Was Your Cheater a Slob?
The Friday Challenge question is: Was your cheater also a slob? Someone’s gotta be the chaos janitor.
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Dear Chump Lady,
At what point did they give themselves permission to become complete slobs?
I was just listening to the Tell Me How You’re Mighty podcast episode on things we will NOT miss about our exes.
I noticed a theme: slob behavior.
Sweat stained sheets, toilet paper rolls never filled, hair shavings left all over the bathroom, the…toenail clippings…🤮 More than one submission had tales of ex FWs who behaved in ways that make actual warthogs look like celebrities on a red carpet. With the chumps quite literally left to clean up the mess.
Of course there’s no way they were like this from the start. They put on their best possible performance of put-togetherness to win the heart of the chump. And at some point decided “Well that’s done” and started to show their true toenail-clipping selves. Their chumps, knee deep in another pile of shaved back hair with broom in hand, wondering “Wait how did I get here???”
Meanwhile the FW, back smoother than their balding head, is off pulling the charm on the AP.
It reminded me of my own moment of realization I was living with a slob (washing the dishes in the BATHTUB because his promises to get to them had never been fulfilled every dish we owned except a coffee cup and a singular spoon was now in the bathroom) and I thought:
“I wonder when he gave himself permission to be like this?”
In the laundry (pun intended) list of things FWs feel entitled to, “being a complete slob” should be added. They give themselves permission to spend marital assets, open the marriage unilaterally, invite APs into your home. Follows they give themselves permission to never clean up after themselves either.
KatTheBat
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Dear KatTheBat,
Yeah, that makes sense. If you’re going to check out of your marriage, would you really circle back to finish the dishes first? I think it’s just part of the larger cycle of devaluing. I’m a Grand and Important Person, my chaos janitor handles all the little things. Being the scullery maid shows where you are on the totem pole.
Not every cheater is a slob, of course. But I do think they tend towards carelessness to others. So why not the house stuff too? Mine used to drape his pants over chairs the minute he walked in. UGH.
So much not to miss. So, CN — Was your cheater a slob?
TGIF!
He was always organized, neat, tidy, and put-together in public and with betrayal objects. Behind the scenes,he was a dumpster fire who was unable to manage finances, would sleep on the same sheets and pillowcase for months(I quickly stopped sharing a bedroom with him after I discovered the first few betrayal objects) and never on time. Always late. He left hair everywhere. Yuck. Wear the same clothes days on end. Many of his betrayal objects were also slots, which is not odd for folks who have history of alcoholism, arrests, STIs, etc. Chaotic, disorganized and unhealthy lives. Do not miss that!
My ex is a slob and a hoarder and a compulsive shopper of sale items we never needed or used. He often neglected his personal hygiene and would go to work and wash his hair in the bathroom sink so he didn’t look dirty.
He was always late.
He was so gross…why did I try so hard to keep this person?
Six months later I’m still cleaning up my house and barn and every item trashed or donated is a victory!!!!
Yeah- it’s the million dollar question.
We put up with so much plain grossness from these people.
Another story like mine. I tried so hard to hold us together. Why?
Ooh, Broken, that reminds me. ExH started always having very greasy hair, even though I know he showered every day. Turns out the dope was using the bottle clearly marked “conditioner,” and it never occurred to him to wonder why his hair never got as clean as it used to.
Ewwwww — I mercifully forgot about the nail clippings. However, I will never get over the toothpaste flecks on the faucet, on the bathroom mirror, on the wall … what the heck was he doing in there, since he always had horrible breath anyway?
Same! The flecked up mirrors and walls drove me crazy. And mine had chronic bad breath, too!
Oh, wow.
He insisted on doing his own laundry, which would be once a month, because I would “ruin” his clothes. He hung everything to dry, which meant it ws evaporating all over the house.
He also refused to use a dresser, instead, he used laundry baskets to store his clothes. These baskets were nowhere near the bedroom. Instead, the baskets were on the couch, the loveseat, the pool table, the floor, and the chairs. On the rare occasions we would have company, he would cover everything with blankets.
So. Many. Toenails.
He also had SO MANY SHOES, which all stunk, of course, and these were strewn about the living areas of the house.
He fancied himself a chef, and would cook, using multiple pans, pots, knives and plates. Any guesses on how often he would wash a dish? Load the dishwasher?
His office and our garage looked straight out of an episode of Hoarders. I couldn’t park my car. in the garage because there was no room for it.
He was such a treat. Can’t imagine why, 6 years out from DDay, I still shout all the praise that he is GONE, and instead, stinking up one of the AP’s house.
Mine was an excellent cook but would dirty up every pot, every pan, and every “manly” utensil. (So not the measuring cups or measuring spoons, but used multiple sets of tongs and pancake turners.). And he would never, EVER clean up after himself.
We were both messy in some ways. Being a SAHM, I picked up after him in ways that I should have had a fit about. But I’m happily single and don’t plan to navigate that ever again.
But his financial sloppiness was the worst. Very early in the marriage, I took over bill-paying because he was just not keeping up with it. He also wasn’t planning for taxes, so I did that too. Not that I love that sort of thing, but I don’t mind it. I also drew up a rough budget because I noticed that he was a wild spender, as were all of his family members. They just didn’t get putting aside for vacations or denying certain purchases to meet a goal. We kept to a rough budget during our entire marriage and managed to save a good amount for retirement. He always chafed against that, but I’d ask him if we should dial back the retirement savings or go on the vacation he wanted because we couldn’t do both. We also had a lot of medical debt at times. Later on, I figured out how to fit work around the kids and household issues, which eased the concerns. Because of that, the kids were able to do activities that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. We went on vacation more than before.
So when we separated for the last time, I pretty much figured that he’d go wild spending, and he did. He took insane amounts out of his retirement assets, claiming they were his alone. Not legally, dude. I began to file taxes as “head of household” so he was solely responsible for the tax burden. The kids and I went on a strict budget to keep going because I wasn’t making much at all, and didn’t want the kids to quit college. They were also both working while being commuter students.
