Wants, needs and getting help
I've been thinking a lot about this lately. It's been fueled by the fact that I've been struggling with a chronic illness that I was diagnosed with in January, trying to balance fatigue and feeling icky with raising two kids under the age of five and working full-time from home.
Basically I am trying to get DH to pitch in more around the house, and it's been a frustrating battle. Lately I've been trying to focus on strategies and systems that I can put into place that will take the onus off of me. I hate having to constantly ask for help, or constantly remind him that I need it. I know he loves me and genuinely wants to help, but his behavior is an irritating combination of:
- ADD (as in, I ask him to do something, he does it once, then forgets from then on)
-bad training (as in, his mom never ever had him help her around the house, so he has no instinct about making his bed/doing laundry/doing dishes unless asked)
-taking me for granted.
We've been fighting a lot lately, and the constant rage I feel is draining me emotionally and spiritually. I am tired of being angry. I feel sick, I walk in on him leaving plates at the table or leaving clothes all over the floor and I just blow up and start screaming at him about how I am not the maid and who the fuck does he think he is and this relationship is slowly killing me because all I do is work and all he does is fuck off.
I am tired of being angry all of the time. And when I blow up at him, he stops listening and stops helping me and goes and hides in his man-cave and sulks and leaves me with the kids. So... not helping.
I am also realizing that I have my own issues with asking for help. As in, I am not comfortable doing it. I grew up in a family where my needs were either belittled, used against me as a sign of weakness, or categorically ignored. It was OK for my brother to flunk out of school because he had bad teachers, or attention issues or whatever, but whenever it was me I was just lazy, etc. So I'm really uncomfortable admitting that I can't do something, and my instinct when I don't feel well is usually to over-exert myself to prove that I can still "handle" everything.
But I am not handling it. And I need to get better. And I need to make the time and space to let myself get better.
So this is what I have done so far. I have stopped doing DH's laundry. I still do mine and the kids', but I'm just not doing his anymore. I haven't told him this, but eventually he will have to figure it out.
I also told him that it is his turn to cook two nights a week. They are set in stone. He is not allowed to get take-out those nights. He has to plan a meal, shop for it, make it, set the table and clean it up.
I am contemplating making him a chore chart, but I still have some dignity left.
What do you think? Is this sad? Any other ideas or strategies would be much appreciated. I am trying to take the emotion out of these discussions, mostly my frustration, and these approaches seem to be working better. He made dinner for his first "cook night" last night, and he was really excited about it...and it was a good dinner, and I got to relax.
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but perhaps passive aggressive...I mean the not telling him you're no longer doing his laundry. You're starting a game you may not want to finish. Like what if when he figures out that you're refusing to do his laundry without even giving him the respect of a head's up? Then he might decide to 'even the score' by not telling you something important, by just waiting and letting you figure out what he's not doing. maybe let him know upfront how you are feeling and why you think his doing his own laundry is fair.
you have a chronic illness, and he's telling you you're being petty for not washing his clothes? that's just all kinds of classy.
does your husband know the ins and outs of your illness? i mean, if he were more educated would that help the empathy level and encourage him to help more, or at least help himself more?
we are at war almost all the time these days and i believe it has a lot to do with the state of our home. it's a disaster area alllllll the time. but it's the little things that he doesn't do that really enrage me. simply picking up after our child...
he also says he 'didn't go to girl school' which means he can't take the time to figure out how to strap the carseat into the car... ugh, i could do a whole blog about this as well...
or maybe you're irritable from being in an intolerable living condition.
i'm sorry you're going through all this, it sounds terrible. i mean, a lot of guys do this, and a lot of guys also freak out when their women are diagnosed with something and lash out. but it's not alright. i hope you don't feel like you have to take this.
