(I'm sorry dear, I went on a bit of a ramble because... well, I'm a chatty person and I'm doing some serious analyzing of the relationship these days... sorry!)
Well, not as explicitly as a friend of mine was told by her boyfriend - "Well my mother did it for me so now you have to do it" (he's from Southern Italy and they're even more traditional in that sense). [He made her miserable for a long time, they broke up and she came to London, eventually he came crawling back and now they're living in London, pretty happily from what I can tell!]
But we kind of had this agreement that since I work from home and he's away all day, I would take care of the house and in exchange he would pay a slightly bigger share of common expenses. To be honest I don't think we ever sat down and actually verbalized it in these terms, but we did drop a few comments to that extent. It actually did seem fair to me, to be honest? I knew how to do that stuff after all, and he took care of the bigger things - like he's built all the IKEA furniture we bought, installed the dishwasher and boiler, changed the ceiling lamps, sinks, etc... because that's his skill and not mine. I honestly thought it was a fair split of responsibilities? I wasn't resentful (for now at least....) I was happy to do it.
And yet at times it felt like living with a frickin teenager... like, he would always leave all of his shoes by the kitchen table when he took them off instead of putting them in the shoerack literally two steps away. I asked him to please sort it out and he would say yes and then avoid doing it... just like a teenager, lol! Eventually he did it, or I took them and placed them in the middle of the hallway so after stepping over them five times he would eventually put them away. Lately I had given up and just picked them up myself because tbh I didn't much care anymore, it just took me a second anyway.... but that is not the behavior of an adult. It's a teenager.
(Esp. considering he spent his time listening to loud music and playing videogames and barely even bothered to talk to me lately. I had been telling him, previous to BD, that I felt like we communicated more when I was in London than now that we shared a house - at least back then when we skyped for an hour I had his whole attention and he actually talked to me, when I was home for a few weeks it wasn't 'everyday life routine'...)
Same for his work boots - there was a pair lying in a corner in the living room for months. When I asked whether they were going to stay there forever, he just made a funny joke and carried on doing whatever. Eventually when he was carrying some stuff to the garage I added the shoes to the pile and they were finally gone
Or another classic... his clothes. The wardrobe is apparently a foreign concept, he just piles everything up on a chair or on the floor. It's a bit of a habit of mine too, tbh, so at some point I would just say 'let's sort out our chairs, shall we?' and we would do it together.
I'm trying to think of how things went during the few months he lived there alone before I joined him (he'd been nagging since he was in his 20s about wanting to move out but moaning he couldn't afford it and had to wait till we moved in together. (Now mind you, he actually COULD afford it, it's just a hassle...) So eventually I offered him to stay for free at my house since we were going to be there together soon anyway, so he could save on rent. But anyway... he did do the washing and hang things out to dry (he needed those clothes for his work after all!) and very precisely and diligently, as always when he does something (he's an electrician and plumber so he's meticulous). He did pile up dishes in the sink till it exploded but then was very precise in using the dishwasher. But he wasn't big on taking out the trash (a million beer bottles accumulated...), sweeping, cleaning the counters, or god forbid the bathroom (when he was working at the coal plant everything turned black with coal dust.) I had suggested he hire for an hour or two the lady that helps my grandma with the cleaning, but he never got around to it (too much hassle) so occasionally his mom popped over and cleaned the place. They also invited him to dinner twice a week or so. She ironed his clothes and gave them back to him.
It's quite clear he was doing just the bare minimum and once I arrived, it quickly vanished... lol.
He has, after all, lived with mum until he was 30/31, a stay-at home mum... she did pick up after him but after her depression a few years back she's become very disorganized and a bit of a hoarder. Her room and the room where Ex and his sister grew up are literally invaded by clothes, piled up all over the place. And there are big closets, but I have no idea if they are empty or filled with even more unused clothes, because they are blocked by the piles?
Funnily enough, after BD (but before I learned about OW) I talked to him and he was saying he'd been asking about some houses, they were like 350€ a month, interesting, and one of them was this big and in that place and the guy might want to sell it too... and inside my head I was thinking: so a year ago you couldn't afford to rent your own place, but now you magically can and you can also buy a house all of a sudden? O.o And the next time I spoke with him instead, when I asked him how he was, he said: 'well I have the prospect of furnishing my own house and that cheers me up... but all the houses I've seen are so expensive, like 350€, no way I can afford them:(!'........................ so.... you WANT to have your own house but in front of the practical reality of it, you're already backing off? Tbh I'm curious to know whether he will actually go through with it or not... it was easy to move into my place, no contracts, no dealing with the bills and the contracts for those, no rent...
(He really cannot deal with any hassle at all. His old boss still owes him about 5K € and he hasn't done anything to try and get it back, even tho he really just needs to go speak to the worker's union and let them handle it. He sends his dad to handle things when need be. How sad is that?)
And the buying a house thing, that's a big issue too, because you see, he's the male son. Both him and his father kept saying that it was important for him to own a house. We were talking of maybe buying a house together (I have some money stashed away for that purpose from when my dad passed away) and he was saying stuff that made no sense, like he wanted to own a property on his own, maybe he could buy an apartment and rent it out and I could buy the house where we would live... O.o? And funnily enough, his sister is living in a house owned by the husband, she's unemployed and she and the baby are supported by the husband, but nobody is telling her she needs to own a property... ah, Italy!
....to be honest I don't really know where I'm going with all this, lol, I'm just thinking out loud I guess. I'm not sure how it works that this kind of stuff pushes a guy to have an affair? More like, perhaps it highlights a character flaw that is compatible with having affairs?
Media articles on MLC, Standing, Infidelity II
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