Do you want to be messy? Since you describe it as horrible chaos it sounds like you don't. How have you been trying for 30 years to be more tidy?
As someone with the same problem, and feeling as misunderstood and helpless as you, now working on it with more success (limited), here's what I can say.
If it's paralyzing you need help. Work on it with a therapist or use self-help books to try to understand why you feel paralyzed and why you let your place get messy when you don't like it that way.
Break it down into easier bits. Do you have a public and private area in your home? Can you start by trying to just make the public part look tidy more regularly?
Get the other kind of help - can you afford a housecleaner sometimes? Can you afford a few sessions with a personal organizer? I have one who will do a whole room in about 3 hours at $30/hour. I've even asked for Christmas for some time with her. Or pay a kid or teenager to help you clean up a room?
Is it inability to get rid of stuff? Maybe you need to figure out why that is and see if you can pare down how much stuff you keep.
The thing I learned is this. Your spouse doesn't get to make you change into something you're not - HOWEVER, in a relationship you do have an obligation to observe how your behavior impacts your spouse and take steps to modify your behavior if you want to change your negative impact.
I also learned this. If your spouse wants something (a cleaner house) and wants to dictate how he gets that something (a tidier wife) that's where you've got to negotiate. You can agree to a neater house with the help of a (cleaner, agreement about which rooms can stay messy, etc) but you get to provide some input that enables you to meet his needs and your own.
Also, you are who you want to be. If you don't want to be messy, get to work on you. Don't let H's not understanding and being critical make you resistant to working on a perfectly reasonable goal you might set for yourself to create a tidier home for yourself.
Adinva 51, S20, S18 M24 total 6/15/11-12/1/12 From IDLY to H moving out 9/15/15-3/7/17 From negotiating SA to final D at age 50 5/8/17-now: New relationship with an old friend __ Happiness is a warm puppy.
