How to ask them to take better care of themselves?

I'll tell you something that's really helped me in this area. Maybe it will help you too.

My last serious relationship was with someone who would put off doing laundry for so long that he'd end up wearing dirty underwear to work sometimes (this was generally in-line with his other domestic habits). It's not the reason that we broke up, but those little things really just irritated me the entire relationship. Like, fuck, do your goddamn laundry.

Anyway, a few months after we broke up, I was ranting and raving to my therapist about how frustrated it had been dating someone who was wearing fucking dirty underwear to work sometimes, we he cut me off. "You know, there's a lot of people in the world who wear dirty underwear sometimes and are still in very happy relationships."

It was a real perspective shift for me. That relationship still wouldn't have worked out, and the truth is that I'm probably just not compatible with someone who isn't consistently on top of things like laundry, but it's not a universal truth that someone has to do laundry consistently (or get their tooth fixed, or eat vegetables) to be capable of being a good partner.

/r/datingoverthirty Thread Parent