I pit my husband for throwing household items out

The BBQ Pit
81

My husband doesn’t want to do ANYTHING around the house. He was his mother’s baby and she never asked him to do any chores. His dad did require him to do outside chores, but he got paid for those jobs. My husband has not really grown up. He’s not quite mentally challenged, but he certainly has learning and memory problems. I have certain physical limitations. I’d be delighted to get someone in once or twice a week, in order to get some of these things done. However, he doesn’t want to spend the money. He agreed with me that he needs to do some things, and to make accommodations for me. For instance, if I have some items in a chest, and these items are easily accessible to me, he SHOULD NOT move them to a place where I can’t get to them, simply because he wants to use THAT chest for his stuff. He needs to put his stuff, which I don’t touch and am not interested in, in a place that’s inconvenient or impossible for me to reach, and let me have the chest for my stuff.

My husband will see me reach for something, and get it down for me, but he doesn’t seem to grasp that I can’t access all of the storage space that he can. Unless it’s pounded into his brain by repetition. He’ll agree with me that he needs to put stuff where I can reach it, but he never seems to remember that he’s promised to do so, until I give him “the look”. He will also ask me to do something that I’ve told him, many, many times, that I’m not physically capable of doing. Each time I have to remind him that I CAN’T lift 100 pounds, or whatever it is that he wants me to do.

My husband is the sort of man who will come in from the kitchen, plop down in front of the TV, and then ask me to fetch him a cold drink. While I’m working on my painting. It does not occur to him that I might be busy. He’s also the sort of person who will send a waiter for a straw, and then want some more napkins, oh, and he wants some steak sauce. I have to intercede and tell the server that he’ll want napkins and sauce when he asks for a straw, so that the server makes one trip instead of three.

Actually, no. I complete my chores before I sit down at the computer, or pick up my book. If I do have anything on my “to do” list, and I’m at the computer or on my PS, or whatever, I have set it in motion (laundry is in the washer, dinner is in the oven/crockpot). I watched about 10 minutes of Survivor and almost puked. On the rare occasions that I do watch TV, I’ll generally have some handwork to be done, or laundry to be folded.

82

If you are one of those rare individuals who never slip, who never allow an appointed task to go undone because of weakness or tiredness or desire for diversion, then you are unusual, and my post was not directed toward you.

The vast majority of people have to survive, and interact, without benefit of a halo.

83

Now thats just crazy talk there! The battle of the sexes MUST BE WON!

Damn good post there!

84

Leave the part about rare ball scratching out…thats just a bit over the top and calls into question the validity of the rest of the claims :slight_smile:

85

I’m not claiming sainthood. I do slip. However, I also prioritize. And I try not to do things that will aggravate my husband for no good reason. I WILL aggravate him if he persists in saying one thing and doing (or not doing) another. This seems to be the only way that he learns. His mother didn’t teach him. His daddy taught him bad habits. I want him to take some responsibility for running this household.

86

Fewer than a dozen times in the many years of having dinner with my parents did I ever see my dad clear his own dishes from the dinner table. Mom was quite strict with the kids about it, and made sure we developed good habits, so it was obvious she wanted everyone to clear their own dishes. Not once did I hear her nag my dad to do it. He just didn’t. That’s how it was.

I have to wonder, how much energy she saved by just clearing my dad’s dishes herself, rather than nagging him daily in an effort to “train” him?

87

Algorithm, your mother probably grew up in a time when male/female roles with regards to household chores were more sharply segregated. That shit doesn’t fly anymore, and we should not have to treat our husbands like recaltricant teenagers in order to get things done that we are not capable of doing ourselves and don’t have the resources to pay others to do them (I would have LOVED to get a maid/handyman to make up for my husband’s shortfall. Mine too. Not. In. The budget.).

88

I’m curious why so many posters in this thread seem to be viewing the OP and subsequent stories as one spouse attempting to “train” another. I don’t see it that way at all.

The way I see it, they all boil down to the following scenario.

SPOUSE 1: Please do X.

SPOUSE 2: OK.

SPOUSE 2 never does X, but also never states an objection to doing X or in any way communicates that s/he has no intention of doing X. Sometimes may even actively block SPOUSE 1 from doing X.

Once SPOUSE 1 has asked SPOUSE 2 to do something, it is SPOUSE 2’s role to either a) agree to do X and then do it OR b) not agree to do X in the first place.

This is not about what a nagging harpy SPOUSE 1 must be. It’s about SPOUSE 2 clearly communicating his or her intentions and then following through with whatever they’ve communicated.

89

True enough.

