How do I get my husband to stop being so lazy?

[waverider]

How do we prevent ourselves from getting exhausted trying to push boulders that have no motive power of their own once we stop pushing? How do we determine which boulders need to be moved, and how far?

Like anything else to do with BPD how do we step off the treadwheel going nowhere?

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members may appear frustrated but they are here for constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[flourdust]

Spot on, waverider.

When my wife completely gave up on housework and most forms of self-care, I eventually came to radical acceptance. I didn't try to make her change. I used to suggest cleaning days when we'd work together on getting the house cleaned. I gave up on that. I stopped waiting for her to do the laundry.

I did all the chores that I felt were essential. I let a lot of things just go. I was not happy about this state of affairs, but I recognized that it was beyond my power to change.

I did vent to friends occasionally. Once, I went around the house taking pictures of her various disaster areas. And commiserating on bpdfamily with others who were in the same boat was cathartic.

After my wife moved out, I cleaned the whole damn place, top to bottom. I left her bedroom alone for two months -- it was the worst mess in the house, her nest. I finally decided to reclaim the bedroom and cleaned it thoroughly, including buying brand new bedding to start fresh. That whole process was really therapeutic.

[Bpdsupporter]

Unfortunately nagging and complaining never really worked for me when my pwBPD would be what I thought was lazy. And I'd get home from work and the house is a pigsty... Trust I feel your frustration.

So I begin to see that there was something else going on not laziness but depression. Your husband sounds like hes dealing with depression. All the sleepling, unmotivated etc. Depression plays a big role in the lives of our pwBPD. Marijuana doesn't help I'm sure of it. Because even though its good short term it still has withdraw effects like anxiety and depression and when you have BPD that can feel 10times worse!

Do you think he might be depressed? If so do you think he would be open to taking some supplements that will help his moods?

My pwBPD takes Inositol (vitimin b8). He eats pumpkin seeds and figs and makes a shake in the morning with macca powder ( great for men... my dad uses it too and says it gives him more energy and he feels stronger). My pwBPD says these supplements have been extremly beneficial to him.Also St John's wort is fantastic as well. All these you can get at the health food store.

I'm saying this because it really sounds like his energy is low. Is he open to sobriety? Or getting drug treatment?

I will tell you

since my pwBPD has been sober and taking care of himself he has more energy, maybe it will help your husband feel more positive and more motivated to help you around the house.

[teapay]

I'd say spot on Flour,

At the end of the day, I think your solution, sadly, is really the only ultimate solution to this type of problem.  For you it is solved, even the nest, and it will be much easier to maintain.

I often find the only real solutions to problems that involve my wife are "hard" or "systematic" solutions which don't depend on her.  They happen regardless of her.  Other efforts only bring short term solutions at best.  Those quickly fade once immediate pressure is gone.  The result of these is constantly eating half measures and trying convincing to convince yourself and others you've acquired the taste of it.   Of course she often doesn't like this because it takes the ball out completely out of her court and actually inhetently enforces something on her which me geating much involved.  Those things she doesnt like she needs to learn to live with MI or not.  If she can't, then she probably can't be in a r/s with me nor probably any one else.  I like things to be in both our interests, but if I have to choose between her and my welfare I've become determined to choose me. 

[Cloudy Days]

I think the intent of my question was to figure out how to not give up my own emotional well being while trying to encourage my husband to be more helpful around the house, without starting an argument of course.

He did mow the lawn... .most of it. It took him 3 days to get done what he did, I pointed out to him that in the past he has done it all in one day. He didn't weed eat, he didn't cut in any of the bushes that he wanted so it looks awful. I'm just going to let it slide however I made sure he knows that it's not acceptable for when we show the house. This is what I am really worried about. I literally can't fix the outside myself, I need his help. He didn't even mow the area so I could have a bonfire. Still waiting on that Birthday gift that will never come. It was harder for him to do because he hadn't mowed once this year and it had rained quite a bit. So the grass was higher than usual and he also hadn't went and gotten his blades sharpened so it was more difficult for the mower. He digs his own grave on all of it, he waits until he absolutely has to do something before he does it and it's 10x harder to do because of it.