And when the divorce was final, we were fine. Reportedly, my ex was not. His own attorney commented to mine that his client “might or might not” be able to fulfill the obligations of the settlement agreement. Well, not my concern. At signing, my attorney commented that if I paired up again, I should seek someone like me who is measured and thoughtful about money, not a wild spender like my ex was. Got it.
And my ex did eventually fulfill the financial obligations of the divorce. Last I heard, he was with someone his family felt might be taking advantage of him financially. Well, what goes around comes around!
Not so much a slob as a hoarder. I was amazed by some of the stuff I found when I was cleaning out after she left. I knew that she like pashminas, but when I gathered them together from the various places she had stashed them around the house, I worked out that she had left behind 3 bin bags full of the things. I always wondered how much that little “collection” had cost me over the years!
LFTT
I can understand the love for those- but I hang mine proudly and find most in charity shops.
She’s doubly stupid for buying new .
Heyyy my letter!
I don’t miss the empty promises to do the dishes. Or me cleaning the apartment only for him to utterly destroy it in a day.
I’m not the best with laundry. I do leave it in the basket too long because I hate folding it, but that’s always been my responsibility.
But holy crap my ex was a laundry tornado. If he wanted a particular shirt, he took every single piece of clothing out of his dresser until he found it, leave all the clothes all over the floor, and the drawers still open.
Seems like there’s a laundry theme going too…
I asked my kids – How many times have you heard me tell him ‘you know that elf that used to pick up after you? She called and quit! You have to do it yourself!’ And they said “ at least a thousand times it’s burned in our brain”. So happy to be the elf that was
Taken off the schedule!
Ha, I commented to my kids that their dad would have to get a new Dobbie the House Elf now and they laughed. Everything I said came true. He is also terrible with money, blowing through our two very good salaries every month. Last time he was over in France I told him he must be nearly paid off on his mortgage by now and said “nah, I just had to refinance”! Goodness knows how long for because he was 62 when he said that!
Mine was (and still is) a slob. Still has the terrible habit of leaving old food, drinks, and used plates/etc out without the decency to clean up after himself. He made the excuse that he does not focus on “corporeal matters” which included things such as: picking up after himself, throwing his own trash away, knowing other’s (or his own) schedule, paying attention to anything that needed to be done in the home, and much more. He now gets to live like that back at his parents house and puts the “corporeal matters” (coparenting, kiddo’s schedule, ensuring kiddo has appropriate food/clothes, planning his own summer vacations, and more) as his mother’s responsibility. She’s much easier to coparent with than my ex though and is proactive about kiddo’s care.
Does he tell his boss that he’s not into “corporeal matters” too?
Of course not! He actually pays attention to things they ask him to do (for the most part). He instead asks others (family) to buy the things he needs for work but didn’t get at the last minute. Like asking his mother to get the supplies he needs for a special project he promised to do but did not remember to get until two days before.
“Corporeal matters???”
Is he a ghost?
No, he used that as an insult for anyone who lived in the present or thought of daily physical needs because he “lives in his head,” is more scholarly/intelligent, and is too good for that type of thing. Very glad to no longer be with a cheating ex who got “triggered” daily over me asking common things like what his schedule looked like or what he’d want for dinner.
What an id*ot.
Celene, my brain-up-his-ass exH traveled a lot and was also inconsiderate about sharing his plans. It was not uncommon to hear “Oh, didn’t I tell you? I won’t be home for dinner, actually for the next week, because I’m speaking at a conference in __________.” He was also on an academic lecture circuit which was scheduled at least a year in advance, and it was always a surprise that guess what, he needed a ride tomorrow to the airport an hour away.
I know he was merely trying to drive me insane. Yes, he’s an incompetent buffoon, but the I-know-something-you-don’t-know smirk always gave him away.
This! “Yes, he’s an incompetent buffoon, but the I-know-something-you-don’t-know smirk always gave him away.”
My ex was a pro at “forgetting” to inform me about something, too.
Oh my god yes. I always thought CL’s “chaos janitor” post was the best, but this runs equal first now. Yes to the toenail clippings (he ripped them off and left them on the coffee table), yes to snot on the shower walls because “the steam just clears out my sinuses”. Yes to the dirty clothes dropped all over the floor on his side of the bed. I asked him one time what he would do when the level of dirty clothes reached the level of the bed and he just said “I’ll get out your side”! Didn’t often brush his teeth (so black teeth) – I could go on and on. We were already divorced when he upped and left his rented farmhouse IN FOUR DAYS AND STILL FULLY FURNISHED to dash back to the US to buy a house with latest Schmoopie. I ended up emptying it over a period of eight weeks on the weekends as I was still working. He’d bought a dog in February (abandoned it in May – it was later rehomed) and I found one of the dog’s bones wrapped up in a curtain that had fallen on the floor. He left coffee in the coffee pot and wet washing in the machine when he caught his flight back to the States. I hope Schmoopie is enjoying all this. The house had no garden, just four rose bushes and despite being retired he never took care of them for over three years (that fell to me too). He once told me I ironed like crap and he could do better because he’d been a marine, so I stopped ironing his shirts – and he started looking like such an old hobo that even his dad commented on it! Again Schmoops, enjoy!
😡 People who abandon pets deserve the death penalty, and I don’t even believe in the death penalty.
Oh God- the shower snot- another nightmare memory unlocked.
Not forgetting the pubes in the soap!
Oh yeah, blowing out snot in the shower, so it ends up in the drain. 🤮 Will not miss that.
…that part about the shower actually made me heave and someone on the bus just asked if I’m ok.
Ha ha, sorry about that. But I guess you can imagine how I felt having to clean it up!
Klootzak left toenails everywhere and every morning he would cough up phlegm or whatever and spit it in his sink and leave it there to dry. We both worked from home the last several years of the marriage. He took an entire bedroom as his office and I was tucked into a small area in the basement.
