"My Husband Is a Mess"
He doesn't close the refrigerator door. OK if she leaves him?
Today’s column: Dear James, The Atlantic, March 4 2025
This is a very strange column. So you can see what I mean, here’s the letter-writer’s first paragraph, verbatim:
“I’m 32 years old,” she writes, “my husband and I have been together for eight years, we married two years ago, and we have a 3-year-old daughter. After we met and fell in love, we knew we wanted to spend our lives together. But these days, I’ve been seriously thinking about leaving him.”
Do you see it? Right off the bat? Deep confusion about the meaning of commitment…
I’ll go through this history point by point, because it’s important. (1) They wanted to spend their lives together when they met. Nonetheless, they didn’t marry, though that’s what marriage is. (2) After five years, they had a child. (3) A year later, they did marry. (4) Now—two years after the wedding, and eight years after they became a couple—she’s “seriously thinking about leaving him.”
And why? He’s “absent-minded” and “messy.” He “tends to forget to close the fridge, turn off the AC, or lock our door. He loses his keys, somehow damages his passport or other documents before flights, and turns his music up to maximum volume at night, oblivious.” And though she’s told him she dislikes all this, she sees “very little improvement.”
She says she used to be able to shrug this stuff off, but now it bothers her, “a lot.” But she wonders whether she should end a “relationship” over such “nitpicky” problems.
AdviceObsessed wonders why she’s still calling it a “relationship.” It’s a marriage, now, which is different, and that misunderstanding may be the crux of her problem…
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before we pursue that, let’s check in with James. What does he say?
Nothing he says is actually wrong. He sympathizes. He suggests the guy get help. He asks her to consider whether she still loves him; okay, that’s good advice. Finally he observes, rather obviously, that when you’re thinking of leaving your husband over the refrigerator door, it’s probably not about the fridge.
This is all okay, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough. What James should have asked her—what AdviceObsessed would love to ask her—is why did they eventually marry, after six years and a kid? And did the shift from living-togethers to spouses mean something to them? If so, what?
If the LW can’t answer that final, very important question, AdviceObsessed can. Living together is when you actually can leave the guy over the refrigerator door, if you’re really that trivial (though most cohabiting couples, I believe, are not). My point is marriage is when—in theory, anyway—you can’t.
Marriage is an ancient and specific commitment, a contractual commitment, and for many, a religious commitment. Though it sometimes fails, it’s always supposed to be life-long. Marrying means you don’t leave your husband because he “really annoys” you. It means you pledge to work stuff out.
That’s the difference between a husband and a boyfriend, which the LW’s roommate ceased to be when they finally tied the knot.
But all this dances around the most important point, which is you definitely don’t leave your daughter’s father because he tends to lose his keys. These two people have a child, and her parents are her whole world. But you’d never know this from either the LW’s question or James’ answer. The LW mentions the fact of this child, and that’s all. James himself gives her even shorter shrift, joking that the husband may be “trying to out-baby your 3-year-old.”
The LW‘s biggest commitment has to be to her daughter, but there’s no indication she understands this. If she did—or maybe if James had pointed it out—she’d know what she must do next: Not leave her husband, but protect their daughter, by preserving her marriage.
You’re right the advice is mostly useless, because it fails to come to terms with what is happening. It sounds like a not-uncommon situation.
He is likely competent at his job and provides well, but struggles with organisation in the less structured “home” environment. He tends to be “reactive” in personality, and doesn’t “lead” or “take responsibility” around the house
She feels like the chief parent & homemaker with an actual child and husband as pseudo-child. He “helps” but she does the organisation & asking
A clinician would possibly diagnose ADHD for him and depression for her. The diagnoses are not the key to solving this, but are helpful stereotypes in understanding how each spouse feels about & interacts with the situation
Their core home dynamic is that she complains about stuff and he goes through the motions. She will freely complain that “he never does anything right”, though thinks she’s being very restrained about it because she only complains “occasionally”. He seems to only make an effort to connect when he wants sex. Often she will say he does “nothing”, although there’s usually quite a lot of stuff he does do; but anything in a “shared space” is up to her to organise.
He doesn’t take initiative much, and when he does she takes over anyway because he’s doing it wrong. They might have tried couples therapy, which mostly consists of her complaining about him and him making half-hearted efforts to “improve”
Core issue: both parties feel alone & unappreciated.
It’s fixable, but both spouses need to reverse the way they approach life.
Both spouses are outsourcing core responsibility. He’s making her responsible for his actions, & she’s making him responsible for her feelings. Both must stop thinking “if they, then I” and get some very uncomfortable help so they can start saying “I can” & “I do” without offloading responsibility
It’s a feedback cycle. Once both spouses are generating positivity rather than negativity things can improve rapidly. But getting there is hard and will never happen while each spouse expects the other to return good while giving bad
Argh. This sounds like a way, way bigger problem than the fridge door, indeed. It's like mentioning a messy divorce, and saying "we don't know who should get the nice black umbrella".
All I can say is, the poor child.