Are you the sort of person who emails me every now and then saying ‘stick to filth, stop with the feminist rants’? Look away now.
Are you a guy who claims he is a feminist but makes self-deprecatory jokes about how if he did the washing up he’d only do it badly so there’s really no point? Are you the kind of person who says ‘ah, men are just useless at housework though, aren’t they?’ This one’s for you.
Chore wars: housework and feminism
First thing’s first: men are not shit at housework. When my partner forgets to do the washing up, or the washing, or the tidying or the bathroom or any one of the million things that humans need to do in order to keep a household in working order, I do not roll my eyes. I do not tut and say ‘oh, baby, you’re such a man.’ That would be sexist.
When I complain to a friend that I’m sick and fucking tired of picking socks off the floor and changing bedsheets and the fact that I am always – always – the one who spots that the fridge needs cleaning before it grows a new species, I do not expect my friend to roll her eyes either: sexist.
Housework is a feminist issue. As I feel compelled to point out, it’s not the most important one. But it matters. It matters, precisely because it doesn’t always feel like it matters.
‘Oh, it’s only the washing up.’
‘It’s just a bit of vacuuming.’
‘It takes two seconds, so why make such a fuss?’
Thing is, as many people have pointed out: it’s unpaid work, so it’s not ‘just’ anything. Sure, it only takes a few minutes to run round the house picking up clothes and chucking them in the washing machine. Half a minute to put the powder in, choose the right setting, and set it off. Only ten minutes at the end to take the washing out, hang it up, and fold away the stuff I’ve negligently left drying there since halfway through last week. But it’s ten minutes of my time, and my time is precious.
When all the household chores are added together, I spend roughly ten hours a week cooking, cleaning, tidying, sorting, and screaming silent screams into my pillow because holy Christ this is not what I want to do with my life. Then, when I have finished with the screaming and I get onto a bit of a moan, people (mostly men, but often women too) tell me that it isn’t important. That, in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter that I’ve had to clean the hob again because ha ha jokes when it comes to housework men are just not programmed to notice what needs doing.
A rock, a dishcloth and a hard place
This rant’s been sitting in my drafts for a while, as I pluck up the courage to spew it onto the internet and have people go ‘oh GOTN you’re so clichéd with your old-fashioned caring about domestic labour’, but this week BBC Woman’s Hour launched the ‘chore wars’ calculator, so I thought it was a good opportunity to let rip. Chore Wars is a bit of a cutesy, not massively accurate way to calculate who does the most chores in the household, and whether the split is fair.
This is not a feminist issue just because traditionally housework was seen as a ‘woman’s domain’ – it’s an issue because polling shows that much of the unpaid household work still falls to women, even in households where the amount of paid work is relatively even. It’s also a big issue because of how we still talk, think and write about it. When it comes to household chores, my male partner has two options:
- help out, and receive praise for being an amazing human
- not help out, and get some mild tuts and eye-rolls and a pat on his simple, masculine head
Ah, shit – in these options I have automatically used the phrase ‘help out’, as if he is stepping down from on high to swoop in and help this damsel in marigolds rather than performing a task that, ethically, is his to own. God, I hate me. And I also hate the fact that even on International Women’s Day this year, in relation to a press release about the uneven split of unpaid domestic work, Reuters’ headline smugly pronounced that Norwegian men are ‘most helpful’ with housework. Helpful. Not ‘contributing a fairer share’, but ‘helpful’. Thanks.
Talking of thanks, where’s my fucking pat on the head? Whenever my partner manages to do one load of washing or tidy the lounge, I have been conditioned to actually tell him ‘thank you’, like he is a particularly well-trained puppy doing clever tricks for biscuits. I myself am perpetuating the myth that household tasks are mine to own and his to deign to help with, by rewarding him just for getting off his arse. He hasn’t been conditioned to praise me for scrubbing a frying pan because I’m a woman, so apparently it’s just my goddamn job.
When it comes to the housework I have two options as well, but mine aren’t quite as tempting: I get to choose between being a servant or a nag.
Housework and sex
This is a sex blog primarily, and that’s because the vast majority of things in my life are actually linked to sex in some way. I am a horny, angry, feisty slag, and even something as simple as housework is linked to sex in my mind. I don’t find it enjoyably filthy to sashay around the house, naked but for a small cotton apron, and bend over to scrub the floors while boys wank in a corner (although that might be hot in the right context), but I do draw a strong mental link between sex and housework.
