I’m getting tired of being the household beast of burden. Last night I decided to try and make just ONE damned chore in the house equitable. I assigned one kid to empty the dishwasher, the other to fill it, and my husband to wash whatever large items wouldn’t fit in the dishwasher. We discussed it. He agreed it was fair. I HATE a dirty kitchen and can’t cook when it’s filthy and I’m tired of doing all the cleanup before slaving away at the stove and then repeating.
Spoiler: he did not wash the dishes. He played video games and then went to bed. I washed them this morning.
I was mildly annoyed (read this happens constantly so I’m used to it) and told him just now that since I washed those dishes, could he please put them away. He’s doing that now, but his response has me fucking fuming.
“Why wouldn’t you just wait until I washed them? Why did you HAVE to do the dishes just to make me feel bad about it?”
I was mildly annoyed before and now I’m just fucking furious. He has no idea why I would even consider that manipulative. I’m so mad right now I can’t even find the words to productively explain to him why that statement was so offside.
Help me, sisters. I can’t even find the words.
Do situations like that - your feelings getting invalidated and turned on yourself - happen more often or is it uncommon?
And I can see why you struggle to put this in words and explain it to him, because to me it seems like its so many layers you would need to explain to him before he would be able to see his manipulative behavior. This is something I would really struggle to do myself, so i can just send you virtual hugs.
Sorry if this unwanted advice, feel free to skip the stuff below if you just want advice regarding that specific situation.
Reading your comments, I am wondering, do you have any boundaries regarding chores and their distribution? Like if nothing changes, how long can you live with it? What is the minimum of understanding/change you want to achieve to stay in this relationship? Are there any red lines for you? How do see your own situation when you are sick for a longer time or older or have to work for more hours a week?
I feel like you already took a huge effort to communicate with your husband, to provide resources and free education, to be understanding, to deal with constant mild annoyance. It seems like that did not change anything. Right now it seems more than reasonable to check in with your own needs, expectations/hopes/wishes for the future and if you actually believe in your husbands willfulness&ability to change his ways.
It’s a mixed bag. 50% of the time he completely invalidates my feelings, but the other half is actually very understanding and progressive. He has been quick to apologize and make amends when he genuinely understands if the behaviour is off-side but that understanding seems to be at war with his deep desire to protect his ego at all costs, so he battles hard to defend himself even when he’s blatantly wrong. I am the opposite and will consider all sides and always more likely to accept culpability and apologize and make changes so it doesn’t happen again.
Things getting turned around on me ? Constantly. Like I have to actually keep a notebook all day long about everything I do and say, just so that he can’t twist it around on me later if a situation like this comes up. He’s very good at misdirection - I don’t even think he does it consciously, he just has a natural talent for twisting things and disagreeing and picking apart small minutia until I’ve totally lost track of what we are discussing. His dad is like that too - not a smart man, but don’t ever ever fucking play chess or poker with him because he’s a survivor and he will fuck your shit up.
He becomes extremely manipulative and gas-lightey without even realizing he is doing it. Or maybe he does. I’ve tried discussing that with him too, but this is one of the topics he has firmly decided he does not do (except he does) and so he has nothing to change or apologize for
Which is why I’m here for productive ways to discuss this one isolated topic with him. If I can’t stay on point and get through the discussion quickly and efficiently, it will get twisted into a horrible 5 hour nightmare of guilt and confusion.
I’m really quite upset by some posters saying that I’m practically abusing my husband and setting him up to fail. I’m just exhausted and need him to step up, I’m not abusing him.
I think you are trying to isolate a topic from all the other issues, but it seems pretty much impossible. Even if you for yourself can isolate the topic perfectly, I really doubt your husband is willing to do same and instead will view this in context of all other discussions you already had.
You know your husband best and probably know the best way to bring up this issue. If you, as someone who lived with him for years doesn’t know how to get him to understand this, we probably aren’t able to either.
I don’t have any experience with this, but in similar situations I saw two recommended strategies:
Get someone to be on your side in this issues and get them involved, like ask a family member or a friend for help when bringing this topic up. Or get some help mediating this like with a counselor or get into couples therapy
Confront your husband with consequences if he does not do get it. I thinks its important that those are consequences that you can actually enforce. So separation / divorce / no sex / not cooking / no cleaning / other things for him can totally be those consequences.