"Do you want me to do anything?"

[unicornsinspace]

How on earth do I get my DH to stop asking me this question!!
In his mind he's trying to be helpful but it just angers me! I've literally said to him so many times "I do not want to think for another adult" "I don't have another person to ask what needs doing, I just do it" and he always seems to ask me when I'm in the middle of something meaning I have to think about what he can be doing while I'm already doing millions of jobs.
So as not to drip feed, we have 2 DCs aged 8&4 and no help from family so the majority of everything falls down to me as I work part time.
AIBU to not want to think for a 37 year old man?? And how can I get him to stop when telling him in plain English to stop isn't working.

Yeah that sounds like incompetence to me, deliberately not engaging in the process without instruction in case they are expected to do it regularly. It's one thing to be lazy with housework but to not be able to care for your kids is disgraceful.

My partner has needed a bit of work to get out of the single man mindset, of cleaning the bathroom twice a year and only washing up when everything is dirty. When he was a student his house was pretty grim! Things that have helped are him having a set daily job to start off with, this has been the end of day kitchen clear up and washing up. We also have the printables from The organised mum method which we don't follow religiously but it means he can think 'I'll do the living room' and there is a list to follow.

As a process things have been getting better and better, with kids and full time jobs our house still isn't as clean and tidy as I would like, but we are both putting in the same effort all round into cleaning, childcare and cooking.

Yup, that's team work and good communication.

"Lucky" 🤣

In the extremes between not doing anything and having to be spoon-fed everything there is a whole sphere of actually bring a responsible adult and opening your eyes and seeing what needs to be done

Lmfao

I once witnessed a rug washing incident when I was staying with friends that really encapsulated all the drama of this issue.

scene

Enter living room, big rug that smells weird on the floor.

man: I’ll air it outside

(rug left outside in rain, gets very wet, taken down, left in pile on outside decking)

women present eye rug, say nothing. 3 days pass.

man returns rug to living room floor.

woman 1: I think that rug still smells a bit tbh

man: well I hung it out the other day so it should be fine

women look at each other, man looks angry and sad

Man goes out on sunny day, two women wash the rug and hang it out.

man returns, sees rug on line, is sad.

women return rug to the floor

man sulks, picks stupid fight about something else. Says he feels like he can’t do anything right.

it literally was like a play it was absolutely ridiculous. So much repressed emotion over a fucking rug. Afterwards I spoke to the wife involved and she said she was so fed up of having to explain the specific steps involved in housekeeping tasks AND THEN having to manage her husbands emotions about whether he’d done a good job that she has just stopped and was trying to let him work it out by himself but then he’d get really offended if she ever was critical about what he’d done. But it was stuff like - have you given our children any food today? Did you get any loo roll cos you used it all up? Etc etc

he is quite an extreme case and I know there are lots of men who do not have these issues but it was painful to see and draining just to be present while it was going on.

Oh god I've worked with male managers where I feel sorry for their wives.

they expect others to organise their meetings, and remind them of every conversation they have ever had because theyve forgotten important things, and basically do their jobs for them. All the time wondering why they got promoted and how the hell they are still married.

We are 6 managers, three male, three female. If you took two of the male managers out literally nothing would change, everything would still get done.

They either delegate everything (90% of the time to women on their team) or demand the female managers do it. The only time they do stuff themselves is when it's high profile stuff upper management will see (which answers the question of how they got promoted)

"Some people see the world differently" doesn't work. What if that same person lived on their own? They'd soon work out what needs to be done, whether a load of washing needs to be put on, what day the rubbish gets collected, whether they need to go and buy milk, when it's time to do the washing up, if they need to tidy up to receive guests, and so on.

What a poor excuse.

Also, I don't really want my partner to be "offering" to do household chores in the household we share. It's their job as much as it is mine; they're not doing me any kind of favour.

And as for the "'he should know' attitudes in here", he actually should know, shouldn't he? How does OP know what needs to be done? Does she ask him to tell her what to do?

