Is your pwBPD lazy? How do you cope with that?

[Cat Familiar]

Over time I realized that I've taken on more and more responsibility while he's taken on less. I'm used to working hard and doing physical work. In fact, I like it and I like being outdoors. My husband, on the other hand, complains bitterly when he has to do something and I've gotten to the point where I don't even like asking for his help. He makes what could be a joyful team project unpleasant. And he's so often in a hurry when he does something that he screws it up. Then gets angry. It's like work=hell and play is all he wants to do. He's retired with plenty of money to do whatever he pleases, yet he gets grumpy if I need to hire someone to replace a wall heater. I'm not a spendthrift, but I know that houses need constant maintenance and I do as much as I'm capable of, but there are things that are above my pay grade. It just irks me that I don't have an equal partner in this marriage.

[Ceruleanblue]

I hear you on this. BPDh actually had his mechanics license at one time, but he won't change my oil, or fix my brakes. I've seen him work on his daughter's car several times. He has done her brakes, and replaced her radiator twice. It's just unfair that he'll do more for others than he'll do for me. It makes me feel like I don't matter to him, which I think is essentially true in some regards. He kisses their butts, because they are mean to him, and he's always trying to garner favor, but with someone who is consistently nice to him, he doesn't feel the need to try. How dysfunctional.

He also doesn't treat his things nicely, and that drives me crazy. His brother is the exact opposite, very careful of  his things, and well organized. BPDh likes to drive my car, and park it where it gets door dings, even though he knows I'm careful with my car. He just doesn't respect me or my things. I think because deep down, he doesn't have much self esteem, although he presents as super narcissistic.

And like your husband, he's all about his hobbies. Even with his job hanging in the balance, he won't pick up a book on management, or do much to try to make things better. He always tends to focus in the wrong areas, then wonder why he gets a bad outcome. It makes no sense to me, but I've seen it happen over and over. He should be reading up on empowering his employees, management, and creating a team, but instead he's doing computer animation, and watching food network, and other crap that he uses to distract himself.

[Cat Familiar]

It's just unfair that he'll do more for others than he'll do for me. It makes me feel like I don't matter to him, which I think is essentially true in some regards. He kisses their butts, because they are mean to him, and he's always trying to garner favor, but with someone who is consistently nice to him, he doesn't feel the need to try. How dysfunctional.

I see this with my husband trying too hard to win someone's favor. Yet, with me, he feels like I'm a sure thing and he doesn't need to try.

I tried a different strategy today with him. He's been using my printer to print 100s of pages of something he was giving to somebody else--a Tibetan language dictionary project that he did for his language teacher (another NPD). He bends over backwards to try to gain this guy's friendship and guess what--he's a NPD! and we all know how that works out.

So now the ink shows like it's out. I discovered a workaround so that I can continue to print, even though the printer tells me I need to replace the cartridge. And I've bought a cartridge and my husband has too.

So, today when he went to print, I asked him to see if it was still working and if he had ever replaced the ink cartridge that he bought. So far, I've been able to get by without replacing the color I purchased.

He made a face (like I asked him to do something--god forbid!) so I made the face back to him--and he laughed!

[maxsterling]

I deal with exactly the same.  W rarely does anything to help out around the house, and when she does she complains.  I'm also to the point I would rather her not even try to help because I don't want to hear the complaints. 

I'm not so frustrated about doing all the work.  I lived by myself long enough I am used to it.  But I am upset that my wife will complain about the cleanliness of something and yet do nothing to solve the problem.  Meanwhile, I am giving up my free time to take care of the house the house to the point it is.

Another way it upsets me is it shows a lack of ownership for where she lives.  For awhile, I interpreted her lack of wanting to help out with housework as a lack of desire to stay with me.  She wasn't making my house her own - she was acting like a tenant.   

[Scarlet Phoenix]

Yes, yes, yes!

This seems to be a recurrent situation. Waverider has given some good input on this in other threads about how someone with BPD is driven by satisfying immediate needs but not by long-term responsibilities. It is what it is.

