Anonymous wrote:*neatly! My typo killed my joke.

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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.

Anonymous wrote:I think it’s reasonable to want things done to your standard if you are mostly the one to do them. I like my kitchen counters cleared off and wiped down at the end of the evening, even if they’re going to get some new crumbs and fingerprints first thing in the morning. My husband thinks this is silly. so almost all the time, I do it. But if I’m sick, or busy, or just seem stressed and he says “go make a cuppa tea, I’ll finish the kitchen” he’ll do it. Because he loves me and wants to do things to make me happy, and if he says “I’ll finish the kitchen” and forget to clean the counters, I don’t complain because I love him and I appreciate the thought.

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Anonymous wrote:Empathy PP is insane or one of these men.

If a wife has to look at her DH with constant empathy equivalent to how a mother sees the struggles of their small child who’s still learning, that’s a fast-track to contempt and divorce.

Who has the strength or cognitive dissonance to be able to tolerate a marriage that is really just being a mother to someone you’re supposed to be intimate with? What man is ok with this?

YES!!! THIS!!!! How am I supposed to feel sexual attraction to some fellow adult whom I basically mother!???

So get a divorce. Why do you need to crowdsource this?

Not PP but if I divorce my kids will be alone with DH up to half the time, which will mean living in chaos and squalor and being in unsafe situations. And then I’ll be coparenting with someone who can’t communicate or function as an adult.

I’ve decided it’s safest to stay married because of my kids. Lots of other moms in the same situation.

I will leave when my kids are grown.

Either you are being absurdly overdramatic or you have made a series of outrageously incompetent decisions to marry and then have multiple children with a man who can’t even function as an adult.

His executive functioning issues were not apparent when we were dating and living in a 1 bedroom apartment and only had to work and be married.

As the demands and complexity of our life has grown, his executive function issues are more apparent and problematic.

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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.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Empathy PP is insane or one of these men.

If a wife has to look at her DH with constant empathy equivalent to how a mother sees the struggles of their small child who’s still learning, that’s a fast-track to contempt and divorce.

Who has the strength or cognitive dissonance to be able to tolerate a marriage that is really just being a mother to someone you’re supposed to be intimate with? What man is ok with this?

YES!!! THIS!!!! How am I supposed to feel sexual attraction to some fellow adult whom I basically mother!???

So get a divorce. Why do you need to crowdsource this?

Not PP but if I divorce my kids will be alone with DH up to half the time, which will mean living in chaos and squalor and being in unsafe situations. And then I’ll be coparenting with someone who can’t communicate or function as an adult.

I’ve decided it’s safest to stay married because of my kids. Lots of other moms in the same situation.

I will leave when my kids are grown.

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Anonymous wrote:If both spouses are too busy you need to hire someone to do these things

Who will do the search for the worker, the hiring of the worker, directing him/her, scheduling him/her, making payment?

Because that is work, too.

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Anonymous wrote:OP I see you. I literally call my husband Mr. 80%. It’s infuriating. He’ll empty the dishwasher and when he hits 80% it’s like he decides that’s enough - and then just leaves the rest. Projects all done to 80%. He changed the door handles on our front door and left everything out all over the foyer. It’s been two months and he still hasn’t touched up the paint. Ceiling fan replacement- same. He literally can’t complete something.

Ironically he’s all over his laundry but that’s because it only affects him! (When we first moved in together he wanted to combine laundry and I said no way in hell, I see where that’s going).

Weird. When my husband does a home improvement project (changing light fixtures, door handles, cabinets, painting, etc.) I feel like the least I can do is clean up the work area when he’s done. Let him have a well-earned break rather than being annoyed at him for doing something productive that benefits our family.

That could be one way of looking at it. But it doesn’t seem to flow in my direction when I do something that benefits the family, like cooking, pool maintenance, trash bins, general home maintenance. With cooking I still do the clean up bc I got so annoyed that - you got it - only 80% would get done. He literally just leaves stuff behind. So I am responsible for my stuff, which is daily for the most part, and he’s responsible for his stuff, which is not daily. Oh, and the examples I used I asked that they not be done, they weren’t necessary. He switched out a perfectly functional ceiling fan bc “everyone knows” you have to have one with remote control.

And bf you calling me some shrew, I take a lot of pleasure in taking care of my husband. This is an observation of his behavior, not an indictment of him nor a suggestion that he doesn’t care about me. It’s the 80% observation that is just weird to me. And yeah, it’s annoying!

You’re just biased. It would be interesting to read a list of the tasks that your husband thinks you don’t finish, don’t do correctly, or don’t do well. But we won’t, because he’s not wasting his time and energy complaining about his life partner to strangers on the internet.

