They say opposites attract, and me and my boyfriend couldn't be more opposite in so many ways. Just to give a little background, we still live on opposite ends of our tiny town and sleep at our own places. We do a lot of shared cooking at each other's houses. I am somewhat of a neat-nik and despise unnecessary clutter; he is sloppy, never cleans his place, the refrigerator is atrocious, and I have watched the bathroom garbage can fill up for the last three months and he still piles trash into it (I go over to his house to use the bathtub. I end up cleaning the tub myself before I take a bath). It just never occurs to him to do many of these basic things that would make his life run smoother.
He is also pretty bad with money - he earns a lot but doesn't have much to show for it at age 59. The ways in which he wastes money is a bit appalling to me, as I am coming from the Simple Living frugal way of life. He wastes a lot food and money by not planning ahead, he misses appointments because he doesn't use a calendar, is late paying bills and rent, on and on and on. It's hard for me to watch someone be that way but he has been that way his whole life.
Our backgrounds couldn't be more different either: I come from an educated middle-to-upper-middle class family, he comes from a family of poverty, abuse, chaos and and dysfunction that was pretty bad. He was essentially on his own after his father kicked him out as a older teenager. Yet, over the decades he has done very well for himself working in IT and computers for over 30 years.
So on the flip-side: he is one of the most generous, caring individuals I have ever met and been in a relationship with. He takes care of me, all the way through the crap I have been through the past two years - the surgeries, the death of my daughter, EVERYTHING! I do and would do the same for him too.
So our individual styles really come to a head regarding travel and that can make it a bit stressful - we just flew to Oklahoma City to be with his sister's family (my first time meeting his side of the family, other than his son and daughter). He is so disorganized with the flights, forgot to check the night before, forgot who he made the rental car reservation with (we had to go from counter to counter until they found us). Going crazy making sure he had his diabetic survival bag all set and all his other medications, trying not to lose his glasses at every turn (he did end up losing a pair of sunglasses and had to buy new ones in Oklahoma). He would lose his head if it wasn't attached to his body; he is so very absent-minded. Maybe it is because he is so detail-oriented at work with the computer coding stuff that he simply can't notice details in his outside life?
Consequently for me, being a "doer" and "de-clutterer" and an organized sort of person, it is hard to know when to step in and when not to. He is an adult and if he loses the key to his truck for the second time in two months that it is his responsibility (it already cost him $300 a few weeks ago to have someone come out here and make a new one). He has loose keys all over the place instead of on a specified key ring, so yesterday I made sure he got them all in one place. Luckily someone in town found his truck key ring somewhere and hung it on the fence by his front door.
I don't want to be a "mother" to him and scold him for things, but it is hard to watch someone fumble around so hard with the basics when I know things could be so much easier (and cheaper) for him if he paid more attention and planned things better. I know *some* of what I do to run my life easier has rubbed off a little here and there on him but there is SO much room for improvement.
One of the things I did for him over the summer (I needed a distraction from my grief) was to help him get his apartment set up better and make it more homey - and that was fun. We rehung a lot of his art work he had collected over the years, moved furniture around, and got a table lamp. I helped fix up the bathroom with a new shower curtain and artwork on the wall. There is still so much more work to do - he needs a major de-clutter of the piles of crap lying around. And the whole place needs a DEEP CLEAN. I told him I would clean it for him in appreciation for all the meals he cooked for me after surgery, but I probably can't do it for another week or so because I am still healing. I'm hoping he will let me help him de-clutter before I clean because that makes sense, right?
How does one negotiate this stuff with a significant other? I think if we were ever to move in together this kind of stuff will end up being a sticking point - I like things clean and organized, and he doesn't seem to care, though I'm sure he would really enjoy all the benefits of living in a nice clean place. I sure don't want to do all the work for it and also would never want to become a "nag" about things. We would have to have a SERIOUS discussion on expectations of each other.
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Originally Posted by JaneV2.0