He's been rather moody lately I've noticed within the past week (complaining more not really angry). I can't really tell if he is depressed or not, he's never been a really happy person and he has always slept too much. He actually doesn't sleep a lot he just sleeps at weird times, which is not good for your energy. Bpdsupporter I appreciate your suggestions but in the past supplements have had bad effects on my husband. He's also taking medication, you aren't suppose to mix St. johns wart with psyche meds. I realize you are pushing a natural approach but natural doesn't always mean safe. Also the marijuana is something his doctor supports, he has more than BPD going on and to be honest he's not bad on it, he does more than he did without it and of course there are withdrawals symptoms, that's why you don't stop. There are withdrawal symptoms for coffee and psyche meds, some of them can actually be dangerous.

Also what my husband takes is not my choice. I can't force him to take vitamins or get sober, if he is depressed and wants to sleep all day I can't stop him. There are a lot of things that would help my husband, and all of them he would have to do for himself.

[formflier]

  I pointed out to him that in the past he has done it all in one day. 

Any idea why it took him three days this time?

Might want to consider thanking him for what he did and asking if you can help him with weedeating or the bushes.  Point out that you have 15 minutes "right now" as you hand him glass of water.  So, get a drink and lets go.

I would also point out to you that these are short term strategies.  You need the place to look good so you can sell it.

In your new place, think about the "structure" of when you will need him.  Think about structure of the house, as far as who does what in what room.  Give him a room and ignore it.

Figure out how to minimize his negative impact on the rest.

FF

[Cat Familiar]

Cloudy Days,

I have the same issue with my husband lacking motivation about maintaining our home. I do everything except mow the lawns, haul the garbage to the dump monthly and take care of the pool, which are all duties my husband manages, more or less.

For those of you who live on rural property and have animals, you know there's a lot more to do than those three tasks. Even so, he feels "overwhelmed" by how hard he works--which in my calculations adds up to about 10 hours a month.

His studio is a freestanding structure separated from the house by concrete patios and walkways. I clean the house, all the exterior parts of the house, but no longer do the areas around his studio. He is responsible for the studio interior, which he occasionally cleans, but he does nothing outside. There are spider webs all over the exterior of his building--it looks like a witch's house, and leaves are piled up all over the adjacent patio and walkway.

In recent years, I've hired a gardener to help me once a week with the extensive landscaping, orchard and vegetable gardens. Occasionally he will blow the leaves from around my husband's studio.

I wonder if my husband is even aware of how awful his building must look to outsiders. He prides himself on being such a good photographer and he really does have an eye for detail when he occasionally takes photographs. I wonder if he even sees the chaos and disorder both inside and outside of his studio.

For me, my exterior reflects my interior. So if the house is a mess, by my definition--I'm very tidy, then I'm having some emotional issues. I wonder if that's the case with my husband.

[Cloudy Days]

Yes, I am looking forward to a yard that does not need any maintenance, 90% of the houses we have looked at didn't have grass  

I did thank him, I put heavy praise on him when he does anything because he doesn't do much. I know how I feel without appreciation so I figure slathering it on feels good to him maybe he would want to do it more often.

Usually when I get home from work I don't want to do anything, my time to help with the yard is always on the weekend, and the past couple weekends he ends up sleeping all day. This is my frustration, he says he hates his sleeping schedule but he chooses to sleep when he does. He went to bed at 6:30 last night and woke up at 10:30. I specifically asked him to try and stay awake so he could get his schedule back to normal. He always claims he is not going to sleep, he's just laying down. Every time he says it I tell him no you aren't, the moment your eyes close you will be sleeping.