The poster you are replying to was implying a poster was a gold digger the other day whilst the majority of the women on the thread were agreeing her boyfriends behaviour was screaming red flags for financial abuse.

It somehow doesn't suprise me he also expects his wife to tell him what to do to 'help' or otherwise he is 'oblivious' to it

Mumsnet at its mysoginistic and sneeriest finest. The guy is probably as bright as the OP, so why not try and understand why the problem exists, rather than just assuming that all men are wilfully stupid?
probably something to do with wanting to do the most useful thing at the moment to help OP rather than start doing the dusting at breakfast time.

If I get asked this I’m beaming and saying yes please can you:

take the decorations off the tree
put them all in the storage unit
take the trees out and get rid of them

thanks so much babe I really appreciate you

this is just from this afternoon.

i don’t get the problem

he also does loads without asking but if he comes in and I look like I need help he asked what help I need.

maybe he’s scared he will do the wrong thing or not enough of the right things or ask the wrong question and be told off.

not a life I’d enjoy personally

I think we are all coming from our own situations so answers vary. In my case, when my kids were small, I stayed home with them and my husband worked a couple of jobs.

So, though the workings of the house seemed obvious to me, he was really not as acquainted with it as I was.

He did try to help but for ex., he might sort the laundry or run the vacuum cleaner when what we needed right then was dinner made, etc.

We started getting along better when we agreed that I would be the house manager, as far as the daily tasks. Then he'd ask what he could do. And then I didn't feel like I was being forced into the bossy mommy role when I told him. It took the stress level down here.

"To help OP" 🤣

Anyway, you want OP to sit down and start being his therapist to work out why he is useless at running his own household on top of everything else she is doing? Why?! Why is it too much to just expect an adult person to take responsibility for half of their household? If they are that incompetent maybe a move to some kind of assisted living accommodation is in order for them?

I don't know if I've completely misunderstood your post, because you referred to misogyny at the beginning...

I have attached a list from molly maid of what their cleaners do so it's what is expected to keep the house clean so you can print it out and save you doing the task of writing out a list.

Have you heard of fairplay? It's a method of splitting household labour, but not just the excecution of a task task. So I buy all food and it takes me an hour or so to do a meal plan and work out what happens each night/what needs used up, then I go to the shop which takes another hour or so, then I clear out all waste food, clean down the fridge and fruit storage and put away all food. I then make all the dinner and amend as required. I'm not exaggerating to say this total task probably takes around 8 hours a week. If my DH cooks tea one night from the ingredients in the fridge that's 0.5 hours...its not comparable. I am responsible for the entire task. My DH is responsible for the refuse disposal, he takes the bins outside, I don't need to think at all when the bin lorries come, he books dump slots and packs everything, I never have to say oh can you take that to the dump.
It works because we agreed at the start on the minimum standard for each task, that's different for every household eg we do not care if anything is ironed so whoever if responsible for laundry doesn't have to do that and whoever is not responsible doesn't have the right to complain about it/micromanage it.

It's incredibly important to us because we grew up in an incredibly religious patriarchal environment and my role growing up would have been to serve the men in our household. We do not want that for our children and model their dad being responsible for household labour and respecting my time as equally important as his. My eldest DS6 is responsible for keeping his playroom tidy and for emptying the dishwasher every day.

OP, have you tried telling him something like “Before you ask me that question, I want you to go check four different tasks and see if they need doing. If you check four things and none of them need to be done, THEN you can ask me.”

You really shouldn’t have to say that but if you’ve tried talking to him and it’s failed then maybe spelling it out like that would work. My father has always found things to do first and then will say “I’ve done A, B, C, and D. Can you think of anything else you want me to do?” It just seems like the adult way to handle it.

It seems strange to me that an offer to help attracts such vituperation. FWIW my partner and I have just moved in together and we regularly offer to help each other, as we each have our own priorities and ways of doing things. But I’m sure you are correct and a woman offering to help a man would not be seen as evidence of her incompetence.
But seriously, I ask again, if the problem exists, and I’m sure it does, why just assume idiocy rather than trying to understand what causes the failure of communication or comprehension?

