If H takes this job, it’s going to break me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait it out my fanny. Are you some doormat SAHM who's congratulating herself on how much crap she put up with for decades? Sorry but allowing yourself to be mistreated ks not a solution, it's a failure.

Um, no, and I'm not sure what your vaginas has to do with this.

So your advice is for OP to do all the work herself, allow herself to be treated disrespectfully by a lazy and irresponsible man, let him waste their money, this goes on for decades, and at the end what's the prize? Still being married to a jerk who's slightly better? No thanks.

He sounds immature. That tends to improve over time.

Where I'm coming from with this is, I did have a husband that didn't do as much housework as I felt he should and also was irresponsible with money. At some point I decided to stop nagging and just accept the situation. It was not easy and it was not fair. Fast forward about 10 years- he is now a much greater contributor to the household-- does all cooking, shopping, schlepping the kids around, and a non-terrible amount of cleaning. (I still do more cleaning.) And, his income is now extremely high, high enough that he is still able to make silly purchases or lose money in predictable ways and it doesn't impact us at all. I dislike clutter, so I don't love this trait, but it isn't a crisis like it was before. So yes-- people can and often do have a difficult time in the first part of marriage and then go on to have a great marriage.

It sounds like she's done and is leaving him, and that's also a path forward. But this is something that is a fairly common problem in relationships, and if you read the research on it, it does tend to improve with time, and in later life actually flips, with men doing more housework than women in retirement age.

But what if he didn't improve? What if he never made money? Would it be worth it then? Seems like a big gamble, especially if retirement security is on the line.

Yeah, that was a gamble. My retirement wasn't on the line though, we were financially okay in that department, along with paying for college, etc. After devoting a lot of time reading studies on the division of housework in modern American families, I decided that it was likely to improve and focused on that. It's hard to visualize the counterfactual, how I would have felt if we were still dealing with this. But I tend to be data driven and the numbers for married people are generally better than unmarried.

If my husband never made money at all, I wouldn't have married him. Financial security is a huge factor to me. He was always a good earner, just an even better spender until he made so much it'd be difficult to spend it.

So you married an immature man who treated you badly, but that's ok because money?

He treated me poorly in a way that the majority of men treat their wives poorly. In most American households, women do the majority of housework. So, uh, yeah, like most women in hetero couplings, who stay married, I tolerated this suboptimal yet common condition until it subsided. My decision to do so was less about money and more about wanting to be married to a man.

Okay no. It may be true that in most couples women do the majority of housework, but for a lot of them it's *on purpose*, agreed to, and peaceful.. It's a smaller proportion of couples who have that dynamic because the man is immature, lazy, disorganized, disrespectful, uncaring, etc. Stop acting like those marriages are the same, they aren't.

It's sad that you felt you needed a man that badly. I'm sad for the younger version of yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait it out my fanny. Are you some doormat SAHM who's congratulating herself on how much crap she put up with for decades? Sorry but allowing yourself to be mistreated ks not a solution, it's a failure.

Um, no, and I'm not sure what your vaginas has to do with this.

So your advice is for OP to do all the work herself, allow herself to be treated disrespectfully by a lazy and irresponsible man, let him waste their money, this goes on for decades, and at the end what's the prize? Still being married to a jerk who's slightly better? No thanks.

He sounds immature. That tends to improve over time.

Where I'm coming from with this is, I did have a husband that didn't do as much housework as I felt he should and also was irresponsible with money. At some point I decided to stop nagging and just accept the situation. It was not easy and it was not fair. Fast forward about 10 years- he is now a much greater contributor to the household-- does all cooking, shopping, schlepping the kids around, and a non-terrible amount of cleaning. (I still do more cleaning.) And, his income is now extremely high, high enough that he is still able to make silly purchases or lose money in predictable ways and it doesn't impact us at all. I dislike clutter, so I don't love this trait, but it isn't a crisis like it was before. So yes-- people can and often do have a difficult time in the first part of marriage and then go on to have a great marriage.

It sounds like she's done and is leaving him, and that's also a path forward. But this is something that is a fairly common problem in relationships, and if you read the research on it, it does tend to improve with time, and in later life actually flips, with men doing more housework than women in retirement age.

But what if he didn't improve? What if he never made money? Would it be worth it then? Seems like a big gamble, especially if retirement security is on the line.

Yeah, that was a gamble. My retirement wasn't on the line though, we were financially okay in that department, along with paying for college, etc. After devoting a lot of time reading studies on the division of housework in modern American families, I decided that it was likely to improve and focused on that. It's hard to visualize the counterfactual, how I would have felt if we were still dealing with this. But I tend to be data driven and the numbers for married people are generally better than unmarried.

If my husband never made money at all, I wouldn't have married him. Financial security is a huge factor to me. He was always a good earner, just an even better spender until he made so much it'd be difficult to spend it.

So you married an immature man who treated you badly, but that's ok because money?

He treated me poorly in a way that the majority of men treat their wives poorly. In most American households, women do the majority of housework. So, uh, yeah, like most women in hetero couplings, who stay married, I tolerated this suboptimal yet common condition until it subsided. My decision to do so was less about money and more about wanting to be married to a man.

Maybe in your generation it's that common, but I'm sad for you that you think that was the price of marriage. Personally I'd rather be single.

It's common in every generation. Here's a recent Gallop poll: https://news.gallup.com/poll/283979/women-handle-main-household-tasks.aspx

And it's worse than this, bc it's been proven that men report doing more housework than they actually do. Gallop is tracking self-reported activity. So even the lies are underperforming.

