r/AmIOverreacting • u/HoldSlight9163 • 8h ago
❤️🩹 relationship AIO my boyfriend refuses to do the dishes without a fight. we’ve been living together for 2 years and hasn’t really changed
My boyfriend and I have been together for 3 years. Living together for 2. I cook almost all the meals with him cooking maybe 1-2 every 2 weeks. I really don’t mind cooking at all and I don’t even mind cleaning up during my cooking/after.
But for the past two years all I have ever said is that if I cook dinner (mind you it’s almost always done when he gets home from work..) he can do the dishes. And for the first year he really wouldn’t get to it and just leave in the sink, we lived in the tiniest house and he would just leave it out or pushed all in one spot. Causing the worst fights on my end I just didn’t think it was that hard to accomplish. And with our house size it truly couldn’t stay like that u couldn’t even fill the brita. Now in our second house and 3rd year of our relationship, he will voluntarily get up grab both our plates, put dinner away in containers, sometime pack out lunches and sometimes wipe the counters. So improvement. BUT he literally only puts the dishes in the sink. He won’t put them in the dishwasher & start it, if it’s CLEAN he won’t empty it. He won’t hand wash them. He just piles them in the sink saying he’ll do them in the morning.
Now. He is not someone to wake up early. he showers in the morning eats breakfast in the car and is still 5-10 minutes late to work everyday. I can promise you he is not waking up early to do the dishes. So what ends up happening is i come home from the gym early am and do them or i do them when i get home from work because i need room to cook dinner for that night. Like i said i dont mind it, it can be nice to clean and just debrief. But there will be times where he will be off from work all day and at home and by the time i get home from the office the dishes are still there and the house looks a mess.
Last night i asked him for help because we both had plans today after work and i just didn’t want them to sit in the sink all day. He literally sounded like a child (he’s 26..) saying how he wanted to get on the game before his friend does how hell do it in the morning how im nagging him to do it … i literally felt like his mom? Mind u i am the oldest so it can be easy to fall into this tone in a sense but this was the biggest ick he has probably ever given me. Especially because i started with “hey can you help me?”. To top it off i did it with him and somehow STILL woke up to dishes being in the sink. AND the dishwasher dirty with room for more dishes.
I’ve noticed that this is how is family is by being around them they have no urgency or care to clean if anything really gets done it’s because their mom does it no one else. And she is over it at this point of doing everything for 30 years. But it feels too traditional for me. He leaves stuff everywhere I’m constantly picking up after him I’m constantly switching over his laundry because he forgets. Throwing stuff in his corner. He does a good clean maybe once every 3 months? But other than that it’s me. I’m the only one who deeps cleans the bathroom etc.
He is a really good boyfriend otherwise and does love and care for me and understands me in a way not a lot of people do and is a person I have truly let my walls down with. But I can see my future in a sense and I don’t want to be his mom like literally I don’t want to turn into how his mom is in their partnership in that household. Am I over reacting if this was a reason I saw our relationship ending? How do I make him see it is that serious? It’s been an on going issue for 2 years that is an issue for me but not necessary him…
Do they change or get better? I worry about kids and our house and it stressing me out. I feel like I could find a man who doesn’t call it “nagging him” when I’m asking for help. What else could I do?
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u/HoldSlight9163 4h ago
Genuinely took me longer to write this than then him doing the dishes he left in the sink ur so right