How to get through to DH that doing 80% doesn't count?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t get why it’s so bad to help with the laundry. It’s not like you don’t know that he’s going to leave the clean laundry in a pile. You “watched” the laundry pile up all day without offering to help? WTF? It appears to be some sort of bean counting, and that’s never good for a marriage. Ask yourself “how important is it to ask your spouse to do a task they hate and cause tension in your marriage over it?” It’s laundry. This isn’t important. Just work as a team. Or you could nag and be miserable, but that doesn’t seem to be working for you.

Serious question (and I’m not OP)
What do I do when we’ve already had this conversation? Multiple times? And he’s good about it for about a month, then slips back to previous behavior? And we’ve been married for close to 20 years? Am I the one who’s just supposed to suck it up ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the time? How does resentment not build?

Just.do.your.OWN.effing.laundry.

Duh.

I do. But he puts loads in of his stuff and the kids. And just leaves it there. All over the place. On top of the dryer. In random piles. Sitting in the basket for days. Then I have to dump the basket when I need to use it. (We have multiple baskets. He’ll fill them all. So please don’t tell me to buy another basket)

OMG you sometimes have to DUMP a BASKET?!?! What an effing nightmare! How do you even live??

You got me! This entire conversation is about having to dump a basket once. What a fool I am for not just dumping it once and moving on with my life.

Thanks so much. I’ve seen the light. Your wisdom is unparalleled.

The entire conversation is actually about your (and your fellow “sufferers”) refusal to accept that you are not, in fact, your spouse’s boss.

Your preferred way of handling household tasks is merely that - your *preference*. You prefer laundry folded and put away immediately, your spouse prefers to leave clean clothes in baskets. These two strategies are obviously incompatible, but that does NOT mean that YOU are RIGHT, and HE is WRONG.

Accomplishing housework to an 80% standard implies that the essentials to keep life functioning have been handled (e.g. the clothes are clean even if they are in the dryer, the majority of the dishes are clean even if they’re in the dishwasher, the kids are dressed even if they’re in mismatched socks, etc.)

While there has been a lot of talk of spouses leaving work because they expect their partners to finish it, at no point has anyone provided evidence of this expectation. It is more likely that your spouses are leaving work that they simply don’t care about. Meaning they don’t care if YOU do it or not. So yes, if I clean my house to my own personal “good enough” standards, but my spouse demands “perfection”, then spouse can feel free to “pick up the slack” to make that happen, because I simply don’t give a sh!t about what I see as pointless busywork. Or, maybe leaving a task to finish later (myself) because right now, I just don’t feel like it. If spouse decides that it is imperative to complete the task right now! and they finish it rather than wait for me to do it, that’s on them.

That was my spouse’s MO. And then I turned it on them.

Having a clean kitchen when I cook is a nonnegotiable for me, I can’t be forced to cook in a kitchen that’s a total mess. So, I’ll take my sweet time cleaning to the detriment of anything else, dinner and any plans be damned. My spouse eventually learned that while they don’t have to clean to “my standards”, nothing else gets done until the stuff is clean to my standards. I may call an ambulance for them in case of emergency, but that’s about it.

And no, they did not divorce me.

Same here, couldn’t make dinner because he left all his breakfast and lunch dishes everywhere, crumbs, utensils. No counter space so we didn’t start cooking until HE cleaned up HIS mess.

Just gather all that shit up, crumbs and all, and put it in his car. Not joking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My sister’s DH recently passed on unexpectedly and she is devastated. You all have no idea. She would give anything to have the sort of “problems” you all are complaining about.

🙄

Oh stop it with the tragedy Olympics.

Your sister shouldn’t complain because there are rape victims and starving children and unjustly incarcerated people in the world.

See how that works?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What if you do 80% of 70% of the things?

What if you think the whole pie is 6 tasks and you do 80% of 50% of those and believe you’re killing it.

But the pie is actually 30 things but yours too self centered and ignorant to care, despite being told the 30 tasks and asked to pull your weight.

Then what?

What if you insist on giving 100% to every task when 80% would do and you convince your husband into doing the same and now you’re both spending hours extra every week executing every chore to a perfect and complete standard? What could you do with that extra time? What is the opportunity cost?

Lol

Like that’s what chaotic ManBabies are doing. Optimizing the household.

Lol

Lol isn’t an answer. It’s a real question, and it’s not about optimizing the household. It’s about optimizing your life.

And guess what the best way to optimize your own solo life is: Do whatever the F you want and not a damn about anyone or anything else.

OPs spouse gets an A+ for optimizing HIS life.

