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

[Anonymous]

If I see another advice post that tells a woman to “make a list” for him, sit down and have a talk with him... it’s all more work! And It’s making me crazy!

[Anonymous]

give him a bj and promise more when he cleans the garage / paints the living room / keeps he kitchen clean for a week, etc.

Yes, it's transactional. Get over it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If I see another advice post that tells a woman to “make a list” for him, sit down and have a talk with him... it’s all more work! And It’s making me crazy!

Agree. He needs to make his own damn lists. And if he keeps “forgetting” to do something or “forgetting” how to do things right, he can wallpaper the whole house with it. And if he can’t do that I’ll go hire someone from the HD parking lot to do that for him.

[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.

I don't know, I think you have to balance your attitude of "don't tolerate a half-ass job" with "there is more than one way to skin a cat" and you can't expect everyone to have your standards. I remember reading something a while ago that said if you want to be a woman who has a great career and a family, you are going to have to accept it when you husband runs the dishwasher half full. I repeat that to myself a lot. I try to not nitpick or second guess how my husband does stuff around the house (even though that is really hard sometimes!!!). My own dad had a parenting philosophy of "no helping" -- he did half the work around the house but he did not "help." When he took responsibility, he got to define whether the task was done correctly and what the standards were. That meant my sister and I ate lunches that had zero nutritional value for our entire childhoods but somehow we made it through and my mom never had to worry about lunch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really can’t control or change my husband.

I do what the OP suggests and it works but the feedback never gets embedded into his brain so we have to have the same conversation over and over again for years. It wears me down. It’s like every single day is a brand new day. I can never assume a foundational base of fundamental knowledge or that he will have learned.

Examples:

-I have to tell DH to pick up dirty diapers off the floor and put them in the garbage. Every single time.
-I have to tell DH, every single night, to please put his dishes in the dishwasher and then start it. If I don’t specifically mention that he needs to finish loading the dishes in, and THEN start it, he will just go start it half full and leave a bunch of dirty dishes on the counter for the morning.
-I have to tell DH to get the kids ready for the day (we trade of days for getting them ready). He has to be told, every time, what that means. I can’t just say “get the kids ready please”. It has to be “can you change them out of their jammies?” And then “can you put shoes on them?” And so on and so forth.

I’m exhausted and bitter.

I would say to him, “it concerns me that you need me to remind you to pick the dirty diapers off the floor every single day. Do you need this type of hand holding at work? No? Then why can’t you remember basic things at home?”

I wouldn’t be nasty but calm and genuine. Personally I suspect he is gas lighting you about not being able to remember but if he isn’t, that would suggest some pretty serious cognitive impairment. I mean that truthfully. I might actually say that to him so the embarrassment gets him off his ass.

My DH was like this after DD was born and it was so exhausting and strange to experience as his partner that I was insistent he had early dementia or something. It turned out he has ADHD and significantly impaired executive functioning skills. Medication has helped a tiny bit, but he basically approaches each day like it is his first experience in the adult universe.

[Anonymous]

^^^

same here, we both went in thinking ADD inattentive but it was HFA, even less treatable. Total disaster to live with. in a house with kids.

[Anonymous]

DH here.

I do the dishes 99% of the time. I tell DW not to bother with dishes as I can do it along with something else in the kitchen and also because I actually bothered to read up on how to load a dishwasher. But I do it my way and do tell her when she arranges the dishes in a way that would mean they wont get cleaned completely.
I consider dishes as my responsibility and hence my perview.

DW cooks 1 or 2 times a week. It is going to be her style and I would not comment on it at all except positively. Long after dinner, I might say one it was too salty and if she could reduce it a little next time.

So to me, the person who ends up with the responsibility gets to define how it is done. You can have a discussion upfront on why it might be better to do a certain way or even change the responsibility if you do not like how it is done.

[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.

I was going to say this. And I get heavily annoyed if DH treat me as a daughter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:give him a bj and promise more when he cleans the garage / paints the living room / keeps he kitchen clean for a week, etc.

Yes, it's transactional. Get over it.

Nope, I’m not rewarding him for a half-assed effort at being a functional adult, and I’m not a prostitute.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I really can’t control or change my husband.

I do what the OP suggests and it works but the feedback never gets embedded into his brain so we have to have the same conversation over and over again for years. It wears me down. It’s like every single day is a brand new day. I can never assume a foundational base of fundamental knowledge or that he will have learned.

Examples:

-I have to tell DH to pick up dirty diapers off the floor and put them in the garbage. Every single time.
-I have to tell DH, every single night, to please put his dishes in the dishwasher and then start it. If I don’t specifically mention that he needs to finish loading the dishes in, and THEN start it, he will just go start it half full and leave a bunch of dirty dishes on the counter for the morning.
-I have to tell DH to get the kids ready for the day (we trade of days for getting them ready). He has to be told, every time, what that means. I can’t just say “get the kids ready please”. It has to be “can you change them out of their jammies?” And then “can you put shoes on them?” And so on and so forth.

I’m exhausted and bitter.

I would say to him, “it concerns me that you need me to remind you to pick the dirty diapers off the floor every single day. Do you need this type of hand holding at work? No? Then why can’t you remember basic things at home?”

I wouldn’t be nasty but calm and genuine. Personally I suspect he is gas lighting you about not being able to remember but if he isn’t, that would suggest some pretty serious cognitive impairment. I mean that truthfully. I might actually say that to him so the embarrassment gets him off his ass.

My DH was like this after DD was born and it was so exhausting and strange to experience as his partner that I was insistent he had early dementia or something. It turned out he has ADHD and significantly impaired executive functioning skills. Medication has helped a tiny bit, but he basically approaches each day like it is his first experience in the adult universe.

I just discovered a week ago that my husband does not know how to run our "new" dishwasher that we got about 2 years ago. I am certain he ran it when we first bought it but realized that I have been running it for say, conservative estimate, 100% of the time for 15 or so months. !!!

[Anonymous]

I've read the first 10 pages of this thread... does no one approach their lives as a team? Set goals, communicate expectations, set each other up for success? This all just sounds so miserable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've read the first 10 pages of this thread... does no one approach their lives as a team? Set goals, communicate expectations, set each other up for success? This all just sounds so miserable.

But if you don't keep score, how do you know whether you're winning or losing against your spouse?