To wonder why women

[TenForward82]

... have to remember their work tasks, daily activities, where the kids have to be and when, what groceries need buying and what shops to get them from ...

... But a man can't even remember his fucking wallet, meaning a sick mum who has been up early has to drag herself and her toddler out to the car to drop it off for him?

/Rant

I had a bit of a shouty moment last week about the whole household thinking they could use my head as some kind of memory extension/SD card thing instead of just remembering their own shit. I get the password for every new site DH goes on, his PIN for his bank card, all the school stuff etc. etc. as well as having to remember all my own passwords for both home and work. I think is was DS telling me to remind him to remember to bring his homework journal home which finally tipped me over the edge. Why am I the only one who can remember things?

My husband does almost all the kid & house organising nowadays. I stood around wondering something about DS school life today, hadn't a clue, DH will have sorted it.

-But he didn't do much when he worked FT & I was SAHM.

I hate it when people say men are like this because women let them get away with it. It is not women's job to train men not to be entitled idiots.

No, men shouldn't be entitled idiots in the first place. However, the women who find themselves in these marriages have limited options, leave, put up with it and moan or stop enabling it.

You can moan all you like about entitled men and it is a massive problem, but it isn't something you have to put up with in your own marriage. We can't change society very easily but we can change what happens in our homes.

And the concept that 'we set our own boundaries/expectations in all of our relationships and insist they be adhered to or choose to either accept it or walk away' is crucial to healthy interpersonal relationships and self esteem.

This needs repeating.

No one 'trains' their husband but we all show people in all forms of relationships what we are willing to put up with.

autumn "It's the notion that it is completely within out power to make it all better that I find crazy.@

Oh I agree, the only people who can actually change that behaviour is the people doing it! You can't always change someone else's behaviour. Rarely, actually, as ultimately someone will only change once they want to. But you have another option, which is to leave. If you accept you can't necessarily change it, you must surely accept you can choose not to be a part of it, or you're basically saying there's nothing you can do?

No, not all women are able to just walk away. But some can. Many do. Just because it's not an option everyone can take doesn't mean it's an option nobody should consider.

People will decide what's right for them but personally I find it pretty empowering. As a younger woman with a partner who did barely any housework, I got a lot of 'ah you know what men are like' responses. I'd have found it loads more helpful if someone had actually said to me 'you know what, you don't have to tolerate this. There's nothing inherently different about you both that means you can and do clean the bathroom while he's incapable'. To push the idea that while women can't change men (and it's not their responsibility to) while also saying that it's too difficult to leave seems like it's basically saying 'put up with it'. And that's a dangerous message to give young women who are already raised in a society that makes them think housework and childcare is more their responsibility than their partner's.

It was a fucking revelation to me the day I stopped doing every single clean of the bathroom. My OH would say 'I don't really see the dirt or care. I don't know how to clean the bathroom' yet the dirt still needed taking care of, and i wasn't born instinctively knowing how to clean the bathroom. I went from thinking 'oh it's just I care more about it being clean, it's easier to do it than have an argument' to saying 'you're a grown, intelligent man. You're equally capable of this and we both know it needs doing so from now on we take turns weekly'.

lino "All vegans announce their veganism when they meet a stranger

To be fair, that one is true."

That's bullshit. You only know about the vegans who told you. Not the ones you met and were none the wiser. Such an old, tired trope.

Trinity66, no, you did indeed misread my post. Otherwise you would have understood that my problem is not with the fact that competent men exist, but with the fact that it is rubbed into our faces every time we try to talk about broader social problems. Why should a discussion about sexism that exists on a level our society always be derailed into 'but not my Nigel'? It's like talking about rape culture with people constantly interjecting 'but my husband/father/son is not a rapist!' How is talking about your husband and how great he is helpful to women who may be in less fortunate circumstances? Not all cultural battles can be fought and won on the level of individual relationships and family units.

Well said Autumn.

Spot on u2. A saying I've found so true over the years is 'we teach people how to treat us'. It doesn't apply to every situation (in fact it can be victim blaming when referring to people in abusive relationships), but on the whole it's an incredibly valuable lesson to internalise. So often you hear people complaining about things they have options regarding (I do it too, it's human nature). But it gets to a point where you have to either insist on change or walk away.

WorraLiberty, well done for not being an 'enabler'! I am sure that if we all just try harder, we can all be like you.

Again with the sarcasm Autumn?

Would you prefer women were 'kept in their place' by men then?

Because your contempt for women who insist on an equal relationship, appears to be oozing from your posts on this thread.

I was thinking about this earlier. We have a very traditional set up for lots of reasons and I don’t generally resent it, I love being at home and my trade off for that is that I do everything.

But it is exhausting in a way that I don’t think DH realises. I’m the only one who has done the Christmas thinking and shopping, I’ve soent two days wrapping presents. DS2 has a bug so I’ve been housebound with him for two days. I’ve got cash out to take into school for movie night, and ordered the nativity tickets, and reminded him which morning he needs to take off for it.

We’re running low on loo roll and bleach so I’ve noticed that and added it to the shop. He will pick up milk on the way home but only if I ask him to. I do all the shopping, cleaning, cooking etc.

I am actually shit at all this so when I inevitably forget an appointment or birthday it’s a) my fault and b) my responsibility to fix.

