Not a Question, Just a Vent

I'm with Mamazita, concerned that, instead of looking at him like he grew a second head and walking away (which would have been appropriate), you tried to do what he wanted anyway and are feeling more depressed and burnt out.

Tadpole, I'm not trying to be harsh, but from your many previous posts, your husband does not sound like a supportive, caring person or someone who perceives you as an equal partner. It sounds as though you are property, second to his being FIRST, and that you walking on eggshells. His way or the highway. When I think back on your posts from quite a while ago, it sounds like he thinks *everyone* should think his way about things.

He may not change, but you can. I personally wouldn't be able to let my son see me being treated that way by anyone. One does not have to be rude or raise their voice in order to convey their disagreement with an edict such as the one your husband gave you. It's not being 'disobedient' (I get that he's the type who thinks a wife should be obedient to her husband,and that's not a reasonable expectation to have of one's spouse, regardless of gender). The fact that he's bossing you around and treating you like the serving wench and charwoman instead of as a respected wife is very troubling.

Only you can decide how much of this you want to deal with. Counseling would be good; you might look to see who offers sliding scale (I did just google Springfield IL counseling sliding scale and found quite a few entries). It's hard to start but so worth it. If he refuses to pay for it, consider talking to your pastor. Husbands are supposed to be helpers and equal partners. Maybe he needs to hear that from another man, I don't know. But staying with things like this, only venting but not finding better options-- it only builds resentment. Other than accepting that you need to help your kids with cleaning their rooms (and for this, I would recommend setting some time aside to have them help you do this *every day* before media/video game time; which is what happens in our house-- my son is 10 and only now becoming marginally self-directed with cleanup, and he actually WANTS his room to be clean!)-- other than that, the only thing you can really change is you and what you are willing to put up with.

No way in hell my husband would get away with saying those things to me. He wouldn't dare. Time for you to take a vacation and tell him you want the house spotless when you get home. My husband is a slob, he admits it. I don't pick up after him, and any time he complains about the kids not being tidy enough, I remind him that he's setting the example for that kind of behavior. Your husband doesn't get to set the standards unless he takes the lead, period.

People treat us the way that we allow them to.
You are allowing your husband to treat you like sh!t. To speak to you disrespectfully, to undermine you, to belittle you, to be an asshat.
How exhausted you must be.
Just because someone isn't physically or sexually abusing you doesn't mean that they are not being abusive. He sounds abusive to me.
Sounds like you need to be in counseling.
THere is no way you are going to get your kids to help around the house if their own father wont.
You have posted many things on this board that have to do with how your husband treats you. You need to remember...(I don't remember if you have boys/girls) your daughter is learning how to be a woman. What is acceptable. What behavior is appropriate. Your sons are learning how to be men. How to speak to women, be spouses that are helpful. Do you want your daughter to marry someone like your husband, be bossed around, exhausted, upset? DO you want your sons to treat their wives the way your husband treats you? Do you want them to believe that their ONLY job is to work...not be fathers?
Your family needs professional help.

Even if you are a terrible housekeeper (which of course you are not) the way he is speaking to you is cruel and abusive and completely unacceptable.
My ex made a few snide comments over the years about how things "should" be done since I was "home all the time" but nothing close to what you are describing!
I would seriously take off for a few days and give him a chance to manage the children and home all by himself. Let HIM figure out child care, shopping, dinner, laundry and anything else that comes up. I would also NOT allow him to threaten me with cutting off services just because they happen to be in his name (I assume?) Instead I'd look him right in the eye and say, "fine, I'll just call and set up a new account in my name." In my over twenty years of marriage I earned very little income but I never had a problem or issue making financial decisions, or spending OUR money as I deemed necessary.
Nothing about this is normal tadpole, not a thing. You may want to go see a counselor for yourself. It concerns me that rather than standing up for yourself you instead did what he so cruelly and unreasonably demanded in an attempt to placate him :-(

I'm angry for you!. What will he do if the house doesn't get clean. I've learned to walk away when someone is angry with me. I tell them ahead of time that I will not listen. Have a plan. I walk around the block or blocks. I've also gone somewhere to eat or to the library.

Will he take care of the kids while you're gone or will he be abusive? Do you stay because he is abusive? If so, you and your children are being abused. Start counseling as soon as you can. Get help from your church. Ask for help from a womans shelter.