Yea I've got one of these, actually pretty much my whole family are like this.

It's amazing though, isn't it, that these men can hold down important jobs - I wonder if they 're asking their bosses every 5 minutes if there is anything that needs doing or getting stressed and upset incase they do it wrong.

Also when people come to stay they miraculously forget that to eat a meal the table needs to be laid and that dirty plates needs washing, unless they are given instructions it's just impossible.

Its also amazing that men never have to ask if anything needs doing to their cars or sports equipment nor do they need help on how they work because they just 'know' or just get on with it. But then I suppose because we're all different and our brains work differently (BIG SIGH)

Give him a taste of his own medicine. Go on strike except for yourself and the kids then if he complains, ask him what he wants you to do for him. Then do a different task and do it badly. If this doesn’t work, leave. It’s easy to underestimate the mental load an unequal
and unwilling partner creates until their home and everything feels easier.

I feel your pain same in this house
Everyone does nothing of their own initiative
Dh on nights so in be at 7am normally gets up around 2.45 when I'm going to do school run, he knows we have dinner when I get back dd1 was looking after that as home from uni and other thing is light the fire.
I came in and he was standing at worktop no fire on. I went mad and then he huffed for the evening. I work full-time but work hours around everyone else in house to be able to taxi whoever needs to go somewhere.
And I'm Menopausal 🤣
If I write a note its don't be telling me what to do, if I don't it's what's for dinner what time will I put meat on veg potatoes.
Can't win

The way I find works to stop this OP is to make him entirely responsible for an end to end process.

So my DH does the cooking. So that means he does the meal planning, the washing up and keeps the kitchen clean and tidy and does the food shopping and checks what we are running low on.

I on the other hand do the cleaning and the laundry. From start to finish no input from him (unless of course one or the other of us is ill)

What that means is I don't get asked questions about what he should do with anything food related because that's entirely his domain. And he doesn't need to worry about keeping anything outside of the kitchen clean and tidy.

Gardening however is still shared, which means he doesn't do a thing out there unless I ask him, or he remembers to ask me what to do even though we do the same tasks at the same time each year (amd I've saved some in the shared calender like when the potatoes need to be planted etc)

So separating the tasks can help, but we normally don't have children here (currently have a niece living with us) and it's much easier to do this without kids.

Why just assume idiocy? Yeah, certainly to begin with a gentle conversation (or a few such conversations) to find out if there is a problem and what we can do together to help them is fair. Maybe they are struggling for one reason or another to understand what to do and maybe they even feel embarrassed or upset about the situation. I wouldn't like for my spouse to genuinely be trying and getting upset that it's just not working out.

But after a while the person needs to understand this idea of mental load, that for me to tell them every time what to do is just another job for me to do. There is only so much being gentle and loving and understanding a person can do before they just have to assume that their spouse is either stupid or lazy. It doest help matters when, as other people have said, the person knows how to organise their hobby or prepare for a night out with their friends or other things that matter to them, fun things.

I get what you mean but theres absolutely no point in never ending angst about it.

Make a list of jobs with his name at the top. Stick 2 copies of list on wall - not next to each other. Those are his jobs. Thats it. Pount to list every time he asks, if he asks in what order say 1 word: ANY. Dont give him leeway.

Somehow you sound as if you're doing everything anyway so thats why he gets away with it. If a man asked me what jobs need doing I'd rattle off 3 immediately and seamlessly, never mind all this inner seething. You asked, I answered, get it done.

I mean of course your H knows whats to be done but I doubt he'll change so, you'll have to.

Turn the tables and start asking him. And then when he inevitably says it back or looks surprised, just tell him it’s his turn now. And keep asking and asking until he forms some thoughts of his own.

Good luck, my ex was like this. Would never date anyone who behaves like this again, it’s so annoying.

😂😂😂

Get a whiteboard and write a list of daily / weekly chores and cross off as you go. All he needs to do then is check the board