To be sick of seeing 'I carry all the load' posts

[ijustdontunderstanditall]

Can't do a poll as on the app

It feels every other post atm is a woman being annoyed because they do everything, and their partner just goes to work, doesn't help with kids/house/life admin etc

Maybe I am just lucky that I don't have this issue, but I just don't understand why people don't just put their foot down and stop doing it all? Surely when the dinner isn't cooked/ hoover put round/ bill paid the other person will man up and help?

generally women want things cleaned and tidied far more than men (exceptions obviously)

how many threads here about washing towels after each use? tons.

Do you imagine most men would choose to wash a towel that often - they'd just wash it at the point they felt it needed washing. Same with bedding or cleaning bathroom/kitchen.

So living up to someone else's standards is part of the issue.

I mean i don't cook - i am happy with ready meals/takeaways and beige food. So partner cooks sometimes and the rest of the time i provide a meal from the freezer. if he doesn't like that he can just find someone to cook for him. not demand i cook properly more often.

(and we just pay for a cleaner to come every fortnight to avoid that discussion - to be fair they come probably more than either of us woukd bother if we lived alone)

It’s sickening that it seems such a common circumstance, but what I think is that the outlet of a forum like this one will help. People often don’t want to talk about their partner with friends or family who also know them and may have their own axe to grind. It’s helpful for women to work out how they are feeling and other posters may have ideas and strategies which have worked. And sadly, sometimes it does come down to seeing that the partner is not interested in an equal relationship. I think it would be great if young women could take from these experiences and be clear about what their idea of love and partnership is. May be this should be part of citizenship classes. Young men to be taught that partnership doesn’t mean that they will get all their needs provided for, always put first, and sex on tap.

I think that some people/men dont see detail, they dont see what we might see

OH can drop stuff on the floor, on the table, all over the worktops, he isnt bothered, he wouldnt be bothered if it stayed there for eternity. He isnt bothered if the sheets arent changed for weeks on end, isnt bothered if the floor isnt hoovered, isnt bothered if the bathroom isnt clean.

Some people just arent.

We have a cleaner so I dont do anything anyway.

There are men who won’t ‘see’ the mess even if left, they will squeeze rubbish into a clearly full kitchen bin without thinking to empty it, or step over the dirty laundry on the floor to get into bed without popping it in the hamper or even doing a wash.

Yes their wives/partners can point it all out, and ask them to do it, or make a list for them - and yes, it will probably be done then… unless he’s completely useless.

But a lot of women are tired of having to ask, to show what needs to be done, every single time. That becomes a chore in itself I’m sure you can imagine how tiring if must be having to ask the same things over and over of an adult without them having the initiative to do it without being asked.

There is also conditioning from childhood.

For example in my extended family everyone does their own washing and ironing from being a teen. So if you don't have clean school uniform or an ironed top then it's on you. However on many threads posters are surprised by this attitude claiming it simply easier for them to do all their family's washing and ironing. (The one SIL who offered to do it for my brother at the beginning of their relationship soon found out she was doing his washing "incorrectly".)

Yes it's easier in terms of time and negotiating who uses what when, but it isn't easier in conditioning children particularly boys in the fact looking after yourself is your own responsibility.

Pre kids it's easy to share the load equally.

Post kids it becomes a game of chicken to see if you're prepared to let your kid go to school without lunch money to make a point.

I agree OP yet these posters complaining still put up with it.

I have in the past chosen being poor as a church mouse on benefits and single and alone in the world, over being with an entitled slob who thinks housework should be done by mothers and wives.

Was never happier! The peace, airiness, and lack of clutter, was bliss!

Sometimes I was lonely, sometimes I didn’t have enough money to pay all the bills on my own… but never once did I regret my decision.
Living with frustration and resentment was making me emotionally and physically ill.

Turns out exs small-mindedness, and dependency was holding me back…
My independence has been me so strong, I’ve travelled so far, and seen and learned so much.

A life of drudgery with a selfish person, awful. Better to be alone. Thank goodness we live in a country that facilitates this.

Ex wasn’t even providing that well, I don’t know what I was thinking! I was young, naive, romantic and innocent. There are some people who will take advantage.

I tried leaving ex husband's shirts (that he would take off and dump on the floor randomly). I'd tried asking him to at least put them in the laundry basket - no result. So I just stopped picking them up.

He didn't even realise until he ran out of shirts. And then I got a bollocking from him for leaving them. I tried speaking up, pointing out that I'd asked him to put his shirts in the basket but, no. It was all my fault. I've never seen a man so enraged - I think it was because I'd been compliant (in his view) up until then. He grew up in a family where Mother did absolutely everything, I grew up in a family with both parents doing housework equally. So, in his eyes, I was supposed to do everything, and in mine he should have been doing half.

I think you're being deliberately obtuse OP.

Of course you're objectively correct that there's an epidemic of women doing a double (or triple) shift, doing FT jobs, doing all or most childcare and all or most domestic work and mental load. Very few people would dispute that that's a bad thing.

But you're glossing over millennia of baggage and institutional discrimination which enables this. For millions of women it's just not as simple as "put your foot down".

There may be physical or psychological abuse. There often is financial dependency which is such that the woman can't function without the man's input and is therefore loathe to push too far. It's very hard to run a household with multiple children solo. Plenty of women do it (I do it) but you can't blame people for wanting to avoid this.

