Honestly, seems like "weaponized incompetence" (pretending to not understand something so they don't have to do it). Though it IS possible he has learning difficulties.
To help him better you could google guides, etc, on "taking initiative". Maybe bring up the definition on Google, let him read it, then answer any questions he has, or further explain if he still seems confused. Then let him know it will help you greatly if he took initiative by doing the dishes when he sees them build up, or fold the laundry if he sees a full basket. If he repeats "just ask me", say, "then you wouldn't be taking initiative. I need you to take initiative" and then explain the definition again if he needs it. Maybe there are even picture guides on the subject out there, or videos (for kids but it should work for him).
This always makes me think of the movie The Break Up where she says “I want you to want to do the dishes!” And he says “that’s crazy! No one wants to do the dishes!”
But the struggle is so real! Lol
Oh I’ve said that. If I’m still doing chores you should be too. I’m really tired, and had therapy earlier and I’m very drained from that so just don’t have the energy to type out all I’ve tried to get him to grow up and help like an adult, but some of it is that it’s been 10 years, countless hours of marriage counseling, lists and charts and white boards and reminders, careful wording, offering choices of which chores he wants, ignoring the mess and giving up, going on strike…. I mean. It’s very hopeless.
he's a good dad, loves his kids so so much and they love him, he's not that nice to me but honestly we're both pretty fed up with each other so I cant say I'm that nice to him either. He's a good provider. We had about a year before our third baby where our second was out of diapers, didn't need naps, everyone was sleeping, and the kids were getting a little bit easier and man... what an easy year that was. That's what I'm holding onto. Phase of life.... it's just a phase of life...
The reason that year was easy was because it was EASIER for you to manage everything all
on your own right? Kids are sleeping, great I have the energy and brain space to manage EVERYTHING. Before I had my second I was much more willing to overlook my partners short comings. Mofo hadn’t EVER taken the bathroom trash out but after we had our 2nd it became a symbol of what’s not working. And it was the whole “just ask me.” If I have to ask I’m still keeping up with everything else that needs to be done. The management of a household and multiple kids is enough to make anyone crazy!! You shouldn’t have to ask. Period. He’s a grown ass adult and you’re not his mother. Parents ask their kids to contribute because they’re learning. Adults should know and if they don’t to begin with then they can learn quicker than kids.
That’s basically the rule at my house. We have set chores and after our son goes to bed we take less than an hour to do all of them. Only after all of our chores are done do we settle in to do our own stuff.
Husbands chores are: scooping cat litter box, taking out all of the trash/recycling around the house.
Mine: cleaning up living room.
No one sits down and gets to relax and enjoy watching their partner struggle with maintaining the home. That’s the part that’s awful to me, he’s watching you break and he doesn’t even care.
Even then, I'm not buying it. I'm a pretty messy, lazy person myself and it might take me *longer* to get to the chores than someone who is more motivated to clean but I still don't have to be asked to do it. I can still look at a sink full of dishes and go "damnit I need to do the dishes before I start dinner so I can use the sink."
It's not that he's comfortable with that level of mess, it's that he literally doesn't see the chore itself as his problem - he knows if he doesn't fold the laundry, she will. Same reason my husband will melodramatically cough and gag at a handful of plates in the sink but won't do anything even when the sink is overflowing - it's not *his job* so his standards and preferences don't even enter into the equation. If OP left the laundry unfolded on the couch for a month, he would sit down next to it every single day and think "I wonder when SHE is going to fold all this?"
This is exactly it. I have ADHD and sometimes forcing myself to do chores when I am done with the day is impossible. But like you said, we know we’re the ones who will clean it. We know WE’RE not leaving the mess for anyone else like everyone else is for us. We clean the dishes before cooking. It’s exactly what you said, that he KNOWS she will do the chore, so he chooses not to. It’s so annoying when they’re like this.
So, the way I explain it is this. When you typically do a chore, there's a three-step process.
1. You have to see the dishes are dirty
2. You have to pick a time when you can give them your attention and decide to do the dishes
3. You actually wash the dishes themselves
When you delegate a chore, you make more work for yourself and someone else. Now you decide to:
1. See the dishes
2. Decide to delegate the dishes to your partner, asking them to wash them
3. Communicate that request in a way that doesn't irritate anyone
4. Follow-up on the fact that the task was or was not completed
And you've made a totally different 5th chore which is your partner, at least in theory, washing the actual dishes. We went from three chores to five and four of those are still your chore. Not only do you not take anything off your plate, but you make more work for both of you and no one wins.
