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?

"Strategic incompetence", with the sole intention of doing such a shit job that it eventually becomes easier to do it yourself rather than try to manage your elevated stress levels.

Unfortunately you also have it at a level that would knowingly put your childrens lives at risk.

He knew well he'd not fitted them properly but such is his pattern of PA strategic incompetence, he couldn't deviate from the habit of it.

Quite shocking, thank goodness you caught it.

You have a baby and need to take your time to figure out what you want your future to look like.

In the interim period, bullet proof your contraception.

Stop doing any jobs that benefit him solely.
You have too much going on to cook or do his laundry, doing these tasks for the children is enough of a load.

Lean on family and friends for support.

He may buck up a bit, he may not.

But this level of selfishness towards his own family will be something that will kill your feelings eventually.

The most important thing you can do is take the best care of yourself that you able.

This man is not on your team.

Protect yourself.

I don't know how he got laid three times.

“You said to watch it not to let it burn”

what the actual fuck
i would after all my buttons being pushed with the list of half arsed attention to his family this would have pushed my over the fucking deep end…
reading your post has actually made me feel so livid for you 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

this is deliberate

He’d never purposely notice something broken or let something get destroyed to make a point, but I do think there is a huge amount of contempt for me there. I wonder if it fall down to the ‘I’m the bigger earner and you’re spending my money’ except I’m not as he’s never given me a penny and I’ve never asked for one. The only time when I don’t pay my fair share and pay a lesser amount is the 6 months of mat pay when I have 3 months smp and 3 months unpaid, prior to that I pay my fair Share and even on SMP I contribute.

i also think there is a thing of being half soaked. My eldest child is healthy but the pregnancy was complicated and she still sees a paediatrician, mainly for growth. And in the appointments the paed directs everything to me, as my husband gazes off into the distance like a gormless potato. The paed even checks in and is like ‘everything ok dad?’ The one appointment he went to alone, i had to write down everything for him and low and behold that was all he said the entire appointment, no follow up questions to what the paed said. So after the appointment we’re scrambling around trying to email him to get some answers where if he’d just engaged his brain he could have got on the spot. The mind boggles

Abstinence is the most effective means of contraception

What will you do, OP? Do you think he'd change if you suggested divorce?

To be fair, mine is nowhere in the league of yours OP, but then he doesn't earn six figures either!

However, despite that fact that he was a stay at home parent when our now adult DC were toddlers and did a good job, kids looked after, house clean and tidy, food cooked and groceries done etc. Once he went back to work and we were both working, a lot of that fell out his head. His job was a lot less flexible than mine so suddenly it's all me....

Anyway, we had visitors coming today and I was working and he was off and you know, it turns out he can make the livingroom clean and look and smell nice and same with the downstairs loo. Didn't even take him long.

And the reason I say not as bad as OP's DH is because he actually does do stuff. He does clean up after dinner every day, he can work the washing machine and dishwasher, does all the ironing and all the normal "man" jobs such as bins and cars and garden. It's nowhere near half but then I now work less hours (and still earn more....) so technically I have more time.

Oh when I said a higher rate tax payer I just meant shy of 60k not like 6figz sorry if that was confusing!

thing is he does do things, like right now he’s tidying up after dinner. It’s just a lot isn’t done well, you know like things put away damp so they get mould, Teflon and cast iron scrubbed with scourers etc again really common sense things! Like dumping a raw egg white (dc1 is doing the egg ladder) on the dishes in the sink and the washing up sponge, or not tipping oil down the kitchen sink. I just can’t cope with this, having to stand behind him doing things to make sure he doesn’t do anything well, deadly.

I divorced mine. It didn’t get any better and I was, in his words, controlling and nagging, just because I wasn’t his mother. Oh, and I was nasty because I didn’t want to have sex with him.
He still calls me his wife and thinks I’ll wisen up and realise what I’m missing not doing the thinking and the work for him. Like yours, he seemingly forgot how to cook once we got married. Or clean. Or do shopping.
You’re not his appliance.
Cook and wash for you and the kids. Leaned helplessness is beyond the pale, no wonder you lost all respect for him.

I’ve said quite a few times now and the response is ‘ it’s you always moaning’ ‘I do more than most men’ ‘name a man that does as much as me’.

he packed up his things to move out weeks ago because In the rain he dressed dc1 in shorts, a vest (not a top and under vest) not top ans regular socks pulled really high up to ‘keep her warm’ to go out for a walk OR how about this ‘PUT TROUSERS AND A T-SHIRT ON HER’ and because I said she can’t go out like that, she looks like she got dressed in the dark. Flipped his shit

This.

OP honestly he's a dick and he doesn't respect you or the DC. Mine were frequently funnily dressed (as in not what I would put on them) but they were always dressed appropriate to the weather. DH would say when I dressed them at the weekend that they looked better but acknowledged that it's not like the clothes i used had been hidden away. He personally credits himself with the long sleeve top under a tshirt look. He felt that if it got warmer then it was easier and more appropriate to take of the tshirt and leave the long sleeved top so it was practical to have that on the top....

I am going to put the other side now, in that I am your husband in my relationship (tho I am female and my husband is male). I am the main wage earner and I like to think an intelligent human being. I definitely shoulder my fair share of the housework at least, BUT I can be incompetent at things my husband considers basic household or life tasks. I lose concentration and forget to check things, so for example I would sometimes burn food whereas my husband wouldn't. Things like that.

