Hello! Seeking advice from anyone who has gone through this or is going through this. Sorry for the long explanation. We've been married nearly 25 years so this isn't a simple story...
I am a plus 50 woman with a DD at Uni. I still have a professional full-time career. DH when I met him was a low wage worker and we worked well as a couple bringing up our daughter, it made financial sense when he was made redundant when DD was 6 for him not to seek a new job and he was delighted at that and was the one who did the cooking, cleaning, etc when DD was little. His adage was 'all the time you go to work you don't need to lift a finger, that is my job'. He would decorate, tidy, look after the pet visits, arrange for repairs if he couldn't do it himself (I would pay), take things to charity shop. etc. I would do the garden, cook breakfast at the weekends, pay for all the bills, all the holidays, all the time out etc. It is probably similar to a lot of relationships where there is one SAHP.
Roll forward and the house is a tip. It used to be lovely. He used to care, he used to vaccum and mop floors, decorate each room reguarly. He would notice things if they were broken and sort them or arrange to get them fixed. I have a bit of time but not masses. I also don't have masses of spare money for lots of tradespeople but now find I am having to do the house, the shopping, find I am working a second job to pay for tradespeople and the maintenance and my major rubicon is the clutter. He likes to now go to play sports, meet up with friends and the house and time together gets neglected. He cooks maybe three times a week. Our spare bedroom where DD used to be able to invite friends back to stay but the room is now full of his old clothes. He has been asked to sort through them by myself and DD many times but he will not. They are in laundry baskets. He has even bought new laundry baskets and piled them on top of the old ones rather than sort the older ones out. I have put them in the back of the car to take the charity shop and the reaction has been one like I have stabbed him in the back and so can't begin to try that again.
My major stress is the clutter and the cost of redecoration and maintenance. The hoarding started during lockdown with a sense of love, it was his responsibility to cook for us all and he panicked if there wasn't enough pasta etc, so now we have (I do not exagerate) 20 bags of pasta, we have a minimum of 60 toilet rolls, we have 15 bottles of bleach, we have 7 jars of coffee. We have 7 tubs of gravy granules. Extrapolate that to all the major food and cleaning products and every work surface, every corner of every shelf and floor of the bathroom is covered with jars, bottles, boxes of stuff. The cupboards and the tops of cupboards were filled up about three years ago. The bathrooms are full of cleaning products and toilet rolls.
When I gently question what he sees when he enters a room he says the rooms are ok and don't need redecorating or clearing of clutter but the peeling paint and piled up 'stuff' says otherwise (to me at least). Recently I got in someone to decorate as he was adamant the spattered walls he had spilled coffee down and splashed bleach up were 'perfectly fine'. I painted some doors that had gone yellow (8pm to 11pm a few nights in a row after work) and he said I was being 'pretentious' and inconsiderate of his needs to change things. Previously the agreement was he would do it and I would pay for paint. He won't even clean his own shower and it has mould and grime. It must be 10 years since he picked up a paint brush. As his bathroom is the family one whenever someone stays it is a gagantuan task to get it respectable. I have to do it when he is comatose on the sofa after going out so he doesn't realise as otherwise he thinks I am critiscising his cleaning (which I am but get shouted at if he is aware of it). I think he has a mental health issue but he says his attitude to food stores and decorating and cleaning is normal. Nothing except the work surfaces in the kitchen are cleaned by DH. He used to clean the oven and dishwasher but no more, he latest suggestion was that it was cheaper (i.e. he didn't have to pay or put in the effort) to get a new dishwasher if it broke so why make the effort.
I am embarrased to have people round. Yes he does do the washing of the clothes but no longer the beds, I have to strip all the beds and clean which I don't mind, but do mind when he shouts at me that I am having a go at him by doing it. This is now once every three weeks which is a bit cringy but I don't always have the time or the emotional energy to argue with him, he used to do it every week or every two weeks. I feel like I can't win. It is tearing our nearly quarter century marriage apart. Our daughter comes home from Uni and is similarly embarrased, she does her own washing which is ok but she wants to invite friends home and struggles to feel she is able to do so. She tried to talk to her dad and the standard response is 'we don't live in a show home'. Of course we don't but beyond that there is no reasoning with him.
My tipping point for this message is that I now have had to step over a row of boxes of clothes to get out of a bedroom to get to the bathroom. There is no way to walk through from one room to the other without stepping over. The boxes are going nowhere apparently. I put the boxes of excess clothes quitely up in the loft along with the Christmas decorations but they found their way magically back down. I feel a sense of dread that it will only get worse. I know through some work I do in the community and have seen hoarders that it is a slipperly slope.
How do I move forward? How do I get the message across to someone who is confidently happy in their miasma of clutter and dank mould? Or am I am the one that should be accepting that mould, significant clutter, coffee speckled and faded rooms are perfectly acceptable? I don't want to do the tit-for-tat and stop being kind and stop doing breakfast at the weekend 'to get the message across' as some of my friends have suggested. I feel this would only escalate rather than resolve matters. Any questioning has already made things worse. I am so worn down I no longer know what is right. I had imagined growing old with this (previously) lovely man, but now I am feeling so very very sad at even the thought of anything other than that. How do I bring him back, is that even possible, am I living in cloud cuckoo land? Thank you for reading.