Does anyone else have a husband like this?

[Kanfuzed123]

I know I usually post quite lighthearted things but there’s one thing that’s been getting to me for a while, I’m probably going to phrase this unreasonably or harshly and I’m prepared to get flamed/called out on it. But I feel like my husband can’t do anything. By that I mean without supervision or me having run around and check he’s done it properly after, which he doesn’t take kindly to.

some are minor thing and some not but he just won’t listen. I’ll give you a major for instance, been on holiday and rented a car, putting car seats for kids back in our car, because as per usual I’m watching the kids and cooking (I also have a bad back so it’s hard for me to lift them, bend over and install them) they are isofix (aka easier to install). My fault I didn’t supervise him or check he’d done it properly after. He’s taken both children out in the car since, I got to put kids in car and dc1’s car seat is 6 inches off the bottom of the car seat and dc2 isn’t flush against the back aka they are incorrectly installed, which he refused to believe but it’s f’ing deadly and anyone with eyes could see it was wrong, and no he isn’t visually impaired.

i ask to watch food whilst I feed baby, i come back and it’s burnt black to the bottom of the pan… I say to him I said to watch it, to which he says oh i did, you didn’t say to not let it burn

what’s really got me today, is our online grocery order. I menu plan and he puts the order in, i wrote explicit ingredients and then an acceptable sub… get the order to today and he’s ordered half wrong sodding stuff. I’m honestly at breaking point with it. This is ridiculous right?

Sounds like a prototype man.

To be fair, if she was endangering the kids' lives and literally staring at dinner burning because she'd been asked to watch it and not specifically told to do anything more, he'd have a point.

Why do you "reverse the sexes and make up bullshit" people do it? Does it help you to sleep?

Question. Why are you still with him if he is so bad? And why are you whingeing on here?

Yup, mine is like this. I ask him to look for my sunglasses in the car, comes back and says he can’t find them. Go check myself and they are sitting glaringly obviously on the fucking floor. I ask him to get DD’s hat in the cupboard. Even give specific instructions on where it is (bottom drawer of chest of drawers, top left hand corner under swimwear). Comes back and says he can’t find it. Go up and find the fucking hat. I decide to do everything myself and one day lose my shit because I am so stressed being a parent, full time worker and running the house, only for my husband to turn around and say “you’re problem is because you do too much and never ask for help” no shit Sherlock, if you actually made an effort to do stuff around the fucking house maybe I wouldn’t be so stressed.

Then he does the laundry one day and proclaims how lucky I am that I have a domestic husband 😡

I'm not your husband but I was a less-than-perfect husband. I'd say the incompetence is less of an issue than the rudeness / lack of respect. Maybe the SAHM phase has triggered poor behaviour from him for some reason. But does he know how it makes you feel?

I recognise this behaviour only too well. Not 'noticing' things, not remembering things, not doing things properly. It's passive aggression. He's expressing anger, but in a very indirect way. It may or may not be you he's actually angry with. It may be be someone from the past (e.g. parents) but by placing the most ordinary of expectations upon him, you may have become the focus of anger he never dealt with properly back in the day. (Or you may genuinely be the target, not enough info here to say.) He may be able to overcome it but it would take a willingness to accept what he's doing and engage with the work on himself that would be necessary. Don't do couples counselling; he will hijack it. By the time this is resolved, you may be too exhausted and angry to care about him anymore. That's what happened to me anyway.

No. Only a prototype if you’re willing to put up with this level of fuckery
He is like this because he can be. It is beneficial and has gains for him

I don't think it's men! I think that no one appreciates how much work in involved in always having the right ingredients in the fridge in the right quantities for everyone, doing anything whilst also minding small DCs , cooking a meal every day etc etc etc etc
My DH sits and watches me cook the evening meal every night - we are retired- I do it because I want a decent meal but I really bear a grudge.

to be fair I know quite a few men who are incompetent fools at work as well ....doesn't seem to stop them being promoted

Wow, internalised misogyny much?