He always complained about this one little shelf on a bookshelf in the eat in kitchen area where DS and I had a bin of our craft supplies. We would pull it out to paint rocks or do wood crafting projects. Klootzak complained that it looked cluttery. He ignored that there were THREE upper bookshelves covered in his unused coffee mug collection plus other various junk of his. Antique tool bits. Junk he found interesting. But no, it was our covered sterilite bin and roll of kraft paper on the bottom shelf that looked a mess. 🙄
His office? Garbage everywhere. A garbage can filled with stuff that he never emptied. Boxes and boxes of who knows what stacked 3 high. A large closet stuffed with computer junk (he saved every motherboard he ever owned), old falling apart suitcases, old Navy uniforms he no longer fit into, you name it. Everything covered in dust.
The remainder of the basement? Four complete sets of tires, junk, boxes of old toys (Transformers in their original boxes he just HAD to own), old boxes he flattened but would not part with, beer making equipment unused for over 10 years with hundreds of beer bottles, etc.
We accepted an offer on the marital home and it will be closed by the end if the month. Today is March 20. He has 11 days to clear his stuff from the home. I am just laughing. I wonder how The Latest will like all his hoard moved in with them? He is too cheap to purchase storage. 🤣
My god, the hoarding. He’s about to retire after 37 years, and his faculty office shelves and closet are still crammed with some junk the previous occupant left there in May 1989. (I know this because we chatted about it at our daughter’s wedding in October 2024.)
Hahaha to his schmoopie-turned-wife, as my daughter said their basement is completely full of stuff. I bet he’ll rent yet another storage space when the university won’t let him leave behind any items in his office. Hahaha
My ex had learned to not be a slob in his living space by the time we married, thankfully. But his body otoh…yikes!
He didn’t believe in “disturbing the natural oils” on his skin or his hair so he didn’t shower often enough and when he did he didn’t soap up everywhere or use shampoo very frequently. (The bathroom usually smelled WORSE from his barely washed body odor after he showered! I didn’t know that was possible!)
He literally burned through so many pairs of sheets this way. They got oily on his side of the bed which created holes. I tried to prevent that by rearranging the bottom sheet and laundering sheets more often but it still happened.
He was also not one to trim his beard or his goatee when he had one, or deal with the long hairs in his ears. Or obviously visible ear wax. I did the honors just so I could stand being around him.
And he loved wearing sleeveless “wife beater” tank tops all the time (we lived in a very warm climate) so the kids and I were constantly subjected to seeing his armpit hair and smelling the smells – he also didn’t believe in effective deodorant.
I love Carrie Underwood’s song, “She Don’t Know”….she can have him. Amen! My ex’s new wife gets all this now!
I shudder to think what kind of APs he attracted! Oh wait, maybe he paid them.
The first was smellier than him! The second was his underling at work, a young single mom. His “affair” with her was classic abuse because of the power dynamics. So her vulnerability and the fact that he controlled her salary probably helped her overlook the disgusting.
Ah yes, “She can have him…” I’m singin’ away here.
My wonderful, older attorney assured me multiple times that they always trade down and that their yucky personality traits go right into the next relationship.
Give me my quiet days with the dog!
I suspect that my cheater ex would have been naturally slobbish if he didn’t purposely live with others who did the elf work for him all the time. His whole life he lived with either a parent or a wife, besides brief stints with roommates. He could.not.handle.living.alone. If he ever had to, I think he would be a slob with the best of them.
Yes, eX was a slob! And a hoarder! I spent 34+ years as scullery maid, junk organizer, filth cleaner, attempted de-clutterer, laundress…
As far as hygiene, one thing that was most difficult for me was he insisted on going to bed without showering. He wanted to shower in the morning so he would be clean for work. But he did not have any qualms about going to bed filthy and wanting to have sex with me while he was dirty. I was not worthy of having a sex partner who was clean for intimacy. I showered for him, before intimacy. I remember literally begging him to shower before coming to bed “for me”.
As to the hoarding. It’s all been said before, but he could have been on one of those shows. I spent 3+ decades attempting to de-clutter. Of course, he would not allow me to “Marie Kondo” any of his unused items which filled our house, garage, guest house and even the yards. Well before my D-day, I gave up and accepted (at that time) that this was my fate and there was no escape. Ironically, it was my “guess” that he was depressed, that was a factor in my overlooking his strange behavior that was actually a tell of his secret life. I over-gave on the empathy, compassion, patience and love. He did not deserve it. I was always begging and pleading. I realize now that men call that “nagging” so that makes me the one in the wrong. I should have had screaming rages. I should have thrown things and destroyed his belongings. I was trying too hard to be Loving and Kind Suzy homemaker, but I’ve finally learned that to love myself and have compassion for myself, I must be quite a bit more “Bad Bitch Betty”.
I was ” nice” so as not to trigger rage. I am not as nice as I thought. Now that I’m. Divorced for 2 years from #2 I know that if I has put down the gauntlet and said NO to unfinished projects, No to being treated like a neglected pet, No to a horder basement and rooms…if I had said THATS ENOUGH for alot of bad behavior sooner, my marriage would have been over by 10-13 years rather than 32. That was on me. I had to lie that I was happy with what I settled for, but I believed our marriage was too big to fail.
Oh, may I also add that now I enjoy a simple but beautiful, clean and organized home. No one can keep me from this joy.
Cheaty McLiarface was respectfully neat in our home. In his personal spaces (shop and office at work) he was disorganized, making piles of things that collected dust. I just thought that it was a personal preference and since he didn’t treat our mutual space that way I just let it go. Well, after the truth came to light and I went on the usual epic quest to try and understand why, I eventually learned that the external chaos he created for himself was actually a reflection of his anxious mind.
My #2 cheater filled the house with future faking undone projects and the remains of jobs he quit as a plumber, electrician & maintenance guy.
He would spent actual hours and evenings shopping ( now I wonder)at Lowes, Menard & Home Depot sales. He would ask me to come along sometimes and he would buy large and small items ” for the house ” to fix, repair, build and redo. All these shopping trips of promises were stored in the garage, 2 sheds , 3 back rooms, and even the guest room.
