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I'm just venting ladies. I am SO sick of coming home when FI has a day off and he has done NOTHING but play video games. I mean, is it too much to empty the dish rack or put away towels or pick up his socks!? It's my fault. I let it go so long and just clean up after him and then it just builds and builds and builds until last night happens. I went ape shit on him about a dirty glass in his computer room. Not just any dirty glass. A dirty glass that had leftover coffee from 3 weeks ago hiding behind a stack of papers! O_O So I told him that I hated his mom for being a SAHM and taking care of his ass until he found his first sucker of a girlfriend to pick up where she left off. I told him that I get so jealous from other women's DH/FI/SO who clean the house for them or cook dinner. I told him I want to go on strike at times and clean up my own mess (and of course my daughters) cook my own meals, do my own laundry, ect.
So of course he gets defensive because I'm attacking him and he says, "You act like I don't do anything all day!" O_O Excuse me mutha effer!? You have been playing Borderlands and COD ALL.DAMN.DAY. How do I know? I can see his Xbox post his rewards on Facebook ALL.DAMN.DAY.
UGH! But shit won't change. I love him, I do, but he's not going to change. He's going to leave the pile of his clean clothes on the floor and use them until they need washed. He'll drink out of the same glass for a week if he has too. He'll continue to leave his EFFING hair all over the sink after he shaves.
I just want to kick him at times! Thanks!
Have you ASKED him to do any of the things you wish to have done? Let's face it, he's obviously not a mind reader.
Poor you. I can sympathize a bit with your SO - quite often when I have a day off I like to do absolutely nothing, even if there are chores and other things I really should be doing. And I know it drives my SO crazy sometimes, but I do like my space and my time A LOT, you know? It's important to me.
With that said, it sounds like he might be crossing the line a bit from lazy to unhygienic - not cool. You might try giving him a task or two to do on his day off. A big to do list is a bit much, but if you just ask him to do a load of laundry and a load of dishes, that's pretty manageable, right? This strategy has been known to work on - ahem - certain lazy-ass people I know intimately.
And I want to kick him for you, too! ;)
No, really. If I have a day off, I try to get shit done. When Mr. S has a day off... well, he still gets shit done (if I ask him to). Just a lot less than I would have (or than I asked). ;) What, like I don't need to unwind, too?
That said, I know you love your FI, and I love my husband. We can only do our best to train them. HA!
@Miss Tattoo: Ugh I know the feeling! I have to LOL at your post because I love the way you write! It's like you took the words right out of my mouth. The glass was your breaking point!
Edit: I'm going to toss my FI's Playstation down the hill, you with me? haha!
That's so stressful! I really have to ask my husband to do things around the house for them to get done. Thankfully, he doesn't sit home all day while I work and play video games though!
I completely get where you are coming from. My husband doesn't play video games, but does watch a fair number of shows and movies. He leaves work earlier than I do so he usually has the time to go to the gym and still get home before I do. Um, I'D LIKE THE TIME TO DO THAT TOO...but I typically can't because he doesn't cook, so I'm the one always cooking and don't want to eat at 8 o'clock. He will help out with cleaning, more so on the weekends when we do it together. But, it's usually a "look at what I helped with" kind of thing. What??? Do you want a gold star for pitching in?!!! Ugh....I hear ya on this.
@BanditGirl: Girl, don't get me started. I asked him to fold laundry one day and I could have sworn he looked at me like I just grew a head or two. He has this idea in his head of "man jobs" and "woman jobs" He grew up in a very traditional role family. His mom was a SAHM and dad worked two jobs so she could stay home with the children. She made a huge breakfast every morning for them, packed all of their lunches, sent them off with a wave and a kiss by the door, did laundry all day, cleaned all of their rooms well into his senior year in high school, ect. Like he had no chores growing up except for mowing the lawn and taking out the garbage (which he does now) He doesn't do dishes. Even when I was sick for a week, he didn't do a single dish. He actually went out and bought new glasses! O_O He's set in his ways and I have accepted that he's like this, but damnit! I get so frustrated sometimes.
It's like I have to tell him exactly what to do. If I ask him to go to the grocery store for something, he will get it done...but that's it. And he will feel so accomplished like it took him HOURS to go to the grocery store and he didn't have time for anything else. So when I ask him to do multiple things, he tells me, "I don't DO honey-do lists." One day I'm just going to take my earrings out and fight him over some unfolded laundry.
