Is it weaponised incompetence or are men just rubbish?

Despite being 'trained' by me (his anal mum) DS has developed this good enough attitude to, seemingly, everything in life. He sees no point in going the extra mile when good enough, is good enough. He is so much more laid back than me. In some ways I am a little envious.

I’m sorry but bollocks to your last paragraph - are you a tradwife?

I hate loading the dishwasher so I did it in a really bad way. My DH now does it all the time so I never have to do it. It’s not just men.

Ha, I agree! It’s definitely not taking me 40 min to load the dishwasher (how is that even possible?), but I do make sure it‘s done properly.
Hate it when stuff comes out dirty or the filter gets blocked up with muck 😣

Oh my god yes

Dh is very competent does most of the laundry. He is a good cook but my god he is slow. You cannot be a perfectionist chef when bashing together Tuesday tea before activities. He cooks weekends only now.

yeah, if they wanted to do it well they would... most of them hold down jobs...so presumably they turn up to work on time looking clean and presentable.

Many just don't care if the house is untidy and the dishes are unwashed.

Some are very tidy and clean though, my BIL is. And it's his wife who is messy... though she is still cleaner and tidier than your average man.

This is a really interesting threat and the PP Felix sums up my suspicions. No malice in it, just men have different brains and can’t hold the thousands of parallel thoughts that woman might be having in a day regarding school uniform, shopping, Christmas thinking that starts happening in October, what’s for dinner, ingredients needed for dinner etc etc. I do think they would cope without woman but the world/house would be a dirtier and less organised place. Kids would turn up to school half dressed and fed on whatever is in the cupboards. They’d probably all be perfectly happy and would get around to it all eventually just in a really inefficient way. All the dads would be at the supermarket the night before Christmas jumper day rather than just a handful of mums. Or maybe they would forget completely and all the stupid pointless things that mums have to do everyday would fall away and cease to exist. Like natural selection for household jobs.

I don't know tbh. My DH seems perfectly capable and he pulls his weight. He doesn't always approach tasks in the same way that I would, but I don't always assume that my way is the only right way, so this isn't really an issue.

The unloading and re-loading of the dishwasher takes the EXACT same time as making a cup of tea!

I agree with this. I made a lovely Chinese meal from scratch the other night and was a bit stressed playing it all up at the same time and asked husband to put the rice in the microwave, omg, what a palava reading the instructions within an inch of their life asking about 50 questions about it, ahhhhh! He is a good cook himself but needs a huge amount of time to do it.

No idea, but as a gay woman I can tell you that this generally isn’t a thing in my gay men friend’s relationships!
The male couples manage to run households - from cooking to cleaning to laundry to mowing the lawn to fixing the car to taking out bins to doing DIY etc - just as well as me and DW do…
And my widower dad has an immaculate house and garden so he too seems to be able to manage it all.

Couples seem to slot themselves into what will be their normal early on in a relationship. Many a 50/50 split of everything or some happily negotiate a labour split that works for them, you won’t read much about these couples on here because they are happy and functioning as a team. But for all these sort of couples getting on with life in the background, there are the ones who have a shit time with a lazy man and an overworked woman, but personally I’ve got no sympathy for either, it’s their fault that they formed these shitty unbalanced relationships.

Couples like this get together and a woman won’t care she’s treated like shit because her guy is hot or cute when he lays there on the couch and lets her serve him and of course he’s never gonna change, he can do fuck all, but eventually that lazy twat is laying on that couch with a beer belly, she’s run ragged with a twat but it’s too late, they are stuck together, they forged their dynamic while blinded by love, but when you first start dating you’ve got to look out for these red flags, and I don’t believe they are not there.

Another type of scenario I’ve seen with toxic couples is a woman who micro manages and martyrs herself, they guy cares enough but not to her standards and she takes on too much stress and everything has to be her way, it’s usually controlling and I equally have no sympathy for a guy who lives with that sort of shit, that controlling behaviour would be there from the start.

what I’m saying is at the beginning we need to look out for red flags and what sort of relationship we want to have, it can be done, most are not manipulated into these situations, some are but not most, but lots are blind at the beginning and don’t want to see these faults until it’s too late, I have no sympathy for men or women who don’t look objectively for a life partner who will work with them.

