DH and I are foul to one another

[tiredsince2020]

I don’t know if anyone else experiences this, but far from being the best version of myself around DH I become irritable, snappy, defensive, sarcastic and passive aggressive, and I feel he’s much the same to me.

We have a lot of pressures on us as a family. We have two very young children (young toddler and preschool stage), I work three days a week, DH is full time but because his job does take him away sometimes and is a long commute he isn’t around much during the week. I feel he isn’t very supportive. For example yesterday I took both children out of the house in the morning to a church event, when I came home the house was still a tip. I didn’t expect a deep clean or anything but just a quick tidy of toys would have been good. I feel all the house stuff falls on me and it’s impossible to keep on top of. As a result the state of the house is a factor in everyone’s stress levels. But no sooner is it immaculate and gleaming than it is trashed.

I don’t feel he’s very supportive with the children - he does love them, but he’s happy to leave the kind of day to day mechanics to me and if we ever disagree on something it often doesn’t get addressed properly, meaning it just kind of festers.

I am sure there’s things he isn’t happy about with me too. But it comes out in these horrible ways. I know people will say to talk it out but I am not sure how. Mostly it I try to talk to him about something serious it ends up being my fault somehow or he just dismisses it.

I know I’ve painted him in a bad light here and honestly I was ready to tell him I wanted to end the marriage yesterday, and that might still happen but I really, really don’t want it to. Not for me but the children.

Your original post positioned it as a bit of a mutual issue, with perhaps him being a bit thoughtless and lazy and, frankly, like so many men - conditioned to just assume he doesn't have to prioritise home and family.

But as often happens on MN, the more you post, the more it becomes clear that the issue is actually significantly more than this. It's about the fact that your H clearly does NOT care about you, or your children. When you raise issues or problems, he shuts you down or turns it on you. When your children or you need help, he does not feel that is something he needs to provide. When you are struggling, he does not think about how he could make your life a bit easier.

Which means that sadly, your early comment that "he does not love" you is probably true. I'm really sorry. That sounds so blunt and so harsh. But it is what it is.

Could you write down everything that happened in the house over the course of 24 hours and put the name beside who responded/actioned it.
go kids up and dressed- me
made breakfast and loaded dishwasher- me
school run- me
read email about Halloween email and sorted costume- me
rang MIL to check on her- me

and so on. Get him to do the same. Swap
lists.

If you find you're hitched to a selfish or slobby person then it's no good being extra nice to them and hoping they become a better person. They won't.

Better to decide on your own red lines, to prioritise your own needs where you can.

Generally it does involve doing the thinking regarding the children, however - no way round that if the dad is actually dippy or selfish enough not to care if they have the stuff they need.

Well maybe he does love her/them...but loves himself more...

I know that the advice from @Stoufer @Needlenardlenoo and @MyrtleStrumpet is well meant, but the bottom line here is that @tiredsince2020 is banging her head against a brick wall, trying everything she can to make things run better, and her husband is sitting on his arse, well aware of how much this is affecting her but will not make any shred of effort to do anything about it. This household is not her responsibility alone. OP is reduced to keeping quiet and getting on with it, and I know how that feels. I just don't speak to dH much at all now as everything I would say would be a snipe and a moan, and I don't want to be that person. There is literally nothing positive I could say to him. I know nothing is going to change, kids are 16 and 12 now, and that I have to leave. As usual, I am delaying doing that because of the worry of whether it will make things worse for the kids. Your comment on your husband hearing your daughter crying and just sitting there, that's just bloody awful. I remember once during a storm last year frantically hammering bin bags onto the conservatory roof, rain lashing into my face, while he sat there watching Question Time. That's when you know they just couldn't give a shit and there's nothing you can do. I don't see any other solution than to leave this situation, he's not going to change. I understand how hard that is though.

It's true the updates are more concerning than the original post. If she's speaking to him and nothing changes or even worse, is scared of speaking to him for fear of moaning and snappiness as a retaliation, that's not good.

No advice but solidarity. Everything you've said resonates.
I can't see it ever changing for me.
Hope it does for you.
X

too small and I said this and then it was ‘well why does she have clothes that are too small in her wardrobe?’ and I bite back that I’ve had no time to go through and sort her wardrobe …

Both parties have assumed that the child's wardrobe contents is the responsibility of the mother.

I thought this article was good, in terms of what stage you might be at: www.huffpost.com/entry/stages-dying-marriage-divorce_l_6709b126e4b03acb5636d60d?utm_source=cordial&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=hp-us-reg-morning-email_2024-10-18&utm_term=us-morning-email&email_hash=19d8c722410e3e31fea5dba7689bfb525725a586

I really wish people would stop posting about effing cleaners! I don’t want a cleaner!