It became my 30 year job, to constantly, weekly, pull 2×4s, wood planks, shelving, metal brackets, light fixtures, wires, panels etc..from under the guest room bed and the guest room closet, because I wanted that room clutter free for visitors.
I gave up on the rest of the places as they were stuffed to the ceiling with “someday” that never came. When I locked the doors on my abuser,I had a guy I paid to come out and process the storage items, tool boxes and the piles of undone projects. The amount of money 💰 they were valued at was appallingly low.
I was shocked. I just left everything piled into the house as it was and moved out, taking only what I needed.
I now live a simple clutter free life on my own and miss nothing except my precious illusions that I was valued, loved and cared for. That was all a lie.
I won’t go into the hair that fell all over the bathroom, shower, tub,floor, pillows…as my then husband started shaving things that should not have been shaved. I had absolutely zero idea what that was about, not then not now.
But we will close the curtain on my innocent take. I only knew there was hair everywhere and I broke out in an itchy rash when he touched me.
No one is more grateful than me. NOW and forever.
I can relate. I lived for 12 years with a living room that had no drywall on the walls and ceilings and building materials crowded everywhere. FW was too lazy to finish a project he started, kept promising he would do it and then didn’t. The worst part was that it was the first room you saw coming in the front door. I was embarrassed to even open the door for the kids on Halloween, let alone invite people over. I would have done it myself because I can do a lot of DIY, but I absolutely suck at drywall finishing and it’s a two person job to lift the sheets.
Thank you for replying OHFFS. I’ve felt very alone. I had wanted to leave my marriage very early on because I saw his disease of not completing jobs.
I offered and hired men to come in and do much of the work, especially the leaking cold winter air coming through the old windows..directly on to my 4 year olds head, and 10 year old freezing rooms( not his children)I begged, cried, complained NOTHING moved him. He refused any man who came to give estimates and raged at me.
He was accustomed to his unstable mom who fixed up shacks and made money on the home grown way she flipped. He thought only of the money and also, how HE COULD DO IT HIMSELF.
But my husband would not take action.
Years later he did the windows with a friend but did not complete the molding, painting or finishing. I bought curtains to cover the unsightly mess of wood slates poking out as the frame with no borders at all. Ugly.
It took years and years because he had to do it himself and no other male could enter the house. This and all the other projects left with my house looking poorly kept.
I had talked to friends about leaving him as the messes so increased my anxiety just looking at dry wall, cracked cement, unframed windows,unpainted surfaces and the piles of promises under the beds. I made a conscious DECISION out loud that i wanted my marriage rather than a fixed up cared for house.He did breadcrumb to give me rays of hope…but these evaporated into.the air. I had no way of knowing his later diagnosis of bipolar was part of this pattern and that he had a growing sexual compulsion and the habit of no sorrys and all blame. I just didn’t know
I completely understand. 🩷
Yes. Very Yes.
It took her leaving for what was our home to be in any real standard of order. I have waxed on this before-I have rolled around in her filth moving the furniture that she left behind and that was one of the first key moments during the post D-Day malaise where I said “I think maybe I’m better off.” I continued to find little messes that she had left behind up until about 3 months ago(it has been over two years since she left-those are the lengths she went to in order to not put things where they go, for example, “the trash.”)
I wrote something longer on this that a computer crash ate (and quite frankly I am learning to slim down what I write, so probably for the best.) She almost never cleaned up after herself, her version of splitting housekeeping was “starting the task so Jeff can finish it”, and throwing her hands up and yelling “I don’t know where to begin” and then doing nothing, usually while I was cleaning something else up. She really liked to get on me about the dishes, so I would do a load (we had a dishwasher) and then mysteriously the sink would fill back up by the end of the day with dishes she had hidden.
It took me getting pretty significantly injured after we had lived together for a while to realize how little she was actually doing “even when things were good.” (you ever done dishes or pulled trash while on one leg while you are supposed to be on bed rest when there’s somebody else that can be doing those things but isn’t? I have!)
There came the magic point where I simply stopped trying. I wanted, stupidly, for her to be the equal that she said she wanted to be. There was always an excuse for why she couldn’t do basic tasks (many of which were 5-10 minutes). In her defense she was in her master’s program-which I will wink and nod at while also acknowledging that the feeder conversation for D-Day was her being put on academic probation because she wasn’t putting in any effort on that, either. I was working 60-80 hour weeks and going through a lot that she also wasn’t supportive of. I make no further excuse for my lack of effort-I have changed that.
Hindsight being what it is? Things started to get bad when I started to hold her accountable for her half of the chores because I was getting tired of doing all of the heavy lifting. It turned into “it’s not what you’ve done for me, it’s what you’ve done for me lately.”
Have a Traitor Free Friday!
My ex was an absolute pig. I was at his apartment once when we were in the divorce process and there was JELLY ON THE TOILET. How does one even get jelly in the bathroom?? I was absolutely repulsed, and held my pee rather than subject myself to sitting on that science experiment.
Thought I was the only one. He was a slob and a hoarder and couldn’t stop buying shit from the Dollar Store even though he earned high six figures. Our two-car garage could only fit one car because it was filled with crap. He would come home from work and undress as he walked, leaving a trail of clothes in his wake which I had to pick up. There was crap everywhere. He never did dishes. Or laundry. I tried to keep up, but I just couldn’t. It was too much. It was embarrassing to have people over. After we split, my daughter sent me a video of our house. We both cried. It was once our home; then it became a pigsty. Boxes, broken appliances, paint cans everywhere. A million-dollar house of garbage. I can’t even adequately describe how bad it was. Now he’s married to his AP, and I’ve seen newer videos of my former home via our daughter. It’s neat as a pin. Though they’re still sitting on the stained and holey couch which we got as a wedding present in 1994. He’s got an iron-clad prenup. So he finally has what he always wanted – a girl who literally can’t say no. Hope she enjoys cleaning up after him. I guess it’s better than her previous job as a waxing lady.