I do think this is the price of heterosexual marriage; and yes, it does make sense for women to carefully consider if this is a price worth paying before they get married. If you are single and this would be a deal breaker for you, you may want to either stay single or have a very firm agreement, because this is very much a modern reality.

[Anonymous]

I don’t believe people are lazy. They are just struggling with something. I have always found this to be true when you truly try to see the root of the problem.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait it out my fanny. Are you some doormat SAHM who's congratulating herself on how much crap she put up with for decades? Sorry but allowing yourself to be mistreated ks not a solution, it's a failure.

Um, no, and I'm not sure what your vaginas has to do with this.

So your advice is for OP to do all the work herself, allow herself to be treated disrespectfully by a lazy and irresponsible man, let him waste their money, this goes on for decades, and at the end what's the prize? Still being married to a jerk who's slightly better? No thanks.

He sounds immature. That tends to improve over time.

Where I'm coming from with this is, I did have a husband that didn't do as much housework as I felt he should and also was irresponsible with money. At some point I decided to stop nagging and just accept the situation. It was not easy and it was not fair. Fast forward about 10 years- he is now a much greater contributor to the household-- does all cooking, shopping, schlepping the kids around, and a non-terrible amount of cleaning. (I still do more cleaning.) And, his income is now extremely high, high enough that he is still able to make silly purchases or lose money in predictable ways and it doesn't impact us at all. I dislike clutter, so I don't love this trait, but it isn't a crisis like it was before. So yes-- people can and often do have a difficult time in the first part of marriage and then go on to have a great marriage.

It sounds like she's done and is leaving him, and that's also a path forward. But this is something that is a fairly common problem in relationships, and if you read the research on it, it does tend to improve with time, and in later life actually flips, with men doing more housework than women in retirement age.

But what if he didn't improve? What if he never made money? Would it be worth it then? Seems like a big gamble, especially if retirement security is on the line.

Yeah, that was a gamble. My retirement wasn't on the line though, we were financially okay in that department, along with paying for college, etc. After devoting a lot of time reading studies on the division of housework in modern American families, I decided that it was likely to improve and focused on that. It's hard to visualize the counterfactual, how I would have felt if we were still dealing with this. But I tend to be data driven and the numbers for married people are generally better than unmarried.

If my husband never made money at all, I wouldn't have married him. Financial security is a huge factor to me. He was always a good earner, just an even better spender until he made so much it'd be difficult to spend it.

So you married an immature man who treated you badly, but that's ok because money?

He treated me poorly in a way that the majority of men treat their wives poorly. In most American households, women do the majority of housework. So, uh, yeah, like most women in hetero couplings, who stay married, I tolerated this suboptimal yet common condition until it subsided. My decision to do so was less about money and more about wanting to be married to a man.

Maybe in your generation it's that common, but I'm sad for you that you think that was the price of marriage. Personally I'd rather be single.

It's common in every generation. Here's a recent Gallop poll: https://news.gallup.com/poll/283979/women-handle-main-household-tasks.aspx

And it's worse than this, bc it's been proven that men report doing more housework than they actually do. Gallop is tracking self-reported activity. So even the lies are underperforming.

I do think this is the price of heterosexual marriage; and yes, it does make sense for women to carefully consider if this is a price worth paying before they get married. If you are single and this would be a deal breaker for you, you may want to either stay single or have a very firm agreement, because this is very much a modern reality.

Again, saying that women handle most houshold tasks is misleading. Many of those couples do it that way on purpose and consensually. It's different when they intend another arrangement but the man is too immature to keep it. That is not normal.

I'm sad for you that you have to BS yourself with misleading data to tolerate your husband's bad treatment of you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait it out my fanny. Are you some doormat SAHM who's congratulating herself on how much crap she put up with for decades? Sorry but allowing yourself to be mistreated ks not a solution, it's a failure.

Um, no, and I'm not sure what your vaginas has to do with this.

So your advice is for OP to do all the work herself, allow herself to be treated disrespectfully by a lazy and irresponsible man, let him waste their money, this goes on for decades, and at the end what's the prize? Still being married to a jerk who's slightly better? No thanks.

He sounds immature. That tends to improve over time.

Where I'm coming from with this is, I did have a husband that didn't do as much housework as I felt he should and also was irresponsible with money. At some point I decided to stop nagging and just accept the situation. It was not easy and it was not fair. Fast forward about 10 years- he is now a much greater contributor to the household-- does all cooking, shopping, schlepping the kids around, and a non-terrible amount of cleaning. (I still do more cleaning.) And, his income is now extremely high, high enough that he is still able to make silly purchases or lose money in predictable ways and it doesn't impact us at all. I dislike clutter, so I don't love this trait, but it isn't a crisis like it was before. So yes-- people can and often do have a difficult time in the first part of marriage and then go on to have a great marriage.

It sounds like she's done and is leaving him, and that's also a path forward. But this is something that is a fairly common problem in relationships, and if you read the research on it, it does tend to improve with time, and in later life actually flips, with men doing more housework than women in retirement age.

But what if he didn't improve? What if he never made money? Would it be worth it then? Seems like a big gamble, especially if retirement security is on the line.

Yeah, that was a gamble. My retirement wasn't on the line though, we were financially okay in that department, along with paying for college, etc. After devoting a lot of time reading studies on the division of housework in modern American families, I decided that it was likely to improve and focused on that. It's hard to visualize the counterfactual, how I would have felt if we were still dealing with this. But I tend to be data driven and the numbers for married people are generally better than unmarried.

