I am not talking about things that “should be his job”, I am mad over things he Volunteers to do, then does not do. It rankles when it is something he started (throwing out the door bell, breaking the fridge shelf) and tells me he will fix it, with no follow through.
I love my other half. He’s a great guy. So I let lots of things slide. But you can add him to this pile. My main problem is shelves and hanging up pictures, etc. He literally won’t let me do it. He thinks I can’t hang anything straight. Ok, fair enough - I’m not very good at it, but if I lived alone, I’d have to do it, right? As I don’t, he himself offers to do it and then doesn’t do it. We’ve been living in this house for seven months now and we still don’t have most of our pictures, etc., hung on the walls. I know guys aren’t big on decorations, but honestly, he said he would, without me asking! I keep telling him, “Just hang one thing every weekend, and in no time, you’ll be done.” But he doesn’t do it.
I think I will have to resort to the “picking up the tools myself” and getting to work. It is exactly the stuff he says he will do and then doesn’t follow through.
What an amazingly-beautiful cat. 
The problem I have when my own husband does this is that it drives me absolutely batshit that he agrees (or even volunteers) to do a task, thereby allowing me to cross it off my mental List O’ Tasks, only for me to discover much later that the goddamn thing still isn’t done.
Take the window.
There is a window in our basement that does not shut all the way. Since the window itself is at ground level and is located in our basement, that means that it’s a narrow, casement-style window located about 5 and a half feet off the ground. It opens from the top down. I’m about 5’8. My husband is 6’4. The damn window is eye level for him. It’s now January in New York and that goddamn window will not stay shut, which means that it’s fucking cold in our basement - where the pipes and laundry are located. This weekend we had a frozen pipe (thank God it didn’t explode).
Some backstory: I noticed the window this summer (when our biggest cat raised an unholy ruckus in the basement because there was an Evil Neighbor Cat right outside the window! And he could smell him! ZOMG! THE HORROR!
At that time, because of the configuration of the window, I asked my husband if he could arrange for the window to remain closed. (Let me be clear, I do not care how the window remains closed or, in fact, if it ever opens again - it’s not that kind of window). He cheerfully and willingly agreed that the window should be fixed and that he was just the man to do it. I reminded him a few times about it and was finally assured it was complete.
The window isn’t located anywhere where one comes across it on a regular basis - it’s in a weird corner. Therefore, I never really noticed that the goddamn thing still wasn’t closing properly until my pipes froze up and I went in search of the problem and felt a breeze. An icy cold breeze. In the basement. I tracked the frigid wind to the motherfucking window, which is still not closing properly. I got a hammer and a nail and nailed the fucking thing shut. Problem solved.
I would have done this months ago, saved the frozen pipe, saved the fact that our furnace has been trying to heat a house with a goddamn window open for months, saved all manner of aggravation, if it weren’t for the fact that my husband had assured me that a) he was going to do it and then b) that it had been done. It turns out he’d meant to do it, run into technical difficulties, intended to ask me for advice (I’m a lot handier than he is, frankly), and then forgotten - but because he’d started the project, when I asked him about it he couldn’t remember whether or not he’d finished he just took the easy way out and told me it was done.
Very early in our marriage, it was made clear that if he has told me he’s going to do something, and I then do it (generally because I’m sick to death of waiting for him to quit reading goddamn Mafia threads and actually do it - so wish I were fucking kidding about that), he thinks that’s passive aggressive of me and it hurts his feelings. So I try not to do it. However, that leaves me in the unhappy position of either putting up with shit like the window (or the toilet seat that still isn’t fixed after almost a year), nagging him constantly (which I absolutely despise), or doing it and knowing I’m hurting his feelings.
So, then, billfish and the folks agreeing with (and vice versa), what’s your advice for what I should do then? It’s absolutely fucking maddening when this like this happen. I love him dearly, but this habit of his drives me up the wall sideways. I know that it’s not that he’s prioritizing other tasks - it’s that he’s reading his Mafia threads or wants to watch some stuff he has TiVoed (and which will remain TiVoed) or wants to play WoW. He works from home - and has plenty of time during the day to do this crap - he just doesn’t actually do it.
So, if he’s reading this, fix the damn toilet seat please, sweetie! And take the fucking TV to the basement, please.
His punishment: Do it yourself, and do it so that everything is purposefully left just a little bit crooked and unmovable. It’ll make him insane.
Re the OP in general: There actually was an episode of Home Improvement about this very subject. Jill was at her wit’s end because “Tim won’t do the tasks himself, he won’t let Jill do it because she won’t do it right, and he won’t let her call someone else because he doesn’t want another male horning in on his territory.” However, he always had lots of time and energy to work on his hot rod. I can’t remember how it turned out, but I think of it every time I can’t get any momentum generated on getting our household tasks done.
