to ask why do some very capable men sometimes act so incapable at home?

[Topseyt]

DH tried to tell me this evening that he had no idea how to press the pager button on the base unit of our landline phone so that it would beep and he could locate it to listen to a message. He does know how. He has done it before. Suddenly though, with me out collecting DD1 from her friend's house, he isn't able any more.

Once he had it in his paw, he then tried to claim that he had no idea how to listen to messages on it. Again, something he has done many times before, it isn't a new phone.

I'd bet that he wouldn't do it at work - telling the boss that he hasn't done something he was asked because he suddenly became inexplicably incapable of listening to his voicemail or reading his emails.

He wonders why I looked askance at him.

'So I don't see it is gendered. Make sure you marry an equal competent adult (of either sex) and it will be fine.'

Hear Hear!

Speaking personally (as a bloke) I'd say it's because men take no interest in things they find boring - like working domestic appliances). OK, this is a sweeping generalisation, I know. We might do it once but then we forget all about it and have to re-learn in the next time.

Phones and the washing machine I can manage. The microwave is a mystery to me.

It's not a gendered think IMO. I'm a bloke and I do all the ironing, most of the cooking, preparing the kids for school and other chores in our house. I have never been able to get my wife to do anything with the cars, computers and other traditionally male stuff. I just get told she doesn't know how to do it and doesn't want to learn! I think it applies to both sexes.

But Rags what's the flipside to that argument? That women find microwaves fascinating, or that our LadyBrains are perfectly designed for such banalities?

YouTube is great for finding out anything from how to build flat pack to how to fix a vacuum.

This is true, but in our house it goes something like "our kitchen tap isn't working - I've found this great YouTube video that will show you how you can fix it."

If she wasn't such a great mum/wife/partner I'd have seethed for a week rather than just an hour;)

Because they can. Because they know that someone else - you - will end up doing it for them, or explaining it to them.

Because they've been facilitated to learn to be so useful.

It's one thing to have areas you're better at than the other person. Surely every couple does that.

But the only way people get away with just sort of going "waah, I can't do it" is because they know someone else will fix it for them.

He he, men and microwaves!
Ours is an ancient behemoth of a thing that dh bought before he met me, so 12+ years old.
I was the one to show him how the auto defrost function worked as whenever he tried to defrost anything he ended up overcooking it.
He started his career as an electronic engineer!
For the most part, its not that he's lazy or 'strategically incompetent' he's just utterly oblivious to a lot of things and can be quite messy. Having small children has taught him a lot about the need to tidy up.

Rags. My husband remembers how to use a microwave, iron, oven, washing machine. Is it because he finds it interesting? Personally I am utterly bored by the never ending dirty washing and evning meals.

We can both use domestic apliances for the same reason; we both know that we are responsible for the mundane daily boring tasks that keep family life functioning.

I just cannot begin to understand why you would want to be with, let alone sleep with, and adult who was so...so...I was going to say incapable but I think I'll go for lazy and selfish.

I don't know, I don't think it is the same for car stuff and DIY. Those things are quite hard and require learning about. It's not the same as something which is really simple. If I needed to learn about cars or DIY then I would, but it's a lot of effort to go to when there is somebody there who finds it perfectly simple and is even enthusiastic about the prospect.

Great thread .

I often look at DH and wonder how he runs his own business.

Everything's a drama, every gadget he can't get to work immediately is broken, everything he can't find immediately has been thrown away etc etc!

We've recently been on holiday and any minor issue or clarification requiring a conversation with someone was left to me. He just wafted around like a 3rd child.

My conclusion is that he spends so much of his time managing people and troubleshooting at work he just finds it difficult to cope with additional demands when he's at home.

Should add he is a fantastic DH and DF

Surely, most of us would do as little as possible if we thought we could get away with it .....

BertieBotts

There's something in that, and I think it can rub along fine as long as one person (male or female) isn't getting lumbered with too much because they other person can't be bothered, won't learn, etc.

I thought when DW and I moved in together and took on our house as a 'project' we would both muck in together on painting, decorating, etc. but sadly it didn't work like that.

There is a fine line between asking one partner to do something because they are genuinely better at it, and expecting one partner to do it because of either their gender or their role within the house, isn't there?