He let it go too long is what took him longer to mow it, and like I said he also had dull blades. I told him to have them sharpened last year when it was cold outside so he could be ready, but nope. What's crazy is that he had no problems manually mowing the yard at our old house. I had to mow it a few times when he was gone for 4 months and it is not an easy task but he did it and he stayed on top of it. Our yard now requires a riding lawn mower, his mother was kind enough to buy him a super nice, 360 zero turn mower and now he won't mow. He dragged his feet last year, I just don't get it. Also I get annoyed that he has all day every day to do what ever he wants and what he wants is to do nothing. That would drive me insane! If I had the time he has that house would be spotless, mowed and have pretty flowers everywhere. I think that is where my anger is coming from. He has the luxury of time but he doesn't use it wisely.

I have a list of what I want for my new house, and it focuses on me being happy, which means low maintenance. Cat Familiar, I had a good laugh about the 10 hours of work thing, it's very true, the lawn takes longer but it's not like he's using his brain heavily to do it, and I am the one that has to take out the trash. He keeps asking for us to get a pool at our new home, I try really hard not to laugh. Like I'm going to be stuck taking care of a pool! No way in hell, he wants a pool with 5 dogs, I can really see his lack of logical thinking. I wish I had more money to hire someone, I would do it in a second.

[isilme]

Also what my husband takes is not my choice. I can't force him to take vitamins or get sober, if he is depressed and wants to sleep all day I can't stop him. There are a lot of things that would help my husband, and all of them he would have to do for himself.

This pretty much true for everything, including chores, sadly.

I have fought for years against FI's depression.  He hates anything prescribed, and takes St. Johns Wort time to time - it got him through a very bad patch 2 years back.  Exercise helps him, having regular social interaction with friends helps him, even if I have to insist - left to his own devices, he's sit at home and play video games and complain about being lonely.  So I try to set up dinners out with friends, taking part in game nights some friends have been instituting, going to the movies when anything good is playing, walks after work.  I am often exhausted by 5PM, as a sleep-maintenance insomniac myself - I often get about 4 hours asleep in 8 hours of time in bed.  BUt I have made it a rule that if I can get him up and out to do something, I will do it - it will help me with my insomnia and help him with his depression.

Here's what I see as a simple fact:  NO r/s is truly split evenly at all times.  Many people take turns being the supportive partner and the other as the leaning partner.  Sometimes, it's even - most times, one partner will be the more supportive of the two.  It's just how people are made. Ask ANY couple, separately, who does the most work, and very rarely will you get a consensus.  Housework is contentious in the most healthy of r/s.

BPD tips the scales even more, sadly.  As a person in an r/s with someone with BPD, if you choose to stay, you are accepting a greater amount of responsibility.  It is an illness.  Just because people can't see it, and the person with it might deny it does not change this.  There will be chronic issues day to day, like poor housekeeping, and acute issues, like a sudden rage.  BPD as I have seen it includes self loathing - which obviously is a component of depression, which in itself is debilitating.   

I love FI.  We have made progress since 2008 when I found this site.  I am working on me - it's taking a long time, and coming to terms, realistically, about what I need to be willing to do versus what I can expect from him has helped ME fight my own resentment.  He will never be in a place where I can totally let go.  He might be able to help keep MY head above water, at times, but I will need to be ready to kick and swim at any moment.  Look at radical acceptance.  Get a house that will have less yard and overall be easier for one person to maintain the mess of two.  Get your H on a better sleep schedule, somehow.  It will make a difference and will help.

[Cloudy Days]

I suppose I struggle with what should I radically accept and what should I try and make better. I have radically accepted a lot, when is it too much? I know that I can't change him, I can't make him want a clean house and I can't make him get on a regular sleep schedule. I can nudge him in certain ways but at the end of the day he's going to do what he wants to do. That's what I have been focused on for so long, focus on my actions not his. I feel like if I radically accept too much it is just giving him a free pass to do nothing and maybe my acceptance so far has led to his behavior now. I'm not asking for a lot and I am not asking for anything that he has never done before.

I guess it goes back to the feeling that I don't always feel like he has my back on things. Everything falls on my shoulders and that's hard to swallow. It feels heavy to me to carry around the work of two people. I don't ask for big things, he can't even walk out and feed the cats once a week, such a simple task. It reminds me of being in school and getting partnered with someone where you know you will have to do all of the work but they will still get the same grade as you.