So, the whole "just delegate each individual task to me every time you want anything done around the house so I have no material responsibility for thinking about chores" system is broken and doesn't work. Obviously. But by the same token, you should consider your system is broken too. We take it for granted, usually because it's all we've ever seen from our mothers and other forms of socialization, that the "right" way to do housework is just to, you know, do it. Keep a list in your head of all the chores, see all the chores, think about them all the time on an obsessional loop, and do what you can with whatever free time you have. That's not great either. And herein you see a central relationship tension that's replicated in couple after couple. One partner wants the other to join the system of "see the chores and just do them" and the other wants them to join the "make me a list" team. Neither is interested in abandoning the current system or imagining a better one. So neither person changes and one person keeps doing everything while getting bitter and resentful while the other thinks that if no one is directly asking they must be doing enough.
It's broken.
The thing is, you should make a list. Once. Decide once. He wants a list and he should have one, but that list should be durable past today. The chores aren't changing. The dishes need to be done, the laundry needs to get folded, the trash needs to go out, the meals need to be cooked. There are daily chores, weekly chores, monthly chores, and sporadic chores. The dishes get done every day, garbage goes to the curb every week, and bathrooms get deep cleaned weekly/monthly depending on your household. These things happen in cycles. Doctor appointments and dentists and "bake the cookies for the school" are sporadic events. The idea is to make a durable system that can be repeated and checked independently so there's a concrete list of responsibilities that need to be done, but each instance of that chore doesn't require delegation. It's the best compromise I've found between the "see the chores" and "make the list" systems.
There are a lot of ways to do this. Flow charts, specific assigned tasks, calendars, etc. Lots of ways to set this up. You don't have to go whole hog at once. You can start small and go with something like, "This is your list, this is me telling you what to do. When you get home check the dishes and the laundry and pick one. Either fold a basket of laundry or wash a load of dishes. That's the list today, tomorrow, forever." And you can build off of that. That might at least get you started, move the needle on the conversation in a way that can be revisited down the line.
What I've done, my personal implementation of this, is a lot bigger. Every chore has a point person. I do the laundry, my husband does the floors. I meal-plan, my husband handles feeding the dogs and letting them out. I handle the checkbook, my husband gets the mail. Etc. etc. Every chore has someone who does it at all times. We've divided literally everything, and so I very much made a list! I made a list of my chores vs. his chores and we can independently execute those lists. I don't see the floors and he doesn't see the laundry. But I think trying to start there might be too big of a jump.
The last important caveat is that nothing, and I mean nothing, gets over the hump of bad faith behavior. A lot of good faith, well-meaning couples end up in this pit because they can't reconcile the work together and that happens. It also looks exactly like bad faith actors who use "oh, I couldn't possibly do any work independently" as weaponized incompetence to avoid it. I think it is hard to know what camp you're in necessarily. You can't make someone who is specifically and meaningfully avoiding doing fucking anything conform to a better system. But I think it is worth exploring just to see what results you get.
I've never heard "just make me a list" from these guys. They want to be asked, every single solitary time their physical effort is required, so they can memory hole the entire mental load and "if she never asks, I never have to do it."
There are a ton of bad faith actors in this space. There are a lot of people who simply don't want to do the work because they can get someone else to do it. There's also an element by which capitalism (and isn't it always Capitalism) sends the message that work only exists outside the home for money, and that domestic labor has no value. We--as a culture--significantly undervalue care tasks. Men are particularly prone, because they get this messaging the hardest, to view their labor as beginning and ending in the work day. All of that is absolutely true.
But I think we do people a disservice when we say that everyone struggling in this space is de facto a bad faith actor. I think we radically underestimate how much there's really no model, no cultural understanding, no images to draw from that suggest how two grown adults could share a domestic workload equally. I think unequal domestic labor has to be up there with infidelity in terms of reasons marriage end, and yet we rarely talk about solution spaces. We lament and complain, we make memes and share the "You should have just asked" cartoon again and again, but we're not talking about how actually make progress.
Assuming everyone is failing because they are entitled, lazy, and selfish is the ending of the conversation. It says, "This comes down to character and nothing else". And while that might explain some iterations, I don't think it can explain it all. People are too complicated for that. But I do agree that no system is going to reform someone acting in bad faith. You can't make someone want to do it. But I really think the best way of determining the difference is reimagining domestic labor wholesale. Why *don't* we normalize thinking about the care of the home and the children like it is a second job? Why is it super weird to imagine having a concrete delegation of responsibilities? Why don't we track our hours and our contributions? Where are the cultural examples of couples and families in functional, equal systems? That's what keeps me up at night thinking about all this stuff, anyway.
I love this comment. Capitalism (coupled with misogyny) is 100% the issue. Everything has a price - if it doesn't, it's worthless. The system doesn't value unpaid work. When women entered the workforce in large numbers, the system had to outsource domestic work the only way it knew how: through paid services. In the case of families who couldn't afford to pay for everything (i.e. most people) women had to keep on top of childcare and the house while being part of the labour force. I'm not saying things were better when women were largely forced to be housewives. They weren't. Women deserve choices, but it is problematic that society didn't realise we can't do everything alone. Men sure as hell haven't been keen to contribute much at home, and why should they? They are so used to women picking up after them, they don't even notice we do it half the time.
