I have been with my dh for well over 30 years. We are both in our early 60s. A long running bone of contention has been his lack of input regarding domestic chores.
It's got worse. He does so little around the house I am ashamed to admit it. He also does next to nothing in the garden, and in fact the garden is full of his rubbish which he can't even be bothered to arrange disposal of. I have over the last few months genuinely had enough. I do enough now to get us through without the house being a complete tip. I do all the washing, the majority of the dishwashing, change the bedsheets, tidy the house, clean the bathroom. His regular chores seems to consist of cleaning the kitchen sink and occasionally the bathroom sink. He leaves his breakfast things out all day. Shoes in the hallway. I have counted this am 5 jackets of his in the kitchen just sitting on chairs.
It came to a head yesterday (it does about every 6 months) when he told me I had more time than him to go through the freezer and get rid of out of date food (I realise even as I type this how pathetic this all sounds) than him. I asked why, and he said because I work from home. I have a full time permanent job, and work from home 3 days a week. I already use my lunch breaks to tidy etc. He has a consultant type role, also works from home, it is probably currently 4 full days a week but can vary and some weeks / months he has no paid work at all. This never coincides with him doing any extra chores by the way. He will literally sit and watch me in the kitchen when I have returned from a day at the office put my bag down and start to clear his stuff up and just think that is ok.
So we had the usual shit argument but I realised that we never actually address the fact that he does sod all. I raise the issue, get accused of being short tempered, snappy etc and we end up arguing about that and nothing ever gets resolved. This time I asked him to keep on topic and that I was telling him how upset I felt that he did nothing around the house and I didn't understand why he thought it was fair and that is what I wanted to talk about. He refused to address this - just kept saying how I must be hungry (I am deliberately losing weight as I was very obese and I am changing that) and that's why I am "bad tempered". We are now not talking (again a familiar pattern). He said "as a joke" that the fat me was a much nicer person. When I was very fat and we had this argument he would say I had OCD because I wanted a pristine house, I didn't, I just wanted things to be clean and tidy. So he's moved his insults on.
I actually think I have had enough. I can not face spending my retirement (when I get to it) clearing up his shit. I can't. Why should I? I am also thinking that he is gaslighting me deliberately and I don't like that. The rest of our relationship is good, we have fun, he is kind in many other ways, we do things together, but this is huge. It's like we can only be in a good place relationship wise if I put up and shut up.
In real life I am a feisty woman, known for not taking any nonsense. But I do with him. We could split and I'd be ok financially, not in a fantastic place, but ok, I earn more than him, have a reasonable pension and we have joint savings. We own our house outright and it has a lot of equity. I expect I would end up giving him money. I have never thought this before, always just looked at the smaller picture. But something feels different as though I have reached the end of the line. I know that this is partly my fault, I have put up with it for too long, I guess I was programmed into thinking it wasn't a big deal, but it was and it is. I don't know what to do.