It’s much easier now this is my full time job, as it were. When I worked FT out of the house we ostensibly shared all this but it didn’t really work that way. DH cooked, but I still meal planned and shopped. We had a cleaner but it was me who organised it and made sure the house was tidy the night before.

DH is actually brilliant, but imo it is most if not all men. I have never met a man who gives a shit about any of this. And for those saying single men do it all, well maybe if they are single fathers with no mother or partner in the picture. But single men with no dependents have far less responsibility to start with.

It is endemic, and it’s due to socialisation and expectations. To claim differently is ignoring the point and being disingenuous.

Autumn, but there is some value to be had in people in shitty relationships realising that not everyone's relationship is like that. Otherwise it's easy to swallow the idea that 'every man cheats' 'no husbands willingly clean' etc. It can open someone's eyes to read that there are actually healthier ways to have a partnership and ordinary normal women have partners who treat them with respect and do their fair share. How many times do we hear women who've been abused say they didn't realise what was happening was wrong until someone else found out and was shocked?

People aren't gloating and saying 'ha ha you picked a wrong un, mine's great!'. They're saying 'you don't have to accept this. Decent men exist. If I could get one you could too. There is another way'.

Which I think is loads more helpful and empowering than an echo chamber where only women with crap partners contribute and everyone assumes that's just normal behaviour.

Ps this is a really interesting debate. I'm enjoying how people are (mostly) engaging respectfully and thoughtfully.

Not enabling isn't some huge mindset. It is simply finding the boundaries in your relationship that work for you.

LemonShark massively spot on!

Thanks for spelling it out to Autumn because I'm having trouble putting the point across.

WorraLiberty, well done for not being an 'enabler'! I am sure that if we all just try harder, we can all be like you.

What do you want her to say? Do you want her to say that all men are like this and there is nothing you can do about it? Would it make you feel better?

I wouldn't enable that kind of behaviour either. I am sorry if you don't like that.

AutumnMadness

I just don't see the need for being so condescending tbh I mean this is a thread asking for opinions but it seems like there's only one answer that's acceptable in here? I'll leave you all to it then :/

Some people have clearly had a relationship with all 3 billion men on the planet to speak with such authority.

posts that start 'all men' usually mean 'I have sex with a complete idiot and am a doormat'. Change your life or stop whining.

Because your contempt for women who insist on an equal relationship, appears to be oozing from your posts on this thread.

Yes, it is really strange. It's like she wants people to say there is nothing we can do about it.

So much anger on this board towards women who dare complain about men too
A lot of internalised misogyny as well.

What a load of hypocritical bollocks.

You’re the one who’s angry about “all men” and yet you blame MNers for being annoyed that you’re generalising when there are no doubt millions of men who manage perfectly well to remember what they need to remember.

On some board, somewhere, someone will be stating that “all women” are useless at DIY and can’t park a car, or something like that. That will also be a load of bollocks and hopefully someone will be pointing that out very clearly.

My take on it is that loads of people post on here about how shit “men” are when in fact it’s just that they’ve married a fuckwit and are secretly hoping everyone else has too.

Yep. I wonder if at the root of it it's that people who are in a crap relationship can only handle it by persuading themselves that it's normal and they're not being disrespected/taken for a mug, they're just dealing with a run of the mill man. Whenever anyone paints all men with a broad brush disparagingly I wonder if that's at the heart of it.

I've had some exes that have really hurt me in various ways but it absolutely has never made me think for a second 'all men lie/chest/are commitmentphobes', I know I just picked ones that turned out that way. Simultaneously I have many amazing men in my life, friends and relatives, who are brilliant, kind, caring, pull their weight in their relationships and so forth. I'd be disgusted if a man who'd been cheated on a couple times by a woman generalised that to 'all women are cheats' when I know as a woman I never have!

There's some motivation there in insisting that men are crap, we can't change them nor can we walk away. So... the answer is to just accept it?

There is NO way I would have been running to give him his wallet, you're enabling his behaviour. Just DON'T DO stuff. My DP and I are pretty much 50/50 on the 'boring' stuff in life ( 2 women tho so that make's a difference) but she does work longer hours and isn't as good with organising and details so you know what I do to help her out with her families Xmas cards, and sorting the kids on 'her' days for drop off etc. ? NADA. Because she's a grown ass woman and I'm not her P.A./laundry maid/ nanny. If she doesn't remember to send her mother a birthday card on time then she feels the consequences. If she forgets to send a child in with their music book, she has to go back with it.
There's no other way of you want to be equals in a relationship.

Its because men are crap and women aren't. Generally speaking.

No, Worra, I would prefer some women to (pardon me) check their privilege as not to inadvertently assist men in keeping women in their place. Empathy, intersectionality, attention to structural inequalities and all that. As opposed to naked individualism that is also the hallmark of the Tory party that is oh so good at empowering women.

Why did you take it, Op?

Sometimes people forget things & the other person can help at no inconvenience to themselves.

But if you're ill/it's not convenient-why would he ask/why would you do it?

If it's just money for lunch he could borrow that, so was there something important that he needed?

LemonShark, I agree with you. What gets me is not providing validation and support to women who want to resist sexism. It's the denial of broader social problems and individualisation of everything. Otherwise, I am in total agreement with you.