(Serious question: do you honestly prefer to do 100% of the dishes rather than 20%? This just seems illogical to me.)

DP here. It's illogical to only do 80% of the dishes! Are the dishes going to magically take care of themselves? I'm responding because my DH did exactly the same thing the other day. That's just showing that the person thinks the dishes are not really their job, and they're just "helping".

The person who does 100% of the dishes recognizes the importance of the task.

The person who does 80% of the dishes assumes that it is not important enough to do it in its entirety (because the spouse will pick up the slack), which evidences a lack of caring and respect for the spouse.

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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?

Accept your spouse, with all their warts and limitations. Look at your spouse with empathy. If you know they are struggling, then help. Be a team. Find the good in the initiative to start a task and know that 3/4 of the way done if better then none.

Unclench control and perfectionism. Seriously. It’s laundry.

I dont know. Where is the line between “accepting” and “enabling?”

I mean, I’m assuming that if I died, DH would figure out how to do the laundry. It’s not like he’s incapable. By finishing these tasks without complaint, am I “accepting his limitations,” or am I enabling and encouraging maladaptive behavior?

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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)

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Anonymous wrote:OP I see you. I literally call my husband Mr. 80%. It’s infuriating. He’ll empty the dishwasher and when he hits 80% it’s like he decides that’s enough - and then just leaves the rest. Projects all done to 80%. He changed the door handles on our front door and left everything out all over the foyer. It’s been two months and he still hasn’t touched up the paint. Ceiling fan replacement- same. He literally can’t complete something.

Ironically he’s all over his laundry but that’s because it only affects him! (When we first moved in together he wanted to combine laundry and I said no way in hell, I see where that’s going).

Weird. When my husband does a home improvement project (changing light fixtures, door handles, cabinets, painting, etc.) I feel like the least I can do is clean up the work area when he’s done. Let him have a well-earned break rather than being annoyed at him for doing something productive that benefits our family.

That could be one way of looking at it. But it doesn’t seem to flow in my direction when I do something that benefits the family, like cooking, pool maintenance, trash bins, general home maintenance. With cooking I still do the clean up bc I got so annoyed that - you got it - only 80% would get done. He literally just leaves stuff behind. So I am responsible for my stuff, which is daily for the most part, and he’s responsible for his stuff, which is not daily. Oh, and the examples I used I asked that they not be done, they weren’t necessary. He switched out a perfectly functional ceiling fan bc “everyone knows” you have to have one with remote control.

And bf you calling me some shrew, I take a lot of pleasure in taking care of my husband. This is an observation of his behavior, not an indictment of him nor a suggestion that he doesn’t care about me. It’s the 80% observation that is just weird to me. And yeah, it’s annoying!

You’re just biased. It would be interesting to read a list of the tasks that your husband thinks you don’t finish, don’t do correctly, or don’t do well. But we won’t, because he’s not wasting his time and energy complaining about his life partner to strangers on the internet.

(Serious question: do you honestly prefer to do 100% of the dishes rather than 20%? This just seems illogical to me.)

DP here. It's illogical to only do 80% of the dishes! Are the dishes going to magically take care of themselves? I'm responding because my DH did exactly the same thing the other day. That's just showing that the person thinks the dishes are not really their job, and they're just "helping".

Plus it’s the CONSTANT nasty surprise of expecting something basic done and done right, showing up half-@$$ed and incomplete or needing fixing when you or a family member need it or go to get it.

Yuck. Non stop setbacks. Two steps forward, one step back. all. The. Time. That’s his normal. And worse; they often think everyone has the same high accident rate, forget $hit rate, and failure rate as them! Yeah, that must be it. Everyone’s just as dysfunctional as me so who cares! You so silly! Details schmetails! Look I did part of it!

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:OP I see you. I literally call my husband Mr. 80%. It’s infuriating. He’ll empty the dishwasher and when he hits 80% it’s like he decides that’s enough - and then just leaves the rest. Projects all done to 80%. He changed the door handles on our front door and left everything out all over the foyer. It’s been two months and he still hasn’t touched up the paint. Ceiling fan replacement- same. He literally can’t complete something.

Ironically he’s all over his laundry but that’s because it only affects him! (When we first moved in together he wanted to combine laundry and I said no way in hell, I see where that’s going).

Weird. When my husband does a home improvement project (changing light fixtures, door handles, cabinets, painting, etc.) I feel like the least I can do is clean up the work area when he’s done. Let him have a well-earned break rather than being annoyed at him for doing something productive that benefits our family.