If my husband never made money at all, I wouldn't have married him. Financial security is a huge factor to me. He was always a good earner, just an even better spender until he made so much it'd be difficult to spend it.

So you married an immature man who treated you badly, but that's ok because money?

He treated me poorly in a way that the majority of men treat their wives poorly. In most American households, women do the majority of housework. So, uh, yeah, like most women in hetero couplings, who stay married, I tolerated this suboptimal yet common condition until it subsided. My decision to do so was less about money and more about wanting to be married to a man.

Okay no. It may be true that in most couples women do the majority of housework, but for a lot of them it's *on purpose*, agreed to, and peaceful.. It's a smaller proportion of couples who have that dynamic because the man is immature, lazy, disorganized, disrespectful, uncaring, etc. Stop acting like those marriages are the same, they aren't.

It's sad that you felt you needed a man that badly. I'm sad for the younger version of yourself.

You think that women just *want* to do more work? Like they walk in and say "no, Chad, don't do the dishes! I want to!" It is peaceful because women know the deal- that men are not likely to pull their weight in that regard, and they are tired of beating a dead horse. It's always disrespectful, uncaring, etc.

Thank you for your sympathy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait it out my fanny. Are you some doormat SAHM who's congratulating herself on how much crap she put up with for decades? Sorry but allowing yourself to be mistreated ks not a solution, it's a failure.

Um, no, and I'm not sure what your vaginas has to do with this.

So your advice is for OP to do all the work herself, allow herself to be treated disrespectfully by a lazy and irresponsible man, let him waste their money, this goes on for decades, and at the end what's the prize? Still being married to a jerk who's slightly better? No thanks.

He sounds immature. That tends to improve over time.

Where I'm coming from with this is, I did have a husband that didn't do as much housework as I felt he should and also was irresponsible with money. At some point I decided to stop nagging and just accept the situation. It was not easy and it was not fair. Fast forward about 10 years- he is now a much greater contributor to the household-- does all cooking, shopping, schlepping the kids around, and a non-terrible amount of cleaning. (I still do more cleaning.) And, his income is now extremely high, high enough that he is still able to make silly purchases or lose money in predictable ways and it doesn't impact us at all. I dislike clutter, so I don't love this trait, but it isn't a crisis like it was before. So yes-- people can and often do have a difficult time in the first part of marriage and then go on to have a great marriage.

It sounds like she's done and is leaving him, and that's also a path forward. But this is something that is a fairly common problem in relationships, and if you read the research on it, it does tend to improve with time, and in later life actually flips, with men doing more housework than women in retirement age.

But what if he didn't improve? What if he never made money? Would it be worth it then? Seems like a big gamble, especially if retirement security is on the line.

Yeah, that was a gamble. My retirement wasn't on the line though, we were financially okay in that department, along with paying for college, etc. After devoting a lot of time reading studies on the division of housework in modern American families, I decided that it was likely to improve and focused on that. It's hard to visualize the counterfactual, how I would have felt if we were still dealing with this. But I tend to be data driven and the numbers for married people are generally better than unmarried.

If my husband never made money at all, I wouldn't have married him. Financial security is a huge factor to me. He was always a good earner, just an even better spender until he made so much it'd be difficult to spend it.

So you married an immature man who treated you badly, but that's ok because money?

He treated me poorly in a way that the majority of men treat their wives poorly. In most American households, women do the majority of housework. So, uh, yeah, like most women in hetero couplings, who stay married, I tolerated this suboptimal yet common condition until it subsided. My decision to do so was less about money and more about wanting to be married to a man.

Maybe in your generation it's that common, but I'm sad for you that you think that was the price of marriage. Personally I'd rather be single.

It's common in every generation. Here's a recent Gallop poll: https://news.gallup.com/poll/283979/women-handle-main-household-tasks.aspx

And it's worse than this, bc it's been proven that men report doing more housework than they actually do. Gallop is tracking self-reported activity. So even the lies are underperforming.

I do think this is the price of heterosexual marriage; and yes, it does make sense for women to carefully consider if this is a price worth paying before they get married. If you are single and this would be a deal breaker for you, you may want to either stay single or have a very firm agreement, because this is very much a modern reality.

Again, saying that women handle most houshold tasks is misleading. Many of those couples do it that way on purpose and consensually. It's different when they intend another arrangement but the man is too immature to keep it. That is not normal.

I'm sad for you that you have to BS yourself with misleading data to tolerate your husband's bad treatment of you.

All these women consensually doing far more housework. Nothing to see here!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait it out my fanny. Are you some doormat SAHM who's congratulating herself on how much crap she put up with for decades? Sorry but allowing yourself to be mistreated ks not a solution, it's a failure.

Um, no, and I'm not sure what your vaginas has to do with this.

So your advice is for OP to do all the work herself, allow herself to be treated disrespectfully by a lazy and irresponsible man, let him waste their money, this goes on for decades, and at the end what's the prize? Still being married to a jerk who's slightly better? No thanks.

He sounds immature. That tends to improve over time.

Where I'm coming from with this is, I did have a husband that didn't do as much housework as I felt he should and also was irresponsible with money. At some point I decided to stop nagging and just accept the situation. It was not easy and it was not fair. Fast forward about 10 years- he is now a much greater contributor to the household-- does all cooking, shopping, schlepping the kids around, and a non-terrible amount of cleaning. (I still do more cleaning.) And, his income is now extremely high, high enough that he is still able to make silly purchases or lose money in predictable ways and it doesn't impact us at all. I dislike clutter, so I don't love this trait, but it isn't a crisis like it was before. So yes-- people can and often do have a difficult time in the first part of marriage and then go on to have a great marriage.