For this time, just say you've tried and it's not possible. Do not argue with him or make excuses. Prrhaps write a letter to say to him he might be right, you've tried to please him. It's not working. Suggest that you not him, get professional help to learn how to get the kids to help.

Then stop trying to clean all at once. He's put you in charge of cleaning. Make a plan. Ask him which room he wants cleaned first and.you clean it or if it's a kids room calmly help them clean it. One room at a time. One room during which you suppo rt your kids.

It's obvious he isn't going to change. Stop trying to do it his way. You are in charge of what you do. You are in charge of how you feel. Of course you're angry. One thing I learned in management training is to not let "them"
see you sweat.

You can make your relationship with him more tolerable when you find a way to make his participation less important. This includes getting positive attention elsewhere. Spend time with friends. Vent with them. Make new relationships. Take care of yourself. Know you are the most important person in your life. Walk away when anyone disrespects you, kids or husband. Focus on who you are, strong and brave, and what you can do. Fake it til you make it!

Your husband is not your boss! He treats you like a misbehaving child. Your relationship has become a parent/child relationship. Find ways to know you are an adult, not in need of a boss.

I know you wanted to just vent. Your situation is heartbreaking. With professional help you can gradually change yourself and be happy. Your husband will never treat you as an adult. Grieve that loss and move on.

I'd be angry too.

Your husband is out of line.

ETA: Just read through what others wrote.

Diane B's advice at the end there - wow. That's something to keep in mind. My husband grew up in a household where his mother was treated poorly (without respect) by not just her husband, but also by her sons. My son wasn't as bad (felt bad for his mom) but he kind of pitied her. He certainly didn't see her on par with his father - just because she didn't stand up for herself, and allowed herself to be spoken to like that.

I'm not saying that this is like your home - and this could just have been an argument, rather than a typical everyday occurrence. This is more for all the moms reading this - who are in this same boat. It does take me on occasion to remind my husband that uh no .. it's not ok to talk to women like this. He forgets sometimes (thankfully not often) and does the neanderthal thing - so I can relate Tadpole. But you have to discredit what he's saying. Certainly do not clean up next time he does this. I walk away - as Marda suggests. I just walk away (muttering under my breath that he's an a-hole to get it out) and then I don't dignify his comments with any kind of response.

A good marriage is a team who works together to accomplish goals and they support one another emotionally. Good marriages don't have one person issuing threats and keeping their spouse down 'in their place'.

You have a terrible husband. At best, he's a snotty jerk of a person. He is also an abuser who has you questioning your own worth. Your marriage sets an example of an unhealthy relationship for your kids. Your husband doesn't respect you, so you're going to have a heck of a time convincing your children that they should respect you.

You're not going to change him, so you have to make some decisions and plans for yourself. This is not even about cleaning. It is not about your kids. This is about figuring out why you're still married to a man who treats you like dirt, and why you're still putting up with his garbage.

What a jerk! Why are you married to this guy?

Okay, that's MY rant. Probably totally not helpful to you. But what you wrote pisses me off, for YOU.

This is what I did when my kids were younger and I went on a cleaning spree. I threw out anything broken or toys missing pieces in my kids' rooms. Anything that they had grown out of? Off to Goodwill. Too many toys just makes it so they don't play with 2/3 of what they have and they don't appreciate anything they've got. So I put most of their toys in bins and put them up away from where they could get to them. Every month, I'd get a bin down and change out the toys in THAT bin for the ones in their room. So they had "new" toys to play with. And not many...too hard to keep clean if there were too many.

I know that there are people who throw perfectly good toys in garbage bags in front of their kids and throw them in the garbage cans outside because their kids won't cooperate, but I refuse to do that. First, they should be able to earn the toys back. Second, perfectly good toys shouldn't be thrown out - disadvantaged families need to be able to buy them cheaply from places like Goodwill.