But some spouses will either work another to death if they allow it or will NOT take no for an answer.

So for some, that actually are carrying their weight, its either lie or fight like hell about it.

90

Although sometimes it is about SPOUSE 1 (i.e.: me) becoming a nagging harpy in order for SPOUSE 2 to do what he’s said he will.

91

Maybe Spouse 2 has some unresolved personal shit going on internally and should seek counseling. Spouse 2 could also be an unredeemable lazy fuck, but the first case is more likely.

92

I’m bad about going into a cleaning frenzy once in awhile. It’s usually because I want to make room for something new. Last Summer we got a great deal on a rather large chest freezer, (we were looking for a small one). I volunteered to give up my craft table, and the mounds of stuff piled on top. It wasn’t until I decided to make some homesewn Christmas gifts, that I realized I had tossed the foot peddle to my sewing machine.

As for husbands, mine just installed the trim around the wood floor which was started in 1998 and finished in 2003.

In May, he bought paint and a new cabinet for the back bathroom. The paint is in the pantry and the cabinet is in the still unopened box, in the bedroom.

OTOH, I finally got my patio last summer, (it only took 19 years of begging). But he decided not to use any kind of sealant on the brick because he planned on extending it this year. Now, my new brick patio looks 10 years old because of all the leaf mold stains.

93

Wait a minute!

Back in the 60s/70s I was told that now, in the age of Aquarius, that women would be able to do anything a man could…

You mean women not equal soft, non-hairy man able to give child birth?

I was lied to man!

94

Clearly we should all talk about something non-controversial, like circumizing male babies or bottle feeding infants…

I don’t like the condescension I sense in your posts to me and others, billfish–this has never been about men are scum and women are perfect. There are many, many men in this world (and on this board) who more than pull their own weight–and guess what? I am as critical of their wives as I am of the husbands being Pitted here. For me, there are no gender specific chores (barring breast feeding and teaching a boy how and why to wear a cup). Everyday, mundane cleaning and maintenance, cooking and shopping should have no gender bias. That’s one thing.

Second thing: I confess to feeling a bit “ick” about using behaviorist techniques as described upthread on a spouse. As someone said, a spouse isn’t a trained seal or child–if someone stood over me with a prompt, they’d promptly get a piece of my mind (children are different–they need that kind of thing, sometimes). We are supposed to consider adults to be responsible, pro-active type people, so the trouble comes when they just aren’t.

Billfish may be preaching zen stuff, but I don’t buy it. Accept the inner slob only works for inner slobs. I’m no Felix Unger, but I do not want to live with half broken stuff and half finished projects. The upshot of that is that I have painted every room in this house, wallpapered the ones that have wallpaper and overseen an entire kitchen remodel (whilst working outside the home, maintaining the kids etc).
I was good at it, but I resented his not doing his part and I still resent it. Not only did he not do his part, he not only took credit for work I did (like when I painted the picket fence when I was 7 months pregnant and visitors thought the fence looked great. TH said, yeah–WE’D worked hard on it. Of course, to me, right after I finished, he bitched to me [in private] that I’d spilled some paint on the grass…) Anyway, I have lots of these stories and they are NOT the point–they are the reason for my vehemence in this thread, though.

Here’s my thing:

  1. I don’t want to live with an Oscar Madison or inner/outer slob.

  2. IF you aren’t going to do X, don’t say you’re going to get to X or that you think that X is a great idea or that you’ve been meaning to do X or that you’ll do X next weekend for sure etc. It’s the bait and switch that drives most of us nuts. You don’t want any part of X? Fine–I’ll hire a handyman or do it myself.

  3. Cooking green beans (Not Our Green Beans) in a can in a frying pan with an inch of water in it on the stove is messed up. I don’t care if it works. I don’t like canned veggies anyway. It does mess the pan seasoning up, but also it’s WEIRD. Yep–I have some basic standards, one of which is most things have to do more than just “work”.
    Afterall, pissing out a window “just works” too, if your goal is to relieve your bladder of urine. Grabbing someone else’s genitals does indeed signal your interest in them (so could be said to “work”), but it’ll get you arrested in most states…

For all those following these hot domestic issues, the can of beans was open. Shall I tell you how he makes vegetable soup? (I won’t, because I’ve beaten up on TH enough here. He’s not a bad guy–really. He belongs to that class of people who while they say they’ll do X, they don’t, but also don’t want anyone else to do X, either*–I don’t understand such people, but they are everywhere).

Last thing: if I said I’d do X (let’s make it interesting and say a blowjob) and time and again came up with excuses to not do it–I bet I’d be Pitted, and rightly so. Same difference here.