heh. that sounds about right. i broke up with hal for the 3 months i was on 'roids. when i switched meds the rage went away and we got back together. i totally made my life twice as stressful as it needed to be! have you tried to explain as things come up (instead of in one grand sweeping monologue) the things you need done and why you can't do them? one at a time. like, "i need you to do this because i can't do it." he will begin to understand what you can and can't do with some repetition. and for what its worth, i think positive reinforcement is not just for kids. a little bit goes a long was so keep it up. i feel like i'm the emotionally mature one in my relationship with hal, too, most of the time anyway. always having to lead in the improvement and/or maintenance of our relationship. but he does occasionally make sense of life for me, too. and he's flexible. with time, when i am truly asking with both our best intentions at heart, he comes around. i'm sure yours does too. i don't think giving up because there is a conflict about house work is the best thing for any relationship. KWIM? most of the time, that kind of conflict is small beans, IMO.
i hope you two can work it out, but i really think he has to want to do his share of the work in order for that to happen. i know you know that already, just sayin. it's not something you can convince him of, it's all on him.
that's pretty asshattery of him. Sorry, guava.
But if you both really want some kind of way to assess how much each does on behalf of the family, take a look at these "equality scales":
http://www.equallysharedparenting.com/Toolbox.htm
It's not a bad exercise, especially for people who don't realize that other people are doing more or less work.
This is from a site about equally shared parenting that I like a lot. Granted, it sounds like you guys aren't anywhere NEAR equally shared and that ideal may be too much to handle at this point? If so, just disregard my advice!!!!
Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough. -- Emily Dickinson
You want to do what you think is right and what matters to you, and if other people don't like it, as my father would have said, they can go fuck themselves. -- Amy Bloom
But instead of him introducing you to crazyville, to me it might be time to ask him if he'd like to visit curbville.
when he says there are a lot of things he does for the family without keeping score, ask him what he means. When my husband and I went through this, he meant mostly money; providing for the family. He would say things like, when I pay the electric bill I'm not paying it just so me and the kids can have lights, it's for you too. Or when I pay the car insurance, it's not just do I can drive, it's for you too. When I pay the house note, it's not just so the kids and I can have a roof over our heads, it's so you have a home too. and so on. So he didn't think it was fair of me to just do a household chore, like laundry, just for me and the kids. He had a good point.
But he also meant other things he did around the house (that I didn't consider housework at all) like taking care of leaks, repairing other stuff, salting the steps, all the summer, fall, and winter yard work, all the car maintenance, fireplace stuff, hooking up electronica, cleaning out the basement and garage and keeping them clean and organized, etc. Lots of things that I never or rarely did but depended on him to do but disregarded as real and actual work and a significant contribution to the smooth running of our household, much the same way he discounted my doing laundry as being real work. This was another good point.
(side note: we switched once and doing laundry for a while taught him it was more than just washing out some socks, just as shoveling the driveway (where we live this can be a daily event in winter) just once taught me it was more than just throwing down a few handfuls of rock salt ha ha!)
Just me being willing to listen to and acknowledge his points made things easier and he started doing all the laundry for everyone for years after that. That was a BIG help to me (now it's a chore we share) So I would say, maybe try listening to and acknowledging what he does do for the family and thanking him for the ways in which he is supportive, then ask him again for help. When he does help, thank him and stress how important his help is and how good it makes you feel and how needed he is. Talk him up to your women friends and extended family members, let him overhear you telling people how helpful he is...I tell you, I went through years of nagging and complaining about Mercury Man's mess and refusal to help me with housework and talking down about him, about his lack of household help, but it took less than a few months of acknowledging, thanking, and talking him up to other people to turn this around for us.
yes, it may seem....wrong, like why should you put in all this effort just to get him to pitch in around the house? But keep your goal in mind. You want him to help with housework, and I'm sure you'd prefer he do it willingly and without meanness or stand attitude. Doing it this way worked for me, and is still working. I consider our home to be my domain (I'm very domestic and old-fashioned in this way) but my husband does a full 50% around the house and then some. Maybe your husband is like mine, in that he just wants to be needed and appreciated.
