 Jenny, 35 from Salt Lake City, Utah writes…
My hubby of 5 years is a sweet guy, but I’ll say some of his habits are beginning to annoy me and I wonder if years down the road I will go insane with them. I think it is stuff he should have learnt growing up, like putting dirty laundry in the basket instead of on the floor; leaving his shavings on the bathroom sink; leaving toilet seats up; all those kinda things. He never cleans up after himself, meaning I need to. I keep telling him to change these things and he never does. Like every day I’m on him about it and it never changes. It seems the more I hound him the worse he is getting. I think if this keeps up it will get intolerable. Should I give him an ultimatum or realize this is who he is?
 Dr Thatslife has this to say….
I think you feed off all this drama like a pig at the troth. You love the drama that this whole situation creates, and you are most likely in this lop sided relationship so you can do exactly what you are doing… being his mother. You can’t tell me you didn’t know about these habits before the ring went on your finger – so it shouldn’t be a shock to you that he continues to be a slob into your marriage. I’m sure you’ve also magically discovered he is immature in many other ways as well – not just the trail of skid mark stained underwear strewn around your bedroom. Every time you’re fuming with rage as you frantically pick up his soiled clothes from the floor, you encourage this behaviour. He realizes if he just dumps it there – it magically gets whisked away! It’s a perfect arrangement for him. But hardly an arrangement he will ever learn anything from.
I’d laugh if you told me you thought you could change him – because we all know that’s futile. Oh… that IS what you thought? Ha ha ha! People in their 30’s are already stubbornly ingrained with their habits. Those stubbornly habits of his have been festering since grade school. People don’t have to be in their 70’s to have less than endearing traits etched in stone. If his facial hair shavings are flying around the bathroom every morning, that means they will be tomorrow, next week, and most likely 20 years from now. And the list of things he does that you will detest, will grow and grow and grow – giving you plenty to bitch and complain about. Ah, did I just hit the button? I believe I did! You love to complain. I think if you really wanted this solved you would have gave him an ultimatum well before now. But you love to complain, so by harassing him about him being himself every day – it’s your excuse to do exactly what you want to – complain.
If you genuinely really do want this solved… let’s see what we can do for you. First, change your language and tone. You wanted to be the mother in this relationship, just as much as he wanted a mother in this relationship. Stop giving it to him. Treat him like an adult for once – and instead of speaking down to him, converse directly to him about how this impacts your relationship and how you are no longer going to go along with this behaviour. Set up a big discussion about the current state of affairs. Make the conversation memorable, mature and instill a subtle notion that repercussions loom if he doesn’t “get it”, but allow him to extract that from the conversation himself rather than beating him over the head with consequences. Then immediately after that conversation onward, stop with your daily heckling. That’s right – bring your pestering and shrill voiced complaint factory to a grinding halt.
Secondly and most importantly, STOP BEING HIS MAID and let things go to shit. Let the clothes pile up and allow the bathroom to turn into a festering bacteria breeding ground. It’s going to get pretty gritty round the home front – but he needs to realize you aren’t there as a servant and he needs to take responsibility. When he starts looking to you for why you’re living in a bio-hazard zone and insects are taking over, simply shrug your shoulders. At the VERY most, if he gets shitty about the mess, simply ask him why HE isn’t cleaning it up – and leave it at that.
Let the combination of that big initial conversation; a sudden lack of nagging; and no live-in nanny ferment in his gerbil sized brain. If those three or so ganglions in his head start glowing with activity, he will realize the dynamics of the relationship may have in fact changed! My gosh! From that, he may actually reflect on how his actions impact you and possibly, and I really mean POSSIBLY, change his ways ever so slightly.
From there it’s really a crap shoot as to whether anything will change for the long haul or not. Only time will tell. Good luck Jenny.
That’s life.
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