[Cat Familiar]

That's the conundrum, Cloudy, how acceptance can turn into enabling. Sometimes I get a perverse sense of enjoyment when I just let consequences happen to my husband, as long as they're not too dire. I used to try and step in so that his things didn't get broken, misplaced, damaged or that bills got paid and phone calls returned. But now I just let nature take its course and if he's not responsible, then he loses a bit of money or has to replace an object.

But you know if they were living alone and we weren't there to do things, cook food, clean, pick up the slack, they'd either have to do it themselves or figure something out. I get tired of being the one who does almost everything.

[flourdust]

Radical acceptance means you just stop beating your head against a wall in the hope that the wall will move. It doesn't mean you accept it in the sense that you like it and are OK with it.

If you decide that nothing you can do will make your husband be less lazy, then you have radically accepted that this is the state of affairs. You are not holding out hope for change.

Your next step is to decide what you want to do about what you've accepted as true. You can live with it and work around it. You can kick him to the curb if you don't want to tolerate it. Or some third path. But you've let go of fantasy that this particular problem will go away, somehow.

[Cat Familiar]

Radical acceptance means you just stop beating your head against a wall in the hope that the wall will move. It doesn't mean you accept it in the sense that you like it and are OK with it.

If you decide that nothing you can do will make your husband be less lazy, then you have radically accepted that this is the state of affairs. You are not holding out hope for change.

Your next step is to decide what you want to do about what you've accepted as true. You can live with it and work around it. You can kick him to the curb if you don't want to tolerate it. Or some third path. But you've let go of fantasy that this particular problem will go away, somehow.

It's your second paragraph that is the fulcrum of hope for codependents. We believe that we are such good covert manipulators that one day we'll figure out the magic code that will have our loved ones behaving the way they ought to. When there's a will, there ought to be a way--but we just haven't discovered it yet. 

[formflier]

There is a hard question to look at.  What is RA and what is enabling.

If it is something that you do for them, that they won't do for themselves, I would take a hard look at that.

Accepting that they won't clean their space is accepting.

Cleaning up "common space" or "your space" after they have messed it up, with no efforts to help, is likely more enabling.

Thoughts?

FF

[Cat Familiar]

Cleaning up "common space" or "your space" after they have messed it up, with no efforts to help, is likely more enabling.

It's so much easier to do things myself rather than be the taskmaster or try to manipulate my husband to help clean up the common areas. And even if I succeed, there's hell to pay later.

He's so unused to doing actual physical labor that he remembers when he had to work hard on a project years later and regales people with anecdotes about how he and I spent two or three days staining and grouting the concrete floor in his studio. For me, it was just another day of work amongst countless others, but for him it was a traumatic experience that he remembers in detail a decade later.

I've worked hard physically all my life and it's no big deal to me as long as my rotator cuff isn't acting up, but for him, even vacuuming his studio is traumatic. 

[Cloudy Days]

My husband never cleans up the common space, he specifically chose the guest bathroom as his own so when people came over I am forced to clean it. Specifically his hairs from his beard all over the counter and sink. I don't want people seeing that, I refuse to clean it unless someone is coming over which isn't often. Other things like trash he will just set it on the counter. When I wake up or get home at night I literally just start grabbing things and throwing it away, this is something I have always struggled with him on he doesn't like touching the trash can.

I just asked him if he would quickly mow the area so we could try and have the bonfire tonight and got a whole array of texts and then said something about how he doesn't like to rush around for the sake of my mother. I told him from the get go that area was what I wanted mowed over everything else and it's the one thing he skipped mowing. It's like he's doing it on purpose almost.

I do feel like it is enabling but I always end up having to do it. I can only let things go so long before it starts to bother me. I suppose this is one of those things that will always be a battle. My Birthday and him not doing absolutely anything for it is what brought this on for me. I always felt that at least he does something for me on special days. Then he goes and pulls this crap, which shines a light on how little he actually does. If he can't make an effort one day a year, what can I really expect the rest of the year? I have gotten used to expecting nothing of him.