Housework is not sexy. Standing up to my elbows in a sinkful of grease is not sexy. Selecting the right washing cycle to remove jizz from the bedsheets is not sexy. It’s not even sexy when I strip to my knickers and scrub round the edge of the bath.
And so, when I do all the housework, I have less sex. I’m not on ‘sex strike’ until a guy swoops in to do it – why would I deliberately forego something I love just because I’m angry? It’s not a conscious and deliberate choice, it’s a byproduct of emotional and physical exhaustion.
If I’ve spent all day doing housework I’ve had no time to think about what I might like to do to him. No time to walk, or cycle, or do sit ups, or any of the things I do that make me feel sexy in a sweaty/musky/messy way. No time to remember the filthy fuck we had last week that I haven’t got round to blogging yet. The mental narrative running through my head on a good day involves any number of ‘mmm’s, ‘unnngh’s and ‘oh God I want him to bend me over the coffee table’s. Post-housework, my brain says ‘fuck this shit forever’ and hides in a hermit cave of boiling, passive-aggressive rage.
Bottom line: if I’ve spent ages hoovering the living room, I’m unlikely to want to fuck on the carpet.
Is this blog post sexist?
This isn’t a blog post in which I berate the male half of the species for not picking up a fucking duster. There are millions of men who are not only capable of doing this stuff, but who just get the hell on with it each and every day. Men who – day in, day out – consider the housework to be part and parcel of their role as a significant half of an equal partnership. Or – if they are poly or living in a flatshare – a significant contributing member of a group. Or even just on their own.
These are the men who don’t refer to spending time with their children as ‘babysitting’, or who declare with puffed-up pride that they’re ‘treating’ their girlfriend by cooking dinner, thus taking away perhaps 10% of the unpaid work that she does without thanks every day.
On the other side, there are women who do nothing around the house and drive their partners up the wall. These people are – unless there are genuinely good reasons such as issues with illness or a drastically different split in out-of-home paid work – equally selfish of course. But when their partners complain they’re unlikely to be met by well-meaning friends who roll their eyes and tut ‘women, eh? What can you do?’
Feminist men do the cooking
I’m not writing this just because I hate housework – most of us hate housework: it’s a thankless, miserable task. This isn’t about individual items to tick off a household ‘to do’ list: it’s about hypocrisy.
Because I’ve met men who go on marches and pickets. Who sign petitions and have angry rants and show solidarity to women on all manner of feminist issues, then go home and expect to be worshipped as a God because they spent two hours cooking dinner on Sunday.
If this isn’t you: well done. If this is you, have a little think about why you’re willing to write off unpaid labour as ‘not really my problem/not my area of expertise/something that magically happens when I’m not looking.’
Then put down your ‘awesome feminist’ badge, and pick up a fucking dishcloth.
Questions and comments
I love a good ruck as much as the next opinionated blogger. But here are some questions/comments that I anticipate I might receive as a result of this post, and what my response will be if you give them to me.
I’m a man, and I do exactly half of the housework. I am OUTRAGED by your rant.
Well done. If you do exactly half of the housework and you never moan about it or expect unnecessary thanks, then you are good. But not ‘good’ in the sense that ‘you get to sit on a moral high horse and shout at women who are frustrated by the traditionally unequal split of household chores’, just ‘good’ in the sense that ‘you meet the minimum standards of human decency.’
I am a man, and I do more housework than my female partner. I am OUTRAGED by your rant.
When you complain about her general slovenliness, are you greeted by people saying ‘well, you have to expect it really – women are so shit at this’? I suspect not. But well done for doing loads of housework, and if you’re frustrated I suggest you send your partner a link to this blog.
In my relationship, we have come to the arrangement that one of us earns the money and the other keeps house.
Congratulations. If you have both agreed to this and find it fair, then good luck to you both.
There are certain household tasks that I cannot do because I have a medical condition/have to work much longer hours than my partner.
There are many reasons why household tasks might not be evenly split. That’s obviously not what I’m talking about here though.
Have you tried training/teaching your partner to do better?
He is not a fucking dog. He is an adult who knows how to do this shit. Besides, this rant does not just come because he – a flawed individual like the rest of us – pisses me off sometimes by failing to do his fair share. This rant has come because he is not the only one by a long shot, and because I hate other people’s ‘men are useless’ excuses for this crap even more than I hate scrubbing pans and folding laundry. For the record, though, my partner is much better than many other dudes I’ve known, and he does what decent humans do, which is recognise where he falls down and try to get better at doing stuff. Sadly he doesn’t have a blog in which he can rant about my failings, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that I fail too, in equally important ways.
