Married couples across the globe have all had this fight. You know the one — the one that builds over a week of "nagging" until you blow your top at your partner, screaming, "I'm not your mother!" when it comes to taking care of chores around the house.
Well one wife and new mother on Reddit is desperately seeking advice on how to deal wit her "child-like" husband who's antics make her feel like she has an extra kid in the home.
"I love my husband but I don’t like the way he acts like a child all the time," the mom of a new 6-month-old baby wrote.
While she says he is an amazing father, he completely doesn't take care of himself.
"I have to keep reminding him to eat on time, to take his vitamins, to workout," the wife laments. "He does help me around the house, but I have to clean behind him. For example, he does take the trash out but forget to take everything out, takes care of dishwasher but forgets few dishes on the counter."
What's worse is that if she reminds him to do something rather than just doing it for him, he gets upset.
"I love my husband, he genuinely wants to help me, but he is lost all the time," she says. "He works on something so unimportant (for example working on which he thinks might be helpful in future). He cannot prioritize stuff. I keep telling him this and he acts perfect for few days and falls back the same again."
So now she wants the internet's help: How does she "save" her relationship but still tell him to grow up and what are some tips to deal with it?
Reddit had a lot of feelings, but first felt it was important to validate this mama's feels.
"You feel like his mother because right now you are his mother," one user put it bluntly. "Unless he's dealing with very serious mental health issues, he's not lost, he's just depending on you to do all the work. Care for your baby and him. This has to be a fairly hard line in a relationship, because once this gets out of hand you have resentment, which can be a death knell to a relationship.
You need to STOP right now. As in, do not do these things at all. You can sit him down and tell him why, but you absolutely cannot continue being his mother."
Though she was told by multiple people that she needed to stop indulging some of his behaviors, she confessed she felts too guilty to stop.
"If I don’t take care of him and he doesn’t take care of him who else," she asked. "It’s not easy to ignore your loved ones. He does take care of me. When I was pregnant he made me breakfast and also healthy juice every single day for all 9 months. He does make sure my baby takes his bottles, sleeps good. So I can’t just ignore his stuff."
But people were insistent that she needed to put a stop to this.
"He'll eat when he's hungry just like every creature on the planet," advised one commenter. "He'll figure it out somehow. He'll work out on his own if he cares."
The husband's selective memory did raise a few "red flags" for readers.
"Has he ever been diagnosed with anything, like ADHD or similar? I am just spitballing, but if he genuinely wants to help, but keeps forgetting stuff, there could be some underlying reason," suggested one commenter. "I wish I could help more, but it just feels weird that you have to remind him essential things, like eating or pills, and that he forgets stuff while doing them, dishwasher."
No matter what the underlying issue it, everyone agreed that it's tough enough being a new mom, and dad needs to shape up — be it just being more conscientious or getting professional help.
These stories are based on posts found on Reddit. Reddit is a user-generated social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website where registered members submit content to the site and can up- or down-vote the content. The accuracy and authenticity of each story cannot be confirmed by our staff.
