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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]let me know if you figure out an answer, OP.  my DH really has gotten better about this over the years, but is still terrible by any objective metric.  like, half the things he says he will do he never even attempts to do.  if I harass him, I end up following him around and being a nag AND it takes as much (or nearly as much) mental energy as just doing it myself.  so, mostly I just do it myself.  but half the things he says he will do is better than none of the things.

and while I hate giving people gold stars for basic or marginal competence, I have been trying to openly and verbally appreciate what he does do.  mentally for me, it actually kind of helps that he travels a lot for work.  he is gone at least one week a month, which serves as a good reminder that I don't usually keep the ship running solely on my own.

the other thing that has helped a little is talking about how his brain works.  he will say yes to things which sound like good ideas with no plans of how and when to do them because he aspires to do them at some indeterminate point in the future and he feels like "yes" is the right answer.  like, if I say, "do you want to take the kids to the circus next weekend", he'll say "yes, definitely!  what a great idea!  I think DD1 would love it!"   I need to follow up with "shall I get tickets for all 4 of us on Saturday morning?" or "will you buy tickets today for all 4 of us for Saturday morning?"  he'll generally give me a shocked look and say something like "oh, gosh, I'm not sure, I have a meeting with Bob sometime over the weekend and a memo due on Monday.  I'm not sure I actually have time to go to the circus."  because I go about expecting that we have plans for the circus and buy tickets and plan our transportation, I will learn on Saturday morning that he has a meeting and can't go.  plans to do laundry or clean up his office are similar.  so, basically, I never take his statements and plans as real unless accompanied by a concrete plan.  and he has learned to clarify (sometimes) that he needs to check his calendar/make sure he can really do it.  I also have him put big deadlines and such on our shared calendar so that I can predict when he is just going to disappear into the office for a week.

I also remind him that he would never treat his work this way, telling a client yes and then just not getting it done.  While it annoys me sometimes that family time and tasks are another job to him, well it is a job, and it seems to help him to conceive of it that way. [/quote]

My dh is so similar. He complains incessantly about having too much to do, but when someone says "hey I need help with a household project," he says "no problem." He says it'll take 2 hours on a Saturday afternoon. When even I can tell it will take several hours, then he'll need to order a part and come back Wednesday night, then all day the following Saturday. And he does not learn from the past. It's so strange.[/quote]

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