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

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP. Ok for all the women defending this bad behavior from men. What would you say to the attorney OP was referencing? She’s the only one working, with 2 kids at home, no help and an unemployed husband. If he refused to take the two kids to the grocery store because he “can’t” juggle them and the task of selecting groceries, what would you say?

Ok honey?

If you read that thread, her husband has a chronic health condition for which he requires regular medical appointments; to my reading, he also sounds depressed. Many of us commenting on that thread are being practical: she needs to hire help, first, so she can not feel like she's drowning, and then, second, work on getting her husband the help he needs. It's not (just) that he's lazy, there's more to it.

There may well be bigger issues that poster needs to address with her husband, but that can't be done while they're both utterly drained. Working on relationships takes energy, which few people have in abundance right now, especially when they're overfunctioning (the wife) or sick and depressed (the husband).

Sure but he should still be able to take his 2 kids to the grocery store. What would he do if they divorced and split custody and he no longer had her to lean on so heavily? Oh right, he’d figure it out like the adult that he is.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you can’t offer constructive criticism to your husband in a kind way without him getting upset and/or ignoring you and/or thereafter refusing to do whatever task it was that you corrected him on, you are not in a good relationship.

No, I shouldn’t need to train my husband. Yes, he should already know how to do household chores and childcare but...sometimes he doesn’t and I would much rather teach or “train” him than just accept that I will do all these things myself or continually accept his half-*ssed job.

Household chores are not hard. If an adult who has no health issues or disabilities acts like they cannot figure out how to do laundry, dishes, dust, vacuum, grocery shop, clean a bathroom, they’re not putting in much effort, don’t respect or appreciate their spouse, and are ultimately selfish jerks. How are so many of you married to selfish jerks? My husband isn’t like that and my brothers aren’t and my dad isn’t. Most of my friends husbands aren’t like that either, from what I can tell. How are so many men such selfish, incompetent, misogynistic jerks?

Amen

[Anonymous]

It makes me crazy how everyone always says a cleaning service will magically solve this problem. Or that I need to “relax my standards”.

We are a family of 4 and every day entails dishes/laundry/straightening/sweeping/garbage. You can’t outsource all of that unless you can afford a daily housekeeper.

This isn’t a matter of me having exacting standards and wanting a perfect house. It’s basic health and safety. We have to take out garbage, pick up toys off the floor, clean up spills, or it creates hazards for our children’s well being and safety.

I have to remind/cajole/demand/tell/yell at DH to do anything at all. And then praise/honor/appreciate him for every little thing. I’m so exhausted. I have my own job.

[Anonymous]

I agree with OP.

You just need to train your DH. It is not difficult at all. Just withhold sex. It works like a charm.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think if you're going to be a mom with a stay-at-home spouse, you really have to adopt the same mentality as men in that situation. I stay at home. My husband DOES NOT CARE what we get from the grocery store. It's not that I do it right and therefore he doesn't have to worry. I could do it totally "wrong" and he really wouldn't notice. He does not notice if things are clean or dirty. I don't have to clean the bathroom to his "standards" because he doesn't have any.

So, if you're the wife and you're going to go to work and have your spouse stay at home, I think you have to do the same thing the men do - not care!

Terrific post! Fair and balanced.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP. Ok for all the women defending this bad behavior from men. What would you say to the attorney OP was referencing? She’s the only one working, with 2 kids at home, no help and an unemployed husband. If he refused to take the two kids to the grocery store because he “can’t” juggle them and the task of selecting groceries, what would you say?

Ok honey?

If you read that thread, her husband has a chronic health condition for which he requires regular medical appointments; to my reading, he also sounds depressed. Many of us commenting on that thread are being practical: she needs to hire help, first, so she can not feel like she's drowning, and then, second, work on getting her husband the help he needs. It's not (just) that he's lazy, there's more to it.

There may well be bigger issues that poster needs to address with her husband, but that can't be done while they're both utterly drained. Working on relationships takes energy, which few people have in abundance right now, especially when they're overfunctioning (the wife) or sick and depressed (the husband).

Sure but he should still be able to take his 2 kids to the grocery store. What would he do if they divorced and split custody and he no longer had her to lean on so heavily? Oh right, he’d figure it out like the adult that he is.

+1

If he can’t do this, he shouldn’t have had 2 kids. Really his problem is just that he’s inexperienced and therefore uncomfortable with it, not that he literally can’t do it. He just needs practice, which he is too lazy to do.

Mothers never get to use inexperience as an excuse. It’s bullshit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Like my mama always said "marry them young and train them hard"

So... why is it that it is up to women to "train" the husbands? Who trained us? Why is it that we can see what needs to be done and do it without being given a chore list? My husband will gladly "help out" if I give him a very specific list of what needs to be done... but the fact that I have to tell him what to do and that he still sees it as "assisting" in my domain makes me extremely angry. Did women in the 1960s and 1970s, when many more were entering the workforce have to be "trained" in how to behave and perform in business? No - women entered the workforce, killing it in every way possible, while still keeping the lion's share of home responsibilities. We are doing something very wrong in our society if many men STILL need to be told what to do or are still unable to complete basic home tasks.

PP here. So what would you rather me do? Blame my MIL? Yell at her and have her come and train dh? I am making sure my son and my daughters know how to keep a house and also how to do stereotypical male chores too (lawn mowing, oil changing, circular saw). I hope everyone else is raising their sons to do chores too so that my daughters can marry already trained men.

I agree that women drew the short straw in life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Guess what, other peoples relationships have different dynamics than yours

Duh

I think the OP’s point is that you have 2 choices if you find yourself married to one of these useless types. 1. Get him to change or 2. Accept that he won’t. But then don’t complain about having to do everything yourself.