My home is beautiful, airy, and most of all, clean.
I could feel all of Chump Nation gasp and nod along with this one!
Seriously, if you didn’t have a slob FW, it would only be because that FW had an obsessive compulsive need to clean or avoid germs. Most are so narcissistic that they EXPECT Chumps to be good appliances and do all the housework and clean up after them.
The year FW left me, my son was 9. There were always crumbs all over the kitchen and dirt on the wood floors that I cleaned up. I assumed it was mostly from my 9 year old. After FW left me, the first thing I noticed was how clean the house suddenly was!!! It was crazy.
And the biggest thing… I didn’t have to clean the 4 toilets in the house EVERY DAY (it was a townhome). He made sure to sh** up every toilet. Heaven forbid he stick to one toilet and not make every bathroom dirty.
He was so gross. Piles of empty boxes kept in the garage, his office, and even our storage unit. I have no idea why!
Not to mention he expected me to stay on top of everything he ate… if he went in the fridge and there were no yogurts, he’d scream at me. I would say “you’re the only one that eats those yogurts. If you don’t tell me that you ate the last one, how are the ‘magic elves’ to know to make them appear?”
Life is so much cleaner and peaceful without a FW
Blackheads and squeezed spots on the mirrors. Athletes foot odour and in his yellow cheesy toe nails
Everything stank of old cigarettes except his car which he had valeted
Mouldy golf bags and a gym bag and towels you would never wish to be near
When he left I packed a whole suitcase of underwear in various states of repair (267) and 192 pairs of socks mainly with holes and largely mismatched.
The worst was when I found his deceased first wife’s ashes in the boot of his car as he had to collect them from the undertaker and said he could not afford to inter. He was a widower of 3 years when I met him. I gently paid for the interment and brought her ashes indoors and took care of them.
This is the best⤴️
🤢
My ex was a hoarder and a spender. He usually wore Khaki pants and a button-down shirt in a muted color. I thought he had a couple of each.
When I cleared his clothes out and put them on the porch, I had a group of volunteers carry and count the items on an inventory, and then we hung them on lines. He had dozens of pairs oof Khaki pants, and about two dozen EACH of shirts in rust, blue, dark blue, brown, black, olive and sage green. Dozens of pairs of white sneakers. Dozens of pairs of lace-ups in black and brown. Dozens of pairs of loafers in black and brown.
The real kicker was that he also had dozens of prescription eyeglasses in a box, nearly identical. Apparently, each year he got a new pair that looked just the same as the previous pair.
He also had multiple cell phones (I found the boxes and receipts from about 6 new ones),
boxes of unopened anti-aging supplements he bought online, and much more.
I’ve previously mentioned that he had dozens of boxes in the garage that each contained a ripped piece of his old underwear, a random (often rusty) tool, and an empty plastic food container (mostly cocoa and cream cheese). I still wonder what these were about.
The multiple pairs of glasses is super weird and the dozens of boxes with the pieces of underwear etc. are beyond bizarre and suggestive of some kind of ritualistic behavior tied to mental illness. It sounds like OCD.
My FW was a bit of a hoarder too. For example, I met him right after he graduated, but he kept schoolbooks and magazines he had read in his school years for more than ten years until I finally threw them out, after him promising multiple times that he would. He hoarded books as well and decades old tax records, credit card statements and receipts. Yet somehow he managed to lose important papers like the deed to our house. 🤷
FW took impeccable care of himself. HIs morning ritual of shite, shower, and shave was followed by what I called his “chick time” in front of the mirror: lotions, potions, creams, cologne, etc. He was somewhat messy in our home but I could live with it because I only worked 1/2 to 3/4 time each week. I considered the housework my responsibility because he was working 60-80 hours per week and bringing home every cent (I know because I was the bookkeeper for our business). So yes, there were beard hairs and dirty dishes and laundry that he never lifted a finger to clean but I was okay with that. What I was not okay with was the times when he would make a mess just to put me in my place, e.g. the time when he crapped up my new car. (Our new car but I was the one who drove it daily.) We had just gotten a brand new Volvo – not a luxury car but a very nice car and it was only the second new car we had ever purchased. On the way back from the dealership I told my children (5 and 8 at the time) that we needed to keep this car nice and clean, and they were to bring all of their belongings inside the house every time we got home, and to not throw their backpacks around scratching the leather upholstery. Backpacks went in the back of the station wagon. So, on the way home we stopped at a grocery store and I bought some crusty French bread for dinner that night. We load the groceries in the back and FW takes the bread and gets in the front seat tearing off chunks of bread and giving the kids in the back seat hunks of it. He just keeps tearing the bread and tossing the hunks, also eating his share. By the time we got home from the dealership the car was covered with crumbs. I was… Idk, heartbroken is not the word, but I just felt like this was a special thing and he ruined it. He ruined the car (which could be cleaned – by me of course) and he ruined the experience of an exciting purchase, but most of all he ruined that I was trying to teach the kids to be respectful and responsible. And these are the kinds of incidents I still wonder about to this day. WTAF? Really? I still don’t get it to this day – if he was trying to teach me a lesson it didn’t take, because it made no damn sense.
The newness was tainted. That new feel doesn’t last long anyway, so to have it cut short just hurts. Had it been a true accident, it could have become a funny story. But not when it was obviously intentional. It usually comes down to a controller who does not want to be controlled him /her self.
You just can’t get that new feel back once it is tainted. Our cheaters taint so much.
I heard a great term from watching the cable series The Good Fight. At one point, the protagonist (Christine Baranski is great in this) calls a corrupt, sicko lawyer character a “desacrationist” after he does something a bit similar to what your sh*tty ex did to crush your joy over a new car.
Though I never heard the term anywhere before or since and suspect it was coined by scriptwriters, I think it belongs in Oxford’s new entries because it covers a whole world of weird and creepy behavior.
Not in general. I did all the housework, laundry, shopping, cooking/cleanup, and yard work. If there was any painting to do, I did it. He hated to paint. etc But he didn’t do things like leave stuff laying around, or things like that. If he had a house repair to do, I always cleaned the mess up afterwards, if there was a mess from it.