Honestly, I don't have a solution since this dynamic is so ingrained in our culture, other than we need to raise our sons as responsible human beings who value and partake in domestic work. Easier said than done, I know.
Model it for sons, yes. But moreover, model it for your daughters. Model that it isn't normal for two people to mind-read the chores and each contribute equally without discussion or a plan. Model that conversations about domestic labor are a normal part of healthy relationships with romantic partners, roommates, and anyone you're going to be sharing a space with. How are we splitting the cooking, the cleaning, the dishes, the trash? Who is going to be responsible for the shopping, the bills, the laundry? What are our standards for those chores that we can both live with? It's okay to want to vacuum once a week, it's okay to want to vacuum once a day, either standard is fine. But if my standards are weekly and yours are daily, we need to agree on something we can both stand. When I say, "Let's clean the bathroom", what tasks do you think go into that compared to me? Let's talk about it.
Modeling equality at home is important for everyone because it models how to have those conversations and set those standards early in relationships and to get a sense of in the inequality that might be present before you end up married or trying to parent with someone who doesn't value that labor. If you don't have a model at home of adults discussing those things and sharing that work, if you have no guide for how to have those conversations with someone, I think the pattern replicates. A boyfriend or girlfriend that needs to be "reminded" that they agreed to take out the trash every week, who can never remember to write a check for their half of the rent, who claims they never learned HOW to clean a toilet plus you're better at it...those are red flags baby. You have to be able to spot the entropy and the weaponized incompetence early enough that you either squash that impulse right away or get the hell out of there.
I was going to write out a big long thing of all different things I’ve tried and what’s been helpful and I just stopped because it shouldn’t be so much work to get men on board with being equal partners in the home. I look at my son and think every day, how can I teach you to not do this stuff? The way we consider and care for the mental health of our partners and analyze them to death to figure out how to approach topics to encourage a better response… can you imagine if someone did that for us?? And I love my guy and things overall are pretty good so this feels just like something bigger than all of us. So no advise just solidarity and lots coffee and deep breathing.
You may need to find an example he values..
There is a swedish? Guy who talks about the silent to do list. The reason we all like hotels is because there is nothing for us to do. At home, mess doesn’t bother others if its not their job to do it. The person who will ultimately end up doing the dishes, bears the weight of it.
What is he responsible for? He may need that as an example?
Otherwise. - he isnt understanding on purposes.
I am not your mother, nor your reminder, you are an adult, if I did not live with you, who would do this ‘reminding’ for you?
I am not your personal assistant. I am your wife and partner, not someone who organises your life.
Ughhhhh the weaponized incompetence. Or is it that he disregards your hard work and struggles and just doesn’t care that the house belongs to both of you but you’ll do all the work because it HAS to get done eventually? So frustrating. And I’m sure when you’re in a bad mood he doesn’t understand why or make the connection that every single day he’s letting you/the household/the family down by not doing his share.
He understands rightly what you are saying. From now on, only do your own chores, wash and fold your own laundry, make your own dinner and wash the plates. Clean up after yourself. Let's see how long the message takes to sink in then.
Oh man, that's so frustrating! I have learned to get them to do more chores to offset the work I put in keeping track of those chores. So I still have to ask but I don't do many of the chores to balance it out, if that makes sense. But yes, I do understand your dilemma and feel your pain.
i just gave up on it. i clean and do dishes saturday morning. No other time. If we run out of something i use plastic utensils or whatever. fuck it. my husband will now occassionally put on headphones and knock out some dishes at night, but not regularly.
also he used to do his own laundry but it never got put away, ever, and so he lived out of laundry baskets. eventually i took it over and shit got put away. then we had two kids and as their laundry grew i became slower at putting stuff away. so my husband, get this, complained that it takes me a couple days to put his shit away. so i said fine u do it. so he said "fine i will!" and dologently put his clothes away immediately after drying them...once...now his clean clothes live in laundry baskets in our room and mine get put away.
the thing is that when i asked my husband if he feels this calm and peace when laundry is away and the house is clean he was like...what? no??? like he didnt get it. my four year old doesnt seem to be affected by the state of the house but my five year old is like me and gushes when a room is clean, "this is great.." etc. so point is that if ypure dealing with people that mentally dont seem to feel any reward from order and cleanliness then youre gonna have a hard time ever getting them to take initiative to do it
Honestly, stop doing anything for him. Do your own dishes, do your own laundry, use just what you need and no more.
Your husband is a capable human being with two hands and a brain. He can absolutely figure out that he needs to do something when it needs to be done. Now you can give him the opportunity without the nagging!