Hehe. I've had those days. :D
ETA, My man is an only child, and fed from a silver spoon his whole life. No joke, I've seen the spoon!
Ohh man I hear ya!! Sometimes I feel my rage slowly building as I clean and vaccuum around him as he sits on the couch, watching sports and continuing to create more of a mess (dirty glasses, plates, magazines, books, etc). I need to give myself time outs til I can calm down, lol.
Haha I love that he bought new glasses instead of washing the ones you had!! My DH would wash exactly one glass...and then use that same one over and over.
Whoa - I just read this from you: So I told him that I hated his mom for being a SAHM and taking care of his ass
Don't hate his mom for being a SAHM and taking care of his ass. That's what mothers do -- take care of their kids. Hate her for not teaching him how to do things for himself.
I work out of my home and have always been with my kids and have taken care of them. But that doesn't mean I didn't teach them how to pick up their clothes, take their dishes to the sink, unload the dryer, put garbage in the garbage can, etc. Right now, my DS almost 2 yo knows that he can't leave his socks in the middle of the living room and that they go in his clothes hamper. My DD 10 knows how to unload the dishwasher, my 6 yo DS knows how to set and clear the table.
I suggest that, if you hate taking care of him, you start to teach him to take care of things for himself.
OK - just read your response back to me.
I think you need to sit down with him and say "OK - you don't do 'honey-do' lists. However, I have my own weight to pull and can't pull yours as well. Therefore, if you want clean laundry and clean dishes, you'll have to do them!" Then only do your laundry, your dishes, etc. and leave his stuff sitting around. I bet he'll change his tune!
Also, you might want to cook dinner for one every random night and say "Oh, I have so much of my own stuff to do around here that I don't have time to cook for you!"
@BanditGirl:i totally agree.
he's a grown man, not a child--he can help take care of the house. you're not his mommy, you're his fiance.
i think you need to tell him, very bluntly, that you need help with the house--you can't do it all by yourself. tell him what you want him to do, come up with a plan that works for both of you, and hold him accountable for it.
the longer you let this go and let it bother you, the harder it will be to fix it. and something like this WILL have a negative effect on your relationship.
He's so damn lazy because he was raised to think that it's normal.
BanditGirl honestly has some great advice for you.
Also, there is some information on "training" your husband through positive reinforcement available that I've seen in a book, I believe it was. It may sound a little nasty "training" someone, but I think humans all train each other through their various relationships.
I once had a boyfriend who was the same damn way. I physically can not care for two people due to chronic illness and living with this guy was killing me. Needless to say, we aren't together anymore. He just didn't care, which also showed in other ways. I'm guessing it is not the case for your SO and a reasonable sit down discussion would be the way to go. Emotional responses are just going to turn him off. He honestly probably doesn't understand what the hell you are talking about with this whole sharing of chores business. He has to learn a new way of viewing women and gender roles and other deeply ingrained values.
Good luck
You need to talk to him about things so he understand how you feel and that he needs to do more than just play games all day.. Maybe assign certain duties to him, so he always knows those are his
I know how frustrating that can be. There have been planty of days I want to scream because I don't feel like he pulls him own weight around the house. FI happened to be off today and I was all set to come home to a messy house and was dreading cooking dinner. I was shocked when I walked in the door and the place was spotless and an actually nice dinner was waiting. It really put me in a great mood and I felt really loved and respected by him.
Come on ladies, its a vent. My FI does great 99% of the time, but sometimes I just need to scream about him as well. I'm sure we've all had those days :D
My main advice would be to talk to him and express the fact that you are now completely burnt out on being the sole cleaner of the home and you are overly irritated with his lack of help.
I come from the other side of the coin. I'm the messy one. While I do help out for some things SO is MUCH cleaner than I and he does much more of the cleaning because he is the one at home during the day. He was so fed up because he is slightly OCD and prefers the way he cleans things to the way I do them. Unfortunately, he cannot do it all but because he didn't like the frequency with which I was doing things he had taken on more than his fair share.
There were 2 ways we solved this.
Number 1: I realized that it is compltely unfair of him to be doing so many chores around the house. As much as I hate to fold and put away clothes someone has to do it and I get peeved about the way he does it so that leaves me to do it. Even though I dislike it, it is MY chore to do.