I have periods where it drives me absolutely crazy. Then I have periods where I think I would rather be the one to deal with housework/projects than to be the one to live with BPD. I think this is one of those situations where you must just learn to live with it. Understanding why they behave this way can help (sometimes ... .)

[Cat Familiar]

Another way it upsets me is it shows a lack of ownership for where she lives.  For awhile, I interpreted her lack of wanting to help out with housework as a lack of desire to stay with me.  She wasn't making my house her own - she was acting like a tenant.   

My husband will even say things like this: "I'm nobody, just passing through. It's your house"--just because I bought the property and built my little house years ago. But we did the big building project as a couple (even though it was my money that paid for it mostly). Since he inherited some money, he's certainly put significant money into the property for improvements and repairs.

It used to break my heart when he said that. Now, I think, OK, whatever. I'm certainly not kicking him out and if he chooses to leave, that's his choice. But it almost seemed that he was trying to elicit heartbreak in me (and I told him as much) when he'd use that drama sh!t of "I don't belong anywhere."

[isilme]

I come back to these feelings off and on.  Yes.  I do pretty much all housework, yard work, and it's gotten back to where I do all the grocery shopping, pet care, and of course most errands (trying to get a car to the shop while at work, right now), and a good part of the cooking.  I keep up with the bills being paid, calling repairmen, and so anything that doesn't get done is MY fault, because he likes to pretend he can't possibly do it.  His mom did everything for him and his brother in regards to paperwork and setting up appointments and so forth.  She was not/is no big on cleaning, as a hoarder, but she restricted their abilities to learn to be adults (partly because their older sister was too independent, I think).  So out of habit, he waits for me to take care of everything.  When it won't hurt me, or damage him badly, I try to "let it fail" instead of jumping in to take care of it all.  It's hard not to do that, though, as I can't always figure what can safely fail.

And it gets really tiring and frustrating, especially when FI gets in a bad, dysregulated mood, and gets on to me about "napping all the time" (I don't - used to but in my fight against insomnia I limit it even when facing daytime sleepiness), and accuses me of being lazy for not finishing freelance projects in the schedule he thinks is reasonable, while still keeping the house kept up and everything else AND working full time for 7 years longer than he has.  But I know arguing the inequality will get me no where, AND a part of it is that he DOES do it at times as an emotional ploy - to show dissatisfaction, to show how hard life is for him so he shouldn't have to do chores, etc.

I found a little peace at one time, when I was seriously thinking of leaving several years ago, when I realized that if I lived alone, I'd STILL do all these things, and really would just have fewer dishes to wash.  Not everyone has the same "neat-meter".  Even in couples without PD issues, the neat-meter is more what motivates some people to clean than whether they have a PD. FI grew up in a home with a hoarder.  He hates the idea of his house being like that, but also gets overwhelmed when being asked to get rid of excess things.  He WILL clean, but only certain things, and he's not very efficient at it, and often gets distracted by minutiae (he will decide the day company is coming is the day to alphabetize new DVDs into the shelves.  We keep them alphabetical, and have a large collection, so when I need help taking out the trash and sweeping is not really the time to do this). 

His emotions and thinking is often disordered.  So is his personal space.  Mine is disordered through exhaustion and lack of time, to sew and paint projects as well as keep up with being an adult - so I sadly have a pile of laundry that only sporadically gets folded and put away. 

I see this is as just another part of being with a person with a PD, and think some of it at least ties to the lack of "Executive Control" where good decision making and being a grown up are hampered.  Taking responsibility for your part in house upkeep or errands or other things is part of being an adult, and it's part of how some people with BPD are hampered. 

When I am not upset, or feeling ill used by it (can you tell I'm a little upset today about it?  Got a lot to take care of ), I try to remember that BPD is just as much of a disability at times as someone missing a limb.  For instance, I don't get upset so much about him not helping outside in the yard (as long as he's not being rude to me for not being able to keep up with it perfectly), since his last job damaged his sinuses so badly pollen and simply being outside can make him ill by leading to an infection.  BUT, he could do dishes while I am outside, and that's where I get upset.  And try to let it go. 