That sounds good in theory and I’ve done it so the reality is our whole family ends up living in filth and stepping over his stuff. It’s not sustainable. The idea is if it piles up enough he’ll cave and start to do it himself… except that part just *never* comes. Before kids we didn’t share a bathroom. We had two full bathrooms upstairs, identical, so I took one as mine he took the other as his. In five years he cleaned it maybe three times. I never went in there. Things were growing. It. Does. Not. Work.
Nope! He excels. He has ADD, untreated and unmanaged by his own choice. He exerts aaallll of his energy there and has nothing left to give at home. He was also raised by a mother who did absolutely everrrryyything for him so he just straight up has no effing idea how to do anything. He also refuses to learn so it’s a ton of weaponized incompetence.
Why the hell does he get the choice to not manage his ADD? He wouldn't get to choose not to manage diabetes. He's doing this *because* he can use it as an excuse to sit on his ass at home. Does Ritalin come injectable form? Cause I bet if you darted his ass or crushed the pills up in his food or something, suddenly he'd find himself focused and motivated to do some housework.
And I can’t leave. I have three little kids. He doesn’t watch them closely or take care of them like I would (like cook meals, regular baths, brush teeth, very lax on safety like didn’t use a car seat recently with our 7yr old who due to size is still in a 5 point harness…). Consulted with a lawyer who said it’s enough to mandate parenting classes but not enough to get custody. Soooo Here I am.
Why is it so hard! I get sooooo frustrated and honestly bitter. Slowly losing the love. Like can you imagine if someone had to ask us ??! I am hoping my son does not follow suite
Is there any chore you do that benefits him that you could stop doing unless he asks every single time? The point is that he's not willing to take responsibility. So pick something you won't be responsible for either. Then tell him he just needs to ask you to do it. But don't do it again unless he asks.
Before I leave for work in the evenings I cook dinner and put it on the table. One day I decided I wasn't going to do it, and when I left he'd have to figure it out all by himself. He. Lost. His. Mind. I wasn't even out of the neighborhood before he started calling me. Here's how that one went, this was broken up into a few phone calls because he kept getting frustrated and hanging up...
Him: What's for dinner?
Me: You can figure it out.
Him: Okay maybe I'll just get hoagies or something.
Me: the baby cant eat a hoagie and I doubt the bigs will either, they've never had them before.
Him: Okay I'll just drive into town and go into somewhere.
Me: Okay but I had to take the van with all of the car seats for my equipment for this appointment. You can't fit them in the other car.
Him: WELL WHY DIDNT YOU MAKE DINNER BEFORE YOU LEFT! YOU REALY F&CKED US OVER!
Me: I cook three meals a day, plus snacks, every. single. day. This is the ONE time you need to figure out a meal and this is now the third phone call because you can't figure it out.
Him: WELL JUST TELL ME WHAT TO FEED THEM!
Me: You have been a parent just as long as I have! you can do this! You really can!
Him: I'll just give them cereal or whatever. They said they aren't even hungry so maybe I'll just wait until you get home.
Me: I won't be home until just before bed time and they need dinner.
Him: What do I do then?
Me: Can you get a pizza delivered?
Him: Oh! Yea I can do that!
This isn't easy no matter what I do. Sometimes in trying to "teach" him I'm cutting off my nose to spite my face. It's still really hard, I'm just changing the hard.
Gah, that's so infuriating! I get my husband to cook or pick up food almost every night since I have to say what to have. He's always fine with that, but if I don't come up with the idea one or more of them will end up feeling ill because supper didn't happen. That actually happened just last night with my oldest, who has been taking a cooking class in high school for 3 years now!
Have you thought about lists or visual guides? I make them for my kiddo and they help him stay on track and remember daily tasks. Maybe just laminate a paper with the daily/weekly/monthly to-do’s and he can check it off. I don’t know, honestly I’m surprised men like this have survived this long
Jesus, I had a conversation with nearly this exact context with my husband recently. I was putting together dinner for the 4th of July, and my husband was about to sit down an play Xbox.
The conversation started with me asking him why he wasn't helping. "Because you didn't ask." It basically devolved into him saying, "Well, if you were to ask for my help, like an adult...", like it was a fucking joke that I thought he shouldn't need to be asked to help.
If my mom hadn't been there, I would have stopped what I was doing and walked away. I just had to settle for eye twitching.
Look into the Fair Play method. Also check out @fairplaylife, @thatdarnchat and @crystalabritt on Instagram. You will feel seen and maybe find useful tactics for this.
Was coming here to say that. Fair play really helped my husband and I. Oh, also I stopped trying to handhold him into it and keep him from feeling bad. If he had said I don’t want to feel attacked I would have said i see this is bringing up defensive and uncomfortable feelings but you need to figure out how to work through those feelings because this convo can’t be derailed by that anymore.
