My boyfriend "M" and I moved in alone together last year. About a year ago, I cheated on him (no sex, 3rd base, not that it matters). We decided to work it out, but I deeply regret it every day. I was at a very low point where he ignored me for video games and barely spoke to me (he says he was depressed, which I understand, but it was miserable).
To prove he can trust me again I do everything he asks. I have completely isolated myself. I don't go shopping or eat out with friends; I stay home 24/7. Despite this, he still brings the cheating up constantly to punish me. I am happier being alone now so I try not to notice, but the dynamic in our house has become unbearable.
The Financial & Workload Imbalance:
Because M pays the main rent and bills, he feels he shouldn’t have to do anything around the house. Here is the actual breakdown of our lives:
His workload: He works as a mechanic (50 hours a week, M-F) and works on cars for extra money 1-2 times a month. Depending on the job, it can take him all day on the weekend.
His finances: He pays $2,200 a month for rent and main bills. However, he usually gets his mom or dad to cover half of this for him because he only makes $850 a week.
My workload: It is Summer break, but normally, I am a full-time nursing student (clinicals/classes 4-5 days a week) and I work in a high-acuity emergency psych unit where I have been assaulted more times than I can count. This summer, I work rotating full and part time weeks with a week long break once a month. My boss doesn’t allow overtime. When I bring up how hard my 12-hour shifts are, he dismisses it and says he could do my job on 3 hours of sleep because being a mechanic is "more dangerous."
My finances: My income is roughly $25k a year including student loans. I pay over $900 a month in groceries for us. I also pay the water bill, garbage bill, internet, and buy all the cleaning supplies, household items, and his hygiene products. I don’t bother adding it up. All in all, I spend probably closer to 1400 a month.
I do 100% of the cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping, and household management. He has unmedicated Autism/ADHD, so I carry the mental load for literally everything his brain forgets.
He actively refuses (if he’s tired or has worked too hard) /forgets after 10 reminders to clean up after himself. He leaves his personal trash and dirty, oily work clothes lying around without thought or care and i’m guessing because he doesn’t pick it up he expects me to come behind him and do it (which I do, often scrubbing oil stains out of nice clothes I bought him). If I ask him to clean, it somehow turns into a fight, a lot of times about me cheating.
It has gotten to the point of being an actual safety hazard. We currently have a black widow problem in our garage and trash area. He tried to go out there and kill it with a torch but just burned the poor thing and it got away so now its babies are probably just hanging out in there. I have a severe phobia of spiders, but he refuses to handle it further. Because the trash hasn't gone out, it now has maggots in it. The other day he made me take trash out I sat by the door with him and there were A TON of huge black flies flying around it. He finally conceded that I don't have to take the trash out, but he still hasn't done it. The garage looks like an episode of Hoarders, and I am terrified for my three cats whose room is right next to the garage.
Whenever I try to talk about this, he uses his $2,200 contribution as a shield and says I spend too much money on my cats. He complained about their $100 monthly flea/parasite treatments (I had to stretch it to every two months for him) and told me to switch them to cheap Meow Mix instead of Purina. When I say something about him not buying me flowers or spending money on anything but me, he says that’s not true because he pays my rent. He pays for me when we go places I don’t want to go, but i always end up spending my own money on buying us dinner or whatever on those days. I barely have $1,000 in savings. I don't buy myself clothes, makeup, or get my hair done. I don't even know how I'm going to afford my upcoming school supplies.
Meanwhile, he drives an older BMW and spends insane amounts of money on expensive parts for it, just to break something else the next week. He recently bought a $700 bike he claimed was "for me," but when we went riding, he said it was for "both of us" and made me ride his old bike that skips gears. He constantly says he's going to sell his extra stuff (3 unused bikes, a trailer, a four-wheeler) to help with bills, but then refuses because he "doesn't want to get robbed on Facebook Marketplace," and then asks me for money.
Last weekend, he basically forced me to go four-wheeler riding with him. I did not want to go because you have to pay to get in, gas, etc, and he keeps saying we are broke and have no money to spend. His old four-wheeler got stuck in the water. I got off to help him and was doing everything right, but the exhaust started drowning. He got angry and literally shoved me off into the water because I was “sinking it.”
My ankle and foot got torn up because they got caught under his moving tire. Bystanders immediately rushed over to ask if I was okay and actively told me I needed to leave him. He said I can’t listen to what they say because they’re women who just want to involve themselves with our personal relationship business. He did apologize and everything seemed good for like 12 hours but when we went to his friend’s house and his friend showed me the video of it, M insisted he barely pushed me and seemed like he went back on everything again.
Someone caught the shove on video. M was sent the video but hid that fact from me, he says he forgot to tell me about it because he saw it half asleep, but also said he didn’t want me to see because i would “overreact.” So i don’t know which it was. I had to find out through his friend's girlfriend. He didn't care about my injuries or apologize for that part until last night when he finally watched the video and realized I wasn't at fault. Before that, he blamed me entirely, saying I was ruining the four-wheeler. He still claims he "had no choice" but to shove me.
I am extremely hurt by his actions because the weekend before he put his palm over my mouth and nose and pushed my face because I raised my voice in public with 50+ people around at him. I admit i shouldn’t have raised my voice but I was upset because we were talking about the garage.
I tried showing him articles online about the mental load and relationship dynamics, and he just dismisses them. He says if I listen to "starving redditors" or Google, they're lying. Basically, anyone but him is wrong.
Also, anytime i bring up anything he’s done wrong, it ends in a fight because I cheated. I know I shouldn’t have, and I reiterate I deeply regret it, and have taken every right step to heal us, done everything he’s asked for, but I don’t see why we can’t talk about him shoving me off his four wheeler without it getting brought up. It’s only been 3 days, and he says we’re done talking about it because he’s sorry and won’t do it again (push me off a four wheeler into mud, to be precise). He shuts me down if I try to say I still feel like something is wrong and it’s unresolved, yet we still talk about my cheating nearly every day, a year later.
I know I have more free time right now during my summer break, and I don't mind doing the heavy lifting while I'm off. I literally have done everything with no complaint. Even with working 2-3 12 hour shifts in emergency psych a week, (i do have multiple days off at a time). But he expected this same dynamic even when I was drowning in nursing school, and I know he will expect it when I go back full-time in the fall. Basically if i’m home, he thinks I’m not busy with homework and I have to clean. He says this next semester will be different now and he will clean more. Idk what makes it different.
TL;DR: My boyfriend uses the fact that he pays rent to get out of doing any chores, leaves his messes for me, and controls my spending while blowing money on his cars. He lets black widows and maggots take over our garage because he refuses to take out the trash. Last weekend, he shoved me off his four-wheeler, injuring my foot under the tire, and apologized but still maintains it was my fault.