Must be nice

It’s a simple question for which you still have not provided an answer. Can you honestly say that there is absolutely no better use of your time than matching kids’ socks for an hour? You couldn’t use that time to take them to the playground instead, for instance?

Are you really so boring that you literally cannot thing of a single thing that would be more beneficial to your/your family’s well-being than 100% perfectly completed housework?

(And to address a previous concern, yes you should absolutely be applying this thought process at work as well. The inability to recognize when a task needs to be completed to a bare minimum standard versus executed perfectly does not make you a better worker. It makes you inefficient.)

[Anonymous]

Rules of Fair Play. The partners get to decide Minimum Acceptable Standards. Good luck

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t get why it’s so bad to help with the laundry. It’s not like you don’t know that he’s going to leave the clean laundry in a pile. You “watched” the laundry pile up all day without offering to help? WTF? It appears to be some sort of bean counting, and that’s never good for a marriage. Ask yourself “how important is it to ask your spouse to do a task they hate and cause tension in your marriage over it?” It’s laundry. This isn’t important. Just work as a team. Or you could nag and be miserable, but that doesn’t seem to be working for you.

Serious question (and I’m not OP)
What do I do when we’ve already had this conversation? Multiple times? And he’s good about it for about a month, then slips back to previous behavior? And we’ve been married for close to 20 years? Am I the one who’s just supposed to suck it up ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the time? How does resentment not build?

Just.do.your.OWN.effing.laundry.

Duh.

I do. But he puts loads in of his stuff and the kids. And just leaves it there. All over the place. On top of the dryer. In random piles. Sitting in the basket for days. Then I have to dump the basket when I need to use it. (We have multiple baskets. He’ll fill them all. So please don’t tell me to buy another basket)

OMG you sometimes have to DUMP a BASKET?!?! What an effing nightmare! How do you even live??

You got me! This entire conversation is about having to dump a basket once. What a fool I am for not just dumping it once and moving on with my life.

Thanks so much. I’ve seen the light. Your wisdom is unparalleled.

The entire conversation is actually about your (and your fellow “sufferers”) refusal to accept that you are not, in fact, your spouse’s boss.

Your preferred way of handling household tasks is merely that - your *preference*. You prefer laundry folded and put away immediately, your spouse prefers to leave clean clothes in baskets. These two strategies are obviously incompatible, but that does NOT mean that YOU are RIGHT, and HE is WRONG.

Accomplishing housework to an 80% standard implies that the essentials to keep life functioning have been handled (e.g. the clothes are clean even if they are in the dryer, the majority of the dishes are clean even if they’re in the dishwasher, the kids are dressed even if they’re in mismatched socks, etc.)

While there has been a lot of talk of spouses leaving work because they expect their partners to finish it, at no point has anyone provided evidence of this expectation. It is more likely that your spouses are leaving work that they simply don’t care about. Meaning they don’t care if YOU do it or not. So yes, if I clean my house to my own personal “good enough” standards, but my spouse demands “perfection”, then spouse can feel free to “pick up the slack” to make that happen, because I simply don’t give a sh!t about what I see as pointless busywork. Or, maybe leaving a task to finish later (myself) because right now, I just don’t feel like it. If spouse decides that it is imperative to complete the task right now! and they finish it rather than wait for me to do it, that’s on them.

That was my spouse’s MO. And then I turned it on them.

Having a clean kitchen when I cook is a nonnegotiable for me, I can’t be forced to cook in a kitchen that’s a total mess. So, I’ll take my sweet time cleaning to the detriment of anything else, dinner and any plans be damned. My spouse eventually learned that while they don’t have to clean to “my standards”, nothing else gets done until the stuff is clean to my standards. I may call an ambulance for them in case of emergency, but that’s about it.

And no, they did not divorce me.

Same here, couldn’t make dinner because he left all his breakfast and lunch dishes everywhere, crumbs, utensils. No counter space so we didn’t start cooking until HE cleaned up HIS mess.

Just gather all that shit up, crumbs and all, and put it in his car. Not joking.

I did that once.

He got all angry and dumped what he could on the middle of the kitchen table right in front of the kids before dinner. He screamed “how dare you do this! You’re crazy!”

He’s a raging lunatic mental case though, on top of his ADHD executive functioning deficits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What if you do 80% of 70% of the things?

What if you think the whole pie is 6 tasks and you do 80% of 50% of those and believe you’re killing it.

But the pie is actually 30 things but yours too self centered and ignorant to care, despite being told the 30 tasks and asked to pull your weight.

Then what?