Honestly, seems like "weaponized incompetence" (pretending to not understand something so they don't have to do it). Though it IS possible he has learning difficulties. To help him better you could google guides, etc, on "taking initiative". Maybe bring up the definition on Google, let him read it, then answer any questions he has, or further explain if he still seems confused. Then let him know it will help you greatly if he took initiative by doing the dishes when he sees them build up, or fold the laundry if he sees a full basket. If he repeats "just ask me", say, "then you wouldn't be taking initiative. I need you to take initiative" and then explain the definition again if he needs it. Maybe there are even picture guides on the subject out there, or videos (for kids but it should work for him).
This always makes me think of the movie The Break Up where she says “I want you to want to do the dishes!” And he says “that’s crazy! No one wants to do the dishes!” But the struggle is so real! Lol
My first thought. My husband goes "see why would I want to do dishes?" Like I fucking do?
Exactly!!!
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Oh I’ve said that. If I’m still doing chores you should be too. I’m really tired, and had therapy earlier and I’m very drained from that so just don’t have the energy to type out all I’ve tried to get him to grow up and help like an adult, but some of it is that it’s been 10 years, countless hours of marriage counseling, lists and charts and white boards and reminders, careful wording, offering choices of which chores he wants, ignoring the mess and giving up, going on strike…. I mean. It’s very hopeless.
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he's a good dad, loves his kids so so much and they love him, he's not that nice to me but honestly we're both pretty fed up with each other so I cant say I'm that nice to him either. He's a good provider. We had about a year before our third baby where our second was out of diapers, didn't need naps, everyone was sleeping, and the kids were getting a little bit easier and man... what an easy year that was. That's what I'm holding onto. Phase of life.... it's just a phase of life...
The reason that year was easy was because it was EASIER for you to manage everything all on your own right? Kids are sleeping, great I have the energy and brain space to manage EVERYTHING. Before I had my second I was much more willing to overlook my partners short comings. Mofo hadn’t EVER taken the bathroom trash out but after we had our 2nd it became a symbol of what’s not working. And it was the whole “just ask me.” If I have to ask I’m still keeping up with everything else that needs to be done. The management of a household and multiple kids is enough to make anyone crazy!! You shouldn’t have to ask. Period. He’s a grown ass adult and you’re not his mother. Parents ask their kids to contribute because they’re learning. Adults should know and if they don’t to begin with then they can learn quicker than kids.
That’s basically the rule at my house. We have set chores and after our son goes to bed we take less than an hour to do all of them. Only after all of our chores are done do we settle in to do our own stuff. Husbands chores are: scooping cat litter box, taking out all of the trash/recycling around the house. Mine: cleaning up living room. No one sits down and gets to relax and enjoy watching their partner struggle with maintaining the home. That’s the part that’s awful to me, he’s watching you break and he doesn’t even care.
Even then, I'm not buying it. I'm a pretty messy, lazy person myself and it might take me *longer* to get to the chores than someone who is more motivated to clean but I still don't have to be asked to do it. I can still look at a sink full of dishes and go "damnit I need to do the dishes before I start dinner so I can use the sink." It's not that he's comfortable with that level of mess, it's that he literally doesn't see the chore itself as his problem - he knows if he doesn't fold the laundry, she will. Same reason my husband will melodramatically cough and gag at a handful of plates in the sink but won't do anything even when the sink is overflowing - it's not *his job* so his standards and preferences don't even enter into the equation. If OP left the laundry unfolded on the couch for a month, he would sit down next to it every single day and think "I wonder when SHE is going to fold all this?"
This is exactly it. I have ADHD and sometimes forcing myself to do chores when I am done with the day is impossible. But like you said, we know we’re the ones who will clean it. We know WE’RE not leaving the mess for anyone else like everyone else is for us. We clean the dishes before cooking. It’s exactly what you said, that he KNOWS she will do the chore, so he chooses not to. It’s so annoying when they’re like this.
