I’m at a loss here. My husband has a hard time helping me with chores. And by hard time, I mean he forgets or doesn’t see it as an issue. We’ve been married 8 years, living together for 10. I figured over time it would get better. But it’s been a point of contention, especially over the last year and a half after our daughter was born. I’m at the point where I no longer have affection towards him. I’ll also preface this and say he does have ADHD. And he does not take his medication.
He doesn’t pick up his dirty and put them in a hamper (we have 3 dirty clothes hampers within 15 feet of each other). Or his dirty snot tissues. Or our daughters toys, clothes, or books on the floor. He leaves dirty diapers in her room. Doesn’t make the beds or straighten up the living room after he’s used pillows/ blankets. Won’t help fold/ put away clean laundry unless he has no laundry to wear. Won’t help with the kitchen/ dishes before bed even if I make dinner. I’ve asked him to set up/ check mouse traps, check furnace and well filters, clean the basement/ garage. Clean up dog shit in the yard. But even those tasks I end up doing because they need to be done. Issues that crop up with our vehicles don’t get addressed until it’s almost too late.
I am not a housewife. I was not raised as one. I work 40+ hours a week at a professional/ technical job. We have a 1.5 yr old and I do most tasks related to her care. And I’m 3 months pregnant with our 2nd. I have no energy yet still do 90% listed above.
This man sits on the couch for 3 hours every night on his phone (usually on Reddit). Then he sleeps late enough where he’s always rushing out the house. On the weekends he’s doing some odd tasks that aren’t important/ aren’t needed. Or they are needed, because he put them off for months.
I remind him, he gets all flustered and acts like I’m nagging him. I’ve asked, insisted, I’ve given him “timelines” to see if that helped, I’ve suggested him make lists, I’ve made lists for him. I’ve tried talking with him, calmly, about my frustrations. Sometimes he might make an effort for a couple days, but always goes back to what it was.
I think it’s likely marriage counseling time, but has anyone had luck with other ways of intervention?
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This is why women in their 30’s divorce.
Get him the book This is how your marriage ends by Matthew Fray. Watch Fair Play on Hulu.
He needs to understand that this is serious and it does end marriages. It’s about respect.
You may sometimes need to not ask, but Tell him in a respectful way.
It may also help to give him an immediate task in the moment.
So while you’re in the kitchen: honey, can you help me by doing x while I do y?
Laundry: honey, can you throw these in the wash while I …
Asking him to do ~this~while you are doing ~that~ shows him a) you are busy b) you need help c) it’s a specific task that needs to be done.
We’ve been married almost 31 years. He’s always been good. He became great when I got better at communicating exactly what I wanted or needed very specifically.
Particularly once our son was born, he was willing but not very confident in his ability. If it looked like I had it handled, he was going to let me keep handling it.
I needed to learn to use my words, but he needed to learn to look through my eyes and see things from my perspective.
Now we both just do whatever needs to be done. If we see it, we do it. He probably does more than I do… he definitely does more of the heavy lifting. He vacuums and mops more than I do, and he does laundry more often.
Good luck
The card game, Fair Play helps you divide tasks fairly in a light-hearted way.
Agree on a time to check for completion and whoever isn’t done has to use their spending money to book a house cleaner on the spot.
Whatever you do, OP, do not turn this into a parent-child relationship.
If you have told him 50 times, telling him 51 times will not help. Remember the definition of insanity….
With all that said, We cannot change other people, OP.
We can only change ourselves, and our responses.
Challenge yourself to go on a strict nagging and negativity diet. For the next month, compliment your husband in anything you can, such as him being a hard worker, being kind to your family, getting home on time, etc etc.
Another tactic- Actions speak louder than words.
Some people throw the person’s stuff in a garbage bag when it’s lying all over the house.
If your husband is a gamer, lock the gaming system in your trunk and tell him you need him to Adult.
Get the Fair Play card deck. Sit down and divide the cards. Lay it all out in front of both of you. He takes responsibility for some tasks, including monitoring if they are done, and he has a list that he can refer back to. There is also a documentary based on Fair Play, and a book. But the cards will do what you need to get done.
“I don’t want to nag. I also do not want to be the only person responsible for ensuring that the house is in livable condition. We both live here, we both work full time, these are both our children, and the labor needs to be equitability divided. We have to have a major revamp because I can tell that my resentment is growing and for the sake of our relationship there has to be another solution.”
“When the same issues about housework come up over and over again I feel disrespected and that my time and efforts are not important.”
If he doesn’t get it then it is time for couples therapy.
You have spent 10 years and had 2 children with someone just hoping they fundamentally change who they are? It will not change.
That sounds so frustrating; this is a story all too common with many of my female friends in hetero relationships (and with kids).
I don’t have children, but I felt that dynamic starting to increase and it eventually made me really unhappy. My husband and I eventually implemented a weekly chore chart where everyday has chores and an agreement on who does what. Fill out the chart every Sunday (or whatever day makes sense for you) together.
Also couples counseling – it helps so much with understanding each others perspectives and also holds everyone accountable. Both these things have saved us from a lot of future resentment (at least I hope haha). It’s a process and things didn’t change right away – some weeks are better than others. But we’ve only been married for just over a year and realized it’s better to nip things in the bud so we can grow and learn to be better partners. My husband now goes around and recommends couples counseling to all the couples he knows (lol) and he was really against it at first. Highly recommend!
You’re not alone. r/ADHD_partners
Totally support all the FairPlay comments.