I think it’s one of those … it isn’t that he doesn’t care about DD, he’d have gone to her if I wasn’t there, but I was there, so he got to sit down a while longer.

Re the laundry suggestion, if I don’t do his … the children’s and mine is ten times more so that’s not making much difference.

I don’t know, it isn’t going to change so it is largely getting through. I’m just so tired and fed up today. I have a rare day off, it’s literally the one day I’m going to have until February, and it’s solely on housework and that’s so fucking depressing.

@TheWomanWithTheStick true (and I'm sorry you're in a similar situation).

I do firmly believe that you have to protect yourself when saddled with a partner who is content to pile work on you. And that could mean leaving, ultimately. Worth knowing you did everything you could first.

OP keep a copy of your original post here. Would be worth revisiting in a few months to see if anything's improved or got worse.

OK, you don't want a cleaner.

Is there anything else you could outsource?

I hear that you are beyond frustrated with the situation, but your DH is not going to change probably.

I really feel for you OP, I have a family member like you, but I'm afraid it doesn't get any better, the light you see at the end of the tunnel (after they start school for example) won't make you feel any better because the fundamental problem is your DH is not a partner to you, he's a passenger, and a lazy one at that.

The resentment will build and build until there is no love left at all, that's where she is at now, she has stuck it out for years, and they do have some good times together, but they are few and far between in between the festering resentment and outright hatred.

From my point of view the worst thing she did is start to nag.. I don't agree with nagging at all, and will never do it personally, I think it sets a dangerous precedent that the man won't then do anything unless he is specifically told (and then nagged when he's not done it) it makes a rod for your own back, it makes her so stressed and doesn't actually achieve what she wants, which is a partner who can use his eyeballs and his brain.

The easiest solution we have at home is to have set chores and each take care of them, it actually varies for us week on week as we both do the same chores, but we pick up each others slack voluntarily so we can swap and change, depending on what we are doing at the time and what is convenient. But if you have someone who is lazy and leaves it to you, make sure he has assigned chores and DO NOT do them yourself if he leaves it, you've got to leave your martyr head on the shelf.

Does he do any chores or take any responsibility off your hands?

Agree
It's a type of DA
Leaving CC,cleaning, domestic tasks solely to another partner, refusing to parent AND being verbally abusive when asked to contribute is now classed as controlling and DA.
It's rife
It limits womens choices, social choices, work and financial choices whilst a man's career generally takes off .

Guessing you don't want to go straight to leaving otherwise you wouldn't have posted here and would have just gone about getting a lawyer.

DH and I aren't in the best place and similarly, he just doesn't really see the mess, so here's some things that have worked better for us. Admittedly we do have older children which makes it easier:

• To Do List app. I set it all up with weekly/monthly cleaning jobs (which took a while). We both have it on our phones.
• Saturdays, one of us goes and does the grocery shop, the other does jobs off the To Do List. The shopper could take the kids to give the cleaner time to crack on. I always let DH choose what he wants to do (because I don't honestly mind). Repeated on Sunday for an hour with a timer. One of you could take the kids somewhere and one of you do house jobs if it's too tricky with them about.
• I don't iron/put away DH's clothes. They get left in a pile by his side of the bed. I also do no cleaning in his office, don't collect plates/cups etc.
• Train the kids as they get older to (a) see the mess and (b) deal with it. My teen doesn't have any washing done unless she brings her wash basket down, I don't remind her.
• We got rid of a shit ton of stuff. It's much easier to clean and tidy the less you have. Consider toy rotation if you can't get rid and sling half of it in the attic. If there's half the toys available, there's automatically half the maximum mess.
• I do no life admin for my husband either. He's missed a variety of birthdays including his mum's. It's taken a load of admin stress off me. I take no responsibility for anything to do with his family. They're nice, we're all pleasant, but I'm not his PA. He doesn't remind me about my family, so why would I do it for his?
• And... finally, before the kids start school, set up a family email address so all correspondence goes there and you can both access it. Schools often send to just one parent, so this way, you both have the info.

Edited for typos

So don't do it. Go out somewhere. Visit a stately home, go for cocktails, a long walk or whatever you love to do.

Have some time for you to do the things you want to do. Ellen Burstyn called them "should-less" days, where you stop thinking "I should":

"I have what I call should-less days. Today is a day where there's nothing I should do. So I only do what I want to do. And if it's nap in the afternoon or watch TV and eat ice cream, I get to do it," Burstyn explains. "Should-less days, I recommend them. Because what I figured out, is we have wiring, I have wiring in my brain that calls me lazy if I'm not doing something. God, you're so lazy … And that wiring is there. I haven't been able to get rid of it"

Forget what happens when you get back, take the rest of the day for yourself.