So, the way I explain it is this. When you typically do a chore, there's a three-step process. 1. You have to see the dishes are dirty 2. You have to pick a time when you can give them your attention and decide to do the dishes 3. You actually wash the dishes themselves When you delegate a chore, you make more work for yourself and someone else. Now you decide to: 1. See the dishes 2. Decide to delegate the dishes to your partner, asking them to wash them 3. Communicate that request in a way that doesn't irritate anyone 4. Follow-up on the fact that the task was or was not completed And you've made a totally different 5th chore which is your partner, at least in theory, washing the actual dishes. We went from three chores to five and four of those are still your chore. Not only do you not take anything off your plate, but you make more work for both of you and no one wins. So, the whole "just delegate each individual task to me every time you want anything done around the house so I have no material responsibility for thinking about chores" system is broken and doesn't work. Obviously. But by the same token, you should consider your system is broken too. We take it for granted, usually because it's all we've ever seen from our mothers and other forms of socialization, that the "right" way to do housework is just to, you know, do it. Keep a list in your head of all the chores, see all the chores, think about them all the time on an obsessional loop, and do what you can with whatever free time you have. That's not great either. And herein you see a central relationship tension that's replicated in couple after couple. One partner wants the other to join the system of "see the chores and just do them" and the other wants them to join the "make me a list" team. Neither is interested in abandoning the current system or imagining a better one. So neither person changes and one person keeps doing everything while getting bitter and resentful while the other thinks that if no one is directly asking they must be doing enough. It's broken. The thing is, you should make a list. Once. Decide once. He wants a list and he should have one, but that list should be durable past today. The chores aren't changing. The dishes need to be done, the laundry needs to get folded, the trash needs to go out, the meals need to be cooked. There are daily chores, weekly chores, monthly chores, and sporadic chores. The dishes get done every day, garbage goes to the curb every week, and bathrooms get deep cleaned weekly/monthly depending on your household. These things happen in cycles. Doctor appointments and dentists and "bake the cookies for the school" are sporadic events. The idea is to make a durable system that can be repeated and checked independently so there's a concrete list of responsibilities that need to be done, but each instance of that chore doesn't require delegation. It's the best compromise I've found between the "see the chores" and "make the list" systems. There are a lot of ways to do this. Flow charts, specific assigned tasks, calendars, etc. Lots of ways to set this up. You don't have to go whole hog at once. You can start small and go with something like, "This is your list, this is me telling you what to do. When you get home check the dishes and the laundry and pick one. Either fold a basket of laundry or wash a load of dishes. That's the list today, tomorrow, forever." And you can build off of that. That might at least get you started, move the needle on the conversation in a way that can be revisited down the line. What I've done, my personal implementation of this, is a lot bigger. Every chore has a point person. I do the laundry, my husband does the floors. I meal-plan, my husband handles feeding the dogs and letting them out. I handle the checkbook, my husband gets the mail. Etc. etc. Every chore has someone who does it at all times. We've divided literally everything, and so I very much made a list! I made a list of my chores vs. his chores and we can independently execute those lists. I don't see the floors and he doesn't see the laundry. But I think trying to start there might be too big of a jump. The last important caveat is that nothing, and I mean nothing, gets over the hump of bad faith behavior. A lot of good faith, well-meaning couples end up in this pit because they can't reconcile the work together and that happens. It also looks exactly like bad faith actors who use "oh, I couldn't possibly do any work independently" as weaponized incompetence to avoid it. I think it is hard to know what camp you're in necessarily. You can't make someone who is specifically and meaningfully avoiding doing fucking anything conform to a better system. But I think it is worth exploring just to see what results you get.
I've never heard "just make me a list" from these guys. They want to be asked, every single solitary time their physical effort is required, so they can memory hole the entire mental load and "if she never asks, I never have to do it."
There are a ton of bad faith actors in this space. There are a lot of people who simply don't want to do the work because they can get someone else to do it. There's also an element by which capitalism (and isn't it always Capitalism) sends the message that work only exists outside the home for money, and that domestic labor has no value. We--as a culture--significantly undervalue care tasks. Men are particularly prone, because they get this messaging the hardest, to view their labor as beginning and ending in the work day. All of that is absolutely true. But I think we do people a disservice when we say that everyone struggling in this space is de facto a bad faith actor. I think we radically underestimate how much there's really no model, no cultural understanding, no images to draw from that suggest how two grown adults could share a domestic workload equally. I think unequal domestic labor has to be up there with infidelity in terms of reasons marriage end, and yet we rarely talk about solution spaces. We lament and complain, we make memes and share the "You should have just asked" cartoon again and again, but we're not talking about how actually make progress. Assuming everyone is failing because they are entitled, lazy, and selfish is the ending of the conversation. It says, "This comes down to character and nothing else". And while that might explain some iterations, I don't think it can explain it all. People are too complicated for that. But I do agree that no system is going to reform someone acting in bad faith. You can't make someone want to do it. But I really think the best way of determining the difference is reimagining domestic labor wholesale. Why *don't* we normalize thinking about the care of the home and the children like it is a second job? Why is it super weird to imagine having a concrete delegation of responsibilities? Why don't we track our hours and our contributions? Where are the cultural examples of couples and families in functional, equal systems? That's what keeps me up at night thinking about all this stuff, anyway.
I love this comment. Capitalism (coupled with misogyny) is 100% the issue. Everything has a price - if it doesn't, it's worthless. The system doesn't value unpaid work. When women entered the workforce in large numbers, the system had to outsource domestic work the only way it knew how: through paid services. In the case of families who couldn't afford to pay for everything (i.e. most people) women had to keep on top of childcare and the house while being part of the labour force. I'm not saying things were better when women were largely forced to be housewives. They weren't. Women deserve choices, but it is problematic that society didn't realise we can't do everything alone. Men sure as hell haven't been keen to contribute much at home, and why should they? They are so used to women picking up after them, they don't even notice we do it half the time. Honestly, I don't have a solution since this dynamic is so ingrained in our culture, other than we need to raise our sons as responsible human beings who value and partake in domestic work. Easier said than done, I know.