You didn’t listen to the whole message. Women have ALWAYS been able to do just about anything men can (except for that siring babies and writing one’s name in the snow business), but it wasn’t socially acceptable for them to do so, except in times of war (think Rosie the Riveter here, she was allowed into the factories during the war, but afterwards, she was expected to be Susie Homemaker again). Also, while men were able to do just about anything women can (except for carrying and birthing babies and breastfeeding them afterwards), it wasn’t socially acceptable for THEM to do “women’s work”, and quite a lot of them would be offended to be asked to do so.
Nowadays, we don’t split up chores into men’s and women’s work in the US. At least, not nearly as much as we used to. The problem is that some people (who might be male, but might also be female) are NOT PULLING THEIR WEIGHT WITH THE HOUSEHOLD CHORES. Plus they are agreeing to do stuff and then they don’t do it.
Yeah, I know you were trying to make a funny. However, you also completely missed the damn point.
The problem is that my husband is somewhat childlike in his personality, and acknowledges that he does need prompts, or, as he puts it, a keeper. I’d love to quit using prompts on him, but if I don’t, then things won’t get done. Things that he agrees need to be done, and that he needs to be the one to do them. If I knew of something else that worked, I’d do it. His mother used to hit him over the head with a broomstick when she wanted to get his attention, and when I first married him, he wouldn’t pay attention to me (yeah, I know, I should have dumped him and gone back to college, but I had my reasons for sticking with him). He figured that unless I was mad enough to scream in his face, or wag a knife at him, I didn’t really mean whatever I was telling him. So instead of prompts I guess that I should just hit him over the head with a broomstick, right? (No, not you, Broomstick.) Because frankly I can’t think of anything else that will work.
Seeing as you could probabaly kill a person with a lucky swing of a broomstick, can you get a toy sword to use as a this is a serious message stick?
I plan to. I am going to start this week. I am woman, hear me hammer!
Re: the OP: As a male I agree it is a wrong to commit to something with the intention of not doing or to commit and then just blow it off forever (this does not cover unexpected delays outside of your control or other events becoming higher priority). When there are a lot of things, or if one or both spouses can be forgetful it is helpful to make lists that both agree to. What I have found helpful is to have a list of stuff I am going to do and have here put them in order of priority to her. That doesn’t mean I will do them in that order, but it lets me know what is important to her at a glance. She can’t add things to my list without my permission, but she gets to let me know what affects her the most.
That said, I am wondering if there a generational thing going on here. I am in my early 30s and have always expected to pull my weight at home. I do a majority of the cooking and more than half the dishes. She does more of the picking up, because it matters more to her. She gets up the baby and takes him to day care, I pick him up, bath him and feed him.
I would like her to do more if she were to stay home and would expect to do more myself if I stayed home. Actually, we have both stayed home for short periods (childcare issues and maternity leave) and have come to the conclusion that I would make a much better house husband than she would a house wife. It is funny because she is actually much more organized then me in general. But give us both an unscheduled day home and by the time she has made her list and researched what she wants to make for dinner, I will have gone grocery shopping, cleaned the kitchen, and have dinner started, with time for some web surfing.
Jonathan
Actually, due to various problems I have, I use a walking stick to get around outside, and now I’m starting to have to use a quad cane to get around inside. So if just waving a stick around would get the message across, I’ve already got the utensils. However, the problem is that he frequently doesn’t listen unless he’s actually been hit, and hit hard enough to smart for a few minutes.
I blame his mother.
Yes, I think so. We’re not quite a generation older than you (I’m 51, he turns 51 in a couple of weeks). His parents and family did, and still do, very much divide chores into men’s and women’s work. I dated him when we were in high school together, and they were horrified that I took wood shop, and made straight As in it, too. And I refused to take Home Ec. The reason I refused to take (more) Home Ec was because I already knew how to cook and sew very well indeed, and in fact was quite bored with the lessons offered. This absolutely horrified his family, though. What Sort Of Girl IS This? and variations on that theme ensued. No penis, though. Not right then.
While my husband is of my generation (we’re both in our mid/late twenties), his mother, obviously, is not, and babied both of her boys enormously. This is probably a factor. I’m amazed he turned out as well as he did, honestly, since his brother’s become an enormous leech-like slacker.
Husband also moved directly from his mother’s house to mine, with no intervening time to live on his own and realise that things need to get done, or they . . . don’t get done. This is probably also a factor.
So you are criticizing him for not doing what you did not or could not do either?