Isn’t it just that women have higher standards than men and men are more happy to live in filth?
This question is a BONUS one added after a Twitter comment. This one’s thrown at me a lot, so worth tackling. Different individuals have different tolerances for mess: this is normal because we are human. But, unless you are asserting that ‘men’ as a homogenous mass, are all happy to eat off food-soiled plates, wear clothes that have never been washed, allow their bathrooms to smell of piss and mould, and never eat food that has had more than a five-minute blast in the microwave, then this is a massive red herring. As a lazy, slobby, twat who is generally happy to have dirty clothes carpeting my bedroom, I can assure you it’s not about differing standards: it’s about the time spent on work, and who holds responsibility.
This isn’t like you, GOTN, to rant about what ‘all men’ are like.
I’m not. Not ‘all men’ are like this. There are men who do their fair share, who thank their partners for doing theirs, and who never refer to caring for their children as ‘babysitting’. I’m not saying ‘all men are shit at housework’, I am saying that if you are a man and you are shit at housework then that’s a fucking problem. Moreover if you let a female partner do most of the household chores, you sure as shit don’t get to call yourself a feminist.
35 Comments
Good article. I (a man) can agree with pretty much every word. Housework sucks but is a necessary evil. If you live with someone you share responsibility for making the mess, so share the responsibility of cleaning up your combined shit. It’s not about who’s turn it is, if it needs doing, just do it and then you can both grumble about how much you hate it before applying a new selection of sex stains on that lovely freshly made bed.
Love this blog! And I have a long comment, so bear with me!
First off, I would argue that your inability to have sex after house work might actually be down to a resentment of having to do it, rather than exhaustion. Because if you are still horny after work outs, jogging, gym etc… but not house work; it has to be something psychological (although subconscious) that’s putting you off. Because let’s be honest, housework is a massive work out, I am knackered after cleaning all day! Maybe it’s not general anger per se that’s putting you off, but irritation towards him. At the end of the day, it’s hard to be into someone who takes you for a mug. By the way let me clarify, I am totally not surprised that you wouldn’t want it. Any kind of niggling issues relating to who should do what and his sexist expectations of you as a female, are bound to wreak havoc with your sex drive; at least in the short term. Things like that piss me off too.
Secondly, I am really lucky (or am I? should I consider it lucky? There we go again!!)…to have a man in my life who takes on a massive amount of responsibility around the house, because I work full time and he doesn’t. That said, although he does everything without asking, he sometimes gets it wrong. Take the washing for example – he will put all manner of things in together, no matter how many times I explain that they need to be separated. He just doesn’t get it. I end up with stuff that’s not white anymore, the velcro on our baby’s bibs having snagged my delicates and sometimes things like washable floor mats in with clothes! I do despair at this kind of thing, because I have to do it again and his efforts seem pointless. THIS I do admit, I see as an eye-rolling ‘man’ thing. I’m sure there are some who would do it properly, but I’m willing to cast a sweeping generalisation that they wouldn’t. At the end of the day, there are just some things that women get and men don’t – and vice versa. It’s beside the point really, because the fact is, he does most of the housework. And for the most part he does a great job of it without expecting a medal.
Take the other night for example: I came home from work at 7pm to a clean house, a pile of clean washing, my dinner waiting for me (the most amazing home made chips) and a fed, bathed and contented 1 year old. This happens most days. Jealous much? I live the dream!
But my whites don’t stay white. LOL…
At the end of the day, I would never be with a man who assumed that the domestic stuff was my responsibility. Because, categorically speaking, that would make him a knob.
I wrote a similar piece to this on women breadwinning and men bringing up children, it’s here if you’re interested – http://www.christinawellor.com/why-the-term-working-mum-needs-to-die/
And really sorry for hijacking your comments with my essay!! :) x
Thanks, Christina! It’s good to hear tales of people who can get this stuff to work. I do think you’re lucky if both of you are happy with what you do – I think there’s still language stuff that creeps in there, though. For instance: he ‘takes on a massive amount of responsibility around the house.’ Would a guy ever say this about a woman who did the housework and raised children? Probably not. Not your fault, and it’s absolutely not a criticism, I just think it goes to show how thoroughly this stuff is ingrained in the way we talk about housework.