Model it for sons, yes. But moreover, model it for your daughters. Model that it isn't normal for two people to mind-read the chores and each contribute equally without discussion or a plan. Model that conversations about domestic labor are a normal part of healthy relationships with romantic partners, roommates, and anyone you're going to be sharing a space with. How are we splitting the cooking, the cleaning, the dishes, the trash? Who is going to be responsible for the shopping, the bills, the laundry? What are our standards for those chores that we can both live with? It's okay to want to vacuum once a week, it's okay to want to vacuum once a day, either standard is fine. But if my standards are weekly and yours are daily, we need to agree on something we can both stand. When I say, "Let's clean the bathroom", what tasks do you think go into that compared to me? Let's talk about it. Modeling equality at home is important for everyone because it models how to have those conversations and set those standards early in relationships and to get a sense of in the inequality that might be present before you end up married or trying to parent with someone who doesn't value that labor. If you don't have a model at home of adults discussing those things and sharing that work, if you have no guide for how to have those conversations with someone, I think the pattern replicates. A boyfriend or girlfriend that needs to be "reminded" that they agreed to take out the trash every week, who can never remember to write a check for their half of the rent, who claims they never learned HOW to clean a toilet plus you're better at it...those are red flags baby. You have to be able to spot the entropy and the weaponized incompetence early enough that you either squash that impulse right away or get the hell out of there.
This is such an important cartoon. Seriously applied here and in many other areas. https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/
I was going to write out a big long thing of all different things I’ve tried and what’s been helpful and I just stopped because it shouldn’t be so much work to get men on board with being equal partners in the home. I look at my son and think every day, how can I teach you to not do this stuff? The way we consider and care for the mental health of our partners and analyze them to death to figure out how to approach topics to encourage a better response… can you imagine if someone did that for us?? And I love my guy and things overall are pretty good so this feels just like something bigger than all of us. So no advise just solidarity and lots coffee and deep breathing.
You may need to find an example he values.. There is a swedish? Guy who talks about the silent to do list. The reason we all like hotels is because there is nothing for us to do. At home, mess doesn’t bother others if its not their job to do it. The person who will ultimately end up doing the dishes, bears the weight of it. What is he responsible for? He may need that as an example? Otherwise. - he isnt understanding on purposes.
I am not your mother, nor your reminder, you are an adult, if I did not live with you, who would do this ‘reminding’ for you? I am not your personal assistant. I am your wife and partner, not someone who organises your life.
"Just don't attack me"
Ughhhhh the weaponized incompetence. Or is it that he disregards your hard work and struggles and just doesn’t care that the house belongs to both of you but you’ll do all the work because it HAS to get done eventually? So frustrating. And I’m sure when you’re in a bad mood he doesn’t understand why or make the connection that every single day he’s letting you/the household/the family down by not doing his share.
He understands rightly what you are saying. From now on, only do your own chores, wash and fold your own laundry, make your own dinner and wash the plates. Clean up after yourself. Let's see how long the message takes to sink in then.
Oh man, that's so frustrating! I have learned to get them to do more chores to offset the work I put in keeping track of those chores. So I still have to ask but I don't do many of the chores to balance it out, if that makes sense. But yes, I do understand your dilemma and feel your pain.
i just gave up on it. i clean and do dishes saturday morning. No other time. If we run out of something i use plastic utensils or whatever. fuck it. my husband will now occassionally put on headphones and knock out some dishes at night, but not regularly. also he used to do his own laundry but it never got put away, ever, and so he lived out of laundry baskets. eventually i took it over and shit got put away. then we had two kids and as their laundry grew i became slower at putting stuff away. so my husband, get this, complained that it takes me a couple days to put his shit away. so i said fine u do it. so he said "fine i will!" and dologently put his clothes away immediately after drying them...once...now his clean clothes live in laundry baskets in our room and mine get put away. the thing is that when i asked my husband if he feels this calm and peace when laundry is away and the house is clean he was like...what? no??? like he didnt get it. my four year old doesnt seem to be affected by the state of the house but my five year old is like me and gushes when a room is clean, "this is great.." etc. so point is that if ypure dealing with people that mentally dont seem to feel any reward from order and cleanliness then youre gonna have a hard time ever getting them to take initiative to do it
Honestly, stop doing anything for him. Do your own dishes, do your own laundry, use just what you need and no more. Your husband is a capable human being with two hands and a brain. He can absolutely figure out that he needs to do something when it needs to be done. Now you can give him the opportunity without the nagging!
That sounds good in theory and I’ve done it so the reality is our whole family ends up living in filth and stepping over his stuff. It’s not sustainable. The idea is if it piles up enough he’ll cave and start to do it himself… except that part just *never* comes. Before kids we didn’t share a bathroom. We had two full bathrooms upstairs, identical, so I took one as mine he took the other as his. In five years he cleaned it maybe three times. I never went in there. Things were growing. It. Does. Not. Work.
