*MIL told me a story after I'd married DH and moved to Australia with him (he's Aussie). She told me that not long after she'd married his father, she was "nagging" him about something (i.e. probably asking him to do something he'd failed to do several times already) and he got angry, threw his bowl of spaghetti up in the air so it went all over the wall and ceiling (FFS!) and shouted at her to "stop nagging me, woman!" and she "never nagged him again".
I was horrified. I think she meant it as an object lesson - as in, don't nag the man, he doesn't like it - but all it did was make me think "you poor sap, did you really fall for that one?" And of COURSE she had to clean it all up as well. But that's the way she was brought up. SAdly for her son, it's NOT the way I was brought up and I wouldn't put up with that kind of shit at all. "Poor" DH has to take his turns at cooking and washing up, despite him working and me looking after the children, because I have 2 boys and I will NOT have them grow up thinking that women do all the "wifework". I don't accept the accusation of "nagging" either - I point out that if DH had done whatever the first time of asking, I wouldn't need to keep asking. So it's entirely his own fault that I'm still asking him to do it (or "nagging").
Such a load of bollocks. 