For clothes - I always kept out-of-season clothes put up in boxes with notes on them so that I would know who they were for and what season. (Anything that was too small for my older son was automatically for my younger son.) And when they were older and didn't want to take care of their clothes (when it was their JOB to...), I wouldn't buy them anything new because they weren't taking care of what they had. I also told them point blank that if they didn't hang up their clean clothes (and that was their FIRST job with their clothes, by the way), I would take them. I only had to do that with one of my sons - the dirty ones that didn't make it into the hamper were mixed up with the clean ones he didn't hang up or put in drawers. And by this time, he was doing all his own laundry and spending MY money on detergent and water. After several warnings came and went, I started picking up his clean clothes and putting them away in my own closet. I didn't say anything - I just kept doing it. Within a few weeks, he had only a few clothes left and realized he didn't have his clothes anymore. "Mom, where are my clothes?" "Son, I told you what the consequence of not putting your clean clothes away would be. So now you live with what you've got." Only then did he feel the weight of his behavior with his clothes. At some point, after being tired of washing a few clothes everyday or wearing dirty clothes to school, he started looking for his clothes and found them in my closet. He quietly put them all away in his room. After that, the first time I saw clean clothes laying in his chair, I took them and he figured it out. He knew I would do it again...and I never had to. He put all his clothes away from then on and his room was a lot cleaner.

He's in college now and his room is immaculate. He has turned from being my messiest kid into a neat-nick.

Maybe your kids won't ever be neat-nicks. But you don't have to let your kids treat you like their dad does. You can take what they have away ENOUGH that their rooms are not pig-styes. And I encourage you to do this. If they won't obey you, if they ignore you, if they make you miserable, stop talking to them about it. Remove their stuff. When they balk, tell them point blank that until they do what you ask, this is how things are going to be.

Getting rid of stuff that you don't need in your house would make you feel a ton better. Don't worry about money "lost" or money "spent". Just get rid of it. The less "stuff" you have, the easier it is to deal with your house. Throw out any old stuff - your husband's too. Don't ask. Just do.

About that husband of yours - I would start serving dinner on paper plates and not cook hot dishes. When he balks, tell him that until he stops talking to you like you are his damn servant, that's what he's going to get. And stick to it. And as much as I love Marda, and love her advice 99% of the time, I HAVE to say, I totally disagree with writing this man a letter giving ANY kind of apology or mea culpa of ANY SORT, or asking him what room to clean first. DO NOT give him the idea that he is your boss. Asking him for advice or telling him that you don't know how to clean is doing just that - acting like you agree that he is your boss. You can't say "You're not my boss" in one breath and then write him apology letters or ask how he would like it done in the other. No, no, no!!

I DO agree with her about walking out of the house when he starts up. And so what if he turns off the electricity? Call his bluff and watch HIM squirm with that. It's not like he can turn it back on when he gets home for HIM to enjoy. Tell him "Fine. You do that."

After you've done a purge and gotten rid of clutter, I would hire a cleaning service to come in every two weeks. I wouldn't even discuss it with that tyrant husband of yours. Just do it and pay them. If he figures it out, tell him that he is not your frickin' boss and you will NOT be ordered around. And NEVER, NEVER let him force you into "justifying" what you "do all day". If you do that, he will feel justified in trying to act like your boss. Stop allowing him to talk to you that way. Stop him in his tracks and tell him that if he doesn't stop degrading you, the NEXT thing that you won't be doing is washing his dirty clothes. Push until he stops. I mean it. If you keep letting him do this to you, you are allowing your kids to learn to treat their wives the same.

Being a parent is a hard job. Staying at home and making things work is a hard job. If the tables were turned and you were out of the house working and HE was staying at home, he would be a wreck and NOTHING would get done.

I'm angry too. How disrespectful. I'd say its time for action. Since nobody wants to pitch in to help go through everything and make 3 piles: keep, throw out, donate. Start in 1 room and go through every single thing. Broken toys or those with missing pieces and stained outgrown clothes throw out. Outgrown clothes in good condition and toys they don't play with donate.This should get rid of about 50% of the clutter from my experience. After that organize things and put them away. Move on to the next room.

Moving forward start off my keeping the clutter out. Go through papers as soon as they come into the house. I actually sort my mail standing in front of the fireplace and toss usually 90% of it. School papers from the kids check over and put in recycling. Newspapers read and put in recycling. I have a recycling bin in my kitchen that gets filled and then dumped into the huge bin stored in the garage. I have another paper recycling basket in the living room that is the same deal.

Take 10 minutes every single day when the kids are home and have them pick up their room. Before dinner, before bath time. After brushing their teeth. Whatever works for you. I use to have them do it after dinner. No desert until their chores were done. I had a friend who let her kids clean each other's rooms. Just the thought of their sibling in there handling their stuff made them straighten up on their own.