What he did do was smoke all the time, I didn’t realized until he was gone how bad it was. I did notice through the years that a yellow build up would get on the TV screen and curtains and I would clean that. What I didn’t realize; until he had been gone a while, was just how bad it was. That stuff stinks to high heaven.
I remember a couple years after he left if someone got on the elevator at work that was a smoker, I could smell them right off. I never could before. I am assuming I stunk right along with him when we were together.
So glad I never had to live with that again. My second (and true) husband, didn’t smoke, and neither he or I would let anyone smoke in our house or cars.
Yes, the odor of smoking is just terrible. My grandmother was a lifelong smoker, and I inherited some of her furniture. The only way I got rid of the smell in the upholstery was by having the furniture reupholstered.
There’s a special kind of paint that was developed to get rid of the smell of tobacco smoke in a dwelling unit.
Wow, what a thought-provoking theme.
After the smoke cleared following D-day, it started to dawn on me that there might be a method to the slobbishness because FW’s entire excuse to betray and his entire DARVO platform casting me as a horrible ogre were based solely on my telling him to do his fair share of housework or childcare and then me periodically calling him on his crummy, sulking attitude while doing these things.
Sure he was raised like Little Lord Snowflake and was a kind of a slob to begin with but it also seems like a nifty blameshifting strategy: be a whiny pig and then build a case for resentment and “revenge” based on being called out for it. It gives added meaning to “weaponized incompetence.”
It was also the only obvious way to set me up and fabricate an excuse to cheat because fair dispensation of tasks was really the only thing I was consistently testy about. Being raised by feminists and also half Irish (social justice maven squared), I grew up understanding that unfair division of household labor is one of the chief “unseen” expressions of inequality that grinds women down, disadvantages them in the workforce and the most common reason women divorce. So I told FW before we moved in together that he would either have to clean up after himself and do equal chores or hire a cleaner.
When I left work to care for kids full time, I did cover a lot of things but FW soon learned that if I could ever be inspired to have sex again, he’d have to do shifts of cooking, toy-organizing and childcare at times and act like he loved doing it or else I’d pass out from stress and exhaustion while reading the kids their bedtime stories.
It wasn’t even a deliberate sex strike on my part so I couldn’t be accused of being “withholding.” I was just dead tired and my “libido” is tied to fairness and kindness. I remember it got to the point when the kids were all in the toddler range that he had a meltdown over it, bursting into tears and asking why I didn’t want him anymore and what he could do to fix it.
That was probably the only period when FW pulled his weight– mostly without being asked– and mostly put a good face on it. But, in retrospect, I realized he still probably carried around a little “blame bag” and every time I said, “Hey, you missed a spot” or reminded him not to dribble choke-able items, nails or power tools around toddlers or made fun of his moping attitude when he had to lift a finger, he’d secretly throw a blame chip in the bag until he’d “earned” enough to cash out on a sleazy affair.
That’s why I was so gobsmacked and blindsided during the secret cheating spree when, out of the blue, he started viciously attacking me for generally “mistreating” him and making him feel “unwuved.” I hadn’t been keeping score so I had to rack my brain trying to think what I could possibly have done wrong. I asked him to be more specific but he couldn’t name a single offense because his only grounds to mistreat and exploit me were my objection to being mistreated and exploited.
Maybe the reason it took him a few decades to save enough chips for a bonkathon was because he’s one of those hypocrites who actually needs rationales to justify doing awful things and my objections to blatant sexism were slim grounds. Otherwise I was typically generally nice, supportive, cheerful, affectionate and uncomplaining because that attitude is simply better for parenting and just my natural social disposition.
I guess being so “nice” could look kind of chumpy considering what he was up at the time to but I can’t regret having kept my side of the road clean if just because it made it easier to quickly see his manufactured blameshifting for the massive lie it was. I don’t even regret the beautiful birthday bash I threw him in the middle of the affair because it obviously eroded his rationalization system and tormented tf out of him. He mysteriously burst in tear in the middle of it, couldn’t sleep for a week and apparently started fighting with the AP after that. Haha. It was the meanest thing I ever did and I didn’t even know it.
At the same time, I’m also really proud in hindsight that the times I was bitchy were about holding my ground on chores and parenting duties and refusing to eat sh*t. Plus it made it even more hilarious to learn after D-day that the AP would scurry around with a dustpan cleaning up FW’s never-ending pocket clutter, scrubbing pee stains from her shower walls and washing his socks like a manic tradwife contestant as if she intuitively understood this was the one area she could really outdo me in her one-sided pickme death match. Yeah, Toots, have at it.
My (adult) daughter told me the name for this: weaponized incompetence.
Early on, I did insist he do his share of household tasks. There was the time he left the mop and bucket of dirty water in a doorway, to show me I guess. I left it and we both stepped over it for days until I couldn’t stand it anymore. And yes, he admitted he was leaving it there out of spite.
Then he became a medical student, a resident, and a doctor. I took over all the household tasks because, I told myself, he worked such long hours (and to be fair, he did; also, to be fair, we got a cleaning service as soon as we could afford it, his idea), but I also never asked him to help with anything because he’d get so evil and peeved about it. It was easier to do it by myself than have to put up with him.
Weaponized incompetence.
My parents, married forever, used to take on big projects, like renovating houses, and do them together because they liked doing and they liked each other. Made me sad at the time that we couldn’t and now mad at myself that I just put up with it. Chalked it up to “Not everybody’s handy.” 😔
No, FW was not a slob. He was raised by a military father who instilled neat & tidy. Never had a problem with FW that way. In fact, FW would rather stay home cleaning & fixing household stuff instead of spending time doing anything else. I’m amazed he made the effort to cheat. But I was getting to be a “testy” appliance tired of staying at home so he needed a new one to try & get to stay home with him. So he gets himself a social animal Schmoopie instead 😂 Moron.