It sounds like she's done and is leaving him, and that's also a path forward. But this is something that is a fairly common problem in relationships, and if you read the research on it, it does tend to improve with time, and in later life actually flips, with men doing more housework than women in retirement age.

But what if he didn't improve? What if he never made money? Would it be worth it then? Seems like a big gamble, especially if retirement security is on the line.

Yeah, that was a gamble. My retirement wasn't on the line though, we were financially okay in that department, along with paying for college, etc. After devoting a lot of time reading studies on the division of housework in modern American families, I decided that it was likely to improve and focused on that. It's hard to visualize the counterfactual, how I would have felt if we were still dealing with this. But I tend to be data driven and the numbers for married people are generally better than unmarried.

If my husband never made money at all, I wouldn't have married him. Financial security is a huge factor to me. He was always a good earner, just an even better spender until he made so much it'd be difficult to spend it.

So you married an immature man who treated you badly, but that's ok because money?

He treated me poorly in a way that the majority of men treat their wives poorly. In most American households, women do the majority of housework. So, uh, yeah, like most women in hetero couplings, who stay married, I tolerated this suboptimal yet common condition until it subsided. My decision to do so was less about money and more about wanting to be married to a man.

Okay no. It may be true that in most couples women do the majority of housework, but for a lot of them it's *on purpose*, agreed to, and peaceful.. It's a smaller proportion of couples who have that dynamic because the man is immature, lazy, disorganized, disrespectful, uncaring, etc. Stop acting like those marriages are the same, they aren't.

It's sad that you felt you needed a man that badly. I'm sad for the younger version of yourself.

You think that women just *want* to do more work? Like they walk in and say "no, Chad, don't do the dishes! I want to!" It is peaceful because women know the deal- that men are not likely to pull their weight in that regard, and they are tired of beating a dead horse. It's always disrespectful, uncaring, etc.

Thank you for your sympathy.

If they are SAHM or work part time, yes I would think that is definitely and explicitly the deal. The question is not "In how many households does the woman do more". It's "In how many households does the woman do much more despite working full time and going to therapy and constantly exhorting her DH to do the things he explicitly agree to do?". And that's a far smaller proportion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait it out my fanny. Are you some doormat SAHM who's congratulating herself on how much crap she put up with for decades? Sorry but allowing yourself to be mistreated ks not a solution, it's a failure.

Um, no, and I'm not sure what your vaginas has to do with this.

So your advice is for OP to do all the work herself, allow herself to be treated disrespectfully by a lazy and irresponsible man, let him waste their money, this goes on for decades, and at the end what's the prize? Still being married to a jerk who's slightly better? No thanks.

He sounds immature. That tends to improve over time.

Where I'm coming from with this is, I did have a husband that didn't do as much housework as I felt he should and also was irresponsible with money. At some point I decided to stop nagging and just accept the situation. It was not easy and it was not fair. Fast forward about 10 years- he is now a much greater contributor to the household-- does all cooking, shopping, schlepping the kids around, and a non-terrible amount of cleaning. (I still do more cleaning.) And, his income is now extremely high, high enough that he is still able to make silly purchases or lose money in predictable ways and it doesn't impact us at all. I dislike clutter, so I don't love this trait, but it isn't a crisis like it was before. So yes-- people can and often do have a difficult time in the first part of marriage and then go on to have a great marriage.

It sounds like she's done and is leaving him, and that's also a path forward. But this is something that is a fairly common problem in relationships, and if you read the research on it, it does tend to improve with time, and in later life actually flips, with men doing more housework than women in retirement age.

But what if he didn't improve? What if he never made money? Would it be worth it then? Seems like a big gamble, especially if retirement security is on the line.

Yeah, that was a gamble. My retirement wasn't on the line though, we were financially okay in that department, along with paying for college, etc. After devoting a lot of time reading studies on the division of housework in modern American families, I decided that it was likely to improve and focused on that. It's hard to visualize the counterfactual, how I would have felt if we were still dealing with this. But I tend to be data driven and the numbers for married people are generally better than unmarried.

If my husband never made money at all, I wouldn't have married him. Financial security is a huge factor to me. He was always a good earner, just an even better spender until he made so much it'd be difficult to spend it.

So you married an immature man who treated you badly, but that's ok because money?

He treated me poorly in a way that the majority of men treat their wives poorly. In most American households, women do the majority of housework. So, uh, yeah, like most women in hetero couplings, who stay married, I tolerated this suboptimal yet common condition until it subsided. My decision to do so was less about money and more about wanting to be married to a man.

Maybe in your generation it's that common, but I'm sad for you that you think that was the price of marriage. Personally I'd rather be single.

+1 I'm in my 50s. I would not stay with a man who treated me "poorly". That PP is normalizing sh1tty behavior by men. That's why it's not changing.

I do agree that it is all too common, though. My parents despaired of me being an old maid at the ripe age of 30. I come from a conservative culture, with very defined gender roles. I guess I am the black sheep of my family because I was not going to accept being treated " poorly in a way that the majority of men treat their wives poorly". My mother told me that this is just the way things are. Her husband, my father, treated her poorly. I vowed to never be put in that position.