*may be related to those whose dating life consists of “I don’t want him/her; you can’t have him/her”.

95

oh, piffle. We’re got two pages in two days on this thread. If you really want to cause a meltdown, Let’s talk about spouses who can’t take responsibility for declawing their cats but insist humans remove their shoes indoors.

96

Actually, that’s not a bad analogy at all.

97

Even back when I did not have a job, and my husband had one and was a full time student we divided chores. We made a list of things that had to be done, weighted it for how often it needed to be done and how arduous it was, and then took turns picking the items off the list. I had to take things that he could not do because of his schedule, but he took things that I really hated to do, like the dishes. He also got credits for the nice things he did for me, like bring me coffee when I wanted it. It worked pretty well and every so often we would renegotiate. He did at one point forbid me from vacuuming because I lost a toenail while doing so, and I had to take a less desirable task, but overall it worked.

But, he has always had this thing about not liking clutter, or keeping possessions he personally had no use for. He also has an amazing ability to break from reality as demonstrated by the scotch tape incident.

I love scotch tape. There are myriad uses for it, and I also like other fasteners as well. He viewed them as clutter and would throw them out, seemingly not in a willful attempt to thwart me and my love for connections, but as casually and mindlessly as one would throw out a used tissue or irrelevant junk mail. I took a small lock box we found at a thrift store, and it became the box of things that holds other things together. I put my tape, glue, staples, screws, paper clips, rubber bands, and nails into the box. I did not have all that many of each kind, but I found uses for them and it felt so good to have them when I needed them. Then I ran out of scotch tape. We lived on $500 a month and so it was a while before I could afford more, but I found some on sale for less than a dollar after Christmas and blew that month’s and the previous month’s allowance I had set aside for treats for me on it. I was happy. I put it in my box, and all was well, and when I had need of it, I went to my box, and lo, it was not there. He had not seen it. He had no idea what had happened to it. This was in a studio apartment which did not even have vermin that could be blamed for the disappearance. Over the years, I would buy more tape, get one or two uses out of a roll and lo, it was gone.

In 1995, after eight years of this, we moved to a new city, both of us having graduated college. I inspected every box as it was unpacked, and I found a box full of of scotch tape. He claims that he had no idea how all the rolls got in that box, and oddly, I do believe him. I know he put them there, but his swiss cheese memory from drinking away his high school years, along side the immense capacity for cognitive dissonance from years in an abusive home and being raised Catholic, I can well believe each act of tape stashing was independent. They all got in that same box because when he saw the tape roll he would think, hmm where can I put this where it won’t clutter up someplace accessible, and each time arrived at the same answer blissfully unaware of the dozen rolls already lurking in that box. Asking for tape did not yield the answer, “oh there is some in that box”, because the retrieval mechanism in his brain doesn’t work that way. It is a box to put tape into, not to get tape out of. Having found the magic tape box, I broke the spell, and was able to retrieve tape at a whim. Often I would send him off for tape and have to describe the box and its location because he had only a vague recollection of there being a tape box.

Our current battle ground is my food mill, and our apple peeler, a nice one with a crank that actually works.

98

There really are people who do have to be nagged. KellyM for example. It is her job to take out the trash. She knows it, she accepts it, but there are days when simple asking will not work. I watch my husband inform her of the level of the trash multiple times, each time cramming more in the can, and then when she finally gets around to taking it out, bitching that it is over full and hard to take out. Her excuse, “Well, he did not ask me to take out the trash, he just said how full it was.” Sometimes he has actually made the leap and asked her in no uncertain terms. Of course, he doesn’t know that as he never listens to himself anyway, and she doesn’t either because she filters most of what he says out anyway because to not do so is the path of madness (he does continually chatter, giving us status reports of the news, the pundits, his aches and pains, and whatever else pops into his head, kind of like a walking twitter.)

The key to happiness is to not eat your own liver out over it. KellyM agrees to be nagged and do the taking out of the trash, and he agrees to occasionally actually ask her to take it out rather than state the trash level. And I occasionally prompt her to take out the trash, and I occasionally let him know now is not a good time for nagging.

99

I hate to ask, because I’ve been Posty McPostyPants in this thread, but I’ve got to know. How did you vaccume off a toenail?

Eta, if the answer is too icky for the squimish, can you put it in a spoiler box please?

100

I vacuumed in bare feet and pulled the vacuum back while I had my foot out in front of me. The toenail caught on the back of the vacuum, and it separated enough that eventually it fell off. No infection, and it grew back fine. He is squeamish over blood and never wanted to see that much blood again.