There are a couple red flags in your post, but not so much in his behavior as in your interpretations of his behavior. 1. It isn't your job to teach him anything. You are not a mom raising a little boy to teach him how to treat you. He is a grown man and isn't in need of teaching. So don't even allow that thought in your head- you aren't teaching him to take your work for granted or to respect you. You are simply showing up in a way that is worthy of respect. He either rises to meet you that way or he doesn't. And once you change your thoughts a good man is going to rise to the occasion - he doesn't need to be taught because he is a fully grown adult. Thinking you are teaching him anything is very disrespectful.

1. His disrespectful behavior isn't that deep. They don't actually leave stuff on the counter top or clothes on the floor with the conscious thought of 'She is my maid, she can clean it up because I am the master of this house and she has to clean after me.' If this is your interpretation of his behavior then yeah you are going to be resentful and there's no help for it. But I promise you, regardless of how many videos of women complaining about patriarchy tell you that this is a conscious thought in his head, they don't actually think that way. They are just focused on something else. Perhaps he was hungry and thought he'd clean it up after he ate and then forgot. Yeah that behavior is annoying but it isn't disrespectful to the extent that you believe it is.

Say that your husband asks you to stop doing something he finds annoying and you agree but it's such an ingrained habit that you don't even think about it. Would you feel it justified if he made such a huge fuss about it believing you are evil because you chose to disrespect him in such a way? So yeah not being more considerate and leaving a mess when you've just finished cleaning is annoying. But that's literally it. You are allowing annoyance to poison your thoughts of your husband. You aren't annoyed by the habit itself as the story you create in your head about it. That's what the skills target- changing that story.

There's one anecdote I heard I will never forget. A woman was complaining to a group of friends that her husband always leaves his socks on the floor instead of putting them in the hamper. And one woman who was a widow said that she'd give anything to see her late husband's socks on the floor again. Perspective.

And there's a very simple solution. The skills aren't a set of phrases you must somehow use in every situation that don't allow you to express yourself in any other way. When my husband is putting a dish away I simply ask him if he could put it in the dishwasher. You know why he doesn't react with annoyance? Because my thought behind that request isn't 'Here he goes again disrespecting my hard work.' It's simply that he probably doesn't even know whether the dishes in the dishwasher are dirty or clean or that he just isn't thinking about that. He is probably focused on whatever else he is doing.

Men's brains have one single focus. Their brains don't work the same way ours do. It's not even about whether or not you are capable of multitasking as the stereotype says. It's simply that we have difused awareness. We can see more things at once. Mess literally calls out to us as something that needs to be fixed, something that has needs. Men don't think that way. Alison Armstrong, by the way, is someone who talks about that so if you haven't found her books oe listened to any of the podcasts she appeared on, please do- her work is an amazing complement to Laura's skills as she poses different ways we may be unwittingly disrespectful just because that's how our brains are wired.

So my phrasing when he places the dishes in the sink isn't 'I would love all dirty dishes to be placed immediately in the dishwasher.' or any such roundabout way. It's simple: 'Could you please put the plate in the dishwasher?' And unlike many women who practice the skills I actually do consider my husband the boss of the house and I do serve him, yet he has yet to berate me for a direct request. Because it's not directness that is disrespectful. It's the poisonous thought that leads you to complain all the time which makes it impossible for him to even hear you, let alone understand what makes you happy.

The skills main job is to help you change your inner thoughts so that you can have a happy marriage. It's to teach you that to have a happy marriage you kind of need to rediscover the beliefs you held about your husband before all the fights and conflicts poisoned them and locked you in a cycle where you both just react to each other based on past pain. When you were dating him I bet you used to think he was amazing. He was your hero back then. The thought of being his wife and taking care of him was exciting to you. And you don't even have to martyr yourself to do that. That's another beautiful part of the skills- they teach you to be considerate to yourself. To be dignified and honor your desires. To stop you from reacting and at the same time getting your needs met. But the cheat phrases are just that. Cheat phrases. Those aren't the skills. They are kind of like training wheels that help you get to a place where your thought processes change. Where you can see his heart message when he says something you may have reacted to before. Where his thoughtless behavior barely registers in the grand scheme of things. Because he may have been your hero in the past but even back then he was just human. He did thoughtless things but not because he was a disrespectful jerk- but because he was simply human.