Ballbag McGee was outwardly a respectable cop and self appointed ‘nice guy’.
When we were married, the house was tidy with the usual kids and pet cornucopia lying around – since then he’s lived in various pig styes with the Triffid .
I’m not a perfect housekeeper by any means but I draw the line at filth and dirty carpets and floors.
My daughter’s boyfriend has commented on how disgusting it is- you wouldn’t think so to look at the idiots, but there we are.
Dickhead McCluggage was always disgustingly messy- when we were teenagers, his car was always full of crap, old takeaway boxes and dirty clothes.
I remember going to his family home one day and being amazed at seeing mouldy coke- I didn’t think it was possible.
When we were married, he’d take the rubbish out if made to and do the odd thing under duress but nope- disgusting.
Skid marks, squeezed pus on the mirror, piss on the floor and toilet seat, clothes all over the floor, stuff unpacked and the boxes just left, shoes everywhere
Every surface covered in junk that didn’t belong there.
He used to pee in the front yard when he couldn’t be bothered walking to the toilet.
He eyeballed me while peeing in the kitchen sink once .
He never brushed his teeth but would swill a bit of mouthwash when he had to impress someone.
They were rotting out of his head and I lost several teeth and piercings due to cross infection.
I’m willing to bet the Klingon’s dental bills are a bit higher these days and her house is a little more trashed since he moved in after burning ours down.
A pair of quality men there for sure- go get ’em, ladies.
I think he wins the title of most disgusting!
If not the winner, definitely in the top 5.
Mouldy coke? He peed in the yard because he was too lazy to walk to the bathroom? He was cross infecting you with his rotten teeth? 🤯 I’d call him a disgusting pig, but a pigsty is cleaner than him.
Yes- very unfair on pigs who are intelligent and live a lot cleaner if not jammed into a sty or crate to compare them to this….human.
Oh hell yes. After I left I had occasion to go to the family home (where FW still lived at the time, but we were going to sell) a couple of times to pick up the last of my stuff. I was appalled. It stank to high heaven. The floors had obviously not been cleaned once in the year I had been gone, neither had the bathrooms been. The bed didn’t have sheets on it and the pillowcases were gray with dirt and sweat. When I asked what was going on, FW expressed the insane belief that only the sitting surface of toilet seats need to ever be cleaned, not the inside of the toilet or the bottom of the seat, because only the seat touches you. He must have no sense of smell since the odor of a filthy toilet apparently isn’t an issue for him.
So FW had to move in with his girlfriend in order to sell the house, because he knew he wasn’t going to clean it adequately for showings. I suspect he had his girlfriend clean it up before he left. I don’t know how he got a girlfriend because any sane woman would run for her life as soon as she got a whiff of the place. During our relationship I didn’t know how filthy he actually was because he lived with his parents when we met. Had he been in his own place and left it in that state there’s no way I would have kept dating him. I don’t particularly mind messiness and am not a clean freak by any means, but a crapton of visible organic matter and the foul smells/potentially harmful bacteria they produce are disgusting to anyone who is psychologically healthy. I think that level of slobbery is beyond laziness and is a product of mental illness, not unlike extreme hoarding.
Agree- there’s messy and then there’s just plain disgusting.
It was the same when I had to go to my house- it was an eerie feeling like there was no more soul or light in the house.
It was dark, cold, horrible mess everywhere- all my clothes thrown into the spare room with my wedding dress and all photos of us and people we knew on top of it all.
It broke my heart.
There’s something deeply wrong with them.
That’s it. That’s exactly how I felt, like all the soul of the home was gone. Well, it was quite literally true, since FW has no soul, so I didn’t find it surprising at the time. As for family photos, FW gave every single one of them to me, thankfully still boxed as I had left them. He didn’t even want the memories of his children growing up, nor pictures of his own parents, siblings, nieces and nephews.
Yes, they are definitely not normal.
Definitely. Mine was a tornado of mess-making. Literally never picked up after himself, refilled things, notified me that things were out, or did a chore without being asked. Would use up the ice cubes in the ice cube tray then put the empty tray back in the freezer.
And if I asked him to perform a chore or task, he would either not do it and say “Oh, I forgot” or do the worst, most half-a**ed job I had ever seen, which made me regret asking him. Weaponized Incompetence.
Post-Divorce, being a single mom was hard, but it was so nice only cleaning up after 2 children instead of 3.
Hoarder and Amazon Addict. Always buying stuff. Unable to throw anything out. Owns duplicates and triplicates of almost everything. Every surface covered and stacked with his clutter. It was like living in a storage locker. It is so great to no longer live with him and his piggy mess.
Chalk up another one on the OCD/Hoarder/ADHD/Bipolar/Narcissistic F**ktangle. Earlier in our marriage, I quietly went on a housecleaning strike to see how long until he’d notice/say something. It was quite a while before he commented on the state of HIS bathroom- and was royally pissed when I told him what I’d been doing. It took me five years of Ms. Rachael-style cheering him on to take some initiative loading and unloading the dishwasher.
He’d wear only boxers when at home, and so made me answer the door every time because he was not dressed- even when I was teleworking, in a meeting, and I told him some repair person would be by so be ready. He was still berating me to answer the door, mid-meeting (Covid isolation was so much fun that way).
He’d also put away every tiny leftover from dinner, leaving stacks of unlabeled storage containers in the fridge. It was up to me to do regular refrigerator archaeology (when he wasn’t home to contradict my decision!) so the fridge wouldn’t stink and offend his oh so sensitive olfactory sense.
It was an ongoing battle with hoarder shit- his mother would offload hoarder-mathom from her (3-4 times larger) house onto my ex because she could tell herself she solved the problem while shoving it off on me. Cleaning out the garage when we were moving to a new place was a slow, painful job since he’d block me donating long-unused items ahead of our probable-move! Stuff that was MINE to begin with! I had to do what I could do of it behind his back, and I couldn’t get away with much before he’d notice.