what you are going through is a lot...the money thing especially, I would have a really difficult time with. I hope you two can work this out.
if the situation were reversed, would you live like this? would you keep the kids company, while he makes all the money, then have him do all the house work when he gets home? would you sulk or pout or all him petty when he asked you to do things? would he have to ask you? if he had a chronic illness, would you not take some of the burden off of him?
do you get thanks for pulling your weight with your kids and your house? do you feel entitled to thanks, or do you feel like it's just your job so you do it? are you in a mentality where positive reinforcement needs to be used on you, or are you an adult?
another thing I was thinking you could maybe try, is to have a 'date night' once a week or every other week if at all possible, where you two go out and spend some time alone (or even alone time at home) and just talk to each other and interact like you were dating again. I've noticed after our date nights my husband is much more willing or likely to volunteer up help around the house; to do stuff without me asking like making a meal or clearing the table and stuff like that.
Your resentment and anger are very, very much justified, but I'm getting the impression that your intentions are to have a loving and peaceful home...it's impossible to bring peace to your household with anger and rage. Maybe when you talk to your husband, ask him what his intentions are when he disregards your pleas for household help. guava, I doubt he will tell he intends to ignore your illness or cause you heartache, grief, and pain. It sounds like to me his carelessness is based on ignorance and cluelessness on what this really means to you. Give him a chance to express his intentions and to help bring peace and order to your household.
and something your husband would appreciate. He will probably initiate doing a lot more too. Your requests are not unreasonable at all and once you get into motion, it's natural to keep that momentum going. The 15 minutes with the kids in the morning will turn into 30, and so forth.
I hear you on asking for help...this is something I still struggle with in my marriage. Sometimes I have to remind myself that my husband is my partner in life, he's supposed to be the one I lean on and my strongest supporter in life; it's ok to ask him for help when I need it. He's there to hold me up and support me just like I am there to hold him up and support him. That's what a partnership is all about. You don't have to bring everything to the table, he is there to bring stuff to the table to. You're not in a partnership by yourself, you know?
I read this book recently about a couple back in the late 60s and early 70s who decided to have an egalitarian marriage & parent that way too. They gave lectures about it, I guess cos it was so out of the realm of what was 'normal.' They always had women asking how to get their husbands to help around the house. In extreme cases, where the husband just wasn't getting it, they advised the women to unilaterally decide what jobs were the husbands' and then to just stop.doing.those.jobs. Full stop. They said this would lead to radical change of some kind, leaving open what that might be.
I thought it was great advice. And so I think what you are doing is right on. Yeah, maybe you could tell him you are not doing any more of his laundry. But I don't know all the history of how you've gotten here, how exasperated you are about how many times you've asked, etc etc. Mostly I want to say you are not out of line, in my opinion.
A chart - I would make it for the whole family - is not a bad idea, either. If you make one for you, the kids (I don't know if your kids have "chores" or "help around the house as part of the family" or not, and I can't remember how little your little ones are? but if not babies, I don't think it's too young to start teaching them that EVERYONE is part of the family and EVERYONE has responsibilities as part of the family...after all, you don't want them to grow up to be your husband, know what I mean?? okay, I'm getting preachy, huh? Sorry! You didn't ask how us to tell you how to raise your family, did you? But I do think it's related), AND your DH then it's less all about DH and his crappy-ness and more about how you can all function as a family.
One last note-- (& this is something I struggle with a LOT) - try not to be the one who does all the reminding. Because then you are still doing a significant amount of "work." If it doesn't get done, and you have to do it, then that sucks. Or you could learn to live without (no dinner is hard to live with, but maybe some of the other stuff you decide to have him do. Dirty bathroom or whatever). Ditto with if he doesn't do the laundry or cooking or whatever the "right" way, i.e., the way you would have done it. We have to let that go. If it's clean/edible/whatever, then good enough, you know?