I'm so sorry. As a sahm, I feel for you. I HATE it when my dh TELLS me what to do with my day. I don't go to his office and tell him what to do, nag him about this and that. Stay at home parent is your job, so YOU get to decide how to prioritize your time during the day. Maybe the kids rooms are messy, but maybe something else is more important this week.

You and your husband should be a team. If something needs cleaning, and it's really bothering him, and he has no time to help clean himself, there's no reason he can't just ASK you respectfully if you would be able to make some time to help the kids start cleaning their rooms. Threatening and blaming are not OK. Also not OK, are little sarcastic comments about what is not being done (that one is my personal vent)

When you have a quiet moment, tell your husband how you would like him to communicate with you. Tell him it would make a huge difference and you would really appreciate it because the way things are being said now feels awful

I agree that cleaning the rooms is just a symptom, but I want to address because it's on your mind.

I am not a great housekeeper ... at all. And because of that, it's really hard for me to teach my kids. Still, I'm trying. I'm working on it.

Your kids are really little. Your profile says they are 4 & 6. If that's still true, they really are very young. You can definitely help them to learn, but don't buy into this idea that they should be able to just go clean their room. There are tasks they can do. If you break the cleaning process into smaller pieces you will be able to get some help from them, but it's not fair for your husband to say that it's your job to teach them and that you have failed.

Your husband's expectations are unrealistic and completely unfair. Marriage should be a partnership. Parenting should be a partnership. Keeping a house should be a partnership. If you are a SAHM, more of those responsibilities will fall to you because you have both decided that you will be a SAHM. But when he is not at work, he needs to be a husband and a father. Telling you that he's going to turn off the WiFi and cut the power is treating you like a subordinate, not a partner.

I wish I could tell you the words to use. I can tell you two things that really worked with my husband (who had completely outdated ideas of our roles). I told him that he worked 40 hours a week, that he took a break for lunch, that he could leave at the end of the day and that he could take vacation days and sick days. I worked 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and the only time I got a break was when I was sleeping. I also told him that I needed time to myself and told him that he needed to watch our son for a couple of hours. Leaving him for a couple of hours or maybe an entire day can give him an idea of what it's like to be a SAHM. It's not going to give him a complete picture. Most people can handle it for a few hours or even a couple of days, but that is not at all the same as doing this day in and day out for years. But it will hopefully give him more appreciation for all you do!

ARGH. I feel pissed off for you. Your husband is not getting it at ALL. What a jerk. Also, you sound a bit like a push over...I'm sorry to tell you that, but I hope you can gather up your hidden warrior and really let him know you mean business about this. If he does not listen to you insist on marriage therapy together to save your marriage. He is teaching the kids to disrespect their mom, and to expect the wife to do all the housework. I CANNOT believe he said no to taking out the trash. WTH. I would be so angry. (I have worked full time and I have been a stay at home mom, and being a SAHM is a much harder and more exhausting job...and it never ends. Working is like a break. I know guys/dads who totally get this and have heard two Dad friends say it...that going to work is such a break and taking care of kids is so hard. Your husband needs to step up and start doing HALF the work from when he gets home till when he goes to bed. You get what you can done during the day. He gets his what he can done at his job during the day. When he is home you both are a team.)

My friend is a sahm. Her husband hired her help since her job was to take care of the kids not to be a house keeper. If you can't afford to do this perhaps your husband isn't pulling his weight in terms of being a provider.

PS. I use to tell my kids to clean their rooms or else I would do it for them. When I did it I would put everything not in its place in a big contractor trash bag. They would then have to do chores to earn back their stuff. Truth be told, I only did this once and they knew I meant business. Just the threat of this motivated them to clean.

Take a vacation without them.

Get a job and leave him to it. You could go to work at 10am and with a lunch break not get off until 7 or 8pm. Then he'd have to figure out what to do.

If this was me he'd never get past telling me it was my job one single time and not get his ears reamed with my angry words.

He treats you like a servant in "his" home. You are equal to being his housekeeper that he gets to have sex with when he wants. He has zero respect for you or he'd be in there busting those kids chops and letting them know he expects them to mind their mother and that he wants their rooms done now.

Kids have you and him figured out. They don't clean, he gets mad at you, you do the work for them to shut hubby up. They don't have to mind or do anything you say.

I'd get a job and I'd put every penny of it in the bank and when I had enough I'd simply tell him that he's a lousy father and that if he doesn't get his butt up and be a man for his kids that I had enough to rent my own place and he could keep the kids for the rest of the summer.