In my experience if there's something a bloke wants to do or is interested in doing it will be done. Otherwise forget it. They have zero interest in anything unless it's particularly important to them. Completely focussed on self.
Add that to a herculean level of laziness exhibited by most men and you have the usual situation where women do almost everything whilst carrying huge amounts of mental load for children, elderly parents, siblings and men just carry on unbothered.

There is always some paragon of virtue, a man whose great with their children, great cook, brilliant at house work but they are outliers and frankly why would they be seen as amazing when women just do all that stuff anyway.

One thing I've noticed a lot of men like doing in the home is cooking for big events or social occasions....they do this because they enjoy it and because it leads to plenty of praise. They also invariably use every utensil and trash the kitchen which the wife ends up sorting out, whilst the man basks in the glory of his amazing meal. They also dress this whole spectacle up as 'helping' and the guests loudly proclaim as to how lucky the wife is.

So yeah, they can do it when the rewards are high enough

My father was the perfect man doing all the repairs and maintenance and also used to cook and drive everyone to places with a big smile and sense of humour. I took this for granted I guess. I unfortunately married a person whose mother and father did everything for him. ( realised much too late) Therefore, once we got a big house he came out as useless plus also very tight to outsource help. It is a nightmare in our house when things need to be repaired or even maintenance. I feel he also pretends he is rubbish at most things not to help. He moans endlessly about anything you ask. Damage cause for late repairs costs more sometimes. He is not good and very grumpy all the time so I had enough. Divorce is imminent as he is ruined our day to day and I resent and loss respect for him.

It isn’t weaponised incompetence. It is simply not doing jobs that you don’t want to do or don’t think are necessary. I actually think virtually everyone does it (men and women) except a few people who have something to prove and have to show they are competent at everything. Surely there are things that you have no interest in doing but you could do if you really had to?

My DH absolutely tries his best and would never weaponise incompetence but he is much slower than me at tasks. Often I would rather do it so I can have him on hand helping with the children rather than him pissing about forever doing something I could do in less than half the time.

I used to allocate work in my team. Generally speaking, if you wanted something done accurately, you'd give it to one of the women who were more likely to stress about doing it right and on time. If you wanted something done fast but with errors, give it to one of the men. Men also won't tend to pitch in or help out other team members in the same way as women.

I'd say, generally speaking (because there's always exceptions), men choose not to take on extra responsibility easily. When they do choose to do something, they are still more likely not to ask or to look up how and are happy for their work to have mistakes. eg When we had a baby, I was constantly online looking up what to do. My husband was very involved but happy to just wing it.

It's a combination of weaponised incompetence and indifference. They won't do chores or will do them badly because they are simply indifferent to them. People put effort into things they care about and a lot of men don't care about living in a clean and tidy house.

When my DH does housework it's far better than my efforts because I do it quickly. He can take 30 minutes to hang or fold a load of washing.

However, he also doesn't prioritise those tasks unless they're shoved in front of him & he knows it's expected. I.e., washing machine beeping repeatedly or he's asked to do something. He has a couple of weekly cleaning jobs we've allocated at his, because I was sick of doing it all. I REFUSE to do them. Come Saturday I pointed out they hadn't been done yet as I went to do groceries. Came home to him watching YouTube & DC on screens. It's just not his priority. He did it, because I said I wasn't doing it. I'll be doing the same this week, too.

Well men manage to live on their own and have jobs and do all manner of grown things like my husband

If they are so bad how on earth do they have partners?

Oh god @Appletreepots I wouldn't ever leave a man in charge of your finances - that way hell lies.

@Appletreepots did that not give you the most enormous ICK? !

I don't think so. My father (now in 70s) has barely done a single day's worth of domestic tasks in 50 years of marriage