This shit is HARD shit to navigate. It's hard for my family and both of us parents are 100% behind having an equally shared parenting kind of arrangement.
and all my sister's husbands, and most of my friends' husbands, and just about all married men i have ever met.
"forgetting" is refusing. i'm so serious, i read this and thought "ugh this story again," because it's so common. think about it. would he forget at work, after the first time he did something? of course not, and he's not forgetting at home. he just knows you'll take care of it, and all he has to do is listen to a little bitching and go hide, but it beats house work.
Mr Filth does about 40% of the house work, but it wasn't always that way. and when he finally did come around, he admitted it wasn't because he forgot, and it wasn't because he didn't know how, and it wasn't because he just didn't have the instinct for it. it was because he didn't want to do it, and he didn't care that it was making me miserable, and exploiting me. at the time, he had other resentments toward me that made him just not give a shit.
cleaning a house is not brain surgery. it requires no learning curve.
(for the record, no 40% isn't enough. but it's pretty good compared to other households. i'm still gunning for that 10%)
is it sad? maybe. and maybe some of it is your fault. as in, when he doesn't do shit, you do it for him. and if you're like me you fell into a routine of bitch about it/don't bitch about it, and eventually everything got done and you adjust to a low-grade misery, to avoid a larger misery.
but now you have an illness to manage as well and you can't keep humoring him. he just needs to grow the fuck up and pull his own weight. if you separate by chore (we don't in our house. we each do each task on an as needed basis. i didn't want to hear "it's not my job." if towels are piling up, wash them. plus, mothers delegate and i'm not his mother. he is capable of self-regulation.), then never do those chores. it's good that you quit his laundry. if your illness makes carrying heavy loads tough on you, you should quit all of the laundry.
oh, and if you're really in a marriage where he'll pull a tit-for-tat and not tell you important shit because you didn't tell him about the laundry, just leave him. you can't reason with that.
and i won't tell you what to do about it, because i have an unusual view of marriage, that only works for me.
but i know that thought process well. is this worth fighting? do i have the energy to fight today? it sucks. assholes do that to people, force them into situations where they have to choose between two things that they know the other person finds unlivable. it's called forcing the situation.
i was actually being facetious when i said it's your fault. i mean, you have to choose between doing shit you don't have the energy for, or have a fight about it that you don't have the energy for. so sometimes you choose not to fight, reinforcing his behavior.
word to the wise, that "see how long it takes for him to ..." i don't think i have ever heard of a case where that went well. i know a lot of women who've tried it, and their men have a much higher tolerance for filth. it only made misery, and more work.
good luck.
hey, mf, i figured its only fair that you know that this is the comment that i blew out of importance:
"oh, and if you're really in a marriage where he'll pull a tit-for-tat and not tell you important shit because you didn't tell him about the laundry, just leave him. you can't reason with that."
it has nothing to do with you, though. it has to do with me and what i would have felt if someone told me this when i was in the thick of it with hal and having a newly diagnosed chronic disorder. i have read that a lot of couples don't make it through a diagnosis that changes the lives of the diagnosed and their partner. it is really hard when you throw a disability into the mix. so i was feeling like "no! don't leave him over something like this! how could she suggest that when she has no experience with this sort of marital obstacle! don't give up so easily! life is never tit-for-tat, especially when one person has a disability." it was a knee-jerk out of context reaction to what you wrote. sorry about that, or rather, for letting it affect how i responded to you in a separate thread.
i really don't think you tell people what to do, you offer your opinion like the rest of us.
i'm glad i found this. yeah, i was referring to the suggestion from someone else that it would be a bad idea to withdraw from doing a man's laundry without telling him, for fear that he would withhold valuable information. while i don't doubt that marriages like this exist, i think it's not the case here and if it ever got that point, it's beyond reason.