I waited and found a great man who didn't treat me poorly. We have a much happier marriage than my parents or my sisters who also accepted being treated "poorly". Married 20+ years

I tell DD to marry a man who will treat her well, like her dad treats me. Teen DS sees his dad doing a lot of the cooking and shopping, helping with laundry, etc.. DS even cooks himself, takes out the trash once or twice a week, fold his own laundry, makes his own bed. The've been doing this since they were tweens (we did help make beds when they were younger). They are responsible for packing their own lunches and washing their lunch containers. I won't be able to control their chores or what they do once they leave home, but I like to think that I did my job of teaching them to take care of themselves, and hopefully, one day if/when they get married and have kids, they will be good partners and parents, ie, not like OP's husband or the PP's.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait it out my fanny. Are you some doormat SAHM who's congratulating herself on how much crap she put up with for decades? Sorry but allowing yourself to be mistreated ks not a solution, it's a failure.

Um, no, and I'm not sure what your vaginas has to do with this.

So your advice is for OP to do all the work herself, allow herself to be treated disrespectfully by a lazy and irresponsible man, let him waste their money, this goes on for decades, and at the end what's the prize? Still being married to a jerk who's slightly better? No thanks.

He sounds immature. That tends to improve over time.

Where I'm coming from with this is, I did have a husband that didn't do as much housework as I felt he should and also was irresponsible with money. At some point I decided to stop nagging and just accept the situation. It was not easy and it was not fair. Fast forward about 10 years- he is now a much greater contributor to the household-- does all cooking, shopping, schlepping the kids around, and a non-terrible amount of cleaning. (I still do more cleaning.) And, his income is now extremely high, high enough that he is still able to make silly purchases or lose money in predictable ways and it doesn't impact us at all. I dislike clutter, so I don't love this trait, but it isn't a crisis like it was before. So yes-- people can and often do have a difficult time in the first part of marriage and then go on to have a great marriage.

It sounds like she's done and is leaving him, and that's also a path forward. But this is something that is a fairly common problem in relationships, and if you read the research on it, it does tend to improve with time, and in later life actually flips, with men doing more housework than women in retirement age.

But what if he didn't improve? What if he never made money? Would it be worth it then? Seems like a big gamble, especially if retirement security is on the line.

Yeah, that was a gamble. My retirement wasn't on the line though, we were financially okay in that department, along with paying for college, etc. After devoting a lot of time reading studies on the division of housework in modern American families, I decided that it was likely to improve and focused on that. It's hard to visualize the counterfactual, how I would have felt if we were still dealing with this. But I tend to be data driven and the numbers for married people are generally better than unmarried.

If my husband never made money at all, I wouldn't have married him. Financial security is a huge factor to me. He was always a good earner, just an even better spender until he made so much it'd be difficult to spend it.

So you married an immature man who treated you badly, but that's ok because money?

He treated me poorly in a way that the majority of men treat their wives poorly. In most American households, women do the majority of housework. So, uh, yeah, like most women in hetero couplings, who stay married, I tolerated this suboptimal yet common condition until it subsided. My decision to do so was less about money and more about wanting to be married to a man.

Okay no. It may be true that in most couples women do the majority of housework, but for a lot of them it's *on purpose*, agreed to, and peaceful.. It's a smaller proportion of couples who have that dynamic because the man is immature, lazy, disorganized, disrespectful, uncaring, etc. Stop acting like those marriages are the same, they aren't.

It's sad that you felt you needed a man that badly. I'm sad for the younger version of yourself.

You think that women just *want* to do more work? Like they walk in and say "no, Chad, don't do the dishes! I want to!" It is peaceful because women know the deal- that men are not likely to pull their weight in that regard, and they are tired of beating a dead horse. It's always disrespectful, uncaring, etc.

Thank you for your sympathy.

If they are SAHM or work part time, yes I would think that is definitely and explicitly the deal. The question is not "In how many households does the woman do more". It's "In how many households does the woman do much more despite working full time and going to therapy and constantly exhorting her DH to do the things he explicitly agree to do?". And that's a far smaller proportion.

On the contrary, when women outearn their husband, they do even more housework than in couples where the woman earns less. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/05/02/housework-divide-working-parents/

Are these women just like, obsessed with working? Is that it? Has nothing to do with the fact that men are cultured to regard it as women's responsibility?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait it out my fanny. Are you some doormat SAHM who's congratulating herself on how much crap she put up with for decades? Sorry but allowing yourself to be mistreated ks not a solution, it's a failure.

Um, no, and I'm not sure what your vaginas has to do with this.

So your advice is for OP to do all the work herself, allow herself to be treated disrespectfully by a lazy and irresponsible man, let him waste their money, this goes on for decades, and at the end what's the prize? Still being married to a jerk who's slightly better? No thanks.

He sounds immature. That tends to improve over time.

Where I'm coming from with this is, I did have a husband that didn't do as much housework as I felt he should and also was irresponsible with money. At some point I decided to stop nagging and just accept the situation. It was not easy and it was not fair. Fast forward about 10 years- he is now a much greater contributor to the household-- does all cooking, shopping, schlepping the kids around, and a non-terrible amount of cleaning. (I still do more cleaning.) And, his income is now extremely high, high enough that he is still able to make silly purchases or lose money in predictable ways and it doesn't impact us at all. I dislike clutter, so I don't love this trait, but it isn't a crisis like it was before. So yes-- people can and often do have a difficult time in the first part of marriage and then go on to have a great marriage.

It sounds like she's done and is leaving him, and that's also a path forward. But this is something that is a fairly common problem in relationships, and if you read the research on it, it does tend to improve with time, and in later life actually flips, with men doing more housework than women in retirement age.

