How to train your live-in significant other?

My boyfriend of a year and a half and I have been living together since September last year. It didn't used to bother me at first, but the more time goes by, the more he annoys me with his habit of making a mess every time he does something. If he cooks, he doesn't even bother to throw his rubbish in the bin. If he spills something on the counter, that's how it stays. He leaves his stuff all over the place, treads mud from outside on rainy days and it just drives me mad. Every single time I clean the apartment, in just a few days it ends up looking even worse than before!

I tried asking him nicely. I tried more extreme tactics ("If it's on the floor, it either goes in the rubbish bin or the dirty laundry basket"). I even tried withholding sex, but since our sex is rare enough as it is... it didn't work.

I don't know what else to do... I'm sick and tired of cleaning up just to see him dump all over my work. He doesn't take kindly to being told what to do, so I'm left picking up the work and feeling miserable myself.

Anyone have a similar thing going? Any tips on how to get him to at least respect my work?

Living together can be hard. You get to see exactly how the person is. Have you explained how you feel to you boyfriend? Maybe just flat out telling him that you feel disrespected when he creates a huge mess and you are stuck with it. Instead of asking him to pick up the stuff or cleaning it up, just tell him how you feel when you have to do it. May be that will work. It may seem like he is not listening or he may even become annoyed but might hear what you are saying.

My boyfriend and I have had similar problems. I tried asking him liked you have and got no where. It wasn't until I said something like "I really feel disrespected when you..." I some times add "I am sorry if if this upsets you, but I have been feeling really upset myself and I needed to let you know." Some times that works enough for him to listen to me. HOWEVER, people do not always change. But, making him more aware of your feelings may help.

I did tell him how his attitude makes me feel disrespected and like he expects me to be his maid/surrogate mum... He brushed it off every time. He really doesn't think it's a big deal and he doesn't mind the mess himself. More even, sometimes when I tell him to pick up his leftovers he gives me the "You don't always pick up your mess, either!" spiel and suddenly we're discussing my lack of housekeeping skills... and I'm just sitting there thinking, how the heck did we get to that?!

Hang on just a second. It didn't bother you at first, now it does. How is he meant to know that? Have you actually talked, properly, or just given him orders?

Withholding sex is clearly not the right way to go. Especially in a time of shortage.

I am a messy person and I can tell you that I am a messy person not out of malice. I am a messy person even when I live alone, so clearly I do not make messes to harm or disrespect a SO - I do not have anybody but cats living with me at the moment, and cats are not bothered by messes.

I do not have any advice, but just wanted to tell you that he does not do that out of any negative attitude towards you.

I am not really sure what to say about this. My boyfriend has been pretty responsive when I am tell him that things bother me. It has taken some time and it is not always easy to have the discussions with him but it is just starting to work. It has taken about two years. To be honest, some times when I have told him that I feel disrespected it has resulted in somewhat of a fight and like you said, it turns onto me. I think it is just my boyfriends way of dealing. He becomes defensive. But, I have given a lot of thought to the situation. I thought about "can I live with this?". Have you thought about that? Is your boyfriend being messy something that you can live with? People can change a little, but will he suddenly become a neat and clean person? Probably not. I am a messy person. My clothes are always on the floor and the bathroom is a disaster. However, my boyfriend is a neat freak. We have had the discussion that I need to become a little neater and that he needs to relax a little. Compromise.

I think that if this something that you can live with, then continue to express your feelings to your boyfriend. If you look at the situation and you think in the long run this is something that you can't let go of and don't want to deal with long term then it might be time to move on. I am so sorry to say that. I am dealing at moment with a similar situation. It has come to a point where I need to look at my relationship and make some decisions. It is not easy and may not end how I or you want. But, you need to do what is best for you and what will make you happy.

I am sorry, this is probably not what you want to hear.

Yes, compromise. But that is indeed a two-way street. My husband is messy. He loves me, so he tries to maintain things that make a big difference to me and my living space. He's poor at cleaning, but he tries. Sounds like yours doesn't, and has a bit of a bad attitude.

Like I said...

It wasn't so bad, at first. You know how it is during the "honeymoon period": you put on your best face, dress to impress and keep yourself on the best behavior. When that started to go away, we ran into each other's quirks, no biggie... but this, this is something I can't live with. My mum spent her entire life toiling after my dad in addition to working full-time and, y'know, being a mum. It wrecked her health, her morale and her self-esteem. I don't want to end up like that.

Maybe I shouldn't have used the word "messy" when "pigsty" is more appropriate. No joke. Remember when I said he doesn't clean after himself when he cooks? I mean his rubbish stays there for days - until it rots away. We had to throw out our last rubbish bin because it was infested with maggots thanks to his habits. Yesterday he came to get me and said "Honey, there's some spilled milk on the floor." I looked at him and asked him why didn't he clean it himself. He said, "Well, now that you know about it, why don't you do it?" Seriously, that is not OK.

I'd love to compromise, but being a housemaid isn't what I signed up for and he knows that, yet he keeps being like that.