Number 2:We simplified as much as possible. SO's main complaint was clutter and things being left where they didn't belong. It costed some money but we bought organization tools such as a three space laundry seperator plus the one hamper we had plus another hamper. This makes a space for most every color combination I choose to sort. It doesn't keep everything off the floor all the time but it helps to make cleaning quicker.
Number 3: SO had to be consistant with me and he had to really help me realize that he was getting stressed out and it was hurting our relationship with me being so unhelpful. It is not as if I am some amazing helper now but I try to play to my strengths and it helps him to stay off my back.
Find out what he CAN do. What does he know how to do? Let him know that you cannot ever efford to just replace every dish because he chooses not to wash them. He IS being lazy and even though this is something he is used to you CANNOT allow him to constantly be a slob like this. It is unhealthy for everyone in the home. He is probably never going to be a clean freak but he is choosing to be unhelpful even though he knows it frustrates you. Keep working at it!
ETA: I'm sorry that was a novel!
@Miss Tattoo: I did a little happy dance when I saw you said, "they need washed." FH hate, hate, hates when I leave out "to be" and I miss people thinking it's normal. I can't wait to fly back to PA tomorrow to hear it again.
But I would get on FH's case if he lazed around all day, if I had asked him to do something before hand. Otherwise I would get frustrated but try not to take it out on him. Spontaneous cleaning just usually doesn't happen.
It is a vent but she clearly states that this is not a one-off.
If you want things to change , I suggest you sit down and have a heart to heart.
Explain to him that you cannot keep working and doing all the chores around the house.
Ask him what chores he is prepared to tackle and assume resposibility for. When he does them- DO NOT CRTICIZE! Positive reinforcement will eventually work.
If he doesn't do the chores he has chosen don't do them. Just leave things where they are. If you need to wash dishes or do laundry for you and your child go ahead- but don't do his.
My first husband started dropping his clothes, including suits, at the foot of his bed, when we started to live together. I just left them there from day one. We had a hamper in the bathroom for the laundry, and the suits needed to be hung up.
Eventually, he realized that he did not marry his own private maid, and he started doing it for himself.
@missfireslayer: LOL that is perfect!
My partner likes to accomplish things on his down time as do I. It just so happens that the things we each want to accomplish are usually quite different (improvements & chores vs. movie watching, video games, "tinkering").
My partner is epically disorganized (socks on the floor, laundry in a heap, dishes and paperwork in every nook and cranny), and while I understand that he works (a lot) I still get frustrated when he rolls his eyes at me for asking him to walk ten feet and put his garbage in the garbage instead of leaving it on the coffee table.
We have often had noisy disagreements over how the work loads are often skewed --definitely worse in the past, but more resolved now that we have been able to communicate about the issue.
I think that he needs to be reminded that if he were living on his own, all that shit would still have to be done. Just because he is living with you doesn't magically mean that you are going to pick up after him like a maid and dote on him like his mother did -- it is not about "honey do" lists, it's about equal partnerships and pulling your own weight.
hubby and i joke because i do tonnes more than he does so when i go to work leaving him at home he has a honey do list... or as he calls it "my list of demands", bearing in mind my demands are things like change a light globe or take the scuba gear out of the living room and into the lockup so not too demanding i would think
my hubby thrives on verbal affirmations - if he picks up the laundry (his laundry btw) off the floor in the hallway and puts it in the laundry room i make sure to thank him and say how much i appreciate him doing that as it helps me and hes like a damned puppy ready to do it again, which means he gets more positive affirmations and its a cycle. as soon as i nag him, pointing out that ive asked him to do something 3 times he shuts down and gets stoppy
find out what your guy responds to and make it work for both of you
Miss Tattoo, I have total sympathy for your situation.
My husband has been taking care of himself since he left home to complete his military service when he was 19. He grew up in a very egalitarian household where both of his parents worked full time and shared the housework. He has been doing his own laundry, washing his own dishes, vacuming his own floors, etc. for a loooong time.
And yet, he STILL drove me batshit insane when he first moved in with me. I don't know what happened but it's like he suddenly forgot how to live like a civilized human being. The apartment was covered in crumbs and dust, the bathroom was covered in his grime, his sweaty gym stuff was stinking up the place, and I couldn't keep up with the mess of two people all by myself. I had a series of escalating nervous breakdowns before he finally saw the need to help me out. Even then I had to teach him how to do a bunch of things. For example, he'd never had a dishwasher when he was living alone, and it took me six tries to teach him how to load one properly.
