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?

I'm so sorry this happened, the statistics for men who leave women who have been diagnosed with cancer or left disabled are shocking.

Have you RTFT? There have been numerous explanations.

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?

They don't. I think people who are with reasonable partners don't realise how bad some partners are. And it creeps up on you - you yourself don't realise how bad your partner is, because exactly - who would do that to someone else!

As I withdrew labour (eg. not picking up his socks, asking him to cook/do the washing occasionally, put the kids to bed, buy his own car insurance or book his own flights and do his own packing) he barely did the stuff for himself, let alone start pulling his weight with the kids. He withdrew further and further, started travelling for work more, and it turned out, started seeing prostitutes and having affairs.

Some people genuinely only see relationships as a transactional agreement that should benefit them or they wander off - but they're good at pretending until they have their mug trapped.

I think that often things are equal until they have children. Usually the woman takes time off for maternity leave and ends up doing more of the home/child stuff simply because she’s there more and then when she returns to work they struggle to go back to doing equal shares. It shouldn’t happen but I can see how it might.

Xh was raised by sexist twats who thought that their prince shouldn’t lift a finger (they proudly used to laugh about xfil never having changed a nappy despite having 7 children). Trying to make him realise that my vagina didn’t help me to clean. I shouldn’t have married him but I was young and stupid, I thought that I could fix him.

Agree that these threads are dead boring

BUT

Have you ever actually been in this situation? It's very bloody hard to put your foot down. I tried it and was accused of being an awful bully and having no empathy🙄

This was after months of cleaning up after another adult and being as accommodating as I can tolerate.

You've clearly never been in this position OP. If just not doing things so they'll have to step up worked, there wouldn't be an issue. But instead no one does anything so the situation is worse.

What women in this position should realise is that if they work and can support their family, care for the kids, manage the housework and carry the mental load, they don't actually need their 'partner' anymore and can consider going it alone. That is truly liberating, especially once their 'partner' realises it too.

Because men change over time. Nobody knowingly marries a selfish or abusive person.

that's not strictly true. Some women are convinced they will change a man, some women decide to show off their domestic skills thinking it makes them good marriage potential.

Anyone should change and step up when they have kids, but we still live in a world where women see being house-proud as a quality, and find it cute to be useless with DIY, cars, gardening.

Two things:

1. People who don't want to moan don't start threads. If they did go on a moaning thread and say "dh does more" then they'd get told they were smug and to get off the thread.
2. I suspect sometimes there's a lack of seeing what the other does. When the dc were small and I was sahm I could have written that I "did all the cleaning, almost all the cooking, all the night wakings, he never hoovered, never cleaned the toilets, I did the washing and hung it out almost always, I organised any maintenance needing doing...". But looking back is easier to realise he did a lot too, as well as working full time. He almost always did the food shop (and took the dc with him which gave me a break), some DIY, sorted the accounts and bills, washing up etc. There's a point with small children where I think everyone feels exhausted and it seems relentless and it's easy to think that you're doing it all and not seeing what the other one does (I remember when dh commented that towels were normally washed annually - because he'd never done it, and normally I washed and hung them up to dry and put them away in the time he was at work).

But ask yourself why this is the case (I don't actually agree with your point that women find it "cute" to be hopeless at DIY but never mind).

From before birth both men and women have different expectations set for them. They learn from the examples of their parents, from media, from society.

I think of clever, ambitious women in past generations, cut off from opportunities to achieve outside of the home, channeling all into the only outlets they had. If all you were allowed to be was a mother and a housewife you'd probably try to excel at it as well.

It does seem depressingly common. However I don't think it's as easy just to stop doing things. I'm not in this position but on threads I've read, the women don't feel like they can stop cleaning as their kids will live in a dirty house, stop tidying as their kids will live in a messy house, stop walking the dog as it will go crazy in the house and create even more mess, stop doing the laundry as their kids won't have clean clothes etc. Yes they can stop doing things for their partner, but they still have more than their share of stuff that's pretty essential in looking after themselves and their kids. They can't just go on strike and stop driving the kids to school, making their packed lunches etc as often the dads don't actually step up, they let their kids suffer then guilt the mother into taking the blame, calling her 'selfish', and saying that they will withdraw their financial support if she withdraws practical support. So I can see how women feel trapped into putting up with it

Yy to the "cutsue ditsy can't hadle basic DIY". DH had to leave for 4 months to take care of something back in his country 2 years ago. I am in my 30s. The number of horrified women that I am in house by myself was astounding.
"aren't you scared?!"
"Do you need shopping or anything?"
"Do you need Peter to do any DIY?"
"Oh I could never😱"
While these would normally be nice offers, the tone they were offered in was totally highpitched "damsel in distress needs help".