>this is something I can't live with.

Yeah, I've had to tell my husband that quite a few times. However, he would never have a bad attitude such as your story of spilling milk on the floor story and ask me what I'm going to do about it. It sounds like your situation is extreme. (Maggots? I knew a couple of people that let their house get like that - the dishes piled up in greasy water so much that when someone tried to extinguish a match, the "dishwater" went on fire! Oh, and I had a pig roommate that would store the dirty dishes in the cupboards and only wash them when she needed a dish for ordinary purposes or gourmet cooking episodes. She ended up marrying an industrial food guy - god knows what happened after that. The day I moved in I started cleaning at the counter and just kept going, discovering the secret horror over the day as I cleaned. The garbage bag was stuck to the wall with filth.) I guess what I'm saying about those other people is that a lot of people have bizarre quirks and failings about housekeeping, and they can be very hard to live with or make it impossible to live with them. These stories are only funny if you don't have to live them. And you shouldn't have to. You need to talk together and be taken seriously.

Tried talking again today... to no avail. He turned it on me, as usual. I asked him to please put his rubbish in the bin rather than leave it around. He replied by saying "But you do the same, how come it's OK when you do it?" He said I left an empty takeout box on the counter, which I admit to doing, but that only happened once. Still enough to invalidate my claims though, apparently.

So talking is out, it seems. As soon as I bring it up he reverts to brat mode: don't wanna talk about it, you do it too, you're not my mum, lemme alone. And the apartment looks like a pigsty again.

I'm burned out on cleaning... and on trying to talk any sense into him... We're not that wealthy but maybe I'll just go ahead and hire a bloody cleaner once a week, I honestly don't see any other way out of this.

There is a book "kidding ourselves" and its author, who has done research, says that hiring a cleaner, if possible, is the very best way to deal with your problem.

The book is about women with children, but it is a very good read and I recommend it even though you just have a SO and no children yet.

At some point you have to decide whether living with that partner is worth the aggravation.

I kept wishing my husband would take the trash out when it needed to be taken out instead of after it was overflowing all over the floor and I'd reminded him X number of times, etc. but then, as I was taking the trash out myself yet again (before it overflowed :-) I realized that I was the one who wanted the trash out, he didn't really care/it was not high on his list of things to do/care about. I finally decided I had a choice whether I would do all the chores myself, as I'd have to do living alone, or if I would do the chores and live with this great guy I loved and who added things I wanted to my life I couldn't get alone. In other words, I have pets and clean up after them. . .

We were raised completely differently, a lot of it because of our different genders. But how we think is different, what's important to us, our backgrounds, etc. My stepmother was big on the dishes must be done immediately after dinner so I "learned" that and it's hard to realize that that's not the way it "has" to be, just the way I was trained.

If I were you, if he has an "area" I'd clean his stuff off common and your space and into his Otherwise, if you are going to clean anyway, whether it is just messy/dirty or REALLY messy/dirty is not that important? Too, I'd set myself up a schedule of when I wanted to clean and "not notice" in between". Learning to relax and feel instead of "worry" about surroundings has benefits. I have a cleaning person come in every other Tuesday and I get to doing "my" cleaning on Monday night/Tuesday morning before they arrive, LOL. Otherwise, if my husband doesn't mind I don't worry about it unless I need to (he the dish washer but doesn't necessarily do them on my time so I can need to do some to use the kitchen to make dinner, for example -- that's okay though because he makes breakfast most mornings!) or it's my mess. If my husband minds, it's usually my mess :-) If not, he can do some of the cleaning too, we do it together (maybe start some together time straightening?). If you "want" it, it's your job to get it for yourself, not someone else's. They don't want it so they should not have to work to someone else's standards (a good opportunity to look at what your mother demanded/supplied/did not supply, etc. as far as why you do chores/cleaning the way you do).

No, you're not his mum, you're a person who isn't being respected and taken seriously. You are not perfect, and you don't expect him to be perfect, but two sloppy incidents versus 20 or 200 is very significant. Orders of magnitude. His slob culture is more important than listening and respect? Never mind the mess itself; this I could not live with.

Most people suck at conflict resolution. If you read Marshall Rosenberg's stuff about communication and emotions and listening, you might gain some insight that would help. His website has a lot of free readings, so you don't have to hunt down a library book.

If your partner won't hear you out and respect you, you have to decide if you want to live like that, or if it's just too much. You may need to move on. One sad fact is that only one in ten men help around the house (I think that statistic is specifically about married couples, but I'm not sure). Feminism hasn't done much for us ladies in that realm. We concentrated on getting more equality in business and politics, but not so much the home. In nine out of ten homes, the woman does the cleaning and home chores, while the husband works outside the home. Usually, a man gets to come home after work and sit down and relax, whereas the wife--often a mom--has to work 24/7 (especially if she has kids, because even if she's asleep, she's usually the one who has to get up in the middle of the night to tend to the children), and rarely gets time off.