What if you insist on giving 100% to every task when 80% would do and you convince your husband into doing the same and now you’re both spending hours extra every week executing every chore to a perfect and complete standard? What could you do with that extra time? What is the opportunity cost?

Lol

Like that’s what chaotic ManBabies are doing. Optimizing the household.

Lol

Lol isn’t an answer. It’s a real question, and it’s not about optimizing the household. It’s about optimizing your life.

And guess what the best way to optimize your own solo life is: Do whatever the F you want and not a damn about anyone or anything else.

OPs spouse gets an A+ for optimizing HIS life.

Must be nice

It’s a simple question for which you still have not provided an answer. Can you honestly say that there is absolutely no better use of your time than matching kids’ socks for an hour? You couldn’t use that time to take them to the playground instead, for instance?

Are you really so boring that you literally cannot thing of a single thing that would be more beneficial to your/your family’s well-being than 100% perfectly completed housework?

(And to address a previous concern, yes you should absolutely be applying this thought process at work as well. The inability to recognize when a task needs to be completed to a bare minimum standard versus executed perfectly does not make you a better worker. It makes you inefficient.)

The beauty of your stinky BS is that it’s all subjective.

So to a selfish narcissist, it’s beneath him to sort and fold laundry, or put his dirty dishes away, or notice the trash can is overflowing and take it out, or talk with his upset daughter. He’s so busy and important like you said, that he needs some decompression time on Netflix. That way he’ll be ready for tomorrow, when he again will work, eat, make messes, and need his decompression time. That’s the best most optimal plan for him, and exactly what he does. Day in and day out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What if you do 80% of 70% of the things?

What if you think the whole pie is 6 tasks and you do 80% of 50% of those and believe you’re killing it.

But the pie is actually 30 things but yours too self centered and ignorant to care, despite being told the 30 tasks and asked to pull your weight.

Then what?

What if you insist on giving 100% to every task when 80% would do and you convince your husband into doing the same and now you’re both spending hours extra every week executing every chore to a perfect and complete standard? What could you do with that extra time? What is the opportunity cost?

Lol

Like that’s what chaotic ManBabies are doing. Optimizing the household.

Lol

Lol isn’t an answer. It’s a real question, and it’s not about optimizing the household. It’s about optimizing your life.

And guess what the best way to optimize your own solo life is: Do whatever the F you want and not a damn about anyone or anything else.

OPs spouse gets an A+ for optimizing HIS life.

Must be nice

It’s a simple question for which you still have not provided an answer. Can you honestly say that there is absolutely no better use of your time than matching kids’ socks for an hour? You couldn’t use that time to take them to the playground instead, for instance?

Are you really so boring that you literally cannot thing of a single thing that would be more beneficial to your/your family’s well-being than 100% perfectly completed housework?

(And to address a previous concern, yes you should absolutely be applying this thought process at work as well. The inability to recognize when a task needs to be completed to a bare minimum standard versus executed perfectly does not make you a better worker. It makes you inefficient.)

Lol

You want the list of stuff the family needs done right now? Or yesterday but it’s not done? Lol.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t get why it’s so bad to help with the laundry. It’s not like you don’t know that he’s going to leave the clean laundry in a pile. You “watched” the laundry pile up all day without offering to help? WTF? It appears to be some sort of bean counting, and that’s never good for a marriage. Ask yourself “how important is it to ask your spouse to do a task they hate and cause tension in your marriage over it?” It’s laundry. This isn’t important. Just work as a team. Or you could nag and be miserable, but that doesn’t seem to be working for you.

Serious question (and I’m not OP)
What do I do when we’ve already had this conversation? Multiple times? And he’s good about it for about a month, then slips back to previous behavior? And we’ve been married for close to 20 years? Am I the one who’s just supposed to suck it up ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the time? How does resentment not build?

Just.do.your.OWN.effing.laundry.

Duh.

I do. But he puts loads in of his stuff and the kids. And just leaves it there. All over the place. On top of the dryer. In random piles. Sitting in the basket for days. Then I have to dump the basket when I need to use it. (We have multiple baskets. He’ll fill them all. So please don’t tell me to buy another basket)

OMG you sometimes have to DUMP a BASKET?!?! What an effing nightmare! How do you even live??

You got me! This entire conversation is about having to dump a basket once. What a fool I am for not just dumping it once and moving on with my life.

Thanks so much. I’ve seen the light. Your wisdom is unparalleled.

The entire conversation is actually about your (and your fellow “sufferers”) refusal to accept that you are not, in fact, your spouse’s boss.