And that's before you get to the societal baggage which dictates that women are the default provider of these services. Many if not most men take as read that their spouse or partner is the person responsible for most domestic stuff. Even the ones who recognise they have a part to play usually don't do as much as they should. Challenging this is necessary, but it's stressful and leads to constant friction and many people don't have the stomach or the emotional energy for this. Many women are not backed up by their families, who put pressure on them to remain in situations where they are the default carer/domestic helper because that's what their families think is the natural way of things.

I'm not saying you're not right: you are. But I think you're minimising the difficulty of challenging it. It's a long, hard slog to challenge it and there's no guarantee you will be successful at the end of it.

I don't personally identify with those posts either, and I'm not convinced the behaviour is really that gendered - as a woman who's very much on the slatternly, messy side. I pull my weight but I don't care about tidiness anywhere near as much as DP does, and I have no desire to spend any more than the bare minimum of time thinking about domestic crap. I'm always astonished at how much people willingly put on their own plates that they don't need to. But then I'm also child-free and not maternal, which I suspect is linked.

The other pattern I notice on MN though is on dating threads where women pretty much exclusively want to find "traditional", stereotypically manly men. Most MNers seem to want to find tall, burly rugby-playing men who look like good "protectors" and earn enough to be good "providers" (and presumably who want to play those roles too). Short men are talked about with disdain, men on low salaries are cocklodgers, and generally any man who deviates from traditional masculinity gives you the ick.

It shouldn't take a genius to work out that if you look for traditional masculinity, well then that's what you get down the line as well - a man who thinks his job is more important than your career, and who thinks it's your role to run the house by yourself. Even if he doesn't say so out loud at first.

If you cannot understand other peoples lives because they are so different from your own, then maybe don’t read threads where the title indicates as much? That’ll save you the trouble of not understanding won’t it?

I hope you told him to make an appointment with the optician.

Although I now don't live with a man for me personally the situation was this - you can't have someone who has everything you desire - some things you need to prioritise, so for me that's someone who is kind, has a job, good sense of humour, interesting etc. So if I found someone who ticked all my boxes but is a bit shit round the house it would be something I'd have a whinge at but wouldn't be enough to actually leave them (if that makes sense). So I think a lot of the time these posts are people who are on the whole generally quite happy in their relationship but have certain things they get frustrated with which is totally normal. It would be unusual to live with someone and not have anything you wished they did differently, whether it's being shit with money, in the house, sleeping habits, eating drinking whatever.

Spot on. Should I not buy my children new clothes when they grow out of them, or book their vaccinations, to make the point to my husband that he needs to take on the mental load.

How does “just stop doing things” work when it’s your children who will feel the consequences?

I understand what you mean. I guess it’s one of them things where it’s easier said than done to put your foot down.

I’m quite lucky that my DH does a lot (sometimes more than me tbh) round the house and is a great dad to our son from the minute he gets home from work. It upsets me when I see woman complain about how lazy their DH’s are when it comes to house work and looking after the children. A friend of mine constantly was upset her DH didn’t even change a nappy or feed the baby. I mean I just couldn’t put up with it

Forgot to add onto my post - i do find it unacceptable that a lot of men still think it's woman's work to do the housework and childcare (and is a lot of the reason I am now a single parent and plan to remain one!!!)

No, women don't 'let this happen'. Its a deliberate abuse tactic designed to take up all of your time and energy.I think you imagine that if she stops doing the housework, it means he'll 'have' to do it. He won't, and he won't pay a cleaner either; he'll just ignore it, and if she complains about the mess he'll say her standards are 'too high'.

If it was that simple it wouldn’t be a problem, would it?

But surely women let this happen?

Oh dear. Apart from the victim blaming aspect of this question/statement, there is also the fact that males and females have already been exposed to gender stereotyping long before they reach adulthood. And I think we all know who generally benefits from such stereotyping.

Agree with all of this and I’m also like you - I’m a lazy slob who can’t cook basically. I do as little domestic drudgery as I can get away with simply because I don’t like it and don’t have very high standards of cleanliness, it certainly isn’t ingrained in me as a woman.

Really good points raised.

Whenever I read those posts about how hard their lives are I often think:

a) just leave then, judging by the post they bring nothing to the table so just go and you'll no doubt be absolutely fine running the life you want and laying all those bills as a singleton...

b) if he's a bit shit and you're not going to leave... you picked him! Sorry to sound harsh but if having done the checks & balances during courtship to assess relationship suitability and he's the best you could find (because your 'perfect partner' errrr didn't cross paths with you?shall we say or lives in your imagination), then welcome to your chosen life.

c) I often wonder how much 'mental load' could be attributed to just not being better organised & getting stuff done. I mean, the length of some posts going into extreme but uncoordinated detail from people who are supposedly completely overwhelmed with organising kids dentals appointments and navigating the social dynamics of the school gate collection area... staggering.

It's not my situation but I'm sick of seeing posts like this where people can't even do basic thinking about others situation. Can you really not think about why others may not put their foot down? Really?

Totally agree. My husband is amazing and does everything equally. He works full time and me 25 hours around school runs. I feel very lucky but if he didn’t help out, I’d not tolerate it.

I also think many people make work for themselves - when I see “running the house and doing the finances” I just think what exactly does that involve in this day and age? Set up automatic direct debits and you don’t have to think about it until contracts are up for renewal which you get a reminder for anyway on email usually. No idea what “running a house” means if it’s something different to laundry and cleaning and food shopping (which yes, of course men should play an equal part in, but also are things literally everyone has to do whether they’re single, married, a parent, childfree, have a job, are a SAHP)