Now that I've thoroughly "trained" him, I only need to start with a certain tone and he comes running to help, but it took a good long time. And he was supposed to be an easy one... I wish you luck with yours!
@jayce: OH sweaty gym stuff KILLS me. My honeyman decided it was a bright idea to put his soaking-with-sweat clothes in the washer and not start a load, so silly me, a couple hours later I went to start some laundry, figured they were clean and went to go toss them in the dryer, I nearly died from the grossness LOL!
@Miss Tattoo:This sounds exactly like my husband. Until I finally asked him to permanently do the laundry as his chore (it's the only one I asked for). I do have to frequently remind him, but... it's sort of working.
Of course the rest of it still blows.
:( Sorry.
PM me anytime you want to vent. I'm around here every few days.
@Belle2Be: Uggh!!! Tell me about it! I've learned to hold my breath and look in to see if the clothes look washed (stuck to the side of the washer drum instead of loosely piled on the bottom) before I touch them.
He used to come home from practice or working out and go sit on the sofa to watch TV in his sweaty clothes! Our sofa started to STINK like a mother-effer, and that triggered one of the nervous breakdowns I mentioned above. I had to say to him, "Come here and SMELL THIS. SMELL IT!" I felt like the owner of a puppy rubbing his nose in his mess. I seriously had to restrain myself from grabbing him by the back of the neck and rubbing his nose on the sofa because he kept saying, "I don't smell anything!" GRAAARR!!!
Sorry. I get infuriated all over again just thinking about it. Now he knows to either hop straight into the shower or to sit on a towel on the floor if he wants to watch TV after the gym. I still get grossed out occasionally, but it's tolerable now. Thank God.
Thanks ladies for the advice. I have been diagnosed with OCD/panic disorder. I'm not a germ freak though. It's just things need to be in order. I can't take clutter. My books on my bookcase are in alphabetical order. My DVD's are the same way. Towels are color coded in the closet. It's just the level of control I need to not have panic attacks. FI knows this and I think he just doesn't clean up because he knows I will just go over it again. We talked at dinner about it and he did say he knows he needs to do his part, but he feels like I will have him do chores all day on his day off which is not true. I'm actually trying to take advantage of this before Diablo III comes out.
Haha! Shit I thought had I had written this! This is one reason I am really not wanting a proposal. I dread the thought of living with my bf. Even if he stays over I get upset cleaning all his filth up. I had to tell him that I won't live with him ever until it changes. His lazy ass brother is nearly 30 and still at home with his mom picking up after him!
I never go to my bfs flat. Even going to his back door makes me itchy and feel gross. I so feel for you. How do you stick up for yourself without nagging? And why when the DO something is it so half assed?
There is some awesome advice in this thread. And I admire you all for your patience!
You have the patience of a saint really. You cohabitate! And your love with him obviously makes it worth it - or barely tolerable? ;) I'll dumpy bf of many years I'd he doesn't sort his shit out! I'm not waiting until I'm 50 to find someone to settle down with!
I hear you sister! Sometimes it just hits me how unaware he is of everything I do. Today he looked up from his video game while I was talking wedding and asked me "How do you know if someone's not coming to the wedding?" Ugh...
AHHHHH! I just want to sympathize with you! I think it's crazy RIDICULOUS that you have to ask him to do things. HE KNOWS WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE, HE IS A GROWN MAN. I think it's even MORE ridiculous that people expect you to ask/tell him what to do. GRRRRR.
I obvi have this same problem (sometimes) and I want to rip my hair out when he's like that.
@peaches1038: Vent away girl. My FI isn't really the "talk about your emotions" type of guy. He just wants to know the problem and what's the solution. lol
My rule is: I can't get mad unless I explicitly ask him to do something and he doesn't. Maybe make a chore list? Guys just are not self-starters with regards to cleaning usually.
@Miss Tattoo: hahahh thanks, I feel better. I actually did a speech based off this article for a public speaking class and sometimes use the techniques to 'better' my man:
If girls can do anything then so can guys. I don't buy this "Aww he's a man so he just doesn't know how" bullcrap. It's something we've all been suckered into believing!!!! I know plenty of men who are thoughtful, mature, clean and pull their weight (and are straight...).
Don't let them play you at the "born useless and naive about cleaning" game.
God, even our children can grasp it!
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