I was in a meeting few weeks in and mentioned about needing to change pipe leading to boiler because I realised it's ever so slightly dripping when I was repressuring boiler, so I called local firm to sort it and they might come during the meeting. Cue "omg I could never dare to try to repressure it. So brave" from few of the women while the rest raised eyebrows as I did. Nothing about that was brave or worth an amazement. I just watched youtube video when we first needed to repressure it🤷

They were nice women and smart, but some of them were fully into "haha screwdriver, I possibly couldn't know how to use it" mode. It's sad imho.

Why are smug posters who don't have this problem so keen to hold women responsible for the behaviour of men?

Wwwnothingdotcom

It's great if you can fix stuff but - how is it sad not to? Personally, I don't do that stuff because my DH and FIL enjoy it. My DF also is good at it.

If they weren't around, I might learn. Or just, you know, pay someone. It's not the end of the world and call it it 'sad' is way more patronising than anything anyone said to you...

I don't make my own soup because I can buy a perfectly good version at the store. I don't fix cars because I can get someone else to do it🤷‍♀️

No, it's not sadnot to.
It's sad to do "women possibly can't do that😱" charade.

And repressuring boiler really isn't "repair" tbh

sorry, I should have said SOME women find it cute to be useless and unable to change a tire or a washer or use a drill to put a curtain rail up.

There is a such a thing as free will. I can't speak for older generations, but women in their 50s, 40s, 30s today can't blame "society" for their lack of expectation or ambition.

We know better, we can do a lot better, and many women ARE doing better. There's no lack of high flyers, in the city and many places with big families.

It's a systemic problem.

Raise your sons to clean the toilet.

I don't recognise the reluctance to do DIY amongst the women I know any more than the men - and when a friend offered her husband to give me a hand with something, it was just because he'd done it before, and she knows I've already got my hands full.

I do see some women who flat refuse to do it precisely because they do everything else, and feel that they shouldn't have to be rummaging around unblocking a toilet as well as being the one to clean it every week.

When I split from ex, I had offers both of help from the women (and their partners/husbands) I knew because they're kind, and wanted to help me, not because they thought I couldn't manage!

Surely when the dinner isn't cooked/ hoover put round/ bill paid the other person will man up and help?

Lol - DH would just leave the gas and electricity provider to cut us off; the house to have been repossessed by the mortgage provider…..That is why I do the admin, because of the phone calls saying

”You have had the final warning, we are going to cut you off today….”

OP, you clearly have no comprehension of ADHD!

@Chanelbasketballandchain there's still a massive gap between high flying men and women, and misogyny/patriarchy is just as strong even if the law has moved on (in most, not all countries. Women do not have equal access to professional/public roles. Young women today are still facing really difficult choices about how to afford/juggle career and family and still have time/money left over for themselves.

Men are just using different methods to control women's participation in work and society now. They can't outright discriminate but they still use coercive control in relationships, ugly trolling on SM against women in the public eye (see Caroline Criado Perez) etc., deprioritisation of issues affecting women in public policy. There's still a long way to go.

But yeah, let's blame women for their predicament 🤔

In one of my previous relationships I did stop, and the slack never got took up. The house descended into squalor and I left, then it descended into further squalor. It’s fair enough to let the place turn into a pigsty when it’s just adults, but you can’t do that with kids, it’s not fair on them.

Wahhh my man is so great
Yours is rubbish

Wtf is the point in this?

No, DC haircut, he's not that bad! My point is that he would absolutely anything I asked, why should I even have to ask?

You've got a very black and white view of this topic, OP. Sometimes people make poor choices when it comes to relationships and don't know how to get themselves out of the hole they've dug; sometimes partners or circumstances change and, again, people don't know how to or can't get out of the hole...the society we live in is one in which women are not valued at all. Until that changes, these sorts of behaviours won't either.

But as to why people "don't just put their foot down" - you are obviously used to living with a reasonable adult. For some others, putting your foot down just means shit doesn't get done. Children get left alone, are left in dirty nappies, aren't fed, aren't dressed in weather appropriate clothing, don't make it to school on time, are late getting anywhere, dinner doesn't get made, dishes are smashed by 'accident'. If only life were as simple as "putting your foot down"...

It’s very naive. Stopping chores in the hope the other person will step up is like being in a sexless marriage and thinking stopping having sex at all will make the other person step up

This is an interesting topic for me personally. I was once married to a misogynist, I did the sahm and mental load thing. He undermined me at every turn, financial abuse, and eventually physical abuse. I was made to feel worthless. And all of this happened with a smile on my face, thinking this was my choice, it was my lot in life, and I just had to get on with it.

I left him after he turned physically violent.

Years later, I'm now married to a woman. I have the high-flying career, my wife is a student, and runs the household in many respects. But we are a team, and after being treated as "less than" myself, there's no way I would do that to my partner, no matter our earnings disparity or splitting of household tasks.

I'm in a true partnership now, and it's such a relief.