Submitted by Mind Shattered on 03/16/2014.
My hyper husband has done it again. When my back was turned he performed the task of hanging pictures on brand new walls. We had discussed it and agreed to center the pics on the walls. He went in and hung the pics where HE felt like it. (very off center). Now when He goes to work I can rehang them and fill in the holes & paint over them. If I say ANYTHING to him about this, He will go off into an angry outburst and it'll be "who cares, I didn't do anything wrong, you don't do anything around here, so I had to do it, f-off, etc" in his rage he'll start moving stuff from one place to another ( usually my stuff) and I spend days trying to find the simplest stuff I need. I feel like crying, I want to scream. And I can't say one darn thing without setting him off. And he's going to be pissed if I don't acknowelage his effort and say thanks & tell him it looks good. Even if I stand right next to him in a task like this he will wait till I turn away for a second get that nail in as fast as he can & it's never what we just agreed on. All I can do is go back and fix it when he's not here & he'll never notice. I'm so tired of this. Keeping my mouth shut to keep the peace. His ADHD is untreated by the way....... My guts are turning & I feel like my head is going to blow off. :(
Tasks and partnering
Submitted by jennalemon on
This sounds more like he is being defiant. "I'll do it MY way." Dh does this a lot.
Dh also will make such a mess when doing a project that the mess sometimes takes more to clean up than the task. I do not want dh in the kitchen cooking for that reason. He fries everything on high heat and the grease is spattered on all surfaces within 2 feet. If he peels something, there are peelings all over the floor and the counters. If I mention what he has done and the cleaning it will take, he get angry at me for bringing it up. I don't care about if he gets angry anymore but it always seems odd to me that he reacts like that when there is a project. We can't seem to work together.
The more and more he responds like this and I respond like this, the less and less he does. Is it intentional to get out of doing things? OR are his standards so much lower than mine? Anyway, I find it best if he stays away from cooking.
It's always me
Submitted by Mind Shattered on
I am going through these same issues myself...
Submitted by daydreamr on
I am going through the same exact issues with my husband. It's so frustrating! He gets so defensive. I can't ask him to pick his clothes up. He will walk into the house and shed his clothes in various places around the house. No matter how I approach this with him. I have tried putting a laundry basket in convenient places, asked him to put his clothes in the hamper, ignored them, even putting them in a pile on his chair. He always responds to these kinds of issues with "I'm such a slob!" It's always me as well. He is very clever and knows how to manipulate these situations to turn it back on me. He will go through and make a mess, I clean it up, and he has the nerve to say he's the only one who does anything. He will use the dishes as his argument. The thing is that their is so many other things to do that the dishes get sacrificed in the process. Dinner does as well. I have tried to ask him to help me come up with some ideas for dinner but it's always "make whatever you want. I'll eat it." But that isn't helpful. So, I try to ask him if he has any requests. He won't even budge. Not a single meal idea. He throws the irrational argument (for not helping me figure out some meal ideas) "what's the point? You still won't cook dinner." The issue is that I end up making the same few things over and over. And instead of helping me figure out what he actually likes to eat, he will pick at his plate for about 5 minutes, say he took too much food, and walk away from the table. This seems to me like his way of passively saying he didn't like what I cooked.
It has been helpful for me to become more assertive, even if sets him off. I have to be firm about making boundaries that have never been there. It's not easy. I am trying not to break down and cry because he just uses my emotions against me. I have been asking him to stop picking fights with me. It helps a little. He gets angry when I ask him to help me, especially when he wants to something more gratifying. Well, he got totally angry because I needed him to help me clean up for pest control. He told me I never do anything and he's the only one who ever cleans. But then a woman we know asked him to help her and he left right away. He helped her move, drove her around for 2 days. Then, yesterday, I forgot my phone at home when I left to do errands. Well, he got so uptight about it. Accused me of having something to hide. I took that as an accusation of cheating. But yet, he was helping this woman. It took him 1.5 hours to take her home. So when he brought up how I forgot my phone and was gone 4 hours again, I said what were you doing? You've been helping out Jane for the last 2 days but you get angry if I need help. He flipped out and said "She's a LESBIAN!!!!!" I asked him why it took 1.5 hours to take her home and go to the store and he just left the room, went outside and stayed out their until it got dark. I am starting to distance myself emotionally from everything. It's been getting so bad. I tell him he's abusive. Not physically but emotionally and psychologically. I do think their is a lot of passive aggressive tendencies in a lot of what I am reading on here and in my own husband. It's so hard to deal with. It's difficult to determine what is ADHD/ADD and what is passive. Sometimes it seems like my H will be unable to tell me he upset with me about issue X so he gets angry with me in other ways. I'm not perfect. We both have ADD/ADHD. Sometimes "I forgot" isn't an adequate excuse. It's just not. Throw your trash out. Pour the soda into the glass and walk the can over to the trash. It's so frustrating.
same thing, but with bushes
Submitted by dedelight4 on
We went through the same thing, but with the bushes in front of the house. (and other things inside) But, anyway, We were planning to fix up the yard, and we both agreed that the bushes needed replacing. I told him I didn't want him to take the bushes out UNLESS we had new ones to take their place, because I didn't want the house to look bare in the front, or look unbalanced due to having bushes on one side of the house and none on the other. I wanted the entire front to be symmetrical and balanced, as well as nice looking, according to what we could afford.
Well, I got very sick and ended up in the hospital for a month. When he drove me home from the hospital, he said "SURPRISE", and showed me where he took out all the bushes on the right front half of the house. The left side still had bushes there, but there were NO new bushes to take the place of the missing ones. He wanted me to be happy that he did this, and he was very proud of himself. The thing is though, he took out THE BEST BUSHES, and the ones that looked the prettiest (out of all the ones that were there). I was very angry, but had to tell him "oh, that's a great job". (because he would have only gotten angry that I didn't like it)
It's now 2 years later and there are no new bushes. The right front half of the house is completely bare, while the left side has manicured bushes and rose bush trees. It looks really strange. I'm going to have to get the bushes myself and do it, BUT, then I he's going to yell at me for doing something I physically shouldn't be doing. I can't win either way. I've asked him to replace them many times, but he never has the time, (or money) But, he buys all kinds of computer or tool stuff that we DON'T NEED.
Nothing is ever finished!
Submitted by zambarano on
Yes, the missing bushes for 2 years! Four and 1/2 years ago, we made a big push to get our attic renovated (my dh was doing it himself, as he has those skills) and I spent about $5000 getting parts, he spent days up there, measuring, moved all kinds of stuff around, did some of the work, and it seemed that things would be finished in time for the deadline we had set for ourselves - the home visit by the social worker coming to evaluate us as adoptive parents. Well, the home visit happened sooner than we thought and suddenly there was no deadline. And today, 4 1/2 years later, there is a pile of absolute rubbish in the attic - old wrapping paper, clothes that don't fit anyone, games missing a piece, broken furniture, old mail and newspapers, notebooks, you name it. The attic is unusable for anything, and I have mentioned this many times over the years and it gets me exactly nowhere. It is mind blowing to me that he can just put that completely out of his head, even though he is the one that continues to drag useless stuff up there in boxes on a regular basis. I admit I don't have any idea how his mind works with that.