Maybe you misunderstand. He says he needs to get a round tuit. That is what he needs to do the job. A round tuit. He cannot do the job until he gets a round tuit. You are just too impatient.
In all fairness, a lot of our problems with getting stuff done is the timeframe. When I want something done, I want it done yesterday, and am more than willing to bust my ass to get it done. Jim will get stuff done on his own schedule (which I will admit is far less driven than mine), and is much less willing to bust his ass.
Far be it from me to detract from the attempt to paint all this testimony as merely a meeting of the “She-Woman Man-Haters’ Club,” but I must report that the reason my sister has a cleaning lady once a week – which she and her husband each pay half for – is that she was seriously thinking the alternative was a divorce. He is apparently congenitally unable to finish a cleaning or home improvement task. For examle, he will sweep the kitchen floor, by sweeping all the detritus into a little pile in the corner and leaving it there, leaning the broom against the wall next to it. When asked, he says he’s going to get back to it. But of course he never does, and the crap gets spread all over the floor again, same as before except now the broom is out as well. And the third time my sister asks she’s “nagging” and he sure as hell isn’t going to do it when she’s nagging him, he won’t give her the satisfaction. And she’s not going to do it because it’s his goddam job and would it kill him to finish it, and the next thing you know the argument is not about sweeping, the argument (whether this is said or not) is about consideration and respect, or a lack thereof. What he saw as her saying he wasn’t doing it “the right way,” or soon enough, she saw as him not doing it at all. I’m not kidding: I really think they would have eventually ended up in divorce court if they hadn’t just decided to spend the money to have many of those chores done by a third party.
For home repair, she asks him three times to do something – not nagging, not escalating the tension, just asking politely – and then she calls a handyman to do it and sends her husband the bill. It seems to work for them.
Nooooo, she’s criticizing him for something he said that he would do.
In fact, I have a wooden disk, about an inch across, with the word “TUIT” burned into it. No matter how many times I keep giving this disk to my husband, his chores don’t get done.
Nooooo, she’s criticizing him for not doing something he said that he would do.
In fact, I have a wooden disk, about an inch across, with the word “TUIT” burned into it. No matter how many times I keep giving this disk to my husband, his chores don’t get done.
No kidding. This Amazon title says it all:* A Housekeeper Is Cheaper Than a Divorce: Why You Can Afford to Hire Help and How to Get It*.
Amen! I look at it this way, the every-other week visit from my cleaning lady costs about twice my hourly wage. It would take me much longer than two hours to do what she does, and I would loathe doing it, and be annoyed at The Devil’s Grandfather for not doing it with me. I cheerfully leave pieces of green paper out for my cleaning lady. I can always get more (baring injury or retirement), and it’s much much cheaper than couples’ therapy.
If you think you can’t afford a cleaning person, make some calls and get a couple of quotes. It might be cheaper than you think.
Storyteller is nails on.
Let me add that men love to hear appreciation from their spouses for what they do happen to accomplish. A lot more stuff would get done (and less words spoken compared to all the “prompting”, nagging, manipulating, etc. that a few posters here advocate. Tell them (even if it isn’t perfectly done) that you appreciate completing the task, give him a smooch for the easy stuff, hugs and a beer for the moderate stuff, and some intimate gesture for the hard stuff. Less energy spent getting him to do it if you “pay it forward” so to speak. The by-products? Less anger and energy spent on your part and less resentment and tuning you out on his part. Win-Win!
When was the last time you actually verbally appreciated him for doing something that you asked him to do? (I know this goes both ways, ladies…but the OP and subsequent posts are directly primarily on getting the men to do what their wives wanted them to do.)
This fine general advice and all, but think a little before you apply it. If my wife has been working late (I leave for work about 2 hours before she does and get home about an hour before her, normally) and I have been the one making dinner and cleaning up for the last three days, it can bug me a little when she thanks me for helping her out with the house work. I am not helping her out with her work. We are in this together and I usually contribute as much or more to keeping house as she does. I appreciate a little appreciation, but don’t act like it some special think that I only do once in a blue moon. After a couple of times we went through this we figured out it was her mother’s programing that the house should be hers, and not her husbands (my BIL is 45 and his mother still goes over to his house to cook, clean, and do laundry).
Men shouldn’t assume that their wives will take care of the house, but women should not act as if anything their husbands do is just assisting them in their domain.*
Jonathan
*In many relationships there are definite, and healthy domains that need to be respected. But that should be by mutual consent. My wife and I established early on that when it came to nice kitchenware (knives, pots and pans) it was my way or no way. I would much rather wash them myself every time than have them ruined. Her hard line is decor. She gets the final vote on wall colors, decorations, and upholstery. And we are both happier that way.