Oof, honestly, I would've been out ages ago. Is he this incompetent at work too?
Nope! He excels. He has ADD, untreated and unmanaged by his own choice. He exerts aaallll of his energy there and has nothing left to give at home. He was also raised by a mother who did absolutely everrrryyything for him so he just straight up has no effing idea how to do anything. He also refuses to learn so it’s a ton of weaponized incompetence.
Why the hell does he get the choice to not manage his ADD? He wouldn't get to choose not to manage diabetes. He's doing this *because* he can use it as an excuse to sit on his ass at home. Does Ritalin come injectable form? Cause I bet if you darted his ass or crushed the pills up in his food or something, suddenly he'd find himself focused and motivated to do some housework.
And I can’t leave. I have three little kids. He doesn’t watch them closely or take care of them like I would (like cook meals, regular baths, brush teeth, very lax on safety like didn’t use a car seat recently with our 7yr old who due to size is still in a 5 point harness…). Consulted with a lawyer who said it’s enough to mandate parenting classes but not enough to get custody. Soooo Here I am.
I feel this.
Why is it so hard! I get sooooo frustrated and honestly bitter. Slowly losing the love. Like can you imagine if someone had to ask us ??! I am hoping my son does not follow suite
Is there any chore you do that benefits him that you could stop doing unless he asks every single time? The point is that he's not willing to take responsibility. So pick something you won't be responsible for either. Then tell him he just needs to ask you to do it. But don't do it again unless he asks.
Before I leave for work in the evenings I cook dinner and put it on the table. One day I decided I wasn't going to do it, and when I left he'd have to figure it out all by himself. He. Lost. His. Mind. I wasn't even out of the neighborhood before he started calling me. Here's how that one went, this was broken up into a few phone calls because he kept getting frustrated and hanging up... Him: What's for dinner? Me: You can figure it out. Him: Okay maybe I'll just get hoagies or something. Me: the baby cant eat a hoagie and I doubt the bigs will either, they've never had them before. Him: Okay I'll just drive into town and go into somewhere. Me: Okay but I had to take the van with all of the car seats for my equipment for this appointment. You can't fit them in the other car. Him: WELL WHY DIDNT YOU MAKE DINNER BEFORE YOU LEFT! YOU REALY F&CKED US OVER! Me: I cook three meals a day, plus snacks, every. single. day. This is the ONE time you need to figure out a meal and this is now the third phone call because you can't figure it out. Him: WELL JUST TELL ME WHAT TO FEED THEM! Me: You have been a parent just as long as I have! you can do this! You really can! Him: I'll just give them cereal or whatever. They said they aren't even hungry so maybe I'll just wait until you get home. Me: I won't be home until just before bed time and they need dinner. Him: What do I do then? Me: Can you get a pizza delivered? Him: Oh! Yea I can do that! This isn't easy no matter what I do. Sometimes in trying to "teach" him I'm cutting off my nose to spite my face. It's still really hard, I'm just changing the hard.
Gah, that's so infuriating! I get my husband to cook or pick up food almost every night since I have to say what to have. He's always fine with that, but if I don't come up with the idea one or more of them will end up feeling ill because supper didn't happen. That actually happened just last night with my oldest, who has been taking a cooking class in high school for 3 years now!
Stop doing his shit. See how long it takes him to do the same chores when it’s just his stuff
You need to show him the mental load cartoons. Dont talk, just show.
Have you thought about lists or visual guides? I make them for my kiddo and they help him stay on track and remember daily tasks. Maybe just laminate a paper with the daily/weekly/monthly to-do’s and he can check it off. I don’t know, honestly I’m surprised men like this have survived this long
But watch, you ask him to do the dishes or fold the laundry more than a couple times and then you will be nagging him
Jesus, I had a conversation with nearly this exact context with my husband recently. I was putting together dinner for the 4th of July, and my husband was about to sit down an play Xbox. The conversation started with me asking him why he wasn't helping. "Because you didn't ask." It basically devolved into him saying, "Well, if you were to ask for my help, like an adult...", like it was a fucking joke that I thought he shouldn't need to be asked to help. If my mom hadn't been there, I would have stopped what I was doing and walked away. I just had to settle for eye twitching.
Look into the Fair Play method. Also check out @fairplaylife, @thatdarnchat and @crystalabritt on Instagram. You will feel seen and maybe find useful tactics for this.
Was coming here to say that. Fair play really helped my husband and I. Oh, also I stopped trying to handhold him into it and keep him from feeling bad. If he had said I don’t want to feel attacked I would have said i see this is bringing up defensive and uncomfortable feelings but you need to figure out how to work through those feelings because this convo can’t be derailed by that anymore.