I don't feel happy anymore, has DH always been lazy arrogant and selfish?.

[Wigglesworth]

Sorry this could get epic as I try to get it off my chest. I don't have anyone to talk to in RL about this. Everyone we know thinks he is lovely, he is quiet, polite and talks sensibly and is very conservative around other people.
I'm not sure if my DH has always been selfish and I am only just realising it now. Maybe I tolerated his lazy selfish ways but now that we have DS I don't have as much time and patience to deal with it.
Basically he does nothing around the house off his own back. If I ask him to do something small like take the bin out or change DS he huffs like I am nagging him or stalls until I have to ask him again which makes me look like a nagging cow. We both work, him 37 hrs per week, me 30 hrs per week, we both do the same job at the same place.
He called me heartless and cold last week because I don't get sentimental over absolutely everything. He obsesses over the way he looks, if someone has a better car than him, has a better score than him on his x-box game (which he plays on lots, although alot better than he used to be since we had a very long "chat" about it).
He sings really high pitched and loudly in the car, it is so fucking irritating, yet he is convinced he sounds good. After about 5 mins of this in the car yesterday I tried to start a conversation about a hitch hiker we saw yesterday to shut him up without actually telling him to. He said I stifle him, hate him singing and will use any excuse to stop him doing so. He always tries to make me feel like a bitch.
Yesterday again I was in the kitchen cooking lunch and I accidently knocked DS over. DS always has a habit of standing right behind me and clinging to my legs, DH told me I am a clumsy cow and should watch what I am doing. God he is being such a fuckbag lately.
I can't make my mind up whether he has always been like this and I was blind and am only just now realising it or whether he has slowly changed into a cunt that uses every opportunity to make me feel like a heartless clumsy nagging old wife. I am now starting to think I would be happier alone, I don't want to be I would love to make it work and be a happy family unit. I very much doubt he would go to counselling TBH, I just don't know how to deal with it. We are not speaking to each other ATM and I feel like I want to tackle him about everything tonight but don't know what to say.
Sorry that was very long.

Yeah, men like the "nagging" card. They won't do stuff if they're not asked, if you ask them once you're "telling them what to do" and they don't like that, if you have to ask them twice you're "nagging". Just a way of making everything your fault!

Sorry, no practical advice here... (except re the cooking, tell him he's incredibly rude and should direct his energies into either doing the cooking or looking after DS while you cook!)

Well, you can try being absolutely & totally Adult the whole time with him - never retaliate, always stay calm, don't respond to personal criticisms or moans except to say "Sorry you feel that way", make constructive suggestions like the above. It could work.

I have to agree, he sounds like a prat.

I don't even ask him to do any washing, ironing, cleaning, cooking, food shopping, bathing DS, feeding DS. I do it all, he never offers to do any of it. If I do ask him to pick his pile of clothes off the floor and sort then out and he does it he expects to be thanked and says "see you never give me any praise". WTF, I guess I am enabling his behavoir by doing everything but if I didn't we would live in a shit hole which wouldn't bother him one bit TBH.
He never appreciates anything i do for him and takes it for granted. I am always made out to be the bad guy.
Another example of his selfishness, I am setting up a training course at work which i have done some work on. We both do the same job but he is training for a promotion. I have helped him and looked at his work and given him my opinion. I asked him last weekend to look at something I had done and he said "yeah i will look at it this weekend." I asked him again and he just said yeah later but you know more about it than me so i'm sure it will be fine. It got to the point at work when I had to hand in my work and he hadn't looked at it. I came home that night and brought it to him to look at and we noticed something which could have been made better. He said "why didn't you ask me to check it earlier". I said "I did twice" and he said "well I didn't realise how important it was you should have brought it to me and said please look at it it's important." WTF, so basically what he is saying is I have to beg him for his support yet i drop everything to help him, and it once again is my own fault. He convinces himself that he is in the right when he is actually profoundly selfish and self obsessed.

So basically you have a toddler and an adolescent in the house.

I have no advice to offer other than my sympathy. When DH acts like that I tell him just how sexy I find having a whining teenager rather than a husband is. I find he bucks his ideas up for a while after that.

IME experience they won't offer to do anything, they need to be trained to take responsibility. Its worth putting this effort in to train them though.

a) Make a list of all the household chores and sit down together and divvy up ownership and responsibility of each chore. Include things like car maintenance and garden stuff too. You each agree what things you will take responsibility for doing. This gives the other person the right to remind the other to do it.

b) get a cleaner!

Kiwi is right. Sit down with him and write out a list of all the things that need done. And don't forget things like taking out the bin, unblocking the toilet/house meaintenance, car maintenance etc - which might show him up in a better light when it comes to it.

He is behaving like a teenager, and you should explain that you want it to work and therefore want to be able to fancy him - which means him showing you respect, and you seeing him as an equal rather than another dependant.

As an aside, start thinking about how you would cope without him there. do you have things in place, how are the finances set up? Do you earn enough to cover the costs adn childcare etc by yourself. Would you have any other support. Never does any harm to know where you stand on that side of things as it will give you a stronger understanding of what could happen if you don't manage to sort this out.

Obviously hope you can get this sorted. Think it is just a case of immaturitis (xbox and snide comments show this).

Sounds to me like there is more to this than just not helping out. He seems to think the world revolves around him, and not to have much consideration of you at all. He also seems to get a kick out of telling you what a horrible person you are, though he doesn't seem to have any intention of leaving as long as you keep doing everything he wants!

Some of the stuff, like the singing, actually sounds like he might well be doing it deliberately to wind you up (and then be able to put you down if you react), do you think that could be true?

You could try getting more assertive on him (e.g. refusing to let him speak to you that way, refusing to let him demand praise for little things while he doesn't give you any, etc...) and/or dragging him to counselling; but I think he does need to change his whole attitude, not just the jobs he does, if you are going to be able to make this work.

I had one of these models.. he's now my XH and I'm hoping to upgrade to a more mature version. Very wearing indeed to live like this!

Do agree though, spell it out. Create the list, tell him you aren't putting up with this any more, and you expect him to pull his weight. Don't automatically do things for him, definitely don't be martyrish about it. XH always mildly improved if I told it to him straight, I just got fed up of doing it on a weekly/daily basis.