheFoundation I'm struggling to think of an example of him obviously disrespecting my feelings but I'm definitely a bit of a pushover and don't stand up for myself enough. Hence why I've found it difficult to bring this up in the first place and letting it continue.

Do you feel like it's happening subtly even though you can't think of specifics? I don't necessarily mean him doing anything unpleasant, but even if you want to do the weekly shop at the Co Op and he prefers Tesco, so you always go to Tesco... that kind of thing eventually leads to a cumulative feeling of 'horrible' in a relationship.

[quote ComtesseDeSpair]@todaysdilemma. After a long time reading Relationships threads, I find most women are actually pretty good at working out for themselves whether their partner’s bad behaviour is due to something out of his control or a mental health problem or whether they are being being unreasonable in their (usually pretty reasonable) expectations. And that by the time they’re posting about it on MN they actually know, deep down, that if he can make the effort to shower when he wants to see his friends and to leave the house to see those friends, then his choice not to wash the rest of the time and to spend his time playing computer games rather than with his partner - even when she has told him that both of these things really upset her - are just that: choices.[/quote]
Exactly. Dont get why people are saying it could be depression when he clearly makes an effort to shower for everyone else EXCEPT the OP

This is simply a dating relationship,no commitment of marriage, no kids and she's not his mother. The whole POINT of dating is figuring out whether you want to be with a person and commit to them. Absolutely get out now while you can @RachD90! Please do not stay for the "good points" . Any "good" man respects their partner and this fundamental lack of respect means his behaviour will only get worse in other aspects down the line if you married him. I can't gey over that there are actually women out there whose standards are so low they'd would stay with a boyfriend who doesn't even shower

Even if it was depression related (which it doesn't sound at all like it is) , if I was OP I'd still be getting out of this relationship pronto. You're not married to him so no commitment to "sickness or health", and funnily enough losing their relationship is often the push that gets men to seek help for themselves since there's no doormat woman enabling their behaviour anymore. But like I said, it doesn't sound depression related at all.

i brought it up again and didn't go how I wanted it to but we did finally get somewhere. DP admitted that he's got into some really bad habits from lockdown and been struggling with it, that he knows he needs to break out of them and have some structure. He did also admit that he's not considered the impact on me (granted this was after an hour of initially justifying why it's none of my business)... so long story he got up and had a shower before work this morning and has said he will make more effort going forward. So fingers crossed it is the start of things improving...

Glad your chat (eventually) got a result Rach ... BUT please keep yourself alert to everything @SarahDarah posted.

It took you an hour of listening him justify his lack of a shower simple respect for you, before he 'complied'.

Do you want to spend an hour on this again, next time he backslides?
Do you want to be with a fully grown man who requires an hour's input from you, before doing the basics?

It sounds like living with a disaffected teenager.
He's had a shower - big deal.
Now - how long are you going to spend arguing yourself blue in the face with him about 1) his constant evening gaming, at the expense of interaction with you, & 2) the fact that you do all the 'wifework'?

Of course, I want to be happy for you that progress has been made. Supposedly. But agree with @ChargingBuck - it took an hour for him to even see the issue. And I notice you haven't said anything about him agreeing to step up on the other stuff - cleaning, shopping, mental load etc?

Meanwhile, he's neatly positioned himself as a "victim" who needs you to be sympathetic and supportive. So he will "try" but if he doesn't do it, he can't now be blamed because he is "struggling".

I'm not hugely optimistic. If he said that if he can't knock this on the head by himself within a month, he will seek external support or something, then MAYBE I'd be cautiously more optimistic. But I'm not. I think he just realised, after an hour, that you were not messing around, and is planning to do the bare minimum to keep you there (because he doesn't want o you to leave because then he would genuinely live in a hovel as you would not be here to cook, clean, shop, plan etc).

I wouldn't get your hopes up. If he gave a shit about how you feel, he would have never allowed himself to become such a slob. Don't waste too much more time with this one. You'll regret it.

I would just bin a relationship with these grubsters. I dont care if they are depressed. After orthopaedic surgery where my bones were sawed and reassembled I had my husband carry me into the shower with both feet in waterproof wrapping so I was clean. I can't believe some chap cleans his teeth once a week, is too lazy to go to the dentist and his family puts up with the stench.