Reply to S/o outsourcing cleaning as a relationship fix

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My feeling about it is this. I love my spouse and I love our life together. Outsourcing the cleaning does two things. It gets rid of conflict and [b]it improves quality of life [/b]because neither of us likes to do it. Yes there are things to be done, but when the big stuff is out of the equation there is a lot less on your plate and it’s not as important to keep score.

I guess some people will divorce over cleaning of cleaning can be the straw that breaks the camels back. And I’m sure for some the cost of outsourcing is a deterrent. But living in conflict, therapy and divorce are so much more expensive. [/quote]

So I totally get this. I've had a maid for as long as I've had a salary because I hate cleaning and will do anything to avoid it. I keep a super neat house and am good at cleaning things that are used on a regular basis and I'll vacuum, but I'd rather do just about anything than clean a bathroom, even one that's not gross. So improving quality of life I am all for.

But the getting rid of conflict thing confuses me. Last March, when everything went crazy, we stopped having our maid come. This was for several months until we decided it was ok to start up again and she felt comfortable, so for those months it was just my husband and I doing all the cleaning. He actually did more than I did because I was busy with some other things. So I know he'd step up and do it if we didn't have anyone. Paying someone to avoid being annoyed with him seems to me to be putting a bandaid over a bullet hole?[/quote]

Eh.  If it’s not a conflict for you, then it’s not a conflict for you.  Personally, I don’t see why married people would fight about money or sex.  But for some people, those things are an issue.  For us, it’s chores. 
I’m sure there is some kind of conflict in your marriage.  [/quote]

We work to resolve our conflicts. We are fundamentally different people and therefore obviously react to things differently, but then we use our words to explain how we feel and we understand what the other person is saying and we move on. So no, we don't have any kind of outstanding conflict in our marriage. We don't fight about money because we've discussed how each person feels about it and we came up with a joint plan for how to address it. Same with sex, although obviously that's a much less calculating and transactional kind of resolution. We don't feel the same way about either of those things but by learning how the other person feels and respecting their position, we have some to a place where we're both happy. Hence why I think hiring cleaners doesn't actually solve the underlying issues you have.[/quote]

But it does.  The underlying issue is that the laundry needs to get done and dinner needs made.  
[b]If you and your husband were both hungry, but neither of you wanted to cook, so you just ordered food, would you call that “not solving the underlying conflict in your relationship?”  [/b]
What if you did that five days a week, and you each cook one of the other days?  
-One way to frame this is that neither of you wants to cook much, so you eat out a lot.  
-Another way to say it is that the most he is willing to cook is one day a week, and you aren’t willing to do more than half of the cooking, so you each cook one day a week and order out the rest.  
- Another way to look at it is to say that he is a man child who doesn’t do his share of the cooking, so you have to order out.  
- Another way to look at it (and this is what is the most socially ingrained), is to say that you aren’t *really* being a good mother when you get takeout that often, so you are going to cook 6 days/week while your husband only cooks once a week.

The last two ways of thinking about the problem are destructive to your marriage in a way that the first two are not.

Obviously, there is another layer of getting takeout means that important financial goals aren’t being reached.  
[/quote]

No, I wouldn't, because we're both on the same page and neither one of us want to cook, so where's the conflict?[/quote]

The conflict is that you are both hungry, but neither of you wants to prepare food.  
You could solve it by your method of talking and talking about why each of you don’t want to cook, why the other person should cook, and eventually come to a resolution.  
Or, you could solve it my way, and just order takeout.

Both ways solve the problem.

[b]The other thing you can do is create a conflict where there isn’t one and insist that everyone needs to have a meal prepared at home every day, so either he can cook half the time, or you can do it all of the time and resent the hell out of him.  [/b] Frankly, this is the path I see a lot of women take.  [/quote]

How do you solve the daily cleaning issues, like cleaning the kitchen after a meal? I guess in your example if you're ordering takeout for every meal, it's just a matter of throwing the containers out. But what about a situation in which you actually use your kitchen? I'm fine with dividing labor, and I do more laundry than my husband and he handles the dogs more than I do, so if one spouse handles cooking and cleaning because the other does laundry and yard work, for example, that's not a problem. But it seemed to me in OP's post that her husband was refusing to do anything. (Granted, I think OP should make her kids clean their bathrooms, but that's a different issue). So my problem is with husbands that see anything around the house as the wife's problem to solve, and I think that's a jerk move. [/quote]

My housekeeper makes the meal earlier in the day, puts it in the fridge, and cleans the kitchen.  She also does the laundry while she is there.  After dinner, we just rinse off the plates we used and put them in the dishwasher.  
Her husband does the mowing and weeding.  [/quote]

Thank you for chiming in from the 1%. I'm sure your story will be really helpful for so many people.[/quote]

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