I wouldn’t agree that guys are often crap at certain things though -again I suspect that the way we talk about/assign chores means that men tend not to grow up believing that they’re responsible. Women are more likely to be taught how to cook, clean, iron, and because society tells us it’s our job, we’re more likely to pay attention. Just as I suspect guys are more likely to ‘know’ how to put up shelves. It’s not that men are natural shelf-assemblers: just that they’ve been subtly taught that it’s more important for them to know this than to know how to separate clothes. Likewise I don’t think I’m naturally better at doing the washing than my partner is, I’ve just had way more teaching, as society shows me – for instance – ads in which it’s always the mum who gets sad because there was a red sock in with her whites. Guys see these adverts too, in almost every instance they’re also shown that it’s ‘not their problem’ to a certain extent.
Yeah, this.
Just a minor language thing. I agree with everything you said, let’s get that out up front.
Now, about words! I think ‘helping out’ is actually a gender-neutral statement. It’s not that the man is deigning to ‘help out’ the woman in doing her gender-stereotypical role-job, but that either person is helping maintain the house. A shared task. I’m the primary income user of the household. I’m -also- the person with the lowest tolerance for a messy home, and so relationships where I’m involved tend to have me drift to the primary housekeeper role. When I ask my romantic euphemism, I almost universally use the words ‘help out’. Please, help out around the house with chore x-y-z. It’s not been limited to romantic euphemisms, either. I’ve used the same language on roommates and long-term visitors of either gender.
Probably to most people it just sounds nicer to be helping out with a task than working at a task. I’m not real sure how else to phrase a request to get work done around the house. “Can you do the job of doing the dishes?” vice “Can you help out with the dishes”, basically. Hmn.
Actually, I want to think on that more.
For the record, the language matter is simply me thinking too much on a single tiny thing (I like to think about words) and is completely besides the totally valid point you made: regardless of the words, society does totally expect the woman to be the non-slob who always has to keep the place clean, and that’s shit. That’s shit because maybe she doesn’t -want- the job, and it’s shit because fuck, why does the man automatically have to be painted as a slob who can’t/won’t help keep a place clean.
Hmm, interesting. To be honest I may be wrong on the ‘helping out’ thing – I’ve never been in a relationship where the guy I’m with has done the majority of the housework, so I’ve rarely been asked to help out, save when I was younger and the person asking was my Mum. I think I’d generally go with ‘please could you do the dishes?’ and try to hold off from ‘help out’ because I do feel like it has implications: that they’re helping me with my chores rather than contributing to all, but yeah. Hmm. I’ll have more of a think on this.
Men cooking and doing housework has always been a fantasy for women, right?
Pretty much the premise of the book “The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework” by Joshua Coleman. Basically suggesting that there are a number of tactics people use to get out of doing housework and a number of reasons that women in particular don’t call men in particular on the imbalance. Worth a read for anyone who’s actively trying to work this stuff out in a relationship.
Just looked that up on Amazon and here’s a bit of the blurb: “His book will help all women motivate their husbands to become better partners and better fathers.”
That women are supposedly responsible for ‘motivating’ their partners to become better fathers is kind of what I’m pissed off about, to be honest.
I’d be somewhat worried if my partner became any sort of a father. I mean, I’m sure as hell not planning to reproduce…
I have a question. As a woman who is a total slob and who rarely musters the energy to clean, I feel a little guilty here – I’m a horrible house keeper. My husband and I have emotionally split but still share a house and a budget etc. does far more housework than I do these days. He cares more, he’s better at it in that he gets shiny results in very little time, whereas I seem to just stir the mess around and hoard things.
However, given that this is the case, GOTN, who do you think should clean the shit he leaves sticking to the side of the toilet every morning, him or me? Because I can’t quite manage to broach the subject (given my general slovenliness) even though I’m horrified by the idea of anyone having to clean up my literal shit after me, whatever about the metaphorical.
Ah, a question for the philosophers =)
Tbh, if you’ve emotionally split, I’d be tempted to make these calls in the same way I would with housemates. In that situation, he’d have to clean his shit but you’d have to tidy your stuff too… I’m not an expert though =)
I agree with you re ‘helping out’. This reminds me of my husband saying he was ‘babysitting’ on rare nights when I went out. Do I ‘babysit’ when he’s not there? Helping out suggests lending a hand to the main .. doer.