But what if he didn't improve? What if he never made money? Would it be worth it then? Seems like a big gamble, especially if retirement security is on the line.

Yeah, that was a gamble. My retirement wasn't on the line though, we were financially okay in that department, along with paying for college, etc. After devoting a lot of time reading studies on the division of housework in modern American families, I decided that it was likely to improve and focused on that. It's hard to visualize the counterfactual, how I would have felt if we were still dealing with this. But I tend to be data driven and the numbers for married people are generally better than unmarried.

If my husband never made money at all, I wouldn't have married him. Financial security is a huge factor to me. He was always a good earner, just an even better spender until he made so much it'd be difficult to spend it.

So you married an immature man who treated you badly, but that's ok because money?

He treated me poorly in a way that the majority of men treat their wives poorly. In most American households, women do the majority of housework. So, uh, yeah, like most women in hetero couplings, who stay married, I tolerated this suboptimal yet common condition until it subsided. My decision to do so was less about money and more about wanting to be married to a man.

Okay no. It may be true that in most couples women do the majority of housework, but for a lot of them it's *on purpose*, agreed to, and peaceful.. It's a smaller proportion of couples who have that dynamic because the man is immature, lazy, disorganized, disrespectful, uncaring, etc. Stop acting like those marriages are the same, they aren't.

It's sad that you felt you needed a man that badly. I'm sad for the younger version of yourself.

You think that women just *want* to do more work? Like they walk in and say "no, Chad, don't do the dishes! I want to!" It is peaceful because women know the deal- that men are not likely to pull their weight in that regard, and they are tired of beating a dead horse. It's always disrespectful, uncaring, etc.

Thank you for your sympathy.

If they are SAHM or work part time, yes I would think that is definitely and explicitly the deal. The question is not "In how many households does the woman do more". It's "In how many households does the woman do much more despite working full time and going to therapy and constantly exhorting her DH to do the things he explicitly agree to do?". And that's a far smaller proportion.

On the contrary, when women outearn their husband, they do even more housework than in couples where the woman earns less. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/05/02/housework-divide-working-parents/

Are these women just like, obsessed with working? Is that it? Has nothing to do with the fact that men are cultured to regard it as women's responsibility?

I don't know, probably some of them are unahppy and others of them have their reasons, but I do know it's abnormal for a.man to behave like OP's husband, being lazy and yelling and doing hardly anything in the face of therapy and repeated requests.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t believe people are lazy. They are just struggling with something. I have always found this to be true when you truly try to see the root of the problem.

um.. yes, some people are just really lazy, and in part, it's because housechores aren't important to them.

case in point: my teens have their own bathrooms. I make sure we have enough TP in the house, but it's up to them to put the TP in their bathroom. I noticed their TP on the stand was getting low. I reminded them to get it. Neither did. I told them that one day, they are going to run out of TP when they really need it, and what are they going to do. Sure enough, I hear the my teen DS yell through the bathroom door, "I need TP!". I was tempted to not get him any since I had told them, repeatedly, to restock it. Their TP stand can hold up to 4 rolls. You'd think they would learn their lesson and put 4 rolls on it. Nope. Anywhoo, as I got him the TP I said, "I told you so." I asked him what are you going to do when you are living on your own, and you don't pay attention to the TP, and a woman comes over, and either you or she needs the TP while there.. you gonna yell to her, "I need TP". Sure, if she's a good person, she'll get it for you, but that might not be a good look for you.

It's because my kids are lazy. BTW, even after all this, I told them to put 4 rolls on there, and stood there and made sure they did it.

Sure, they are teens, but a lot of men (and women) don't seem to get any better about not being lazy about this type of thing.

[Anonymous]

You already sound pretty broken, OP. I’m not sure this job can actually make your marriage worse. At least you may have a little more money (ideally for child support and alimony).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait it out my fanny. Are you some doormat SAHM who's congratulating herself on how much crap she put up with for decades? Sorry but allowing yourself to be mistreated ks not a solution, it's a failure.

Um, no, and I'm not sure what your vaginas has to do with this.

So your advice is for OP to do all the work herself, allow herself to be treated disrespectfully by a lazy and irresponsible man, let him waste their money, this goes on for decades, and at the end what's the prize? Still being married to a jerk who's slightly better? No thanks.

He sounds immature. That tends to improve over time.

Where I'm coming from with this is, I did have a husband that didn't do as much housework as I felt he should and also was irresponsible with money. At some point I decided to stop nagging and just accept the situation. It was not easy and it was not fair. Fast forward about 10 years- he is now a much greater contributor to the household-- does all cooking, shopping, schlepping the kids around, and a non-terrible amount of cleaning. (I still do more cleaning.) And, his income is now extremely high, high enough that he is still able to make silly purchases or lose money in predictable ways and it doesn't impact us at all. I dislike clutter, so I don't love this trait, but it isn't a crisis like it was before. So yes-- people can and often do have a difficult time in the first part of marriage and then go on to have a great marriage.

It sounds like she's done and is leaving him, and that's also a path forward. But this is something that is a fairly common problem in relationships, and if you read the research on it, it does tend to improve with time, and in later life actually flips, with men doing more housework than women in retirement age.

But what if he didn't improve? What if he never made money? Would it be worth it then? Seems like a big gamble, especially if retirement security is on the line.