Your preferred way of handling household tasks is merely that - your *preference*. You prefer laundry folded and put away immediately, your spouse prefers to leave clean clothes in baskets. These two strategies are obviously incompatible, but that does NOT mean that YOU are RIGHT, and HE is WRONG.

Accomplishing housework to an 80% standard implies that the essentials to keep life functioning have been handled (e.g. the clothes are clean even if they are in the dryer, the majority of the dishes are clean even if they’re in the dishwasher, the kids are dressed even if they’re in mismatched socks, etc.)

While there has been a lot of talk of spouses leaving work because they expect their partners to finish it, at no point has anyone provided evidence of this expectation. It is more likely that your spouses are leaving work that they simply don’t care about. Meaning they don’t care if YOU do it or not. So yes, if I clean my house to my own personal “good enough” standards, but my spouse demands “perfection”, then spouse can feel free to “pick up the slack” to make that happen, because I simply don’t give a sh!t about what I see as pointless busywork. Or, maybe leaving a task to finish later (myself) because right now, I just don’t feel like it. If spouse decides that it is imperative to complete the task right now! and they finish it rather than wait for me to do it, that’s on them.

I mean, if my spouse and I didn’t so the fair play cards, and come up with an expected minimum standard for all our chores, you’d have a point.

So…how long do those dishes sit in the sink dirty? Until they grow mold?

[Anonymous]

Housekeeper comes once a week.
No kids.

[Anonymous]

She charges us extra because of all the good mold and pee on the toilets and bathroom floors. And rounding up trash takes double the time as usual since it’s everywhere. $500 a week well paid for living with a ManBaby.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What if you do 80% of 70% of the things?

What if you think the whole pie is 6 tasks and you do 80% of 50% of those and believe you’re killing it.

But the pie is actually 30 things but yours too self centered and ignorant to care, despite being told the 30 tasks and asked to pull your weight.

Then what?

What if you insist on giving 100% to every task when 80% would do and you convince your husband into doing the same and now you’re both spending hours extra every week executing every chore to a perfect and complete standard? What could you do with that extra time? What is the opportunity cost?

Lol

Like that’s what chaotic ManBabies are doing. Optimizing the household.

Lol

Lol isn’t an answer. It’s a real question, and it’s not about optimizing the household. It’s about optimizing your life.

And guess what the best way to optimize your own solo life is: Do whatever the F you want and not a damn about anyone or anything else.

OPs spouse gets an A+ for optimizing HIS life.

Must be nice

It’s a simple question for which you still have not provided an answer. Can you honestly say that there is absolutely no better use of your time than matching kids’ socks for an hour? You couldn’t use that time to take them to the playground instead, for instance?

Are you really so boring that you literally cannot thing of a single thing that would be more beneficial to your/your family’s well-being than 100% perfectly completed housework?

(And to address a previous concern, yes you should absolutely be applying this thought process at work as well. The inability to recognize when a task needs to be completed to a bare minimum standard versus executed perfectly does not make you a better worker. It makes you inefficient.)

The beauty of your stinky BS is that it’s all subjective.

So to a selfish narcissist, it’s beneath him to sort and fold laundry, or put his dirty dishes away, or notice the trash can is overflowing and take it out, or talk with his upset daughter. He’s so busy and important like you said, that he needs some decompression time on Netflix. That way he’ll be ready for tomorrow, when he again will work, eat, make messes, and need his decompression time. That’s the best most optimal plan for him, and exactly what he does. Day in and day out.

Wut?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What if you do 80% of 70% of the things?

What if you think the whole pie is 6 tasks and you do 80% of 50% of those and believe you’re killing it.

But the pie is actually 30 things but yours too self centered and ignorant to care, despite being told the 30 tasks and asked to pull your weight.

Then what?

What if you insist on giving 100% to every task when 80% would do and you convince your husband into doing the same and now you’re both spending hours extra every week executing every chore to a perfect and complete standard? What could you do with that extra time? What is the opportunity cost?

Lol

Like that’s what chaotic ManBabies are doing. Optimizing the household.

Lol

Lol isn’t an answer. It’s a real question, and it’s not about optimizing the household. It’s about optimizing your life.

And guess what the best way to optimize your own solo life is: Do whatever the F you want and not a damn about anyone or anything else.

OPs spouse gets an A+ for optimizing HIS life.

Must be nice

It’s a simple question for which you still have not provided an answer. Can you honestly say that there is absolutely no better use of your time than matching kids’ socks for an hour? You couldn’t use that time to take them to the playground instead, for instance?

Are you really so boring that you literally cannot thing of a single thing that would be more beneficial to your/your family’s well-being than 100% perfectly completed housework?