I just don't understand why you need to do all the work, specially if you have a demanding job. hence the reason I was telling you to get a personal assistant to take all that workload off from you. he may be a good lawyer/doctor or whatever his high earning job is but he's clearly useless when it comes to running a home. If he is so useless then he needs to chip in and get hired help, being the CEO of the household is a full time job and you shouldn't be taking all that workload. Again: if he's not willing to help then he needs to hire someone more competitive than him to help you with the home. You shouldn't;t be working double. No way. Doesn't sound like he's going to change.

Have you realised this is Mumsnet? A lovely support group where we can whinge about everything to hopefully get some good advice 😉

I feel u
my other half is thick at shit at running an house and kids
but brings the bacon home ;)

i ask to watch food whilst I feed baby, i come back and it’s burnt black to the bottom of the pan… I say to him I said to watch it, to which he says oh i did, you didn’t say to not let it burn

He's got to be taking the piss to see how much you'll tolerate, surely

Not really, my point is that a home with two working partners should be run by both. I don't understand why running a home should fall in a woman's shoulders, that's just bollocks.

He's doing it so you dont ask him again. Hes more than capable. Just wants mothering. Its not on, fuming for you!

Here you go OP:

I meant "sexist bollocks".

Urgh. I understand entirely.
It reached breaking point with us while DC2 was in the newborn phase and the solution for us was for him to pay for a cleaner. I do my share of the household and child work, he outsources his. It makes more sense financially to keep him alive and I haven't cleaned a bathroom in a year. Win win?.

You have a choice re this man and your children do not. Do you want to continue to raise them in such an environment?.

Op, my exH was perfectly able to survive and thrive on his own before we married, but went down the manchild route in the years I was with him, so we split.

Same happened with my next partner. At some point I stopped and asked myself the question “Do I choose manchildren or do I make them?”

So next time around, I am treating my partner as an equal, don’t do anything for him that I wouldn’t expect another adult to do on his own. I can tell you, his exW would not believe it, he is so proactive around the house that when he is angry does revenge cleaning! I am now focusing on not becoming a nightmare partner who doesn’t do much, but it is easy to fall on that role when the other one is taking care of so much stuff.

I was about to say exactly the same myself! There seems to be so much of this on MN recently, i.e. women being labelled bossy/naggy for daring to mind that their male partners are practising learned helplessness (because that's what this is) around the home, and it's so depressing. I suppose she should just smile philosophically and say boys will be boys, should she?

Why on earth should the household have the added expense of a 'personal assistant' just because this guy can't be arsed to use his brain properly? If he can do his job right, then he's more than capable of getting a few domestic tasks right. He just isn't bothering to think them through properly.

(OP, unfortunately I can relate as my DH is like this in some regards!)

Dh is like this which was ok when he went out to work and flew around the world and was out of my hair 3 weeks in every 4 but since the first lockdown when he lost his job (too old to get another one) and I became the main breadwinner and he was supposed to take over my job with everything household, child and animal related and earning a few pounds here and there on the side to subsidise the household income I have come to realise that he thought I sat on my back side all day and watched day time tv and so that is what he is doing.

I personally think you need very clear boundaries of responsibility e.g one of you does all food shopping and cooking, all holiday bookings and purchases. The other one does all laundry and car stuff and cleaning for example. If you don’t have clear boundaries of responsibility then it’s easy to default that one person (you in this case) fundamentally has the final say in everything and all the mental load. It’s basically a job share and you need to be very clear of each other’s role. Block out an hour to sit down and make some lists and carve out a proper way forward and who is to do what.

This man will literally watch food burn in the pan while she is feeding their baby “because OP only said to watch it, not to take it off the heat if it starts to burn”. He then laughed in her face when she was in tears about it.

That level of contempt isn’t something hiring a PA will help with.