Help me stop treating DH like a child

[fruitstick]

or rather, help me force DH to stop behaving like a child.

I do love him and most of the time we are very happy. The problem is he just behaves like such a bloody child most of the time.

I feel I'm to blame for this as I've allowed it continue (we've been together 15 years) but now that I have 2 DCs I would like him to take care of himself.

He has such major tantrums they are embarrassing, nothing is ever his fault and he leaves everything to me as he knows I won't let things go undone/makes me feel guilty for not helping him.

This week he has had a very busy week at work and has been very stressed about a big presentation he is doing at a conference tomorrow. Cue bad temper all week. I've cooked dinner, sorted kids out, done his washing, ironed his shirts, picked up his dry cleaning while he's been working but I've got nothing but monosyllabic answers and whines.

Things came to a head this morning when he was due to leave for his conference and couldn't find his car keys. Much drama, shouting, rummaging through house during which time he constantly blamed me for moving them from where he knew he'd left them.

We were on our way to school but had to stop and help him look. After 10 minutes of him storming about the house, I found them in his suit trouser pocket in the wardrobe.

Not an apology, nothing.

Last week he bumped another car as he was reversing out of our drive and he blamed me for parking badly.

If he gets a parking ticket he leaves it for me to pay as he knows I won't let it go unpaid (we had bailiffs once because he'd ignored one).

I sort out all the banking, bills, kids the lot.

I don't want to leave him - I do love him, but how on earth do I make him grow up and take responsibility for himself and actually just not take his tantrummy frustrations out on me.

The worst of it is I hear myself talking to him like I talk to my 4 year old. If I had a naughty step he'd probably spend more time on it than DS!

no help - but mine's the same.

ignore bad behaviour, praise good maybe?

well it's a thought. It just all gets so wearing after a while.

fruit
he is doing it because it works just fine.

If Dh was arsey with me I would not be looking for reasons why he may be so stressed.
I find the 'speak to me like that again and you can do x, y and z on your own' works with my 16 year old . Perhaps you could try that.

And why, if he is shouting at you for losing his keys, is your reaction to stop what you are doing to help him? I would have walked out and left him to it - especially as I assume he was behaving like this in front of your children.

I really don't understand.
Putting up with this behaviour or leaving him are not the only options. Stop letting him behave so badly without consequences.

Agree with pag. If he acts like a whiney sulky teenager treat him like one and reprimand him for his lack of respect Might make him think before he acts like a 14 year old...

these man-children make me want to spew

Agreed AF
But man-children only exist because of wife-mummies

pag...I said a similar thing on a thread recently and found myself with a new arsehole

Are you secretly married to my DH?

I don't have much advice I'm afraid although I dont' get involved with the 'where's my.....' conversations anymore. I just say 'don't know' and leabve it at that. If he wants to stomp about that's his business.

Its hard about banking, bills, kids, parking fines. I'm a 'if it needs doing then do it' kind of person. He's a 'if someone else will do it then let them' kind of person.

I would have carried on to school. You're enabling him.

My ex was like that. I never got him to change so in the end I left (well it was one of many things but still)

Yoy have my sincerest sympathies and I hope you have more success than I ever did

You are right of course.

The ridiculous thing is I don't let my 4 year old get away with it. When I put it down on paper so to speak it is ridiculous to expect he will behave any other way when he sees his father doing it.

DS1 just followed him round this morning saying 'Daddy, I haven't had your keys'

I really need to put a stop to this now before DSs get any older and he starts blaming THEM for things.

I need a phrasebook of things to say.

Well, I'd carry on with the banking and stuff, but parking tickets? Look for stuff of his that is equal to the cost of the fine, stick post it notes on it, and tell him that's where you'll direct the bailiffs if he doesn't pay. And stuff doing his shirts, etc - these things should be done, if at all, as part of a reciprocal relationship.

yikes
[covers ample bottom]

ditto agree AF.
I know a couple like this. ive known them for 10 years. she's matured, and he hasnt. he hasnt made a meal for her in 8 YEARS.

