How to get slob fiance to clean up after himself?

Post Reply New Topic

I am a student and work 25 hrs a week. Obviously I can't afford to get a maid and he just dropped a bunch of money on house paint and an engagement ring so he won't get a maid. The choices are: he cleans or I clean or we both clean.

Then it's obvious, you have to clean. You are the one wanting a clean house, so you have to do it yourself. Or move out.

Do you buy and make the food?
Stop doing it for him.
Buy some disposable plates and cutlery and a garbage bin. Leave the bin next to his seat at the table.
If he wants to eat, he can buy and cook his own food, eat it on disposables, and dispose of the garbage by sweeping it conveniently into the bin by his side.
If he wants to live like a human being who's part of the family, he can do his share of the work.

Alternately, seriously, move out. This guy does not respect your time or your living space, and while he might be nice in other ways, he doesn't sound like a nice person to live with. Essentially, his attitude is that he's allowing you, the poor student and girl, to live in his house which he pays for with his mighty earning power, so take it or leave it.

Of course, in a few years you'll have your own mighty earning power. What's his excuse going to be then?

I disagree with you: you can stop doing anything, if you can do it for as long as it takes. Just make it clear to him from the start that this is what you are going to do and why. Clarity and openness take away the passive aggression: instead you are setting limits. When things get bad enough, for him, he will do something about it, even if that is paying someone to come in and clean the place up.

However if you set limits, you must carry them out and stick to your guns, or he will not respect them.

It helps to have pre-set levels of consequences, which you also need to enforce, and do some creative brainstorming: (ie if he doesn't do some cleaning up to a reasonable standard and amount by the end of the week, you will sell something of his and pay yourself to do his share). His golf clubs, if he has any, should bring in a reasonable sum...

As Eleanor Roosevelt so famously said, we teach others how to treat us. Start teaching... you won't get anywhere, as the past shows, by asking nicely. Inwardly, he probably laughs at that and thinks you have doormat tattooed on your forehead.

In any case, he is showing you a serious lack of respect, and marriages which lack mutual levels of other-respect tend to drift into negative patterns which negative consequences for both partners, unless that respect is restored or created.

You will have your work cut out here.

The problem is she has to live with the nastiness for as long as it accumulates.
I would not recommend selling his things.
I also find that helpless people who can't notice mess suddenly become a lot more perceptive when their jobs are on the line. In other words, they can, they just don't want to.
There are dozens of ways of handling this childishly, but in the end, the guy's just got to decide whether it's more important to him to carry on being a slob or to live with you. If the answer is "slob", well, there you go, you've saved yourself much trouble. (Or you can simply marry and live separately.) But the quickest route to that answer is to sit him down and tell him that simple self-respect will not allow you to live in a dump or to pretend you're supposed to be his maid. And that the man you marry will not shift his own work to you unless he's somehow incapacitated, but instead will look after himself like an adult who respects his wife and her time. So you will move out and live in a clean place for the next month, and he can use that time to decide whether it's worth it, to him, to clean up after himself instead of leaving his mess for you.

I would sidle up to him in a cuddly way, and say "Honey, would you please clean up after yourself from now on?"

That would induce a positive response in me!

If he doesn't, I would then bring out the heavy artillery.

It's fair for a guy to at least contribute to the cleaning of a house.

Tarantella, wild guess here, but you wouldn't feel at all bad about using the silent treatment to get your own way, right?

No offense, and you might not even realise it, but you sound REALLY manipulative. I don't think you should be talking about respect if that's the way you go about getting it, respect is a two way street. The word you're searching for isn't respect.

No, I wouldn't use silent treatments. The entire point is that the OP isn't someone else's maid and has a right to live in a sanitary place. If her guy doesn't respect her enough to clean up his act, there's no reason why she should go on living in those conditions. It's also not her job to wheedle him into it: she's already made it clear how she feels. So: the adult thing to do is leave and live in a nice place. He won't vanish from the earth, she can still see him. But if he wants to live with her, there are sanitary standards he'll need to meet. If he doesn't want to, that's fine, she just won't go on living with him and cleaning up after him.

There is nothing controlling or manipulative about that. It involves her taking care of herself.