My otherwise kind and lovely partner has not done a load of laundry since our oldest child was born over 5 years ago. Over that time I have been on mat leave, been a SAHM and worked part time but not once has he taken responsibility for washing his one dirty clothes, sheets or towels. I resent this (and other housework issues) hugely but just too worn down to do anything about it. This post made me feel quite tearful and despairing. My fear is that my own son will grow up thinking this is how it is and another generation of women will have to put up with this bullshit.
Damn, really sorry – didn’t mean for this to depress people (except, perhaps, those people who should actually be picking up a dishcloth and doing their bit). That sounds like a really frustrating situation, though, and I can see why you’re despairing about it. Five years without doing the washing? He must *surely* wonder how it all gets done.
Go on strike every other week. If he can live through that, go on strike every other month. Then every other year. He’ll catch on eventually.
Reading this, I can’t help but think I seriously can’t be the only guy in the world who enjoys taking as much housework off his wife as possible, right?
You’re certainly not the only one who’d frame it as ‘taking housework off his wife’, as if the housework is predominantly her thing and you’re being awesome by helping. =)
Seriously, I see what you mean, and it’s great that you do a lot, but the main thing I’m trying to combat is the idea that housework somehow ‘belongs’ to women and men are disproportionately awesome for doing it. It’d sound weird to most people if I said ‘oh yeah I take as much housework off my guy as possible’, because as standard society has presented it as my job.
Perhaps we should say “contributing” instead of “helping.”
Actually I see it as predominately my job to do housework. I just hate knowing that my wife can’t sit back and enjoy herself after a day of work, hence why I do as many as possible before I have to go.
And I do see what you’re trying to combat, I’m just surprised things really are like this.
So many right things in this post, thank you. I totally agree with the “helping out” issue. This and the fact that women are supposed to train their men boils down to one problem: the popular belief that women were born with the housework skills built into themselves. We had to get out of her way to learn that shit so they can too. Oooops sorry for rant.
aw man, I feel quite bad after reading this. My husband and I are the opposite of the norm (there we go again though, why is it considered the norm?) really. We both work full time, but I also am self employed and work at home in the evenings too. He does most of the housework, but also has a much higher standard of cleanliness than me, and isn’t an utter slob like me. He does ALL the cooking (he’s much better at it) and the tasks I can’t do (such as ironing, he tried to teach me once but got too frustrated at how slow I was). I tend to do the washing up and washing, which now we have a dishwasher is much easier. We share general house cleaning duties each weekend and get them done together.
But in November and December when I get super busy (home from day job by 5:30pm, work on glass stuff till 7pm, eat dinner, more glass work till 9pm or 10pm, paperwork/accounts/wrapping parcels till 10pm or 11pm, sleep, die) he does it all. ALL. He takes such good care of me, he brings me drinks otherwise I’d forget to drink, he calls me up from my workshop for dinner, he reminds me I need to be up early and should probably go to bed. Honestly it’s like he is a parent during my busy months and how he doesn’t get SO fed up with parenting me I don’t know.
Oh god I’m going to go tell him how awesome he is, excuse me… (And maybe, y’know, try to pull my weight a bit more January – October too. That would probably be more helpful and appreciated?)
This is just it. Completely. What often gets me too is the assumption that not only are women NATURALLY better at housework, but that we enjoy it. It’s fun times for us. If we didn’t have to be doing it, we’d be doing it anyway, of course! Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the aspect of cleaning that means I’m not living in my own filth, and I like keeping my shit together because it makes me happy to live where I live – but nobody enjoys taking clumps of rancid hair out the shower trap. No one.
I used to have a boyfriend who contributed very little to the household. Not only did I pay for much more of our shared ‘stuff’ because I earned a lot more than him, but I did the bulk of household chores. I took on the ‘nag’ role to the point where he was apparently unable to buy a pint of milk without me telling him to first. Surprisingly enough (!) I also had no interest in shagging him. Like zero sex drive at all at the time. Not only does working all the hours and then coming home to do housework tire a girl and sap her libido, I think that I had lost respect for him. Someone treating you like an unpaid domestic servant does not lead to multiple orgasms in my experience. Now single, and live alone, and feel in a lot of ways life is easier, even though I have to do everything myself.