That could be one way of looking at it. But it doesn’t seem to flow in my direction when I do something that benefits the family, like cooking, pool maintenance, trash bins, general home maintenance. With cooking I still do the clean up bc I got so annoyed that - you got it - only 80% would get done. He literally just leaves stuff behind. So I am responsible for my stuff, which is daily for the most part, and he’s responsible for his stuff, which is not daily. Oh, and the examples I used I asked that they not be done, they weren’t necessary. He switched out a perfectly functional ceiling fan bc “everyone knows” you have to have one with remote control.

And bf you calling me some shrew, I take a lot of pleasure in taking care of my husband. This is an observation of his behavior, not an indictment of him nor a suggestion that he doesn’t care about me. It’s the 80% observation that is just weird to me. And yeah, it’s annoying!

You’re just biased. It would be interesting to read a list of the tasks that your husband thinks you don’t finish, don’t do correctly, or don’t do well. But we won’t, because he’s not wasting his time and energy complaining about his life partner to strangers on the internet.

(Serious question: do you honestly prefer to do 100% of the dishes rather than 20%? This just seems illogical to me.)

DP here. It's illogical to only do 80% of the dishes! Are the dishes going to magically take care of themselves? I'm responding because my DH did exactly the same thing the other day. That's just showing that the person thinks the dishes are not really their job, and they're just "helping".

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Anonymous wrote:If you were gone for three weeks all this 20% work would get done, especially if there was a weekly housecleaner he had to prepare for. So it’s NBD, just him working on a different timetable than you.

Does his timetable include kids? Because that is often when a couple gets "out of sync" over household tasks-- when they have kids. Kids multiply the work while reducing the time you have to do it. So if pre-kids you often took a week to put away laundry or only put the dishes away when the housecleaner was coming so that she could deep clean the kitchen, it was NBD because the rest of the time you were working or socializing and who cares with there's some partially completed tasks around the house.

With kids the math is different. There's twice as much laundry and if you don't fold it and put it away, you're spending every morning picking through the pile of clean laundry trying to get your kids dressed for school. If you never actually finish the dishes there aren't enough dishes for a single meal featuring the entire family. You have to make lunches on the edge of the counter not covered by dishes. You can't finish that last 20% in the morning because you're helping a toddler get dressed and doing a school run. And you can't bank on doing it on Saturday morning because the kids have soccer or swim.

This is when women start getting frustrated because having kids forces women to function at a higher level-- more efficient, more multi-tasking, keeping track of more tasks and schedules. But many men expect their lives to operate exactly the same as before. They are convinced that if their approach to chores and schedules was working okay pre-kids, well it must still work. But it doesn't and this puts even more pressure on moms to over perform. This is how DH becomes another child to be managed. And that kills intimacy and breeds resentment. And then the DH wonders why his wife never wants to have sex anymore and why she always seems annoyed with him.

Kids change things but fir some reason a lot of men are determined to prove this wrong.

Or…you can put your husband in charge of dressing the kids, making the dinner, cleaning, etc. I did this simply by getting the higher paid job and leaving the house early and coming home late.

I have the higher paid job and we have the same hours and my DH still does not account for the kids in his thinking about anything unless explicitly reminded to do so. I can "put him in charge" of kid stuff and do (though please note that the act of "putting him in charge" is a task in itself -- my DH does not need to assign household or parenting chores to me) but he will not do it on his own. In the end I wind up resenting that I make more money and still have to be the one to just know all about all the household and parenting items we have to know and to be responsible for making sure one of us does it and then on top of that having to complete tasks for him that he halfasses even after it has been explicitly assigned to him and he's agree to do it.

This morning was "his morning" to do the camp run which meant he sat down to work at 7:30 and did not get the kids up or get them breakfast or help pack their bags or make sure they were wearing appropriate clothes and sunscreen or pay attention to the clock so that they left on time. Instead I wound up getting them up and fed (20 minutes after they should have because I thought he'd do it) and then making sure they were ready and I still had to say "shouldn't you guys be leaving" at 8:55 (10 minutes after they really should have left) and DH just stood up from his desk and walked the kids who I got ready out the door. Please compare to the three days a week that I do camp run on my own without him at all because he works in the office on those days and I do all of it without anyone reminding me or helping me. And again -- I make more. But he just absolutely refuses to make kids or household chores a priority and I always have to decide between rescuing him (and thus training him to continue to rely on me to pick up his slack) or let my kids' lives be chaos because one of their parents thinks 50% of any parenting task is good enough.

When it is his morning to do the camp run, leave at 7:30. Go to work, run an errand, get out of the house, go for a run, whatever. Let them figure it out. How much both of you get paid, isn’t a factor.

I've done this and it's mixed, because there really are negative consequences for your kids. My kids were late a lot to school last year because my husband won't get it together. We now have a few years where it's going to matter if they're on time for school but they're too young to get themselves there, and I have to manage this because he will not.

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.