He had to finish this task himself, though, because he ran off to a Ho-worker’s place after we’d bought the new place and moved in. I was standing over a grown-ass, professional man with a master’s degree literally picking up his childhood toys in the garage. We had no children. I was definitely re-evaluating my life choices at that moment.
He’d wear ratty-ass wrinkled linen pants on a date, sometimes with holes in them. I gave up arguing. Picking at his acne, pulling at various hairs on his body… drove me insane but he’d blow up if I asked him to stop, or if I went into another room so I wouldn’t have to watch. Complained of clutter, but whined he couldn’t handle it because of his ADHD.
Oh, and dirty socks and used dinner plates strewn around the living room.
Guess what? I have ADHD, too. Women get diagnosed much later in life and more rarely- I had to be executive function for two, even though I struggled, myself. This little wife-appliance evidently had a couple short-circuits.
I would actually question that diagnosis, in fact all of them except for the Narcissistic personality disorder. FW found it convenient to pretend to be ADHD, bipolar, anxiety disorder, any and everything because it sent me on a fool’s errand to help him instead of scrutinize him, and also provided handy excuses for his secret double life to everyone.
Narcissistic qualities, not the diagnosis. He does honestly have ADHD (he’d forget about things that were actually important to him and it distressed him greatly). ADHD and Bipolar share some symptoms and comorbidities. His memory was bad and got even worse as he aged- viewed through the lens of undiagnosed Bipolar it makes a lot more sense. Oh, and when the doctor upped his antidepressant dose he became a Goddamn monster. The end was textbook manic discard.
At the core he is also just a spoiled child who runs away from anything hard, whether he created the hardship or not. If I’d managed to have kids with him I probably would have been faced with him going manic and leaving right as I got out of the hospital with a newborn baby and fresh C-section sutures.
But while it was plain he needed to seek real help he’d only do the routine of a shrink rubberstamping his refills and not asking any real questions.
My ex was and still is quite the hoarder. Even though he would say and start to clean up the house then he just would bring in more useless crap he did not need. He’s actually got two refrigerators in a very narrow galley kitchen, one of them being an old fridge that does not really work but he’s going to fix it. 🙄
He had very high standards, but it was my job (and the cleaning lady’s) to live up to them. He talked a lot about personal responsibility, but often didn’t flush the toilet. I kid you not, about once a month I would encounter a toilet filled with shit – horrifying! Isn’t that the last thing in the world you’d want your partner to see????? So yeah, entitled in every way – demand a sparkling house and do absolutely nothing to keep it that way.
And yes, of course he picked his toenails in bed. Disgusting.
She neglected her personal hygiene around me.
But when it was boyfriend time it was bathing, perfume and lingerie.
She mocked me for having paper towels in my car claiming my car was a “mess”.
Her cousin boyfriend?
His vehicle had rags, food, bits and pieces of whatever strewn throughout.
But I was the gross one according to her.
My car could be tidied up inside with one plastic shopping bag and about a minute.
His car… Maybe an hour and a garbage can.
She also made sure the small trash bin I had in my car for trash kept vanishing.
It’s been like 7 years and I still haven’t found a good replacement for it.
She’d demand that I help her vacuum and wash her car.
I’d ask her to reciprocate.
Nope.
But she’d rush right over for her cousin boyfriend.
My cheater was messy in every part of his life.
We once went on a trip and FW left his car on the street for a week in a city known for crime and strict parking enforcement. Somehow the car was still there when we returned, and he acted smug about it.
Years later, I looked him up on one of those data broker sites and discovered he had a list of legal problems stretching back thirty years, long before we even met: Easily a hundred traffic violations (I stopped counting) for speeding and parking tickets. In the years since our breakup, he’d added liens, an eviction, and a court judgement. (He failed to show up to poverty court, so the judge threw the book at him.)
He didn’t finish college until his 50s due to laziness. After he got his degree, his wife begged him to get a job with benefits, but he kept driving for Uber while talking about going for his PhD.
He’s a deeply weird person. Not just irresponsible, but has a pathological inability to understand cause and effect. He’s constantly shocked by the train wreck that is his life and doesn’t seem to understand it’s his fault due to years of terrible decisions.
I was accused of being a slob but I think it was just another convenient manufactured grievance. His hobby is shopping and I’ve found so many electronic parts, unused tools, exercise equipment and just stuff that he wasted money on. Kids say his new place is evidence of new shopping sprees.
Meanwhile FW is refusing to pay their medical bills and kids activities have already been cut back to nearly zero. While vacationing with escort of the month.
Truthfully I pray to the universe he drops dead soon. Karma bus please hurry up
YES! Not in personal hygiene thankfully, but the absolute torrent of her things took over our apartment. I think it was an extension of cheater entitlement that she felt entitled to take up way, way more than her half of everything. When she moved out, she took 80% of the crap in the apartment with her and it was such a relief.
I spent years trying to find a way to get my ex to pull his weight around the house. It’s only now that I’m out that I realised he never wanted fair and equitable labour… he just wanted me to do *everything*! Dishes, laundry, cooking,cleaning.. he was living on easy street. I have so much more time for myself now that I’m not trying to constantly keep up with the extra mess that would accumulate around him.
He was always ‘too busy’ to help with chores. His idea of being busy was spending hours on the computer playing video games.
And no, I don’t blame the games being addictive, because I play video games too, but somehow I have the magical ability to put that aside for a few minutes to take care of mundane activities that need to be done in order to avoid living in filth!
I used to say I was always cleaned up my ex’s messes. The figuratively and literally. Friendships he destroyed, jobs he lost, landlords he pissed off, tools he left laying out in the rain, and mess he left in the house. Wet towels, dirty dishes, muddy foot prints on my freshly washed floors. When we started seeing each other he showered twice or more times a day. But after we’d been together awhile he only showered when he had a new love interest.
One of my friends used to sprinkle baby powder on his feet when ever we went over and he took his shoes off. You’d think he’d be embarrassed. Nope.
I always knew when he was screwing someone new. He’d shower, and kiss me goodbye in the morning. I’d know not to expect him home that night.