Reply to Here's the thing I don't understand about husbands who don't help out

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It makes me crazy how everyone always says a cleaning service will magically solve this problem. Or that I need to “relax my standards”.

We are a family of 4 and every day entails dishes/laundry/straightening/sweeping/garbage. You can’t outsource all of that unless you can afford a daily housekeeper.

This isn’t a matter of me having exacting standards and wanting a perfect house. It’s basic health and safety. We have to take out garbage, pick up toys off the floor, clean up spills, or it creates hazards for our children’s well being and safety.

I have to remind/cajole/demand/tell/yell at DH to do anything at all. And then praise/honor/appreciate him for every little thing. I’m so exhausted. I have my own job.[/quote]

I am not trying to downplay what you're going through but I think that you are yelling at your DH about the wrong things. We're a family of 5 and you're right, not everything can be outsourced (although a biweekly cleaner DOES help!).

But the problem isn't that your DH isn't doing all those things, at least, to me, that isn't the primary problem. The problem is that he (presumably) knows this dynamic upsets you a lot and doesn't want to do anything to fix it. That is the fight I had with my husband in the beginning. That is the fight that let him to work on being more proactive. Maybe you've tried all this and your husband just totally sucks a in which case I would tell you to leave because life is too short, but sometimes when I see relationships like this it is because the wife IS mothering the husband instead of demanding him to be an equal partner. Don't fight about the garbage, fight about his refusal to be an equal partner. [/quote]

I agree that it works best if you frame these conversations around respect and equality because it’s not really possible to argue against.

I.e. “Is it fair to make me scrape your dirty plates and load them in the dishwasher? If you could do that yourself, I would really appreciate it.”[/quote]

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