Point to your 4 yo, and say, "would you let him talk to you like that? No? Well, in that case, don't do it to me". And repeat. Ad nauseam.

fruitstick,

You don't necessarily need a phrasebook of things to say, you yourself need to change how you react to him and his manchild ways.

Bet you as well he does not throw a wobbly tantrum when he is at work; he is doing all this at home as it suits him and you jump to it.

Stop enabling this manchild. You have two children already (who are watching all this and learning from you both), you do not need a third to run around after. You are not responsible for him. Let him take the full consequences of his actions, stop acting as another Mummy figure.

Presumably his own Mother ran around after both his Dad and he when he was a child so this is deeply inbuilt as well. He expects you now to carry on in this same vein and to date you have. He won't change but you can change how you react to him.

I've done quite a lot of work around Transactional Analysis - and lots of work over 28 years with a DH who used to behave like a child to my parent! Fortunately, I put a stop to this years ago, because it is a truly terrible dynamic for an adult romantic relationship.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that treating your DH like a child or a teenager will only exacerbate the problem. You must treat him like an adult.

I was misunderstood about this on a thread last week, so for clarity, I do not mean that you should stop making kind gestures towards a partner who is having a stressful time of it. But when you do those things out of love, in a healthy relationship, they should be warmly appreciated and reciprocated when the situations are reversed.

The only way to do this is to sit down and have an adult-adult chat. People who operate from the child ego state very often engage in passive-aggressive behaviours, so if you've found that any remonstration with these partners has ever resulted in huffy, sarcastic responses, you will recognise it.
It needs a low, calm voice and a refusal to engage in sarcasm or similar passive-aggression.

Your message needs to be that you will not be taking responsibility for things that he has done. When it comes to household issues, you should divide things up into what each is responsible for - and that includes a responsibility to perform the job well. Very often, the child-adult will deliberately do a job so badly that the adult in the relationship needs to rescue the situation and do it properly. This usually results in an accusation of you being anal and perfectionist. The end result therefore is that you feel you may as well have done the task yourself, which from the adult-child's perspective, is a wonderful result.

Don't get involved therefore in jobs that are your H's responsibility. If he does it badly, ask him to do it again.

Refuse to accept blame for things that are not your doing. Tell him that you won't be taking responsibility for those things in future.

One of the better incentives in this situation is that your sex lives will improve immeasurably if you know that you are sleeping with an adult who takes responsibility. It might need you to be very honest about how your sex lives are suffering because of the resentment his behaviour breeds. If nothing else, that is a hell of a wake-up call, that this behaviour is a massive turn-off.

In a romantic relationship, just as in our relationships with friends, colleagues and managers, adult-adult interactions achieve the best result.

No-one signed up to be a mother to an adult we were having sex with, so stop the rot now.

WWIFN - intersting post.

As ever, perfect post from WWIFN. Could I employ you to be my personal counsellor?

We have never been able to resolve this behaviour and are now separating after a very long marriage. I haven't felt so light-hearted for years.

I find myself worrying how he will cope on his own, never having had to be an adult, but I'm not going to enable him any more.

WWIFN that rings a lot of bells. Particularly the passive aggressiveness, which drives me insane. Starting conversations with 'did you not think to .....' is his specialty.

In some ways things have improved but I think things have just shifted into different areas.

For example, he used to really struggle to give up smoking but would blame other things for making him start again. The inference was that unless I made his life very easy he would be forced to smoke. It was only when I kept replying 'I don't mind, you have life insurance' that he finally quit for good (well 18 months so far)

His mother is dead and he does say that he really regrets the way he treated her when he was a teenager, which I imagine is much the same way.

He has sent me a very mournful text to say he is under a lot of pressure but I think a long chat over dinner on Friday might be called for.

WWIF, would you say your marriage is a happy one now?

Yes, my marriage is gloriously happy now.

I really meant it when I said that I knocked this on the head years ago. I don't think we would have lasted 5 years if it had continued, never mind 28!! And to be honest, it was never anything like as bad as some of you are describing. I don't think I'd have ever stopped what I was doing if there had been a tantrum in progress, for example. Added to that, I've always worked and there simply wouldn't have been the time to run around after someone, even if I'd wanted to.

