To wonder why MN is so keen on the 'divorced due to dishes by the sink' blog

[velourvoyageur]

This one - which I think actually totally misses the point?

First off, she didn’t leave him because he didn’t pander to her neurotically high standards of cleanliness and tidiness, otherwise it would have no wider social resonance. She very likely left him because he left her to juggle a two-person share of the household tasks in one person’s 24 hours. So while ostensibly he's posing as someone who can't understand why someone would be uptight about the occasional glass on the side, he's actually applying that reasoning to a situation where he regularly leaves his wife to tackle his dishes - because he somehow can't understand why anyone would want them cleaned. But of course he knows well it’s not some quirky individual femaleishness to be invested in having basic standards of tidiness upheld - everyone who shares in the benefits & is capable of doing so should muck in without anyone needing to be psychic or framing it as doing a kindness to the woman by relieving her of her natural duties. Do men really think that women have historically spent hours hoovering, washing up and doing laundry specifically because they, as individuals, have a particular liking for clean carpets, plates and sheets that men don’t share? 'Be generous-hearted and cater to her irrational womanly desires or face divorce.' No wonder household work is not valued when many men refuse to acknowledge that they also benefit from it. Alleviating wifework has nothing to do with being kind, it’s about recognising a fair division of labour in the household. And getting husbands to do their fair share by appealing to their kindness, rather than to their basic duty as one member of a team, builds a very shaky reasoning for why they should pitch in (i.e. 'I'm tired tonight, I won't bother washing this, I don't have to be kind all the time').

He’s riding on the wifework trend and that’s why the article’s been successful, but all he really admits to is not bending over backwards to please her whims as a response to differing personal preferences re: household management. What he’s actually saying doesn’t really come under the context of the wifework phenomenon at all, but he frames it in the related language, and comes out looking like this self-deprecating, endearingly naïve victim of modern feminism. I'd be hopping mad as his ex-wife!

AIBU to think he's been quite disingenuous and wonder why people cite it so much? (Happy to be disproved)

Not sure I understand your point?

The blog, in my view when I read it ages ago, was that it demonstrated the death of a marriage by a thousand cuts.

One small cut can be healed but if they keep coming, eventually it has a big impact. Isn’t that the point?

To me wifework is about women taking on all of the mental responsibilities including telling husbands what to do because they don’t seem to think for themselves.

It’s like being a manager of the house - being responsible for everything and having to think of everything. When there’s another adult perfectly capable of also taking their share!

I've read almost all of the blog previously and I think he does show fairly decent insight into how he wrecked his own marriage by being a selfish knob tbh.

It's not just the dishes it's the taking responsibility for things, he was the facilitated husband, who didn't actively participate in the marriage.

I found it overly irritating in places and don't rate the book he seems to love, and his religious beliefs are obviously a big influence on him (and turn me off as an atheist)

But as divorce blogs go, it's not terrible I think

Believe
I think people read the title and assume that is what he is saying. But I think he used that precisely to garner sympathy for a very different view of the situation.

But what he is literally arguing is that even if you don't understand why something should be done, you should do it to keep the peace. This is easily refuted by saying that the wife was being irrational, that there should be give-and-take in a relationship, that you shouldn't be so passive, that if she wants to go above and beyond then he can pick and choose when he feels like being kind and 'helping' her. Actually managing a household involves taking the effort to understand why things should be done (this understanding comes with valuing the work) and it has nowt to do with choosing to be kind.

I saw this article about two weeks ago and it explained what I never could of why I get worked up about 'small things like this. I always feel it's a 'two fingers up' at me. I read the article to DH and he got it. Two weeks on he is still making the extra effort which is wonderful.

But he isn't claiming it's about dishes, is he:

Quote:
**The wife doesn’t want to divorce her husband because he leaves used drinking glasses by the sink.

She wants to divorce him because she feels like he doesn’t respect or appreciate her, which suggests he doesn’t love her, and she can’t count on him to be her lifelong partner. **

He thinks it is about respect. I agree he sounds like a wanker, but it does boil down to respect really, imo.

Yes it’s about the respect aspect.

I asked my DH to read this article when he didn’t seem to get it. Now he does.

He's arguing that she divorced him because he couldn't do her the kindness of imagining this might be something she cares about and indulging what he sees as her 'whims'. The subtext is that if she were less uptight she wouldn't connect these whims to feeling respected, because he doesn't. Whereas he should be washing up not out of blind respect that his wife has an idiosyncratic preference for cleanliness but because he sees it as his within his remit too.

