I(35M) have been with my partner(32F) for about 5 years now. She has a pretty high stress job. I get it. My job is not as crazy as hers, and I work from home, so I take care of pretty much everything around the house including cooking, cleaning, paying the bills, pretty much anything and everything so she can just focus on her work. My pay is great, better than my partner’s, and she is very appreciative of my financial contribution. She’s a great person. However, the stress from my partner making careless mistakes is kind of getting at me after all these years.
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For example, She often falls and gets pretty bad bruises, while just walking up and down the stairs. Sometimes she falls while on vacation and gets injured pretty badly, and we just end up getting stuck in hotel until we have to leave. She once got into a car accident (she was driving alone) where our brand new car was totaled. no one was injured though, thank god. She also ran a red light and got citation pretty recently, and while she sometimes tries to help with house stuff, she often messes things up. For example, she washes a $300 wooden cutting board with hottest water possible from the sink constantly and causes a crack, or wipes dining table with rubbing alcohol and ruins the coating.
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Financially, it’s no big deal. Running a red light? $500, cutting board? $300, and dining table? eh.. I can just learn how to put on a new sealant. Totaling a brand new car ($70k) was a bit painful, but at least she didn’t get injured, didn’t injure anyone (thank god the other car didn’t sue us even though she was at 100% fault), and the insurance coverage was great. I’d say what bothers me the most is that I feel like I always have to baby her. I hate doing this, but whenever I don’t pay full attention when we’re walking together for example, boom, she falls, and sometimes sprains her ankle pretty badly, or damages something else in the house, though totally unintentional. After these things repeating year after year, I found myself just doing everything. I might be going crazy, but I can’t even trust that she can walk downstairs and throw the trash in dumpster without getting injured. This whole time, I was like, yeah that’s fine, it’s just a car, it’s just a cutting board, it’s just a table, the traffic violation was just $500, and look, she feels bad, she’ll work on it, and it’ll get better, but I also feel like, when will it stop? What’s next? Do I have to baby my partner for the rest of my life? Can I handle that? I don’t know… Also, probably handling everything myself doesn’t give her an opportunity to learn these things, and it’ll make her less capable and my frustration might only go up, but I also don’t know what’s the best way around this.
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I mostly talked bad things about her, but she’s an amazing human being, and I love her so much. She feels so terrible about the accident, and all other careless mistakes she made, but after all these years, I just don’t know if I can keep going with this. Anyone can relate to my frustration? Do you think this problem will only get bigger, or am I overthinking?
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tl;dr – my partner keeps making careless mistakes such as car accident, traffic violation, mistakenly damaging stuff, and now it’s getting at me. Does it sound like it’ll be a bigger problem later on, or am I overthinking?
5 comments
It sounds like she should get tested for ADHD. She could also have a spatial processing issue (also common with ADHD).
I relate to your partner a lot, and my greatest fear is my husband will start to think this way. I remember a couple months ago I was so so proud of a mac and cheese I made for a potluck but when we returned hours later I had left the oven on. He held me while I crumpled to the floor and had a near panic attack, told me it was okay and gave me tip to help me remember to turn it off next time. I truly don’t deserve him
You sound like you might be or are on the verge of burnout from taking on everything to ease the stress on your partner. I don’t think you taking on all of the cooking, housework and mental load is sustainable or even helpful to your partner in the long run.
What I do think could be helpful if
she isn’t already is your partner seeing an OT to assist with strategies/techniques to help your partner focus and multitask? Working towards a goal of her taking on some of the load that you’re carrying?
If the budget allows it I would consider getting in a cleaner once a week/fortnight.
Her mistakes don’t sound like careless mistakes for her, they just sound like regular mistakes They sound like they’re careless mistakes for you. Just because it’s not a mistake you would make doesn’t mean it’s careless.
I think she needs a medical assessment. She may have a neurological issue that’s affecting her cognition and motor skills.