He isn’t verbally abusive to be fair. I would agree that is a form of abuse.

It is more passive aggressive snipes (on both sides) often dressed up as ‘jokes’ but not always.

I would really appreciate it though if posters could stop writing lists of things for me to do. I don’t need advice on housework, I can do the housework. It is time and also the fact that no sooner have I cleared one area of the house than someone else trashes it.

Yeah @MyrtleStrumpet i get that. But actually it does have to be done some time. It’s like ignoring something pressing at work. It just doesn’t work, some shit just had to be done!

We used yo do an evening tidy. Get kids in bed and set a timer 20mins and take a room each. Usually kitchen and sitting room and do such as we could then sit down together for half an hour.
It's being in the trenches with kids preschool age. We used to have the most tremendous arguments over lie ins

@ComingBackHome I changed how I spoke to him first, and it was hard as he was still in battle mode.

Once we were communicating better and not 'at war' over the dishes, I then did lay down some boundaries about contributions, time at home and so on.

Not saying it is perfect.just 100% times better than when we were constantly bickering. I am not happy with the way I was as a mother at that time either, but the (now older) children say they understand why I was snappy and shouty a lot of the time.

I take a similar approach to @NonStopMoaning. Brisk. Jobs need doing. Will you do X or Y?

Just wanted to add that it's worth thinking about how things were organised in your families of origin.

Sometimes you're replicating unhelpful patterns from the past quite unconsciously.

DH and I used to argue all the time about finances - not money so much as financial management.

Eventually the penny (haha) dropped for me that my dad did all that so I was expecting DH to.

But why?! He sucks at it and I'm good at it (in no small part because I had a good role model in my dad).

OP, when there are two of you, and you have small kids, parenting is supposed to be a team effort. I imagine it like a pair of horses pulling a heavy cart. You and he should be pulling together in the same direction, supporting each other, and when you do that it's managable. Instead what you seem to have is one person pulling all the weight of the cart, and the other person at best sitting on the cart making it heavier, and at worst actively digging his heels in to make it harder. And then when you complain, he's refusing to engage, and making out he's entitled to sit on the cart. Of course you're exhausted.

I don't have any answers, but I do empathise. A cleaner isn't a solution. It might alleviate the day to day drudgery, but it doesn't solve the problem, if anything it embeds it by letting him off the hook further. And of course you would be the one to arrange it and pay the cleaner, and be available to let her in and deal with it when she cancels etc etc, and almost inevitably it will be another womam cleaning up so your husband doesn't have to step up. None of that solves your problem.

The problems are, I think, that he doesn't care and that he won't engage with you to try and make it better. He doesn't love and respect you enough to want to lighten your load at all. And as a reslut your respect and love for him is being killed off too. I would never let my husband shoulder all the burdens of running the family and the home, and neither would he. We've been through periods where either of us was the main breadwinner and the other at home with the kids, and we both pitch in and pick up. That's how it should be. If I feel overwhelmed, I can tell him, and he will talk to me about what we can do as a team to make it better, and I do the same with him.

I don't know how you fix that lack of care and respect. If I did, then I'd probably be a millionaire. But there's a good chance it can't be fixed, and only you can decide what you do about that. But going back to the cart horse analogy, if you leave him, you would still have a heavy burden to pull, but at least he wouldn't be making it heavier. It might even be lighter at times.

I would add that it is shit. My inlaws failed both DH and myself by not instilling in him the importance of domestic duties in support of their partner. My MIL did it all and still does, the men don't. I had issues when I met him and showed love via acts of service so it wasn't an obvious problem.

But, I'm not wanting to divorce so I have to have ways to make it work to lessen the resentment.

On the plus side, my son is being trained up to do chores, see mess and generally crack on. My daughter is being trained up to expect more of her partner. I can't fix my DH and make him be the domestically supportive partner I want/need, but I can change small things and work with my children so they aren't in the same position.

But your husband doesn't see the urgency, does he?

Only you know if that's because he's a slob (what was his place like before you moved in together?) or because he knows you'll crack first.

For instance, I have realised over the years DH would genuinely not care much if no-one celebrated his birthday so he's quite mystified that other people place so much importance on them.

He feels similarly about clean kitchen floors, decor and dust and tbf that was perfectly obvious when I met him.

Add to this the thing that seems most important to me - it appears he doesn’t love you.

Doesn’t sound like you love him either?

One day it won’t be the cleanliness or the night time get ups or the childcare that ends thing. It will be the affair that one of you has.

You can hire cleaners, you can get childcare… how are you going to fill the need to be cared for?