What really changed things for me was around 1990 when I started to learn about Transactional Analysis. Around the same time, I realised that I wasn't re-enacting his Mother's behaviour, but my own Mum's. My MIL actually did all the right things (in this respect) with my H and he'd lived on his own for a few years before we met, so was in fact very independent. Unfortunately, I can see that I undid a lot of her good work by infantilising my H and running myself ragged in the process.

So I stopped doing it and our marriage was all the better for it. I would say looking back that whenever our circumstances changed (e.g. births of our DCs) it cropped up again in minor ways and in more recent years, it cropped up again when circumstances changed again and my business took off in a major way and I had less time on my hands, but after the crisis we went through nearly 2 years ago (well documented on here) I know now it has gone for good.

I've done quite a bit of work with people now about this and I can really recommend you do some reading about TA, combined perhaps with some assertiveness techniques. You're already sighted on passive-aggression and you could do no worse than talk to him about that behaviour too. I agree that it is infuriating to live with. Again, through my work I was able to see that I behaved a bit like this and could see I'd learned it from my Mum. But as soon as I realised I was doing it (about 16 years ago!) I stopped it.

I smiled when I read what you said about the smoking. I always say that to people on here - you cannot make someone do something at all. You can talk honestly about how you feel about it and the consequences in so far as your own corresponding choices, but he is an adult.

I am absolutely passionate about adults communicating directly and honestly with one another and I notice I get frustrated even on here with the games that people play in their relationships.

Yes my Mum was like this too. As a teenager and in my 20s it used to bewilder me why she would let Dad rant in the way he does. And yet, as soon as we had children I reverted to exactly the same behaviour.

I think part of my issue as that I am a SAHM at the moment, although used to have a successful career. I think I feel I need to be a successful 'wife and mother' - hence I take responsibility for things I shouldn't.

Oh it's all so much more complicated than I thought it would be when I had children.

What I've realised today though, is that I need to stop bothering to do things unless he is more grateful. If I don't do them, he can't be any more grumpy or tantrummy than he is already so I may as well save myself the trouble .

fruitstick
I had a fabulous career. i used to be Dhs boss. That does not mean that I am less valuable or less worthy of respect because I am at home

You need to develop some self respectfor the role you play in your family.
I meet so many woman who imediately they are a SAHM, start justifyingtheir existence and tryingto be a cross between a martyr and a skivvy to 'earn' respect.
daft.

doing what our mothers taught us rings true so much for me. My DH doesn't seem as bad a man-child but definately has his moments and I now do my best not to enable that behaviour (our usual conversations are DH "where're my keys/bike helmet/brain" Me "I don't know - think in the bedroom/bathroom" DH "Where?" Me "Use your eyes")

My mum nearly left my dad several times over his behaviour but would always work on herself and make the marriage work. I see myself behaving just like her and try to change that because a lot of the time my parents are now snappy and snide to each other and it's horrid

mine's not quite as bad as yours but getting there and it drives me insane as well. Every now and then he has a fit about the way I speak to him - cue me having a return fit re. I wouldn't speak to him like a child if he stopped behaving like one - nothing really changes though.

I do blame his mother to an extent, except that she was dealing with a very sick husband herself when he and his brother were hitting their teens and she has admitted she gave up on training them then as she thought their girlfriends could take over - so DH's training stopped when he was about 12 and he's still stuck there.

I draw attention to his unthinking behaviour by suggesting that he use the senses he was given to work out where something is - but in the end I will usually get on and do it myself, but not without a lot of sighing and moaning.

He complains about the level of nagging - I remind him that if he DID the stuff he was asked to do, I wouldn't NEED to nag so it's down to him to stop the nagging.

We do comminucate directly about things, which is good, even if it gets loud and irritated sometimes. I tell him he has the observational skills of a peanut, he agrees this is the case (but I fear I have given him yet another excuse as to why he can't find things ) I have threatened a few times to just go away for a week and leave him to it with DS, but I just know he would drag his mother over to deal with everything for him so it would be pointless.

Apart from this we are generally happy but I can see it getting more annoying as time goes on, on both our sides.

I shall certainly do my best to instil a better level of self-reliance in my DS than DH has had.