really i was speaking to an overall theme where we have to walk on eggshells regarding how we broach the subject of doing most of the work in the house, for fear of an unreasonable response. and how we employ techniques reserved for children (positive reinforcement, gentle reminders, etc) on grown ass men. i know, i've been there, and quite literally EVERY married woman i know who's talked about it with me has as well. they've tried everything from coddling to bitching to threatening to nurturing, and none of it made the man give shit #1. so i was getting at, maybe it's time to accept that it's not just our own house, it's not our problem, maybe it really is cultural and maybe it really is inexcusable.
but i can see how you thought of it that way. i hope it's not the real reason you're taking a break.
oh my gosh, no! i'm not taking a break because of our convo. 
i think it was mentioned in the last post, a person has got to want to change. and that is just it, you can only depend on your past experiences to guide your ill behavior for so long. when someone points out the illness of a particular type of behavior or you figure it out on your own (like not contributing to something as basic as housecleaning), if a person chooses to not change , well then he/she likes being a lazy ass fuck and most likely thinks it is the other person with the problem, not them. and mind you, i don't expect change - even like this - to occur over night, but within months is reasonable, you should be able to "get it" and mostly break bad habits when committed to do so. the problem i see is that men don't want to or think they need to change what they contribute. and their wives/partners accept it and feel grateful for the sunday night grilling they might do.
let me tell you something, finding out you have a chronic illness and that it changes your day to day abilities is BIG. it's big for you and your dh. if your dh is anything like mine, it will take him some time to really get it. it will take him time to get that its not you just "not wanting to do house work" its that you really can not and should not be doing the majority of housework, it is about keeping your body healthy.
one thing that you can do, that has worked in my house, is to have a more realistic idea of what your house is going to look like with two young children and one adult with a disability. your house isn't going to be as clean as it was before, it just isn't. that mental list of all the shit your dh has slacked on isn't helping you, him, or the relationship, either.
now, i dunno how anal retentive you are about how clean your house is - but its time to loosen up and pick and choose your battles. for sanitary reasons, certain things must stay clean (kitchen, bathroom toilet/sink area, and no food laying on floor) and if you need to take turns doing it on the calendar, than do that. nothing wrong with holding each other accountable. hal and i have found it best to be flexible on these things. he does the work that hurts me physically - like cleaning the bathtub and he almost always does the eve dishes (hey, by the time he gets home i've already cleaned the kitchen once or twice) and even those chores are going to often not get done, but its OKAY. my expectations, because of my disability, are what some people would consider to be low, but really they work for us. our house is clean enough that if we have people coming over, it isn't hard to straighten up for them. but if someone drops by unexpectedly, watch where you step and yes that is my bra on the kitchen floor. sometimes everything is a mess and hal and i work together to clean it all up. sometimes, i get a wild hair and do a lot of house work in one day. sometimes he surprises me. oh, i should mention, i am so not a type A personality - so that is why i can be so lax about housework. i still do most of the light house work but when i need help, i ask. and if i have to ask more than once, for a while i'd have to say, "i'm not trying to make you feel pressured when i say this, i really need you to do xyz." our house work is not balanced 50/50, but i'm home all the time so it only makes sense that i'm cleaning more than he is. but what i can't do, i don't. and yeah, the bathtub gets pretty bad before hal cleans it, and yeah, i usually have to tell him to. but he does it. i don't have low expectations of hal, and at the same time, i don't have high expectations either. his cleaning abilities are not the most fundamental arch building aspect of our relationship! and gawd, we'd be up shit creek without a paddle if he married me thinking he was getting himself a good housewife!
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actually, about two months ago I asked him to start doing his own laundry, because I said it was just too much for me to handle. And he told me I was 'being petty' and that 'he does lots of things for our family without keeping score'. Which is kind of untrue. So that's why I opted not to get into it with him.
It's probably a good idea to tell him again that I'm just not doing it, and why. I anticipate getting an asshole response like I did last time, though, and a part of me is pissed off that he wouldn't even offer.