Husbands perfection is exhausting

[Allboyshouse]

My husband works very hard, he will not do half a job whether it’s at home or in his place of work (he’s a builder!) which is great … but there are frequent times mostly at the weekend when half a job actually is ok …but his brain cannot compute that you would want to do anything other than perfection. This can become incredibly exhausting when I’m pretty chilled, even my mother in law doesn’t understand how I’ve tolerated him for the last 20 years! Even on holiday it feels like we (me and our 2 sons) are a chore to be with … he wants to cycle at 5am and although doesn’t outwardly say it… I know he thinks we are lazy for not motivating ourselves to get up and go with him! I’m grateful for him and how hard he works , he has so much love to give us all and is kind and funny… but his obsession with perfection and work (he admits the only time he is 100% satisfied is when he’s grafting!) is exhausting…and my vision of the next 20 years together foresees a grumpy old man by my side. I’m sure that there is probably some undiagnosed neurodivergence in there …. But I dont know how to get his brain to accept that Ok is ok!!!

Is it a bit of a fear thing for him? He somehow thinks what he does / believes isn’t good enough, so it has to be perfect?
I don’t know if this is helpful or not, but years ago I line managed someone like this. They did a really good job, but took ages further refining things when it was actually finished.
We discussed the ‘good enough’ principle and talked about the end goal/outcome, e.g. the purpose of the activity is to do x and once x is done, further work isn’t actually adding value and it’s wasted effort. I don’t know if you can apply that to him, but it did help in this situation. Good luck!

are household tasks fairly split? Or is the workaholic only for paid work?

Is it an obsession with perfection or is he just bored when he doesn’t have a task?

My DH is the same, nothing is quick. He likes to cook it takes ages, expensive ingredients, hungry wife and children waiting for the food, top notch food though but it’s so slow.
anything he undertakes becomes expensive and slow due to his perfectionism
deffo neurodivergent
love him lots

You won’t be able to change him unless he feels that he needs to change. This will be deep routed stuff learnt in childhood I’m afraid.

The best thing you can do is accept it and not expect him to do anything else! So if he’s doing a job rather than getting frustrated it’s taking 2 hours, mentally assign the next 2 hours to it so you’re not upset it’s taking ages; you’ve already accepted it will.

I sometimes find it helpful to try to feel sorry for people instead of getting frustrated - can you feel sorry for him that he’s so driven and can never relax with a sense of satisfaction? It must be horrible being so pressured by your own standards the whole time.