How are we supposed to do ALL of this?

I am surprised no one had a stronger response to the poem, I think it is wonderful.

I first read it years ago in my 20s and it intrigued and drew me into thinking about economics/duty/love/the nature of 'home' for women. It stayed with me for years, in pre internet days I could never track it down, but key lines stayed with me. I was delighted to rediscover it as a wife and mother and I think it planted a seed that shaped the female roles I created for myself. It seems a million times more relevant to this thread than the shallow 'Monica' references that have been thrown in upteen times.

when two people have different standards they have to reach a compromise

Which is exactly what I posted earlier - it is compromising moves us along. Greentomatojam gives another good example of this.

What did you think of the poem?

OK, so guardian of acceptable standards aside (AWESOME Title BTW)

What if there is one thing that winds you up - for example, in my case, it is leaving your dirty washing on the floor of the bathroom, rather than putting it one foot over in the laundry bin.

If there's one thing, that your partner does, that you find unbelievably annoying, are you not allowed to ask them not to do it?

Would it not be reasonable for them to not do it?

DP hates having toothpaste with a screw on lid. So we don't buy it any more. It's no big deal.

Unless DP has some massive issue with preferring dirty clothes on the floor, why wouldn't he also shrug, say no big deal, and put the dirty washing in the laundry basket? It doesn't even have a lid, it is literally no more effort than dropping it on the floor.

But to do so, is to have unnacceptably high standards?

I'd also question how far we are supposed to let "neglect" go.
As far as the floor never being cleaned?
No clean dishes?
No food for the children?

When two people have different standards they have to reach a compromise, but we can't possibly play who does the least so that we achieve equal work at home.

Where is the reference to behaviour which you know distresses the other people in your house, which they keep on asking you not to do, but which you carry on doing anyway because their feelings just don't matter that much to you?

Interesting - for me it goes to the very heart of it.

That poem has nothing to do with what we are discussing IMO

AFFECTIONS MUST NOT - Denise Riley

This is an old fiction of reliability

is a weather presence, is a righteousness
is arms in cotton

this is what stands up in kitchens
is a true storm shelter
& is taken straight out of colonial history, master and slave

arms that I will not love folded nor admire for their ‘strength’
linens that I will not love folded but will see flop open
tables that will rise heavily in the new wind & lift away, bearing their precious burdens

of mothers who never were, nor white nor black
mothers who were always a set of equipment and a fragile balance
mothers who looked over a gulf through the cloud of an act & at times speechlessly saw it

inside a designation there are people permanently started to bear it, the not-me against sociology
inside the kitchens there is realising of tightropes
Milk, if I do not continue to love you as deeply and truly as you want and need
that is us in the mythical streets again

support, support

the houses are murmuring with many small pockets of emotion
on which spongy grounds adults lives are being erected and paid for daily
while their feet and their children’s feet are tangled around like those of fen larks
in the fine steely wires which run to and fro between love and economics

affections must not support the rent

I. neglect. the house

So you haven't read my posts then.

Because if you had, you'd remember that I said my level of concern is 1 while someone else's is 10.

So telling me not to sweat a mug is unnecessary. As I've already said I don't.

No-one has yet answered my question about how they would define behaviour which deliberately causes the person they live with, ongoing distress.

And I suspect that no-one will.

I wonder why not.

Your posts are very long & I don't feel like writing an essay in my spare time. My basic premise is that people shouldnt over invest in a clean house & set themselves up as the guardians of acceptable standards. It is a hiding to nothing, especially for women who are better served seeking status & satisfaction out with the ideal home. If I have the time I'll copy and paste a Denise Riley poem which is a more nuanced expression of what I am trying to convey but basically boils down to stop sweating about a mug.

Did you not read the rest of my post?

Why are you ignoring what I'm actually saying?

Well, maybe being nagged about dirty fingerprints everyday makes someone feel like shit? I'm not getting why caring about wiped cupboard doors is by default 'correct'. Not in my universe it isn't.

“AskBasil - you cannot change another adult's behavior by criticizing it or condemning it according to your own values.”

