I can sum this up real quick: He didn't really want to do the chore, so he half assed it pouting all the way. I used to pull that same shit (as in teens to early 20s). I still know men that do it and I know a lot of mid-20s women that do it. See it daily at work. To me, this is the same as buying a shitty gift. You did it, technically, but the amount of effort put into it shows you didn't really care.
"You could at least PRETEND it doesn't make you miserable!!!" ...no, that's the point. You're making someone do something they don't want to do with no reward, so they get to sulk with as furrow a brow as they want. That's the "compromise". I didn't want to do it, and I did it like an asshole, because that's what it is. Guys are experts at that.
I think this is stupid and incredibly passive-aggressive. If you don't want to do something, say so. I'm not going to deliberately screw up a chore so that I'm not asked to do it again. If I do it, I'll do it well, because I feel like not doing it well is some kind of personal failure - if I don't want to do it, I just won't.
But your way is mature and rational. It also doesn't have that fun race to the bottom that couples will sometimes get into. She'll stop and get something on the way home for dinner and "forget" to get him anything. He'll go to the grocery next and buy nothing but olive loaf, pumpernickel, and a case of Dr. Thunder. She'll have dinner with her girlfriends the next night and come home to find him well stuffed on the rack of lamb he bought and ate while she was at Chili's. The possibility of childish, spiteful behavior here is damn near endless.
Allow me to play devil's advocate here for a moment. Do we really KNOW this is what he did? I'd like to propose an alternate scenario: On his way to the store, our subject was stopped at a red light, and his mind began to wander. . . ."What will I eat for lunch?", "How do dogs lick their balls?", "Should I change my underwear this week?". Naturally, such musings led to more complex issues and ideas . . . "Should I get this car tuned up?", "I wonder if Dallas will go with a three or four man defensive front?", "What groceries did we need?", "Why do we have to eat, anyway?" Leading him ever onward to the really big questions . . . . "Why is there air?", "Why are we here?", "Does God exist?", and "If a tree falls on a clown in the woods, does anyone hear him scream?". Until finally he arrives at . . . . The Hodge conjecture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hodge_conjecture. Our subject's mind, fully engrossed in loci and varieties, he wanders the store in a haze, grabbing random items off the shelf, paying mindlessly and making his way back to the car. Finally, he leaves the store and arrives home, coefficients and cohomology classes dancing in his brain, your nutritional requirements unmet, but our subject better off for having grappled with larger issues. Or something like that.
You guys are all forgetting the fact that he offered with no prompting from me. I didn't make him go to the store, shoot I didn't even ask him. Why offer to do simethng if you have no intention to do it? So here is going to play out. I'm going to tell him that we are going to start switching off like we used to do since he appears to have gotten out of practice. Beats the alternative of acting like I forgot how to give blow jobs, right?
In all honesty, I'd guess that Misanthropic is not too far off. I do ALL the grocery shopping, so it's not like I've forgotten what we need in the house... but occasionally, I'll still get all the way through the grocery store, check out, and get in the car to go home only to realize that I'd, say, forgotten to get the one item that I actually went to the store for. Or I'll assemble a meal in my head, get the necessary items, and forget an obvious part (e.g. forget to get the pasta when planning spaghetti for dinner - but I got the sauce components, salad stuff, bread, cheese and mentally chose a wine). He probably just daydreamed his way through the grocery store.
Mya, you take some of those paper towels, add some broth, put in a little bit of that cat food, and you got yourself a stew going. Spoiler
All things being equal, I don't recommend ultimatums as ways to resolve tensions and conflicts. If you're annoyed tell him and tell him why. Figure out, together, a way to prevent it from happening again (the switching off method may well be the method you end up using). But declaring a new regimen seems like it has the potential to breed resentment. And as other people have said, he may have just totally spaced out. I have before. Or maybe he just quarter-assed it for some obnoxious reason we don't know. But a conversation is the way to find out.
I'd definitely go the conversation route. A "Hey...sooo...um. When you said you were going to the grocery store...I expected you would return with...food? What happened there?" Then going from there, figure out what the response is/should be. I am cutting down my drinking. This sucks. I am not happy about this decision. They're wanting to be hard paleo for a month, but frankly, I feel like this is bad decision making at its finest. I'm going to be an uber bitch without a beer at least every other night.
Stop making up excuses guys, he went FOOD shopping and forgot the FOOD. I absolutely refuse to believe that I married somebody so stupid. It wasn't like I sent him to get truffle oil and capers for god's sake. FOOD is a pretty broad category. And this was our weekly FOOD shopping trip.
This was pretty much exactly what I said. Then he offered to go again, but at that point, I said it would be easier if I just did it at that point since we had nothing to eat for the week. Inside he was probably thinking "SCORE!" Then he sat right back down on the couch with his beer and Olympic Beach Volleyball.
...and you just KNOW he won't ask directions on how to get there, and you just KNOW he'll keep driving around the lot until he finds a spot close to the door, and you just KNOW he left the toilet seat up before leaving the house etc.
Mya, does your guy cook at all? Because I can easily space on the most mundane of tasks, but I enjoy cooking. So when I go grocery shopping I am always looking for things that I think will be fun to cook, or that I can do something new with. Back when all of my meals came out of the microwave, I was next to useless when it came to grocery shopping. Also, a list wouldn't have been a bad idea. If your write them for yourself, why not write them for the hubby who you have said is out of practice?
Yeah, I make a list that is stickied to the fridge. I plan out meals for the next week and any ingredients that we're missing goes on that list, as well as the usual stuff like bread and soymilk. So in my case, he'd get to the grocery store but be unable to find a lot of the stuff. He would probably look at the list and go, "they make unsalted butter?" I never make him go since I'm the one who cooks and know exactly what I want, what brands I want, and where they are located in the store. It takes me 45min-hour to get through the store but if he went I'm pretty sure it would be double or triple that. On the plus side, when I bring the car to the 30 minute loading area by the building, I walk up with a bunch of groceries, walk down with him to grab more, and he moves the car and brings in the heaviest things. I fucking hate that parking garage.
So I am on board with you here, since it seems like he offered to do a nice thing and then sort of failed totally, and could maybe have asked for some guidance when it started to feel like he was a little out to sea. But, you also have to remember that all relationship advice offered on this board is basically ridiculous/we only know the things you tell us/we are all e-strangers. On another note, ALL I want tonight is to have sex with my boyfriend who has been deathly ill for a week, and I am just attempting to wait until a vaguely appropriate hour to suggest this as our evening activity.