Here's the thing I don't understand about husbands who don't help out

[Anonymous]

Uh, I don’t “train” my husband. Some things he does better than I do, some things I do better than he does. If I want him to do things, even those he does less well than I do, I have to accept the way he does them - which I do.

I’d be pissed if my DH “corrected” my way of doing chores or taking care of the kids.

[Anonymous]

I don't know how I would have handled this if I had been in this situation. We were pretty much into splitting chores when we met which makes things a lot easier. But I don't think it's easy to figure out how to change a situation like this if you're already in it from the beginning of your relationship.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, OP, you sound like his Mother. Your way of teaching your DH to clean the bathroom is how I teach my sons. My DH knows how to clean a bathroom better than I do by learning from his Mother. If your DH is not cleaning the bathroom to your standards, then you should be the one with that chore, or you should learn to accept the way he does it. I mean, you can tell him you don't think it's clean enough, and if he wants you to teach him, then go for it, but don't think it helps any relationship to treat your partner like a child.

I don't get mad at my DH when he forgets stuff from the grocery store because he can't find the stuff he wanted just as often as what I wanted. I don't have to teach him how to clean (he's better at most cleaning than I am), but when we were dating and I told him he was loading the dishwasher wrong it led to something like a 4 week standoff because he can't handle criticism at all. He had to break the dishwasher and have a technician come out and tell him exactly what I said he was doing wrong before he changed his ways. I don't think you can teach or train a grown man to be better at basic tasks, you have to choose to marry one that's not a screw-up to begin with (which, dishwasher incident notwithstanding, is what I did). This is why I have more sympathy for women who realize their DH's suck at childcare than cleaning - that one is at least partially unknowable before the fact.

Okay I'm intrigued. I gotta know what he was doing so wrong that it broke the dishwasher - just so I can be sure that I don't do it. I mean really, can you put dishes in the dishwasher in such a way that it could break it? Please, tell us, pp!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because my husband wouldn’t go back to the store, clean the bathroom again, or watch the kids. He’d do what he wanted and get pissed at me.

This. Not only that, but the next time one of those things needed to be done, he'd say "Well I can never do it to your demanding specifications, so why bother?" It would give him an easy out, which is what he's already looking for.

Any halfway decent parent knows that positive reinforcement is a much more effective way of getting your children to behave a certain way, and that criticism tends to make them more recalcitrant and combative.

Yep, I'm comparing my husband to a child. That's because when he was an actual child, his own parents failed to do any of this. They bought into toxic ideas about masculinity that "boys are just messy" or "girls are just naturally more helpful than boys." So my grown ass husband has had to relearn how the world works as an adult because his parents bought into dumb ideas about traditional gender roles. That sucks for both of us, frankly. I don't love having to praise my husband every time he does something normal and expected, like cleaning the shower. And he doesn't like that he is instinctively selfish and childish at times because his parents taught him the wrong stuff.

And before you say "Well, why didn't you marry a better man?" a few things. First, the vast majority of men are like this to some degree or another. My husband had actually figured some of this out on his own before I even met him, putting him light years ahead of other men I know. But two, toxic masculinity sneaks into all the crevices of a person's personality. You think you've sorted it out and then, boom, you have kids and discover a whole new batch of idiotic assumptions about gender. Sorry, but we all have to keep working on misogyny forever in the hopes that our kids will have a slightly easier time. At let we are working on it instead of eating it up and teaching it to our kids on purpose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, OP, you sound like his Mother. Your way of teaching your DH to clean the bathroom is how I teach my sons. My DH knows how to clean a bathroom better than I do by learning from his Mother. If your DH is not cleaning the bathroom to your standards, then you should be the one with that chore, or you should learn to accept the way he does it. I mean, you can tell him you don't think it's clean enough, and if he wants you to teach him, then go for it, but don't think it helps any relationship to treat your partner like a child.

I don't get mad at my DH when he forgets stuff from the grocery store because he can't find the stuff he wanted just as often as what I wanted. I don't have to teach him how to clean (he's better at most cleaning than I am), but when we were dating and I told him he was loading the dishwasher wrong it led to something like a 4 week standoff because he can't handle criticism at all. He had to break the dishwasher and have a technician come out and tell him exactly what I said he was doing wrong before he changed his ways. I don't think you can teach or train a grown man to be better at basic tasks, you have to choose to marry one that's not a screw-up to begin with (which, dishwasher incident notwithstanding, is what I did). This is why I have more sympathy for women who realize their DH's suck at childcare than cleaning - that one is at least partially unknowable before the fact.

Okay I'm intrigued. I gotta know what he was doing so wrong that it broke the dishwasher - just so I can be sure that I don't do it. I mean really, can you put dishes in the dishwasher in such a way that it could break it? Please, tell us, pp!