Oh please. Now no one can complain about anything, because either yuh get it to change or accept it. Lol.

[Anonymous]

OP, I think readers are too credulous and most of these stories have an unreliable narrator.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It makes me crazy how everyone always says a cleaning service will magically solve this problem. Or that I need to “relax my standards”.

We are a family of 4 and every day entails dishes/laundry/straightening/sweeping/garbage. You can’t outsource all of that unless you can afford a daily housekeeper.

This isn’t a matter of me having exacting standards and wanting a perfect house. It’s basic health and safety. We have to take out garbage, pick up toys off the floor, clean up spills, or it creates hazards for our children’s well being and safety.

I have to remind/cajole/demand/tell/yell at DH to do anything at all. And then praise/honor/appreciate him for every little thing. I’m so exhausted. I have my own job.

I often think the same thing about the 2x monthly cleaning service advice! I totally agree that houses need daily sweeping, tidying, and vacuuming (esp. if you have little kids and or pets) and bathrooms need to be cleaned at least once a week.

People must be living in filth around here if they think 2x a month makes a house clean.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It makes me crazy how everyone always says a cleaning service will magically solve this problem. Or that I need to “relax my standards”.

We are a family of 4 and every day entails dishes/laundry/straightening/sweeping/garbage. You can’t outsource all of that unless you can afford a daily housekeeper.

This isn’t a matter of me having exacting standards and wanting a perfect house. It’s basic health and safety. We have to take out garbage, pick up toys off the floor, clean up spills, or it creates hazards for our children’s well being and safety.

I have to remind/cajole/demand/tell/yell at DH to do anything at all. And then praise/honor/appreciate him for every little thing. I’m so exhausted. I have my own job.

I am not trying to downplay what you're going through but I think that you are yelling at your DH about the wrong things. We're a family of 5 and you're right, not everything can be outsourced (although a biweekly cleaner DOES help!).

But the problem isn't that your DH isn't doing all those things, at least, to me, that isn't the primary problem. The problem is that he (presumably) knows this dynamic upsets you a lot and doesn't want to do anything to fix it. That is the fight I had with my husband in the beginning. That is the fight that let him to work on being more proactive. Maybe you've tried all this and your husband just totally sucks a in which case I would tell you to leave because life is too short, but sometimes when I see relationships like this it is because the wife IS mothering the husband instead of demanding him to be an equal partner. Don't fight about the garbage, fight about his refusal to be an equal partner.

[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.

I’m the pp. I’ve tried. There is no conversation. He shuts down completely when I bring it up. He cannot account for it or give me any kind of explanation. He just says he will do better and then doesn’t. Basically he just tries to say anything to shut me up and make me go away so the conversation can end as quickly as possible. Silence is his other go to.

My husband is very intelligent and does well at work but That’s it. That’s all he can really handle. We shouldn’t have had 2 kids, or he should have married someone different from me, someone without a career who would be content doing all the housework.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can we have another conversation about how husbands can and should “train” their wives to provide BJs and sammiches without even having to be told when and how to do so?

Well in the example given, the woman had already been “trained” to bring in 100% of the household income, so, nice try.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm with you, OP. I have often wondered this myself. I would also call my husband out on that type of behavior. Shrug.

I’m with you too OP. I tried this route for a few years: make him fix his own mistakes, takes him 2-3 times (and money) to do something right, get him involved with the family. He was incapable. Worse, it would build up an anger in him, every little or large mistake, and then he’d explode one day at any trigger. His explosions were every couple months, then monthly, the bimonthly. He had to have a neuropysche and the results weren’t pretty. They made sense but nothing will help him get it together unless he really really focuses, which drives him angry.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP. Ok for all the women defending this bad behavior from men. What would you say to the attorney OP was referencing? She’s the only one working, with 2 kids at home, no help and an unemployed husband. If he refused to take the two kids to the grocery store because he “can’t” juggle them and the task of selecting groceries, what would you say?

Ok honey?

If you read that thread, her husband has a chronic health condition for which he requires regular medical appointments; to my reading, he also sounds depressed. Many of us commenting on that thread are being practical: she needs to hire help, first, so she can not feel like she's drowning, and then, second, work on getting her husband the help he needs. It's not (just) that he's lazy, there's more to it.

There may well be bigger issues that poster needs to address with her husband, but that can't be done while they're both utterly drained. Working on relationships takes energy, which few people have in abundance right now, especially when they're overfunctioning (the wife) or sick and depressed (the husband).

Sure but he should still be able to take his 2 kids to the grocery store. What would he do if they divorced and split custody and he no longer had her to lean on so heavily? Oh right, he’d figure it out like the adult that he is.

+1

If he can’t do this, he shouldn’t have had 2 kids. Really his problem is just that he’s inexperienced and therefore uncomfortable with it, not that he literally can’t do it. He just needs practice, which he is too lazy to do.

Mothers never get to use inexperience as an excuse. It’s bullshit.

Okay, way to pick out one thing in a complicated situation and focus solely on that.

You have NO idea what this guy would do if they divorced. Plenty of single men eat nothing but takeout, particularly in the times of UberEats and DoorDash. I knew men who would just buy new clothing to avoid doing laundry. And plenty of divorced fathers check out and don't take 50% of custody, if that. My point is that many men DON'T figure it out, at least not to the same standards most independent women do. Believe me, I'm ALL for men growing up, but acting like they'd all shape up if they "had" to is nonsense.

Also, HELLO, we're in a pandemic, which complicates freaking everything.