25 years and out for clearing a shelf!

[Superness]

I’m 50 in less than two weeks, have been with my partner for 25 years, we have two school aged children together, and this week It looks like we’ve come to an end. Things aren’t perfect between us but overall we tick along quite nicely until something trivial happens which blows up disproportionately. On this occasion, I was cleaning the house because we were thinking about moving and I’d made an appointment for a valuation. On our hallway staircase, there is a shelf with dp’s bike gear on it plus some of the kids stuff. It’s messy as it’s an open shelf and I thought it would look nice with plants on it instead. I’d asked a few years back for a door to be put on it but it never happened….busy family life and always jobs to do. Anyway, I put some stuff away and other stuff like a bike lid, I put on the kitchen table thinking it was about time it found a new place to live. Well, when dp asked me why his bike stuff was there and I said I’d cleared the shelf because I wanted ‘my’ house’ to look nice, he went ballistic bellowing at me and repeatedly telling me ‘fuck-you’. I said what a disappointment he was for verbally abusing me over cleaning a shelf and spent the night in one of the children's room. Spent the day working but tearful and very upset. Went he came home from work and ignored me, I felt even more upset and I reacted by asking him to leave. He won’t leave. We are unmarried. He says we will sell the house and I will have to deal with the children. He won’t apologise. Apparently I was being abusive trying to remove all trace of him from this house by clearing the shelf and he’s had enough of my abuse. Honestly, his decks are in the front room, speakers in the kitchen, bike stuff in the washing machine cupboard, third bedroom and our bedroom and the garage. It seems so irrational. It’s obviously deeper than the shelf but I can’t tolerate being verbally abused and being told it’s my fault. Where do I go from here?

I am very unclear on this. I don’t understand why you interfere with all his stuff.

you said you wanted a four out on the shelf, but instead if doing it, you asked him to do it.

why didn’t you just do it? Hey presto, shelf is cupboard and mess is hidden

Door. Not four

I want to add the following: You are not abusive, so please ignore the posters who say you are. Eventhough this is mumsnet, we seem to have an influx of tradwives, pickmes and MRA's trying to gaslight women who are in abusive relationships.

As do some of the posters on here it seems like to me.

Op wants a tidy home, not one strewn about with bike parts. It's not such a rare thing to want a tidy home.ffs. it isn't abusive to ask a person to tidy their stuff up, otherwise parents have been abusing their kids for generations.
It's more abusive when men just leave shit lying about and expect a woman to tidy up after them all the time.

If you're with a man that leaves things lying about, remember, everytime he does so, he's telling you to get fucked. He sees his time is more important than yours, so you can tolerate his mess or you can get fucked. Say it out loud everytime you move something of his.

But you don't KNOW if the OP is abusive or not do you. All we have is the OPs version and her version includes clues that the possibility of her being abusive is real. You can't assert that the OP isn't abusive anymore than assert that the partner is. We have one version of events and that version has indicators of potential controlling behaviour demonstrated by the OP. That's all we KNOW. Everything else is conjecture

but you are thinking of moving anyway?
you were tidying up for a valuation?

Bingo! Exactly what I was thinking.

Tbh, it was inflammatory to decide to make a shelf for plants and to dump his stuff on the kitchen table - and then to talk about your house, as though it isn’t also his. Whilst his behaviour is unacceptable, you are far too forgiving of your own grossly insensitive behaviour.

I assumed she meant pushbike not motorbike.

i do agree with this, you are supposed to be a partnership

There’s clearly more going on in the relationship than this one, on the face of it, overly aggressive response suggests.

The OP acknowledged that earlier, referring to his “needs” not being met. From which I assume she means they’ve not been having sex; how long’s that been the case? Months? Years?

The tidiness of the house / where he’s leaving his stuff has been an ongoing source of irritation between them, obvious from the OP’s responses, and with the physical relationship dead or on hiatus then he’s going to be feeling a bit underwhelmed in the relationship (as might the OP).

I’d guess his reaction to the shelf clearing is probably release of a deeper seated tension, rather than an ongoing pattern of abusive behaviour - unless the OP is now going to reveal that he’s often like this..?

Like some other PPs have said, counselling to see if the relationship can be saved (if he’s not routinely shouting at her) has to be a better option than going nuclear and selling up.

I would say something else is going - not necessarily you, he seems pissed off about something to behavevso extremely- work problems?

Exactly. All we have is OP's words and people are accusing her of being abusive on the basis of that.