There’s another sub-group of folk not really spoken about here that can really confuse the issue…some people actually *prefer* to do the housework. In our case despite an otherwise very well balanced marriage (own names, own accounts, blah blah) she get’s really quite distressed if it isn’t her doing key parts of the chores. He’d been washing, ironing and cleaning etc since primary school so not lacking in either the skills or the motivation. Despite her typically being sub during play, it’s not being allowed to do the ironing that would be classed as a ‘Hard Limit’ ! (And yes, we tried)
We blame it on another culture and a particularly strict grandmother. Seriously though it should be about choice, respect and opportunity more than anything else.
I love this! My partner and I split things pretty much down the middle (I tend to do a little more during the week brcuase he works longer hours, but pretty much 50/50). He’s happy to do it but I think he probably would have done less if I hadn’t pushed the issue (there was a bit of ‘oh I’m not very good at [insert chore]’ to start with)!
I find that sometimes I have to battle internally with myself because I do tend to want to keep everyone happy, so I do sometimes get the urge to do a lot more than my fair share. For my own sanity and the future balance of our relationship, I fight that pretty hard!
Ranty feminist filth is EXACTLY why I read your blog, darling.
I only wish I had read this sooner. This sums up exactly what I’ve been feeling for over a year. My fella and I do talk, and he does try to be a better human being, but for whatever reason I just cannot seem to get how important this is to me through his skull. I either do everything myself, or nag/remind him to pull his weight.
Hi Lea – argh, I’m frustrated on your behalf. Re: the nagging/reminding thing, one of the things that helped me to work out exactly what it was that I struggled with here was the concept of emotional labour – it’s not just the doing, it’s the responsibility of remembering, and a whole lot of other stuff. A friend sent me a link to an AskMetafilter thread on emotional labour, and it made a whole bunch of things clear for me (and for my bloke, when I spoke to him about it). If you’re interested, there’s a document here that is condensed from the original thread: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0UUYL6kaNeBTDBRbkJkeUtabEk/view Basically I think understanding the concept of emotional labour is really helpful for people who *don’t* do emotional labour – when they really grok how much work is involved in having those responsibilities, they can start to realise how exhausting it can be.
This is a great and true post, but I have one question: what *is* the right washing cycle to remove jizz from the bedsheets?
Depends on the bedsheets. Long-staple egyptian cotton 40°C (60°C with extra Vanish if particularly bad), fast spin, tumble dry warm, iron if you like.
Polyester satin (don’t judge me) 30°C gentle spin, hang to dry.
Silk, cold with ‘delicates’ detergent, no spin, drip dry in garden or over bath.
Thank you so much Rachel! You’re a star. I’ve actually printed that out to stick by my washing machine =)
Oh, WOW. I married a man-baby, who had spent his entire life surrounded by borderline-retarded women who had ‘little jobs’, and who had a primary focus on housework.
I don’t have a ‘little job’, it’s emotionally draining, and intellectually frustrating. I might not be shifting big lumps of metal around all day, but, when I came home, I was tired, and didn’t expect to find said man-baby lounged out on the sofa, in his grease-stinking work clothes. (That “Didn’t need washing, because they’re only for work.”), then to be told “I didn’t make any tea, because I didn’t know what needed using up…”)
I did all of the housework, because he didn’t do any, I asked him to leave six months ago, and I’ve only just finished scrubbing his dog’s piss-stains off every surface in the house, because I work. We had a son, and that son went away to Uni two weeks ago, with everyone in the world telling me he’d be back soon enough with bags of laundry. That son messaged me last week, to ask if he could use my Paypal account to do his laundry. I won’t make my son dependant on anyone.
This made me so angry!! (Also reminded me to catch up on said chores this week). I work from home and my man works office hours and then some, but he takes great pride in not doing any house chores as if his job and income are superior and a valid excuse. Any. He doesn’t even put shit in the dishwasher, just anywhere around it. He doesn’t know how the washing machine works. Seriously if I died / ran away screaming, he’d be quick to hire someone, I bet. Because that’s how I feel – hired without pay. Hed make comments when it’s getting messy around the place yet never notice or mention when its sparkling clean. Mostly filled with resentment and annoyances this is really affecting me in all the wrong ways, sex included.
He is a good bloke, as long as you don’t raise complaints. He plays the victim card so fast and returns your argument totally mangled and unusable. Gah. Sorry. Thanks for the article. 😑
Grr, I’m so sorry that sounds awful. I don’t know what to say, I just wanted to offer some sympathy.