Whereas he should be washing up not out of blind respect that his wife has an idiosyncratic preference for cleanliness but because he sees it as his within his remit too.

I think you really don't get it. For him, that washing is not a job that anyone needs to do. That is how messy/dirty/untidy people really feel. The idea of a remit, who should do the work, doesn't apply, because there really is no work that needs doing. At least not immediately.

I don't think lack of respect is the right diagnosis. I think it's simple incompatibility, and possibly a bit of stupidity/lack of imagination. The messy person really can't understand a pain that they themselves never experience. For them, the tidy person really is a neurotic who needs to get over themselves.

she didn’t leave him because he didn’t pander to her neurotically high standards of cleanliness and tidiness, otherwise it would have no wider social resonance

I disagree, there are countless couples where one is in a permanent state of misery because of the messiness of the other, and want to leave for precisely that reason. The tidy one is only "neurotic" in the eyes of their less tidy partner, their standards aren't unusual.

I would very much like to leave my wife, purely to get away from the distress that living with her mess causes me every day of my life. It's not lack of respect, or love that bother me, I don't actually mind those. It's the actual mess that makes me miserable, every hour of every day. She's not even especially messy. But her standards are lower than mine, my mother's, my sisters, and about 80% of the parents of friends whose houses I visited as a child.

The point is that as an adult it’s his responsibility to clean up after himself. He didn’t want to go this and decided to force his wife to take the responsibility of either telling him to do it or doing it herself. Basically he didn’t want to be a fully functional human being and he’s surprised that she left him.

Firesuit but then why write an article about it, framing it as exemplifying a wider social issue, saying that men behave like children in general and why are so many people linking it to wifework at all, if it's just an Oscar-Felix type mismatch?

Also, I would argue that if he were surrounded by dirty plates, flies buzzing etc, as a result of having no wife, he would concede the value of such work. It's because it magically gets done for him and he doesn't know the unsavoury reality of doing it himself that he draws no distinction between being a bit messy, and leaving everything for his wife to do, and so claims he can't see why someone would care about such base matters. 24 hours with no wife and he wouldn't be sitting there scratching his head thinking oh god I wish I were psychic and could imagine what my wife would think in this situation so I could figure out why I'm unhappy that there are no clean dishes anywhere. It would not be remotely interesting social commentary if it were purely about your type of situation where neither party is unreasonable.

You are completely misreading it, OP.

Not a marriage but I've just broken up my flat share for this reason. I can't live another moment with someone who just doesn't wash up properly, clean in corrners or clean bits of food out of the sink or take turns putting the bin and recycling out or buying cleaning supplies or change kitchen roll without being seriously prodded. I feel like mean mummy asking and I think it's disrespectful to me for her to live that way.

I agree with you OP. Something like dishes, no matter how messy you are, you are going to wash that up eventually, but the difference is whether you do it in good time out of respect for the person you share living space with or whether you leave it till the absolute last minute so that they have to look at it, work round it, worry that it's never going to get done, go looking for it at 7am when the kids are eating breakfast and eventually do it yourself. I bet he's the same variety of arse that would then notice it needed doing at 10am on Saturday when everyone else is in the car ready to go on a trip out and would decide to do it there and then because oh it'll only take a minute.

I want to say to those guys, it's easy. You don't pull this shit at work, do you, or you'd be out of a job. Pretend you're at work then, or that your wife is your boss or just that she's a bloke or whatever it would take for you to actually respect her, and then you will find that it is actually pretty simple to do all this stuff without making the lives of the people around you harder than they need to be.

I see what you mean OP - he's saying that he didn't care about the glass, he still doesn't care about the glass, he never saw any reason to put the glass away (or not leave laundry on the floor, track mud through the house make any effort to take care of the children etc) except to indulge his wife.

He would have considered putting his glass in the dishwasher to impress visitors, but wouldn't have done it just because it needed doing and doing it sooner rather than later would mean that his wife wouldn't end up doing it.

He sees doing the normal household jobs as an act of sacrifice that he should have done to show his wife he cared, not someing a responsible adult does to contribute to the household because dividing up the boring labour involved in living in a pleasant environment is the only fair way to co-exist.

Quote "Once someone figures out how to help a man equate the glass situation (which does not, and will never, affect him emotionally) with DEEPLY wounding his wife and making her feel sad, alone, unloved, abandoned, disrespected, afraid, etc. … Once men really grasp that and accept it as true even though it doesn’t make sense to them?"