Honestly, he just refused to scrape his plates. And then, because I told him you have to scrape your dishes before you put them in the dishwasher, he turned it into a stupid standoff and put even more food into it. It was his condo so I just watched him be a jackass and bided my time. $250 later a technician is cleaning out his trap and explaining that you have to . . . wait for it . . . scrape food off dishes before putting them into the dishwasher.

And honestly my DH is not like the nightmares that get threads on this forum - this was a one-off. But the crazy overreaction to any perceived criticism makes me understand why other wives aren't standing near the bathroom saying 'SCRUB HARDER, DUMMY' like OP apparently wants them to. I wouldn't react well to that either.

[Anonymous]

You all need to read the empowered wife by Laura Doyle.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I see TONS of posts like this all over these boards. There's one right now on the parenting board written by a poor BigLaw attorney with a toddler and baby who is working herself into an early grave doing everything for everybody by herself. Her husband is supposed to be the primary caregiver right now but he's not doing a good job. He can't even take the two kids to the grocery store. He doesn't do chores around the house because "he's not good at them." I swear, I am not picking on this woman, she is just the most recent example of this type of thing that I've seen but it's all day every day on here.

Here's what I don't get. If my husband went grocery shopping and picked out the wrong things, I'd (politely)* point this out to him and ask him to go back and get the right things. If he cleaned the bathroom and did a bad job, I'd ask him to do it again and get the spots he missed. if he said he was going to the grocery store and leaving the children at home for me to watch and work at the same time, I'd ask him if he was out of his mind.

Do these women not do this? Am I some crazy bitch? Early on in our marriage, we had some of this back and forth ^ but I was able to train him into a better husband. Yes, I'm using the word train because he started out useless at chores but quickly got better. Household chores are not hard. They just require effort and diligence. Now we're 50/50 and he's very comfortable with taking care of the house and kids. He even does hair.

*We both tolerate a lot of ribbing/teasing in our relationship and he is usually the instigator. So if he brought home the wrong things, I'd bust his balls big time but I know not everyone is up for this type of teasing. However, in his case, it only takes one or two experiences with this to get on the straight and narrow. He's the same way with me.


I guess what Im asking is, for women whose husbands really do nothing at home and you're at your wits end, have you tried calling him out on it? I would honestly say, "you're being a huge baby right now and it's really unattractive. Adults suck it up and get it done rather than whine." But maybe I am a crazy bitch, IDK.

Yes. That is all crazy bitch category.

If my H got the wrong thing at the grocery store I would point out it was a parsnip not a yam... but I would use the parsnip. I would never send him back, wtf is tht.
If he cleaned the bathroom, not to my level, I would learn to live with it, it's a preference not right or wrong.
If he was going to the grocery store at an inconvenient time I would ask him to go at <actual time that is good> and sometime it won't be the best time for me, compromise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Uh, I don’t “train” my husband. Some things he does better than I do, some things I do better than he does. If I want him to do things, even those he does less well than I do, I have to accept the way he does them - which I do.

I’d be pissed if my DH “corrected” my way of doing chores or taking care of the kids.

^^^^ This.this and more of this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think that your example of the bathroom is a poor one -- most husbands would balk at that and refuse to clean it the next time. One of the best pieces of marriage advice i was given was that if my husband makes the bed, don't point out that he should have fluffed the pillows. Everyone has different standards -- and if you want it done a certain way, you either do it yourself or pay someone else. FWIW, my husband and I do split a lot of things, but we have now outsourced cleaning and yardwork because it's something that is never done to my specs.

Same. I think you assume a certain level of compliance. My boss’s wife asks him to jump and he asks how high. My husband would never in a million years put up with being ruled by anyone like that. It just wouldn’t happen. The good side to that is we make joint decisions, collaborate on many things that the wife would get stuck doing (decorating), among other things. The flip side is he is not going to re-do the bathroom to meet my higher specs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, OP, you sound like his Mother. Your way of teaching your DH to clean the bathroom is how I teach my sons. My DH knows how to clean a bathroom better than I do by learning from his Mother. If your DH is not cleaning the bathroom to your standards, then you should be the one with that chore, or you should learn to accept the way he does it. I mean, you can tell him you don't think it's clean enough, and if he wants you to teach him, then go for it, but don't think it helps any relationship to treat your partner like a child.

You are the one being trained here, and you don't even see it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Uh, I don’t “train” my husband. Some things he does better than I do, some things I do better than he does. If I want him to do things, even those he does less well than I do, I have to accept the way he does them - which I do.

I’d be pissed if my DH “corrected” my way of doing chores or taking care of the kids.

^^^^ This.this and more of this.

Yes and yes.

[Anonymous]

No idea. My husband is much better at laundry and cleaning than I am. He does that. He is a high earner with a stressful job.

I also work full-time and would much prefer to do the grocery shopping and cooking vs cleaning. Win win.