(And to address a previous concern, yes you should absolutely be applying this thought process at work as well. The inability to recognize when a task needs to be completed to a bare minimum standard versus executed perfectly does not make you a better worker. It makes you inefficient.)

Lol

You want the list of stuff the family needs done right now? Or yesterday but it’s not done? Lol.

Lol

You’re boring, have no hobbies, and your kids will only visit for big family holidays someday, got it! Lol.

[Anonymous]

The transactional perspective of some of the posters here reminds me that scorekeeping must be exhausting. Many here are making themselves miserable by focusing in what they want to get instead of what they want to give.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t get why it’s so bad to help with the laundry. It’s not like you don’t know that he’s going to leave the clean laundry in a pile. You “watched” the laundry pile up all day without offering to help? WTF? It appears to be some sort of bean counting, and that’s never good for a marriage. Ask yourself “how important is it to ask your spouse to do a task they hate and cause tension in your marriage over it?” It’s laundry. This isn’t important. Just work as a team. Or you could nag and be miserable, but that doesn’t seem to be working for you.

Serious question (and I’m not OP)
What do I do when we’ve already had this conversation? Multiple times? And he’s good about it for about a month, then slips back to previous behavior? And we’ve been married for close to 20 years? Am I the one who’s just supposed to suck it up ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the time? How does resentment not build?

Just.do.your.OWN.effing.laundry.

Duh.

I do. But he puts loads in of his stuff and the kids. And just leaves it there. All over the place. On top of the dryer. In random piles. Sitting in the basket for days. Then I have to dump the basket when I need to use it. (We have multiple baskets. He’ll fill them all. So please don’t tell me to buy another basket)

OMG you sometimes have to DUMP a BASKET?!?! What an effing nightmare! How do you even live??

You got me! This entire conversation is about having to dump a basket once. What a fool I am for not just dumping it once and moving on with my life.

Thanks so much. I’ve seen the light. Your wisdom is unparalleled.

The entire conversation is actually about your (and your fellow “sufferers”) refusal to accept that you are not, in fact, your spouse’s boss.

Your preferred way of handling household tasks is merely that - your *preference*. You prefer laundry folded and put away immediately, your spouse prefers to leave clean clothes in baskets. These two strategies are obviously incompatible, but that does NOT mean that YOU are RIGHT, and HE is WRONG.

Accomplishing housework to an 80% standard implies that the essentials to keep life functioning have been handled (e.g. the clothes are clean even if they are in the dryer, the majority of the dishes are clean even if they’re in the dishwasher, the kids are dressed even if they’re in mismatched socks, etc.)

While there has been a lot of talk of spouses leaving work because they expect their partners to finish it, at no point has anyone provided evidence of this expectation. It is more likely that your spouses are leaving work that they simply don’t care about. Meaning they don’t care if YOU do it or not. So yes, if I clean my house to my own personal “good enough” standards, but my spouse demands “perfection”, then spouse can feel free to “pick up the slack” to make that happen, because I simply don’t give a sh!t about what I see as pointless busywork. Or, maybe leaving a task to finish later (myself) because right now, I just don’t feel like it. If spouse decides that it is imperative to complete the task right now! and they finish it rather than wait for me to do it, that’s on them.

That was my spouse’s MO. And then I turned it on them.

Having a clean kitchen when I cook is a nonnegotiable for me, I can’t be forced to cook in a kitchen that’s a total mess. So, I’ll take my sweet time cleaning to the detriment of anything else, dinner and any plans be damned. My spouse eventually learned that while they don’t have to clean to “my standards”, nothing else gets done until the stuff is clean to my standards. I may call an ambulance for them in case of emergency, but that’s about it.

And no, they did not divorce me.

Same here, couldn’t make dinner because he left all his breakfast and lunch dishes everywhere, crumbs, utensils. No counter space so we didn’t start cooking until HE cleaned up HIS mess.

Just gather all that shit up, crumbs and all, and put it in his car. Not joking.

I did that once.

He got all angry and dumped what he could on the middle of the kitchen table right in front of the kids before dinner. He screamed “how dare you do this! You’re crazy!”

He’s a raging lunatic mental case though, on top of his ADHD executive functioning deficits.

Imagine trashing a loved one’s space to make a point and thinking you’re the good guy. 😬

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My sister’s DH recently passed on unexpectedly and she is devastated. You all have no idea. She would give anything to have the sort of “problems” you all are complaining about.

🙄

Oh stop it with the tragedy Olympics.

Your sister shouldn’t complain because there are rape victims and starving children and unjustly incarcerated people in the world.

See how that works?

+1000
I can’t stand those posts