AITA for being snippy and accusatory, and not understanding towards my husband when I asked him to come back and clean up his toilet seat. I (40 f) got into an argument tonight with my husband (37) regarding my tone of voice when I asked him to come back and clean up the pee and hair left on the toilet seat. I do 99% of the household cleaning. We have two children with high needs and bathroom issues so I end up cleaning a lot of bathroom mess. My husband has ADHD and “doesn’t really notice messes”. We have very different standards of cleanliness.
I was cleaning up the bathroom after everyone tonight and he was the last one to shower. I noticed the toilet seat was not clean and I asked him, apparently in a snippy and accusatory tone, to come back and clean it up. He proceeded to argue with me about whether the mess was his and got very defensive. Later I brought it up again and said I didn’t appreciate that he was being childish when arguing about whether he made the mess, and that even if it wasn’t his, he should just come back and clean it up, as I clean up everybody’s messes all the time. He told me that my tone was the problem and if I had just “communicated nicely” he would have just come back and cleaned it up. I explained that I don’t want to have to communicate in any form about it (this is an argument we have had many times before, and many other similar ones ) and that I expect adults should look behind them and clean up the toilet seat. He said people forget things. I explained that if his lack of cleaning up after himself was a rare occurrence, okay fine, but it is not, and I tried to explain that I get pissy because I have to manage everything and it makes me feel resentful. To him it is just a small ask, to me it is one more gross thing I have to manage. He seems to think I am not being a good partner if I don’t want to help remind him and ask nicely. I also told him that I think it is normal to expect an adult to do this on their own and he seemed to disagree. He left in a huff and is mad.
I might be the AH for not communicating nicely with my husband when asking him to return and clean up his bathroom mess, for not being understanding that people forget things, and for not wanting to nicely remind him about it.
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AITA for being snippy and accusatory, and not understanding towards my husband when I asked him to come back and clean up his toilet seat. I (40 f) got into an argument tonight with my husband (37) regarding my tone of voice when I asked him to come back and clean up the pee and hair left on the toilet seat. I do 99% of the household cleaning. We have two children with high needs and bathroom issues so I end up cleaning a lot of bathroom mess. My husband has ADHD and “doesn’t really notice messes”. We have very different standards of cleanliness.
I was cleaning up the bathroom after everyone tonight and he was the last one to shower. I noticed the toilet seat was not clean and I asked him, apparently in a snippy and accusatory tone, to come back and clean it up. He proceeded to argue with me about whether the mess was his and got very defensive. Later I brought it up again and said I didn’t appreciate that he was being childish when arguing about whether he made the mess, and that even if it wasn’t his, he should just come back and clean it up, as I clean up everybody’s messes all the time. He told me that my tone was the problem and if I had just “communicated nicely” he would have just come back and cleaned it up. I explained that I don’t want to have to communicate in any form about it (this is an argument we have had many times before, and many other similar ones ) and that I expect adults should look behind them and clean up the toilet seat. He said people forget things. I explained that if his lack of cleaning up after himself was a rare occurrence, okay fine, but it is not, and I tried to explain that I get pissy because I have to manage everything and it makes me feel resentful. To him it is just a small ask, to me it is one more gross thing I have to manage. He seems to think I am not being a good partner if I don’t want to help remind him and ask nicely. I also told him that I think it is normal to expect an adult to do this on their own and he seemed to disagree. He left in a huff and is mad.
I might be the AH for not communicating nicely with my husband when asking him to return and clean up his bathroom mess, for not being understanding that people forget things, and for not wanting to nicely remind him about it.
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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> The action on which I should be judged is using a rude tone of voice to my husband when asking him to come back and clean up his bathroom mess, and for not being very understanding that he forgets things, and for also not wanting to have to remind him about it in the future. It might make me the asshole because I’m not being a very compassionate and understanding partner.
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Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.
Flip that though. If he used that tone with you and you didn’t expect to hear it like that, would you have just turned around and cleaned the mess? Or would you have also asked him to speak nicer to you? I don’t think this makes you an AH, but just keep it in mind for next time.
He’s a stupid child. I learned to clean up after myself by the time I was a teenager. Men like this are babies, and his huff is (a) because you embarrassed him, and (b) because he believes he is too good to clean up piss – however, you are.
Tell him next time any residual body fluids are going in his dinner.
NTA
If his ADHD prevents him from being a clean human being he is not managing his ADHD. I absolutely HATE it when people use their diagnosis in this weaponized way.
You don’t have two kids, you have three, and all of them can’t manage to aim for the toilet and not the seat.
Your tone is NOT the reason he got upset. He’s upset because it’s humiliating for a grown adult to be instructed by anybody in any tone of voice, especially their sex partner, to come clean up the urine and pubic hair they left on a toilet seat. NAH
This is not a communication issue, a timing issue or, a tone issue. This is about the problem of two equal spouses trying to be friends, not drill sergeants, not enemies on the defensive, when one of them has ADHD and the other does not.
There are some excellent self-help books about this problem. Read and think before you choose your next move, because this is a very hard problem.