[Cat Familiar]

He WILL clean, but only certain things, and he's not very efficient at it, and often gets distracted by minutiae (he will decide the day company is coming is the day to alphabetize new DVDs into the shelves.  We keep them alphabetical, and have a large collection, so when I need help taking out the trash and sweeping is not really the time to do this).  

His emotions and thinking is often disordered.  So is his personal space.  

I have to laugh at this because my husband's sister is coming for a week-long visit on Monday and guess what my husband did yesterday? He went through his vast collection of books, taking some to his storage locker. While he was doing that, he looked up their value online.

It's hilarious. He complained about being so overwhelmed, yet he continues to buy books on a weekly basis. I don't even think that he did much cleaning in his studio yesterday--so today he's going to freak out about it and how unfair it is. (I do all the cleaning everywhere other than his personal area.)

Thankfully when we built our house, I insisted that he build a detached studio for all his stuff--his man cave. I don't clean in there and it's kind of a disaster. But not my circus, not my monkeys!~

[Foolishwizdom]

This is one of the biggest issues in our marriage and in our tension around whether to have children.

I work and travel and we have not found a way to share or manage the responsibilities. I can't do it all myself and when I lower my expectations too much, I get overwhelmed and depressed by the disorganization and clutter. I try to let him fail in his personal areas like laundry but he either just wears dirty clothes to public or work events, or recently he has taken to leaving stuff at his parents and his mother does laundry.

I mention cleaning help like a maid service (I have been given gift certificates from sympathetic friends or family) BPDh gets upset about the expense or thought of the expense. 

He "anger cleans" when we start to talk about it to prove that he does stuff or that if I just shut up and did it instead of harass him then it would be done. I try to talk charts or lists or joint cleaning times and he says it should just happen.

I am no Martha Stewart and I have clutter because of my busy lifestyle but have learned to develop some routines and patterns to save work and keep some order.  And while I am ok with some clutter, things being sanitary is important to me. BPDh has no sense of sanitary. Mom cleaned. He doesn't.

He can spend all day at his parents' home doing stuff for them and come home and do nothing.

I just... .can this really be an ok life? Does anyone have kids and work and have a pwBPD?

Our couples counselor told me that if I stayed with BPDh that I would become maladjusted... .and I can't decide which coping behaviors are healthy and what is crazy.

[flourdust]

Yup. I work. I cook. I clean.

My wife may cook if asked -- though it's usually not worth asking, as most of her "cooking" consists of assembling something pre-packaged from the grocery store.

She used to do around 40% of the housework. Now she does 5%, if that. And the clutter. Oh, the clutter. Not just "stuff", but trash, dirty dishes, dirty clothes, clean clothes ... .strewn and piled everywhere.

I've slowly given up on cleaning, other than the kitchen. A cleaning service would be useless -- they'd have to move all the clutter to get to surfaces to clean them.

There have been a lot of threads on this topic. This seems to be common with BPD.

[Cat Familiar]

I don't know how people who have kids and are married to a pwBPD even cope. I do have a bit of OCD and I like clean, sanitary and organized. So obviously kids were not in the picture when I was younger and married to my first BPD husband.

It does seem to be characteristic of BPDs to create clutter. I saw that with my mother and as a young child, I would organize stuff and within a few days it would fall into random chaos again. My ex-husband was a thrift store junkie and building material collector. But he didn't do anything with all the stuff he collected, other than imagine what he could do with it in the future.

My current husband collects books and has subscriptions to probably two dozen magazines. When he leaves all that stuff in the house, I collect it into a pile and deposit it in his man cave. He gets really annoyed that I'm adding to the clutter there. 

He often talks about getting a cleaning service to clean his studio (man cave) but he'd have to spend so much time organizing the clutter beforehand, I don't think it's a real possibility unless he makes some big changes in his behavior.