Yeah, that was a gamble. My retirement wasn't on the line though, we were financially okay in that department, along with paying for college, etc. After devoting a lot of time reading studies on the division of housework in modern American families, I decided that it was likely to improve and focused on that. It's hard to visualize the counterfactual, how I would have felt if we were still dealing with this. But I tend to be data driven and the numbers for married people are generally better than unmarried.

If my husband never made money at all, I wouldn't have married him. Financial security is a huge factor to me. He was always a good earner, just an even better spender until he made so much it'd be difficult to spend it.

So you married an immature man who treated you badly, but that's ok because money?

He treated me poorly in a way that the majority of men treat their wives poorly. In most American households, women do the majority of housework. So, uh, yeah, like most women in hetero couplings, who stay married, I tolerated this suboptimal yet common condition until it subsided. My decision to do so was less about money and more about wanting to be married to a man.

Okay no. It may be true that in most couples women do the majority of housework, but for a lot of them it's *on purpose*, agreed to, and peaceful.. It's a smaller proportion of couples who have that dynamic because the man is immature, lazy, disorganized, disrespectful, uncaring, etc. Stop acting like those marriages are the same, they aren't.

It's sad that you felt you needed a man that badly. I'm sad for the younger version of yourself.

You think that women just *want* to do more work? Like they walk in and say "no, Chad, don't do the dishes! I want to!" It is peaceful because women know the deal- that men are not likely to pull their weight in that regard, and they are tired of beating a dead horse. It's always disrespectful, uncaring, etc.

Thank you for your sympathy.

If they are SAHM or work part time, yes I would think that is definitely and explicitly the deal. The question is not "In how many households does the woman do more". It's "In how many households does the woman do much more despite working full time and going to therapy and constantly exhorting her DH to do the things he explicitly agree to do?". And that's a far smaller proportion.

On the contrary, when women outearn their husband, they do even more housework than in couples where the woman earns less. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/05/02/housework-divide-working-parents/

Are these women just like, obsessed with working? Is that it? Has nothing to do with the fact that men are cultured to regard it as women's responsibility?

I don't know, probably some of them are unahppy and others of them have their reasons, but I do know it's abnormal for a.man to behave like OP's husband, being lazy and yelling and doing hardly anything in the face of therapy and repeated requests.

I suspect that OP is more persistent about this issue than most women, as I also was before I made peace with it. Can we at least agree that it is not normal to write love letters thanking your spouse for cooking dinner? That's an unusual level of engagement on this topic. And, like most men are cultured not to do housework, women are cultured to do it. So this is probably not an issue that is brought to the surface in the way it is in OP's (and was in mine at first). So he sounds like a prick but maybe a lot of marriages would look like this if women weren't all out there cheerfully and consensually doing more than they should have to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait it out my fanny. Are you some doormat SAHM who's congratulating herself on how much crap she put up with for decades? Sorry but allowing yourself to be mistreated ks not a solution, it's a failure.

Um, no, and I'm not sure what your vaginas has to do with this.

So your advice is for OP to do all the work herself, allow herself to be treated disrespectfully by a lazy and irresponsible man, let him waste their money, this goes on for decades, and at the end what's the prize? Still being married to a jerk who's slightly better? No thanks.

He sounds immature. That tends to improve over time.

Where I'm coming from with this is, I did have a husband that didn't do as much housework as I felt he should and also was irresponsible with money. At some point I decided to stop nagging and just accept the situation. It was not easy and it was not fair. Fast forward about 10 years- he is now a much greater contributor to the household-- does all cooking, shopping, schlepping the kids around, and a non-terrible amount of cleaning. (I still do more cleaning.) And, his income is now extremely high, high enough that he is still able to make silly purchases or lose money in predictable ways and it doesn't impact us at all. I dislike clutter, so I don't love this trait, but it isn't a crisis like it was before. So yes-- people can and often do have a difficult time in the first part of marriage and then go on to have a great marriage.

It sounds like she's done and is leaving him, and that's also a path forward. But this is something that is a fairly common problem in relationships, and if you read the research on it, it does tend to improve with time, and in later life actually flips, with men doing more housework than women in retirement age.

But what if he didn't improve? What if he never made money? Would it be worth it then? Seems like a big gamble, especially if retirement security is on the line.

Yeah, that was a gamble. My retirement wasn't on the line though, we were financially okay in that department, along with paying for college, etc. After devoting a lot of time reading studies on the division of housework in modern American families, I decided that it was likely to improve and focused on that. It's hard to visualize the counterfactual, how I would have felt if we were still dealing with this. But I tend to be data driven and the numbers for married people are generally better than unmarried.

If my husband never made money at all, I wouldn't have married him. Financial security is a huge factor to me. He was always a good earner, just an even better spender until he made so much it'd be difficult to spend it.

So you married an immature man who treated you badly, but that's ok because money?

He treated me poorly in a way that the majority of men treat their wives poorly. In most American households, women do the majority of housework. So, uh, yeah, like most women in hetero couplings, who stay married, I tolerated this suboptimal yet common condition until it subsided. My decision to do so was less about money and more about wanting to be married to a man.

Okay no. It may be true that in most couples women do the majority of housework, but for a lot of them it's *on purpose*, agreed to, and peaceful.. It's a smaller proportion of couples who have that dynamic because the man is immature, lazy, disorganized, disrespectful, uncaring, etc. Stop acting like those marriages are the same, they aren't.

It's sad that you felt you needed a man that badly. I'm sad for the younger version of yourself.