I would also say find out as much about ADHD as possible.
I don’t have a good solution for you, but I can say that my situation is similar. One key difference is that my husband is a SAHD, that takes a lot of the day to day childcare burden off of me because a kid is something with immediate needs.
One thing that is true for me is that I’ve decided that I want to stay married to this person. For the foreseeable future, and that if that’s true I can’t live in resentment and I had to find things that worked for me on my own. His problems are his problems and mine are mine. (Even though they feel like our problems, however, because WE are not working on a solution I can’t approach them as OUR problems.)
So what does that mean?
– One solution I’m privileged to exercise is that I outsource work I can’t do without resenting him or that if it goes undone I’m unhappy. (Aka, house cleaning, meal prep, childcare, yard care, car maintenance.) If I’m the project manager of the house and don’t have the time and/or skill to execute all the necessary workstreams that keep us successful domestically I pay someone else to do it.
– I implement systems so that when things don’t get done I can live with it. Diapers only get changed in the bathroom. My husband sometimes puts dirty diapers in the sink instead of the diaper pail. I leave it. My husband is responsible for trash and recycling. He doesn’t do it I let it build up in the garage. Yes it is gross. In my situation he handles before it’s a true safety/hygiene hazard. I never comment on these things, it triggers to much of his ADHD stuff that any kind of comment is unhelpful. If HE complains about it, I just kind of “go yeah, that sucks.” In a generally, agreeable, supportive way.
I want to be clear this is not ideal. It’s expensive. It can be lonely. But it’s good enough. It’s more peaceful. I’m not trying to do it all but some is getting done. I’m not building more resentment. We’re not arguing. He has to deal with his ADHD and the impact it has on our happiness and our goals because I can’t.
This was long. I guess, you’re not alone. Discover what you want and can live with, and then create that life. ♥️
Yes counseling if you even want to save it.
Part of the issue is that you are framing it as helping. Helping is when one person is responsible for a task and someone else volunteers to do part of it. Your husband is equally responsible for all of the work. He doesn’t need to help he needs to do his share.
He is used to not doing a damn thing and knows you will pick up the slack. You need to break him of this habit by not doing anything for him and letting him face consequences when he drops the ball. Assign him mornings for childcare. You get up and go to work. He needs to get the baby ready and get them to daycare. Don’t remind or help. Let him be late to work and let him forget your kids stuff and let him have to drive back to pick up whatever he forgot.
Tell him he is in charge of bathing and putting the kid to bed then hand the kid over and leave the house.
Leave the kid with hubby for the weekend and tell him you are coming home to a clean home that he cleaned himself with no help or you are divorcing him.
Yes this might disrupt your kid. That’s okay. It’s better your kid gets disrupted for a little bit and you end up with a husband that can actually care for both kids competently when the other arrives then you do all the work forever and get burnt out and raise kids who idealize your relationship and follow in your footsteps
Is he receiving treatment for his ADHD? If he is, then he needs to look into other treatments, coz this one ain’t working.
I feel like counseling is gonna be useless without that.
He’s going to be “blindsided” when you work up the never to finally divorce him. What is the point of being married if you’re doing absolutely everything alone?
Consider couple counseling. Sounds like there’s long term work to do here if you want to get things on a lifelong track.
If he’s not interested in improving (why would he, you do everything) then it’s up to you to take whatever action is required to make it work (hire out chores, take on all the responsibilities, let a lot more go).
I think you need to start having a series of hard, uncomfortable conversations about what happens if he doesn’t step up and make a change. He’s not going to hear it the first or second time, he’s not going to hear it the tenth time. He thinks you’re nagging him now? He’s going to push back hard. But the alternative is to silently acquiesce to his behavior until you get fed up and leave. If that’s what you want then that’s fine, but it sounds like you’re interested in actually solving this. It won’t be an easy road.
Do you know if your mother-in-law doted on your husband when he was younger? Did he grow up with chores? Curious if traditional gender norms is all he ever known at home.
My husband jokes about having undiagnosed ADHD. He loves doing the dishes because he can prop his phone to watch shows while he does it. He used to be bad about cutting the grass and snowblowing the driveway until the neighbors teased him about putting his wife to work (I was fed up and did it for him). After that, he did every outdoor chore without asking (trash, recycling, leaf blowing, yard work, clean garage, etc). Sometimes I’ll try to help him but I think he resists bc he doesn’t want to be teased again. He basically does the dishes + all outdoor chores while I do all indoor chores.
He used to be messy inside, but I started calling him the dusty character from Charlie Brown and mentioning the joke to friends. He’s better now, but again, it took a little shaming for him to realize it’s not ok to be lazy.
Was your husband like this before you married and had kids with him? He should’ve been doing his share of everything from the get go, as all men should. My husband and I have always both done our share of everything (cooking, cleaning, laundry, you name it) without being asked or told. Your husband is an adult and he needs to start acting like one for once. Right now he’s acting like an entitled lazy and inept dependent, not a husband. Tell him to either man up or get out.
Hire an expensive twice weekly cleaner and take it out of his bank account.
Bonus points if she’s attractive. Might make him embarrassed to be such a slob.
In my experience, being a bitch about it and not backing down gets the best results. No matter how nicely I treat my husband in a situation like yours, the only thing that seems to break through is when I’m nasty/not nice about the thing. Stop allowing him to get away with it. Being unassertive doesn’t help anyone.
Welcome to the past 18 years of my life. ❤️
This is part of several reasons why I divorced my husband.