A woman was at her ‘wit’s end’ with her husband and was fed up with him referring to her as a ‘nag’, but she felt as though he wasn’t doing enough when it came to their home and kids
When you’re married, you’d like to think that your other half would pull their weight when it comes to chores, but one woman was at her “wit’s end” with her husband doing nothing.
She complained that she felt like the majority of the “mental load” was left to her, sharing that she’d given her husband two jobs to complete so she didn’t have to think about them – but in five years, he hadn’t even managed to do them.
The fed-up mum said that if she mentions it “sometimes it’ll improve”, but more often than not he gets “defensive”, and will try to bring up times when she’d done things wrong in his eyes. Or, he calls her “a nag”, pointing out she works part-time, and he works full-time.
Taking to Mumsnet, the distressed woman said she feels like “screaming”, writing: “Am I being unreasonable to despair of my husband never giving anything 100%?! We’ve been together for over 10 years, have three children together and I’m at my wit’s end. He just doesn’t seem interested in doing things, that are a fundamental part of parenting or even god forbid being an adult.
“When the children were younger I got fed up with bearing all of the mental load so gave him two ‘jobs’ to do – sort out registering the kids at a dentist and book them onto swimming lessons. That was five years ago. He’s done neither.”
To give another example of when she thought he’d been incompetent, she explained that he had a “work trip coming up and his passport has expired”. Normally, to make things easier, she’d sort it out, but she’d “refused”, so he’s “flapping around panicking and had to book an in-person appointment to get it sorted in time.”
She continued: “I’ve tried to get him to help with specific things, e.g. cleaning the bathroom is his job but he will wipe down the sink but never use anything other than loo roll or kitchen roll so after a while there’s a ring of black stuff around the plug. He doesn’t consider the bathroom floor part of his job. He hoovers around things (even socks!) instead of moving them. He’s supposed to be responsible for the weekly shop but regularly forgets to buy the specific things only I need (due to my own dietary requirements) so I often have nothing in for breakfast.
“He’s supposed to be in charge of the dishwasher (if he ‘washes’ our youngest’s bottle up there will still be milk residue in the crevices, so I do all manual washing up) but never stacks it right so things remain dirty, never cleans the filter and doesn’t use the right setting so unclean items just sit in the dishwasher until they’re eventually considered clean and put away. He often puts away crockery that’s still got food residue on it.”
She then asked whether she was “asking too much” of her husband, saying: “If I mention it sometimes it’ll improve but most often he gets defensive and brings up the one time I left a cup in the living room overnight, or calls me a nag, or points out I work part-time and he full-time. Sometimes it feels like he’s physically incapable of finishing something.” The woman finished her post by saying she felt “so down about it”, saying she felt “like screaming”.
In the comments, someone wrote: “How someone does something, is how they do everything. This is who he is. I don’t think you can change a person. I understand your frustration as some of that would drive me mad, but you have to either accept it or leave.”
Another added: “Seriously I think I could have written your post. I’m almost 20 years in and honestly it doesn’t change. For me, his good bits outweigh it but in your case, it might be different. It’s always a lazy answer for people to say ‘It’s your fault for marrying him’. Sometimes these men keep it hidden until you’re married with children and then they just can’t be bothered to keep up the act anymore. Only you can decide if you can live like this, but I guarantee you he won’t get better.”
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