You think that women just *want* to do more work? Like they walk in and say "no, Chad, don't do the dishes! I want to!" It is peaceful because women know the deal- that men are not likely to pull their weight in that regard, and they are tired of beating a dead horse. It's always disrespectful, uncaring, etc.

Thank you for your sympathy.

If they are SAHM or work part time, yes I would think that is definitely and explicitly the deal. The question is not "In how many households does the woman do more". It's "In how many households does the woman do much more despite working full time and going to therapy and constantly exhorting her DH to do the things he explicitly agree to do?". And that's a far smaller proportion.

On the contrary, when women outearn their husband, they do even more housework than in couples where the woman earns less. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/05/02/housework-divide-working-parents/

Are these women just like, obsessed with working? Is that it? Has nothing to do with the fact that men are cultured to regard it as women's responsibility?

I don't know, probably some of them are unahppy and others of them have their reasons, but I do know it's abnormal for a.man to behave like OP's husband, being lazy and yelling and doing hardly anything in the face of therapy and repeated requests.

I would think 1) earnings is different from hours worked. 2) not all family work is housework. Taking care of the car, bringing children places, managing finances, all of that stuff counts too and I would be fine doing more housework if I did less of the other stuff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait it out my fanny. Are you some doormat SAHM who's congratulating herself on how much crap she put up with for decades? Sorry but allowing yourself to be mistreated ks not a solution, it's a failure.

Um, no, and I'm not sure what your vaginas has to do with this.

So your advice is for OP to do all the work herself, allow herself to be treated disrespectfully by a lazy and irresponsible man, let him waste their money, this goes on for decades, and at the end what's the prize? Still being married to a jerk who's slightly better? No thanks.

He sounds immature. That tends to improve over time.

Where I'm coming from with this is, I did have a husband that didn't do as much housework as I felt he should and also was irresponsible with money. At some point I decided to stop nagging and just accept the situation. It was not easy and it was not fair. Fast forward about 10 years- he is now a much greater contributor to the household-- does all cooking, shopping, schlepping the kids around, and a non-terrible amount of cleaning. (I still do more cleaning.) And, his income is now extremely high, high enough that he is still able to make silly purchases or lose money in predictable ways and it doesn't impact us at all. I dislike clutter, so I don't love this trait, but it isn't a crisis like it was before. So yes-- people can and often do have a difficult time in the first part of marriage and then go on to have a great marriage.

It sounds like she's done and is leaving him, and that's also a path forward. But this is something that is a fairly common problem in relationships, and if you read the research on it, it does tend to improve with time, and in later life actually flips, with men doing more housework than women in retirement age.

But what if he didn't improve? What if he never made money? Would it be worth it then? Seems like a big gamble, especially if retirement security is on the line.

Yeah, that was a gamble. My retirement wasn't on the line though, we were financially okay in that department, along with paying for college, etc. After devoting a lot of time reading studies on the division of housework in modern American families, I decided that it was likely to improve and focused on that. It's hard to visualize the counterfactual, how I would have felt if we were still dealing with this. But I tend to be data driven and the numbers for married people are generally better than unmarried.

If my husband never made money at all, I wouldn't have married him. Financial security is a huge factor to me. He was always a good earner, just an even better spender until he made so much it'd be difficult to spend it.

So you married an immature man who treated you badly, but that's ok because money?

He treated me poorly in a way that the majority of men treat their wives poorly. In most American households, women do the majority of housework. So, uh, yeah, like most women in hetero couplings, who stay married, I tolerated this suboptimal yet common condition until it subsided. My decision to do so was less about money and more about wanting to be married to a man.

Okay no. It may be true that in most couples women do the majority of housework, but for a lot of them it's *on purpose*, agreed to, and peaceful.. It's a smaller proportion of couples who have that dynamic because the man is immature, lazy, disorganized, disrespectful, uncaring, etc. Stop acting like those marriages are the same, they aren't.

It's sad that you felt you needed a man that badly. I'm sad for the younger version of yourself.

You think that women just *want* to do more work? Like they walk in and say "no, Chad, don't do the dishes! I want to!" It is peaceful because women know the deal- that men are not likely to pull their weight in that regard, and they are tired of beating a dead horse. It's always disrespectful, uncaring, etc.

Thank you for your sympathy.

If they are SAHM or work part time, yes I would think that is definitely and explicitly the deal. The question is not "In how many households does the woman do more". It's "In how many households does the woman do much more despite working full time and going to therapy and constantly exhorting her DH to do the things he explicitly agree to do?". And that's a far smaller proportion.

On the contrary, when women outearn their husband, they do even more housework than in couples where the woman earns less. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/05/02/housework-divide-working-parents/

Are these women just like, obsessed with working? Is that it? Has nothing to do with the fact that men are cultured to regard it as women's responsibility?

I don't know, probably some of them are unahppy and others of them have their reasons, but I do know it's abnormal for a.man to behave like OP's husband, being lazy and yelling and doing hardly anything in the face of therapy and repeated requests.

I suspect that OP is more persistent about this issue than most women, as I also was before I made peace with it. Can we at least agree that it is not normal to write love letters thanking your spouse for cooking dinner? That's an unusual level of engagement on this topic. And, like most men are cultured not to do housework, women are cultured to do it. So this is probably not an issue that is brought to the surface in the way it is in OP's (and was in mine at first). So he sounds like a prick but maybe a lot of marriages would look like this if women weren't all out there cheerfully and consensually doing more than they should have to.

The "love letter" sounds like a desperate move from someone who's trying really hard to save her marriage to a man-baby who needs a cookie every time he wipes his own bum.