[waverider]

He has the luxury of time but he doesn't use it wisely.

I think of my wife as a "time sponge". She can soak up huge amounts of time and nothing seems to be achieved.

I am very wary of not allowing her to just soak up my time too. That just brings about a resentment that you have been 'robbed'. You can spend so much time fitting around them that your days get drained away and you feel like you have done nothing.

It is important to be aware and stick to your own schedule or you will get derailed.

In a way I am glad she sleeps in late, that way i can get something done, even if its just a walk, before the rest of the day is at risk of being absorbed ineffectively. Mornings are a good time for me to pursue my self interests without disturbance.

It is important to not end up doing anything by association, it is sometimes hard to motivate yourself when you are dragging an anchor.

[Cloudy Days]

I think of my wife as a "time sponge". She can soak up huge amounts of time and nothing seems to be achieved.

I am very wary of not allowing her to just soak up my time too. That just brings about a resentment that you have been 'robbed'. You can spend so much time fitting around them that your days get drained away and you feel like you have done nothing.

It is important to be aware and stick to your own schedule or you will get derailed.

In a way I am glad she sleeps in late, that way i can get something done, even if its just a walk, before the rest of the day is at risk of being absorbed ineffectively. Mornings are a good time for me to pursue my self interests without disturbance.

It is important to not end up doing anything by association, it is sometimes hard to motivate yourself when you are dragging an anchor.

You seem to hit the nail on the head here, this is exactly how it goes down and I always welcome the moments when he is sleeping because I either get a lot done, or I get a lot of relaxation time. When he is awake he has a way of making me focus on him.

[Cat Familiar]

I know what you mean, Cloudy. At this point of giving up that my husband will actually be motivated to do something, anything to help around the house, I sort of enjoy when he naps the afternoon away in his man cave and I don't have to be around him and his moodiness. It feels like a mini-vacation. That's really sad to say, but true.

[waverider]

There is a hard question to look at.  What is RA and what is enabling.

If it is something that you do for them, that they won't do for themselves, I would take a hard look at that.

Accepting that they won't clean their space is accepting.

Cleaning up "common space" or "your space" after they have messed it up, with no efforts to help, is likely more enabling.

Thoughts?

FF

This is where awareness and power of choice come in. Once you have a handle on actions and consequences and have let go of magical thinking that things are going to chance for unknown reasons, then you can choose either.

I do both. I enable when I know the consequences for me are not dire and to do otherwise is mores stress than I am prepared to take on. RA is more about accepting things when you cant change them even if you wanted to.

Before you get a full grasp on the process you dont have an educated choice to make, so everything feels like loose/loose. The consequences of your choices are then harder to live with.

[formflier]

 

WR,

Can I sum it up that you have gotten past feeling like there are things that you "have to" do and there are times when you "choose" to do things that your wife really should be doing?

I can see how that would lead to less, or no resentment.

FF

[waverider]

WR,

Can I sum it up that you have gotten past feeling like there are things that you "have to" do and there are times when you "choose" to do things that your wife really should be doing?

I can see how that would lead to less... or no resentment.

FF

Yes, my wife is very dysfunctional and to make a stand on everything means there is no chance of any kind of harmony in the relationship.  I also make very good use of the brownie points i collect in the process.

Never forget the end goal is to have a worthwhile relationship, not force it into some model of "normality'. Does dysfunction matter if no one is getting stressed or in conflict over it?

i get frustrated , yes... .but it doesn't compound into resentment, if that starts to happen I pack my kayak and fishing gear and go spend my brownie points to remind me why I did said 'favors"... .I take my "pound of flesh", nothing comes for free.

[formflier]

Never forget the end goal is to have a worthwhile relationship, not force it into some model of "normality'. Does dysfunction matter if no one is getting stressed or in conflict over it?

Huge point!

[lbjnltx]

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