Reply to Holding my boundary. Let him be mad.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Rigidity becomes necessary when a more causal approach leads to being chronically taken advantage of. [/quote]

OP, would Fair Play help?[/quote]

I’ve seen this mentioned a lot on this board. I think I’ll buy it.
About a year ago or so, I suggested we write down our individual loads. Like the things we own related to home kid family finances etc. we each drafted up our list and shared it.
Mine was probably 3x longer?
After he read mine, he went back to “edit” his list. He added random bs to make his list as long as mine. It was legit laughable. I’m talking about things like “manage Netflix and Hulu passwords”
“Call customer service representatives when internet is down”
“Filled out birth certificate paperwork”

Then he said the whole exercise was a farce.
A part of me hopes he doesn’t come back from this work trip. I think this often. I am not the best version of myself when he’s around. I have stayed quiet for so long to kept the peace and not risk an argument, at the expense of my inner turmoil. Today in his text rage he said that I act like taking care of “my daughter” is unbearable. Sometimes I wonder if I’m on a hidden camera show. Did I not see all these red flags before marriage? I’ve ignored my “knowing” for so long. I know I married the wrong person for me. I feel stuck.[/quote]

Oh god. This comment felt like a time traveling message from myself. I remember when we did this OP. It ended with me crying and both of us shouting.

In hindsight I think it made him defensive and angry because he really did know how bad it was and his ego couldn’t stand being the villain of the story. So whenever I tried to open communication about how to make things fairer it landed us in conflict.

Anyway our oldest is now 10 and our marriage is now very happy. We worked through it and I’m glad we didn’t give up on us back then.

[/quote]

Op here. Yes!! 100% he got defensive and didn’t want to admit to the imbalance. He literally went back and “found” all these things to add to his list to “match” mine in number of items. It was absurd. Managing Hulu and Netflix passwords? Gtfo. He has an email saved with them. [/quote]

Same PP here. And if he staunchly refuses to admit things are unfair, it’s literally impossible to come closer to fairness. AND if he feels like he’s already doing his best, he thinks he doesn’t have any ability to do more, even if it isn’t fair.

This led to my husband eventually picking at me for taking things on like, say, Easter baskets or small birthday parties, saying they’re pointless and I shouldn’t bother, which made me feel like I was losing my mind that these things were on his “optional” list.

And like you I was doing all this while making a healthy salary, not some part time low stress mommy job.

There’s no magic bullet solution but like I said, we did grit our teeth through this chapter and things are great now. I think a factor is that DH got a promotion that gave him more control over/stability in his work life. [/quote]

Op here. Wow. Holiday cards is on my list. When we sat down to talk about the lists, dh did exactly that. He said Xmas cards were optional and my choice to take on. Never mind that he is EXTREMELY opinionated each year on what pictures we use and specifically asks me to order extra cards for him to send to business contacts, distant relatives of his etc.
[/quote]

How’d I know!

There are two things I have read on DCUM that helped me. The first is a “I’ll do my best, she’ll do the rest” mentality. It was so true in my case and I bet yours too. He really thinks he’s doing all he can and is willing to just drop everything else.

The second is, men are motivated only by profit, prestige, and pleasure. That helped me predict what he was just never going to take on. Funny enough I see that in your cards. He is getting some of all 3 out of your Christmas cards so he does have opinions on it. Try to reshuffle some tasks that fall into those categories to his side of the ledger.

Anyway, good luck. I have a lot more I could say but I’m not sure how helpful they would be. [/quote]

Op here! Yes!! 200000% he does his best and assumes/expects I’ll do the rest. I asked him to handle dd’s laundry. So he washes it, puts it in the dryer, abs then proceeds to dump the clothes in her room. I once asked him why he doesn’t consider putting the clothes away to he completing the task. He shrugged. Said something about he figured I had a system for it or that we wouid just pull clothes from the pile.

Weaponized incompetence.[/quote]

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