1. It's not just a glass, it's dishes, so straightaway we're dealing with an essential household task not an optional one. So making out as if she's crazy and he just has to be accepting of her craziness in order to make her feel loved is not on.
2. I think the point of washing dishes up would make perfect sense once there were no clean plates left and the kitchen stank, so don't think much of him for denying the importance of her work (which is purely necessary/practical rather than serving to fulfil some subjective emotional need on her part).

I think you’re totally missing the point. I’m skeptical you’ve even read it tbh.

And as to ‘the title is misleading’ - yes it’s a hook.

And ‘why write it’ - why does anyone write a blog post?

The overwhelming point this man has made is that it’s disrespectful to ignore your partner over and over again and to keep doing something you know irritates or upsets her.

It’s about what the dirty glasses signify. She didn’t leave because of that one irritating habit, she left because she felt like she was married to a selfish child.

I've read the blog post before, OP, and when I saw your thread I thought I disagreed with you. So I read the blog post again and actually I see exactly what you mean.

Underlying the apparently frank and initially disarming admission that he was an arse and should have realised he was an arse, there is a definite undercurrent of 'Aww, bless my lovely little wifey for being upset by a glass by the sink! Of course we men all know that such things are totally trivial unless you have a lady brain, but really, if we love them we have to indulge these charming little whims of theirs. If we don't, we are being insensitive monsters and it's our own fault if they divorce us!'

He does also say in the article that the dishes he left by the sink were ones he planned to maybe use again, not that he never put anything in the dishwasher. My husband does this and it doesn't bother me - he has a glass of water and puts it by the sink instead of in the dishwasher for when he wants another glass of water. In his mind, he is saving everyone the effort of washing and unloading 3 glasses throughout the day instead of just one. I see his point and sometimes do the same myself so in my household this is not an area of contention.

The blogger's wife had a different opinion to him, and he refused to see things her way and so over time their relationship degraded because she felt that he didn't respect her. It's nothing to do with "jobs he expected her to do" and everything to do with the two of them not considering or respecting the other person's feelings until their relationship was unsalvageable.

That's how I interpreted it.

The overwhelming point this man has made is that it’s disrespectful to ignore your partner over and over again and to keep doing something you know irritates or upsets her.

But he also cites walking mud all over the floors and spending time with his children as things he should have done to show his wife he cares. He doesn't show any insight into the fact that this is not stuff you should be doing to avoid upsetting someone, it's stuff you should do because you're not a selfish dick who expects their life, environment and ability to enjoy their free time to be facilitated by someone else doing all the drudge work.

He is painting doing essential household tasks as something which have no purpose except to satisfy her and which he must do to prevent her from being irritated. He sees it as a compromise, not his duty. It's not respect if he still calls her crazy and doesn't respect her reasons for doing the work.

An analogy to illustrate what he is saying would be: say his wife thought it was important to pray every evening and got upset and thought he didn't love her every time he didn't pray, because if he loved her, why would he not do this simple thing, as he knew it caused her deep pain when he didn't. He would reason that it was not respectful not to pray when it doesn't cost him anything and he could see it was making her upset, even though he thinks she's a bit mad and praying has no meaning for him.
There's no direct comparison between his view of the situation & what likely actually happened (i.e. wife leaving manchild). Cleaning dishes and just basically doing your bit doesn't have a subjective value, it has an objective value.

Re: title, not saying it's misleading because it's hyperbolic but because he's cashing in on the capital that hinting at 'wifework' will give him. Everyone expects a self-deprecating post explaining that he didn't pitch in with basic tasks, but instead he writes about not pitching in with 'crazy tasks he will never understand,' which, unfortunately for him, she ended up linking to love, respect & validation. So in the end it's not so hyperbolic as he's still claiming that she couldn't cope with his unwillingness to adopt her own subjective v. high standards.

am clearly totally overinvested and dodging essay writing

Bean I think it's a confused post. Either he is talking about a couple with fundamentally mismatched understandings of how clean the house should be (in which case, not his fault, and tbh I wouldn't advocate indulging very unreasonable demands like never ever leaving a glass out, he makes the wife out to be controlling and manipulative from that pov), or he's implying that the problem went quite a bit deeper and he just didn't pull his weight properly (which is why earnestly explaining the very understandable reasons for not caring about the glass & framing that as the prime example of his misdemeanours is v disingenuous).
It's implied it's much more likely to be the latter, hence my interpretation.

I’m going to read it again! Properly once I’ve got more time.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with doing something to keep the peace - I’m messy and dh is tidy. I know he doesn’t like mess so do my best to keep my mess down even if I might find it goes against my normal behaviour.