The older I get, btw, the more I find that if people don't show up in your life already knowing how to treat you reasonably and be a good friend, they aren't likely to pick it up anytime soon. I think it's civil to give them a chance (hence giving someone a month to consider their own priorities when it comes to cleaning up after self. Some people really will shrug and say, this is me, I'm a slob, deal or don't live with me. Which is fine, so long as you've got truth in advertising). Some things like that can change. Odds are, though, no. Yeah, you do wind up getting a lot of outraged reactions when you stop putting up with people's s**t (like deciding you're the maid), but I don't take the outrage seriously anymore.

You wrote a possible answer to your request for suggestions, and understandably it is less than satisfactory. That means, to me, that one has to back up and look at other issues.

I guess I am answering questions with a question:

Why are you marrying someone who you feel this way about?

So I spoke with hubby and he actually has started to pick up after himself. Yes, I do still have to ask him often times but it does still get done. And we both have areas we need to improve upon. No relationship is perfect and we both have our faults/ flaws. And yes, if I did not "allow" him to let the house get the messy then it would not happen. It was both our faults.

The thing that would get me doing it....

Well you could argue all you want, say how it's half my job to meet your standards, how I live there, how I should care because this, that or whatever, but none of that is reasonable because I don't agree.

You want to know the reason that would cut through it all and get me picking up things? Agree that it's unreasonable to expect him to be bothered about tidying just for the sake of tidying, but just say that it bothers you personally, and make tidying up to be something about you and for you.

Just let him win a little. Don't make it a battle that you're trying to win with him, where you try to make it only fair that he's as bothered about cleanliness as you. Say he's won, that you agree that it's your standards and not his, but just say how much happier you'd be if he tidied up anyway. If you can sidestep it being a battle of wills, where you're trying to get him to want to be tidy, and make it purely about how happy it makes you that he would make an effort, you might see a big difference. I personally would fight tooth and claw to not have to so something I don't want to do, but then doing something to make someone happy is another thing entirely.


I dunno. I'm prob wrong about him, but thats the way I see it from my personal point of view and it's what would motivate me. It's better for him to tidy things up thinking about your being happy when you notice than to pick something up because he's worried about you kicking off.

I think its important to understand housework is not something were good at. Its probably the one feature that gets more obvious the higher you get on the spectrum.

Its not laziness, or a disinterest in cleanliness. Its an inability to rapidly switch between tasks. In fact I always lived with the contradiction of being a clean freak at my work, and total slob at home.

For me cleaning is a mode, and I cant switch back and forth to that mode throughout day to day activities its just not possible.

If Im in a clean mode it takes up a large part of my day and involves a high level of anxiety, that gets released at the end of the job .
However smalls jobs are actually close to impossible to deal with, as i cant get in that mode,, and if I do my anxiety goes through the roof as the amount of work isnt enough to give me the endorphine kickout you get after completing a large job.

Theres also the issue that I have a hard time perceiving cleanliness. Things dont get dirtier they have an absence of time.

So things are either completely dirty or just fine. I dont notice the transition.

This is probably why when an aspie is clean there obsessive, our brains have no idea when something is clean enough, so we fixate on things being overly organized.

Realistically hiring a made is a best option for these guys when there single.

When married a woman pretty much has to accept that this is one area of life there disabled spouse cannot handle.

At best managing the mess is the best hope, accept hes a slob verbally, but get him to at the very least avoid spreading it..

Now of course you shouldnt take on all the work yourself, so if your cleaning he has to contribute somehow.

Either take care of the kids, exchange favors(get him to help your sister move, in exchange for free babysitting etc._

Get him to paint the house etc.

She's the one with AS, Stoek.

If hes the nt, tell em the shove than. Lol

She has a point. Not so much about the cleaning-- I realized years ago that I was going to have to bite the bullet and Just Do It when he explained to me, lovingly and tenderly, that it warmed his heart to see me laying out his clothes and picking up his dirty socks and that he'd rather I not cook meals ahead because he felt good when he walked in the door and saw me standing at the stove with a kid on either leg.

Yeah-- at the time, I was tempted to warm something else with a hot cast-iron skillet.

I digress. It's not exactly over the cleaning that I'd seriously consider calling it off. It's over the, I don't know, basic contempt for what you're doing (things like the statement that "school isn't a job," because actually school is a HUGE amount of work). He might or might not learn to take his glasses to the sink and pick up his smelly sweat socks. Contempt/arrogance like that, trust me, DOES NOT age well. It's been my experience that it gets worse, not better, as they get older and make more money.