So DP rarely hoovers - he does all the cooking and the gardening, I do most of the hoovering and dusting. But if he needs to hoover, he doesn't just stand there looking at it, prodding it slightly, then whining that he doesn't know how to attach a particular nozzle. He simply asks how to attach it. Same as I'd ask how to make the strimmer work.

I hear you! My dh can be stunningly useless. He seems to have to be asked to do things and can't see they need doing.

And I have lost count of the times he's come to me and said things like 'do you want this washing put away?' , 'does this need washed?' and I have to restrain the urge to kick him and shout 'make up your own fucking mind about it, it's not rocket science! You're a fucking adult!!!'

And his office at home is so untidy that whenever he asks the dc to tidy up they just laugh at him and point out his own office. fair enough...

Absolutely! My father never did a thing until he was on his own after my parents divorced. Suddenly he learned to do a whole host of things, including cook, hoover and use a washing machine!

DH can be pretty bad sometimes (claims he can't use a washing machine), but I'm afraid I force him. He does pay for a cleaner though, who also irons his shirts, as now we have DC I don't have time to do it and work too.

I do hope my two boys leave home with some idea of how to look after themselves and don't mysteriously regress as soon as they have a partner!

Oh yes definitely Jdee. Have you told her that, though? Maybe she doesn't realise?

YY Thurlow.

But Rags what's the flipside to that argument? That women find microwaves fascinating, or that our LadyBrains are perfectly designed for such banalities

No. I would say it's that women have a higher boredom threshold than men do.

Again, another massive generalisation that is designed to let useless and lazy people off the hook.

Ooohh, getting started on men and microwaves!!

Sorry, not all men of course, but some of them in DH's side of the family seem to have spectacular disasters with microwaves.

Back in 1999, when DD2 was not quite a year old, DH and I were going to New York because he was running the New York Marathon. His mum and dad came to our house to look after DD1 (then 4) and baby DD2 for a few days.

One morning while we were gone, FIL was doing the early morning shift with the girls to give MIL a break. For some reason he thought he should put DD2's bottle of formula into the microwave for SIX MINUTES while still with the lid completely sealed. The bottle blew up. Blew the microwave door off its hinges and embedded the wrecked bottle in the ceiling!! Nobody was in the room at the time, fortunately, but apparently it sounded like a gunshot going off. MIL gave FIL a real ticking off about that and he never did live it down . They went out later that day to buy a replacement microwave, which I noticed and commented on when we returned.

DH is generally a good DH. I just need to vent about his foibles at times. Mr. Practical he aint! I recall the Christmas when he put a new bike together for DD1 and set it up with the handlebars on back to front. He just couldn't see that it was wrong and couldn't see the problem. He only accepted that it was wrong a few weeks later when she had to take the bike to school for cycling proficiency and the instructor sent a note home saying exactly that.

We laugh at most of his escapades. Have to. He isn't allowed to live them down.

trollkonor I don't think yYour husband is not the sort of man this thread is discussing.

I'm just putting forward what I see as the reason why otherwise competent blokes turn into domestic dumb arses.

What other purpose do massive generalisations have?

BertieBotts

I gave up on that after a huge row about wallpapering!! ;)

To get you to do it. They do it at work too, my boss cant press the approve button for the decisions he has to make without me stood there 'supervising'. I want to scream 'what do you thank that big box saying 'click here to approve' is then fuckwit... but handholding him is part of the job to be frank.

" its tedious and I find it unattractive. To the point of, renders a man unfanciable."

Absolutely.

Of course it's gendered. Otherwise, you'd get far more women who pretended not to be able to use washing machines and dishwashers and far more men who pretended to be unable to learn how to top up oil in a car.

And it is gendered too, that the work women tend to have learned helplessness about, is the stuff that's visible and big and obvious, like DIY - when you've put a new floor down, you notice it's done. Whereas the stuff men tend to have learned helplessness about, is the stuff that's invisible and unnoticed, like the laundry and dishwasher.

And what's also very gendered, is that once women have actually learned how to top up the oil/ change the lawnmower blade/ use the drill they don't suddenly mysteriously unlearn it after having done it themselves for five years when they were single. Whereas men do seem to unlearn those basic tasks like remembering where the socks are kept, even though for years they managed to take responsibility for their own socks.