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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]What do you do when you invite friends over OP? Anything?

I can’t tell if you’re calibrated super laid back about piles of mess in 100% of your home, or what.

What’s your kitchen look like when the adults go to bed? Is there any counter or table space? Or is clutter everywhere all the time- on dressers, counters, shelving, tables, desks, laundry machine, etc.[/quote]

OP. We make our house presentable for guests. The kitchen is cleaned and wiped each night, bathrooms are sanitary, clutter is not everywhere all the time. If we found out people were coming over unexpectedly, we could do a 15 minute pick-up and the house would look fine. I swear I am not a total slob.

In general we split chores 50-50, and he likes to be recognized and patted on the head whenever he does something ... I probably don't give him his proper words of affirmation or something. For example he is better at vacuuming than I am but he cannot open his mail or clean a toilet to save his life. I do not lecture him repeatedly on the proper way to clean a toilet or the importance of opening mail, nor do I expect praise for doing these things. (OK, I wish he'd open his mail sometimes, but it is not worth a daily argument.)

The clutter also bothers me, but I have accepted it because an entire section of our small home had to be emptied due to the renovation. The stuff had to go somewhere. It's a temporary mess exacerbated by kids being home for two weeks. And yes we absolutely have too much stuff, but it's his stuff too!

Basically I am annoyed with his annoyance and his resultant behavior and I want nothing to do with him. Lord of the Manor indeed. Hmmmmph[/quote]

This was me, for a long time. It was awful. I wasn't like you and I really thought that things were my fault and he was right and I just needed to keep trying harder. This spilled into other aspects of our life too, like our sex life, and I felt extremely depressed because I was living life under a cloud of criticism. These became additional subjects of criticism. I spoke to a therapist told me to track my time, and I saw that I was spending almost no time on myself and getting no "credit" for tasks like cooking and getting the kids food, cleaning, taking kids to playdates, playing with the kids, changing diapers, taking them to their doctors appointments, dealing with the special needs of one of our kids, grocery shopping, car maintenance, and many other things. I realized that he was asking me to do the impossible, or at least what was impossible for me. And if DH needed that from his partner, he had to get a new partner. I explained this to him told him that the best thing for us both would be to get a divorce.

He did NOT like that idea and did a 180. He never again criticized how I washed the dishes, he never again complained that the house usually needed a good 30 minute-tidy before people could come over, and most importantly he finally relented and we moved to a place that was big enough to store our items (we went from 900 sq ft to 2000).

I do not recommend letting it get to this point. He has apologized and our relationship is good, but I'm not sure I'll ever get over some things that happened during that period of time. And I could have prevented this from standing up for myself earlier.

About stress: yes he was extremely stressed. He had a very demanding job. But he still has that very demanding job and is also able to respect and appreciate me. [/quote]

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