I’m not sure why you’re telling me this. I agree with you. I still don’t understand why you think men are incapable of cleaning their own toilets without nagging and therefore the only way to get a clean toilet without the woman of the house doing it, is to outsource it.

“You avoid all the problems about behavioural change if you follow my advice - the pre relationship due diligence, the avoiding sexist pigs or dirty messy spouses in the first place, if that matters to you.”

Have you not read the thread? This has already been discussed, most men do not start dumping an unfair percentage of domestic tasks on the women they live with, until they have children. Their behaviour changes from what it was when you did your due diligence.

With regards to the greasy hands argument, Whattheseithakasmean I think that very much depends on a) how crazy-making your DH would find it and b) whether you doing that is part and parcel of a wider pattern of behaviour that distresses and annoys your DH on an ongoing basis. Nowhere have I said that merely leaving greasy marks on its own, is the sign of an abusive relationship and you’ve not read my posts properly if that’s what you’re taking from them; what I’ve said is that if you choose to do something every single day which you know deeply distresses and upsets someone you live with, without even trying to not do that thing, then that is probably abusive behaviour. (Obviously subject to the caveat of it not being a mad Monica-type demand.) I’m open to the line that it may not be abusive, but what would you call it, how would you describe it, when someone continually does something that makes the other person they live with, feel like shit every day, when they know how much it upsets the other person? I did ask this question further down the thread but surprise surprise, no-one answered it.

I expect women are supposed to negotiate better by lavishing praise on men for doing what they were supposed to do in the first place, and by just waiting for ever until they decide to do it, is that it?

Well then, Bobo, you said yourself you can't change adults behaviour by criticizing it, so why don't you stop nagging us? Leave us alone to our unelightened man hating and dirty toilets that we're too poor to afford a housekeeper to swill out

(PS, Matilda, fab posts on this thread!)

Matilda - it is a fact of life that women are poor at negotiating a better deal for themselves and resort to self-sabotaging tactics like criticism and nagging when they haven't got what they want.

I am a reformed MugWoman at work. There are plenty of MugPeople and of course it is very annoying behaviour! Leaving cups out so that there are none for others in the staff room. Or leaving dirty mugs so someone else has to wash them up.

I am not a spoon stealer though. They are the lowest of the low!

If you're a messy person the best thing you can do is not live with someone else and inflict your standards on others.

You avoid all the problems about behavioural change if you follow my advice - the pre relationship due diligence, the avoiding sexist pigs or dirty messy spouses in the first place, if that matters to you.

Paying for outsourcing is quite an effective negotiation technique, yes!

We pay for all sorts of domestic help (I like specialized help of a very high standard rather than having a FT housekeeper which is what most of our friends choose) and some of it is male and some of it is female but, tbh,mI don't pay much attention to whether the ironing is done by a man or a woman.

But why would they be right, and me wrong?

It's only a mug, with possibly nothing in it. Why are they so worked up and over invested in it? How can an empty mug be offensive or rude? I just don't get it.

I think they should just live and let live and learn a bit of tolerance tbh. It's only a mug.

you cannot change another adult's behavior by criticizing it or condemning it according to your own values.

This is key, for me. Who gets to decide in the relationship what is, or isn't, acceptable. If my DH got on my case about fingermarks on cupboards, I would be royally ticked off. It doesn't bother me, if it bothers him he can wipe them off, or leave them, because I don't care. According to AskBasil this makes me an abusive sexist patriarchal man. Except I am not. I am a laid back, happy, feminist woman in a loving strong relationship.

You have to accept people have different standards of acceptable cleanliness and no one is 'right'. As in everything about relationships, it is compromising moves us along. As a feminist, in general I think woman are best served looking outside of the home for their accomplishments and not over investing in house beautiful.

AskBasil - you cannot change another adult's behavior by criticizing it or condemning it according to your own values.

But... you can change another adults behaviour by paying a third adult to make the problem invisible?

(Is your outsourced cleaner a man or a woman, btw?)

AskBasil - you cannot change another adult's behavior by criticizing it or condemning it according to your own values.