I used to do more of the child stuff because I WAH and he works out of the house (pre-covid), but more and more things were falling on me and it really created a bad dynamic...him being more checked out and critical and me being more stressed out and tired.

Covid was a massive re-set and I we now are a true partnership with home responsibilities and our teen boys also have stepped up around the house with chores too.

I have to admit, I'm just not a great homemaker. I am not sure if it's because I was the youngest of 3 and my mom did a lot more or because I have more of my dad's personality---more laissez-faire and less critical.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because my husband wouldn’t go back to the store, clean the bathroom again, or watch the kids. He’d do what he wanted and get pissed at me.

This. Not only that, but the next time one of those things needed to be done, he'd say "Well I can never do it to your demanding specifications, so why bother?" It would give him an easy out, which is what he's already looking for.

Any halfway decent parent knows that positive reinforcement is a much more effective way of getting your children to behave a certain way, and that criticism tends to make them more recalcitrant and combative.

Yep, I'm comparing my husband to a child. That's because when he was an actual child, his own parents failed to do any of this. They bought into toxic ideas about masculinity that "boys are just messy" or "girls are just naturally more helpful than boys." So my grown ass husband has had to relearn how the world works as an adult because his parents bought into dumb ideas about traditional gender roles. That sucks for both of us, frankly. I don't love having to praise my husband every time he does something normal and expected, like cleaning the shower. And he doesn't like that he is instinctively selfish and childish at times because his parents taught him the wrong stuff.

And before you say "Well, why didn't you marry a better man?" a few things. First, the vast majority of men are like this to some degree or another. My husband had actually figured some of this out on his own before I even met him, putting him light years ahead of other men I know. But two, toxic masculinity sneaks into all the crevices of a person's personality. You think you've sorted it out and then, boom, you have kids and discover a whole new batch of idiotic assumptions about gender. Sorry, but we all have to keep working on misogyny forever in the hopes that our kids will have a slightly easier time. At let we are working on it instead of eating it up and teaching it to our kids on purpose.

I know that you need to tell yourself that, to make yourself feel better. It puts the responsibility on society as a whole, rather than you. It's not your fault you married an incompetent ass that you had to treat like a child.

But you should recognize that it's just a deflection - a polite lie you can tell yourself so you don't have to face the truth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, OP, you sound like his Mother. Your way of teaching your DH to clean the bathroom is how I teach my sons. My DH knows how to clean a bathroom better than I do by learning from his Mother. If your DH is not cleaning the bathroom to your standards, then you should be the one with that chore, or you should learn to accept the way he does it. I mean, you can tell him you don't think it's clean enough, and if he wants you to teach him, then go for it, but don't think it helps any relationship to treat your partner like a child.

You are the one being trained here, and you don't even see it.

This is so true of my situation. My DH acts like a complete asshole anytime he’s asked to do something. So guess wha? I don’t ask him anymore because it’s not even worth the fuss. Looks like I got trained.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because my husband wouldn’t go back to the store, clean the bathroom again, or watch the kids. He’d do what he wanted and get pissed at me.

This. Not only that, but the next time one of those things needed to be done, he'd say "Well I can never do it to your demanding specifications, so why bother?" It would give him an easy out, which is what he's already looking for.

Any halfway decent parent knows that positive reinforcement is a much more effective way of getting your children to behave a certain way, and that criticism tends to make them more recalcitrant and combative.

Yep, I'm comparing my husband to a child. That's because when he was an actual child, his own parents failed to do any of this. They bought into toxic ideas about masculinity that "boys are just messy" or "girls are just naturally more helpful than boys." So my grown ass husband has had to relearn how the world works as an adult because his parents bought into dumb ideas about traditional gender roles. That sucks for both of us, frankly. I don't love having to praise my husband every time he does something normal and expected, like cleaning the shower. And he doesn't like that he is instinctively selfish and childish at times because his parents taught him the wrong stuff.

And before you say "Well, why didn't you marry a better man?" a few things. First, the vast majority of men are like this to some degree or another. My husband had actually figured some of this out on his own before I even met him, putting him light years ahead of other men I know. But two, toxic masculinity sneaks into all the crevices of a person's personality. You think you've sorted it out and then, boom, you have kids and discover a whole new batch of idiotic assumptions about gender. Sorry, but we all have to keep working on misogyny forever in the hopes that our kids will have a slightly easier time. At let we are working on it instead of eating it up and teaching it to our kids on purpose.

I know that you need to tell yourself that, to make yourself feel better. It puts the responsibility on society as a whole, rather than you. It's not your fault you married an incompetent ass that you had to treat like a child.

But you should recognize that it's just a deflection - a polite lie you can tell yourself so you don't have to face the truth.

Just by the prevalence of these types of threads, it should be evident that husbands who contribute less than their fair share to the household work aren't rare. Even studies show that full time working women spend more time on childcare and chores that working men do. If you truly feel that household duties are shared equally in your family - great! But you must realize that that situation is less common.