"Grossly insensitive"? Are you always so melodramatic? She moved some bike stuff off a shelf. The house is cluttered with his bike stuff. The abuse she received for clearing a shelf, on a staircase, that's covered in bike stuff, is pretty disproportionate to the "crime".

Ha! Found the MRA. Thank you for proving my point.

There is no such thing as "misandry". That like trying to make reverse sexism or reverse racism a thing. Men are not institutionally oppressed. They do the oppressing, as OP's partner is doing.

@CaptSkippy the OPs own words have indicators for being controlling. As posters rarely post themselves in a poor light and do everything to describe the other person as being in the wrong, it is interesting that in her own words. There are red flags about her behaviour. It is disproportionate to start shouting about having some stuff moved. The OP hasn't suggested there us a history of this. The OP would absolutely have said if their was a history as the OP is wanting the problem to the partner. If someone suddenly acts crazy it could ge that they are crazy. Or it could ge that they have reached the end if their tether. 'He asked me to pass the salt so I stabbed him in the head' springs to mind. How many times has an abused woman got to the end of years of controlling abuse lashed out. We don't condemn them do we. Because we understand the effects of years of controlling abuse.

Why is men's rights activist such a bad thing are female or black rights activists worse or better?
This place stinks of misandry.

Men are the oppressors as a group so your comparison to two oppressed groups is bonkers. The question is - are white rights activists OK?

To me it sounds like OP was simply trying to tidy up so that their joint home could be seen & valued without his bike shit all over the place, to get the best possible price so that they both move to a house they agree they like.
OP has taken the initiative, tine & effort to maximise the value, she hasn't thrown his stuff in the trash.
Bike boy has thrown a tantrum because biking us more important than his family
He also never tidies his stuff because he is more important than everyone else, & OP has to try & do it
Si very unattractive being immature& threatening to break up over a few items on a shelf, when in reality he knows he's a selfish slob

Lol, because MRAs are hardly ever actually advocating for men's rights 😂

Having said that OP does sound quite PA and I'm not sure what I think about this thread. Just the title pisses me off and reminds me of exes telling me I'm overreacting. It's not 25 years and out over a shelf, it's 25 years and out for 25 years PA I'm guessing.

How is cleaning a shelf and making the house nice for viewing controlling? It's what any sane seller would do.

And being in a partnership, one might want to actually do some work to sell the house which includes making it look nice for an estate agent valuation.
That includes tidying your stuff that is all over the house, including in the living room.

Why is it that he didn’t think that needed to be done?

There was a thread recently about a house sale and the clothes rack that was right in the middle of a room. People wondering why it hadn’t been tidied up for the estate agent. That’s the same thing. Bike stuff everywhere isn’t a nice sight for any viewing.

In this case, what did you expect the OP to do?

• Wait for him to come back and …. ask him if SHE could move his stuff/tidy them up for the estate agent


• Ask him to tidy his stuff like she has done countless of times and isn’t listened to? Risk of being told she is controlling/nagging etc…


• Leave the stuff where it was regardless of the impact on the house valuation

If it was a partnership, he would have stepped up and tidy up his stuff. He shouldn’t have needed someone to point it out to him. But instead he is leaving the responsibility of sorting everything out to the OP (he was happy to say she would be the one to contact them etc… afterall), not taking any responsibility around the potential sale whilst also expecting to have things done his way/stuff not touched etc…. That’s not a partnership attitude from his side is it?

Why is men's rights activist such a bad thing are female or black rights activists worse or better?

Off-topic, and it's not my job to educate you, but I would just point out that you appear to have missed out on around, oh, 250 years of analysis of why rights to liberty, equality, etc, although supposedly universal, are not enjoyed equally by all. And that the claims and grievances of those disadvantaged by sex, gender, race are not symmetrical with those of privileged groups. You could remedy this gap, but I suspect you won't try.

OP, it sounds bad. It seems obvious that if you had discussed and agreed selling and moving, and getting an evaluation done, then tidying and decluttering is the next logical step. Only you know if you are keener on this move than your partner, and if you began the decluttering in a needling, aggressive way, to push a move; but that kind of reaction is unacceptable. He needs to express reservations or doubts in more mature, less attacking way. If that's what it's about.

Personally, I couldn't live with someone who wanted to mark territory and claim so much space for their hobby. And wouldn't compromise on sharing space.

What do you think should happen next? What do you want to happen?

@mathanxiety has beautifully put what I was thinking.

@BigSkies2022 Why is men's rights activist such a bad thing are female or black rights activists worse or better?

Is this truly a serious question?!?? Men are privileged and the leaders and the oppressors. Women and black rights activists are the oppressed minority. Men don't need activists, they are the ones in control.