None of it is deliberate (tho admittedly if someone said to me, I will put a gun to your head next time you burn the food, I probably could avoid ever doing it with concerted effort). Mostly my husband is tolerant and we play to our different strengths, though sometimes in an argument he will say it annoys the shit out of him.

But I think I contribute to our relationship in other ways (he too acknowledges this in reality) and that we just don't all have the same skill set.....

Neither do I-7 times as they lost 3 before they had me and then my brothers

he openly told me that it was ‘pointless giving girls an education as they will only end up having babies’

i wish I was joking

Definitely ridiculous. He knows what he's doing, he ruins things out of spite so he doesn't have to do it. He's very smart and highly manipulative. Tbh I would consider leaving him and taking photos videos (although check with a lawyer about filming him) of him not putting the children in correctly. Maybe text him about it so you can screenshot it?

Because if it ever did get to the point where you might consider leaving him, you'll find he's not stupid at all and probably very calculating.

Read the book "why does he do that" by Lundy Bancroft. Very eye opening.

I think it's about time that men started to consider their relevance and contribution to society as as far as I can see there is nothing that men do that women couldn't. There is enough frozen sperm and the ability to sift embryos by sex to allow women to get rid of men completely and do a damned sight better job at running the world and keep the species alive. And I say that as the mother of sons. I'm not saying that there aren't men who contribute positively, but we really don't need them.

Similar with me, manchild after manchild despite them living independently previously.
I got this one and didnt clean a thing for a week, came home to find him cleaning. And he did a better job than I would have.

So weve loosely split house stuff, but I know he can do everything so if I have to go away for weeks or change my hours the house wont fall apart.
However the very first Christmas with him, his mum gave me a calendar and told me all the birthdays were in it, I handed it to DP and said this is for you. He got the hint and I dont bother with his family birthdays/anniversaries etc.
I changed my hours to finish later back in December for reasons, he has had dinner ready for me at our usual time every weekday since. And that surprised me cos I've done most of the cooking for the last 12 years because I like it and am good at it.
It probably helps that we dont have children and I am the type to wait out house stuff until the other person cracks.

I definitely shoulder my fair share of the housework at least.

Then you're not like this twat.

I lose concentration and forget to check things, so for example I would sometimes burn food whereas my husband wouldn't.

If he was preparing food for one of the kids and said, "Please watch dinner while I do this", would you actually proceed to stare gormlessly at the food while it burned, because then you're literally watching it like he asked?

You wouldn't, would you?

ilovelurchers the other side isn't the point though. The point is whether OP is prepared to put up with it.

I knew of two women like you. One has a DH who is fine with it, though they are childfree and she brings in £250k.

The other - her husband left. They started with 50/50 on the kids but it's not working well, last I heard.

And in both cases - fair enough. Everyone can choose. OP might have make a tough decision.

Strategic incompetence is weird, surely easier to just stir the cooking!

That huge lack of competence and common sense is familiar to me from my partners behaviour .And he has no motivation to change because I pick up the pieces .But I don't believe it's intentional .There's something wrong with his brain wiring .Maybe it is inattentive ADH ??

I do think there's massive laziness

It's the glass on the counter stuff that ends up ruining relationships and it's not really about the glass.

Partner leaves their glass on the counter rather than put it in the dishwasher, they continue to do it and you continue to remind them. In the end it's the lack of respect and the fact that you being annoyed doesn't matter to them that finishes it. If your partner is regularly raising that you are doing something that annoys them, no matter how petty it is or inconsequential to you it is, think about why it is you are still doing it.

Can you think of 1 nice thing about him? One reason you married him? This is going to be controversial advice but try, just for a week or two, treating him as if he is your dream man. As if he doesn't burn the food, looks after the children brilliantly, can install a car seat etc. I know! Thank him for everything he does (even if you REALLY have to dig deep). Even if it's just "I really appreciate you paying half the bills / taking DC out for a walk / helping with the kitchen clean up. See what happens. Xxxx

What’s on your mind with the strategy @MassiveOverthinker
do you think he’ll suddenly appreciate @Kanfuzed123 and be a new man.

Sure some of it we can say is strategic but then what about the idiocy, not engaging in our child’s medical appointment and getting into a tizz about it after.

i don’t know re the food if he was literally watching it burn or just went on his phone and forgot about it and literally can’t take responsibility for anything so yet again pointed the finger to me

my last ditch effort is a marriage counsellor because it is getting to me so much, I’m having mum rage or just rage in general where I blow ups and it’s not healthy and it’s clearly unmet needs but it’s very easy then for him to be the victim and I the bad guy. Like with the shopping… first he said they were subs but they weren’t because I asked the driver explicitly and then the shrug and it’s the same thing anyway. We menu plan for a reason. One of which he was saying he was bored of the flipping dinners we were having and fancied some new things so we plan it in advance to keep cost down but also try new things, point is get what’s on the list, don’t go off script, how hard is it, it’s online you are typing lasagne sheets over pasta….

It could be deliberate incompetence, or I wonder if he is on the autism spectrum? He literally watched the food what you asked him to do. You didn't say not to let it burn you shouldn't have to -- but if he is taking things too literally that could be why. Just a thought. I'm not saying it's acceptable, but perhaps it's an explanation?