Is it right women do more?

[NurtureGrow]

Please go gently.

I’ve been asking my husband to help me with housework since we met almost 5 years ago. He does ‘help’ sometimes, but he never does it fully. Ie the area/room is partly clean, there’s always more for me to do.

For me, doing things for each other is
important. I want him to find things clean and tidy. You can imagine after 5 years, it’s disappointing me, that I never find it as clean and tidy as I left it, and he never fully cleans an area for me. It’s always me.

He says he ‘can’t see it fully.’ ‘It’s not a priority’ he’s ‘doing his best.’

He’s also now saying that as he’s starting a business soon (going full-time in a week) he can’t do the business if he has to clean. I said this isn’t about the business, you’ve always been like this in a salaried role. You leave things for me to do.

It seems I have two choices: be submissive and accept it / or keep trying to make him understand. The latter isn’t working. I haven’t got extremely high standards, I would just like it left clean and tidy for me, as I do for him.

Example, I cleaned the kitchen earlier, it took 25 minutes. I’d just like him to do that for me, like sometimes, or ever. He says he can’t, it would take him 1 hour. He’s a genuinely nice person, but I just don’t think all this is right. We have a 1 year old baby.

Id genuinely like to know, please:
**
YABU - women do have to do more, male partners aren’t good at this. You shouldn’t keep asking him and accept it.
**
YANBU - he should do it fully sometimes, it’s not for you to always do

Thank you

Yes, he’s been hire a long time though. He has a good level of English..

I was thinking specifically of the not turning off the hob, just moving the pan even when shown how to turn off the hob. I mean, how long does he intend to leave it on for with no pan on? And what does he think it's doing? There's not really any language barrier to this one.

Yes, I mean it will eventually turn off alone (I think) but it should just be turned off. He doesn’t seem to be able to remember steps.

I do this, then this.

When we are driving people often beep their horns and once we ended up on the wrong side of the road in a foreign country (his country.) His family know his driving and have pushed for me to drive before.

Like his sister said ‘you’re tired, maybe xx (me) should drive.’ I don’t mind driving, but it shows it’s not just me. A while ago, he did agree to have more lessons, but there are still issues. I wish the driving instructor had been tougher.

Honestly what does he bring to your life exactly?

What is his native language ?

I’d rather not say, as too specific, but it is a Western European language

Right? No
Common? Yes
Almost always the case? No

OP if you are looking for lots of women to nod, sigh and say they put up with it then you can find them. There's loads of them.

Equally if you want to hear from those of us who think it's nonsense and demand more and better when selecting a partner there's loads of us too.

Obviously you have already selected your partner.

@SwishMyCape yes, I do agree.. I thought I selected well. It took many years and a lot of effort. These things just weren’t visible to me before. And now it’s having an impact on me.

I will definitely read all the comments and also look up the books mentioned.

Hmmm, interesting.

From what I know most Western European Languages are Latin based and have a similar sentence construction to English with the verb in the middle of the sentence (except for German and Dutch that have it at the end)

They also have the same alphabet, unlike Greek or Bulgarian which use the Cyrillic (Russian) Alphabet.

So maybe "Lost in Translation" isn't the answer after all...

Are we talking about never picking up after himself or jobs not being done the way you like them? I think there has to be an element of accepting if someone else is doing a task they do it their way so if my DP wants me to load the dishwasher then he can stop nagging me about the way I load it because stuff comes out clean anyway. I don't think you should do everything though

I’m going to link the Zawn piece again, as I don’t think you looked at it and I really hope that you do: https://www.zawn.net/blog/household-chore-inequity-is-abuse-a-manifesto

I love my husband dearly, but he used to be like this. I have persevered with caring about this stuff and expecting him to care too and it's improved dramatically over the years. I don't accept "I don't see it". It's gotten better for us and it's been worth the effort for me personally (as long as I don't dwell on how unbalanced things are in the world that I've actually had to spend time on this...), but if he was the kind of person that wasn't interested in improving the housework balance, then it wouldn't have worked. We have 2 kids and have been together about 10 years.

I’ve read it, thank you so much for sharing 🙏🙏🙏

I think it’s true. Absolutely true. And a question of what to do, to turn it around, or move on. It shouldn’t be accepted year on year. Today I’ve felt so fed up, I don’t want to do anything. That isn’t right. I really appreciate all the posts and I will go through all.

‘We already have a word for someone who derives pleasure from someone else's suffering, exhaustion, and illness: abuser.
Household chore inequity is a form of domestic abuse. It forces women to work themselves into exhaustion and illness. Married women live shorter, less healthy and happy lives. Married men live longer. It's not funny. There's no cheerful battle of the sexes spin to be put on men who are slowly killing their partners with their own laziness, year after year.’

It never ceases to amaze me how so many intelligent men can’t manage something as basic as cleaning but can run businesses or manage people. It’s almost like it’s a choice 🙄.

He can’t start a business what with all the cleaning?!?!

Tell him to get fucked with this 🤣🤣🤣

Then boot him out for being a useless selfish bastard.

Boys need to learn house skills growing up in my opinion, all the time. But that's hard to do with the school system thats in place. It kind of whisks moms along keeping up with it. Teaching kids housework/house skills isn't really on the school agenda

He is blackmailing you into being his maid, love.

He isn’t that nice. He isn’t nice at all, in fact.

My ds liked to see things like this - doesn't see things, thinks my standards are too high - I got a cleaner and he pays his share of their costs and he does have to clean up after himself. Dh and I run a business, it's full on and it will consume every second of your time if you let it - I often wish we had never started it - it's too much work and worry - yes you make money if you're lucky but worked out by the hour and the loss of work life balance - the demands and requirements by Gov - it's just not worth it. Being an employee is a much better life.

Ahh youve got one of those conciously incompetent men. A idle slob some might say. He knows what needs doing but pretends not to see its dirty (so he wants you to micromanage the jobs and tell him what do)/no time to do the job (hes tired)/forced to do it so does a crappy job so you wont ask him again. Now hes trapped you with a child too hes got it made! Youll eventually submit and think “if you want a job doing right- do it yourself”

why are you referring to the jobs as “yours”? Hes not helping you out with housework, it’s housework that needs to be done by both of you- no ones job in particular. Youre meant to be a team

youre going to have to be blunt and tell him to shape up or its over. Hes a manchild and youll turn into his mummy doing all the tasks, cleaning his skiddies out the loo whilst he lives the life of riley! Eventually youll get the ick and stop having sex and he will wonder why….

I think house skills needs to be prioritised for boys in childhood really, even at the expense of other things. Its mostly women doing the child rearing. I think the trouble is that moms tend to be swept along with the school system and sadly school doesn't see these skills as a priority. She's also swept along with her husbands needs! I think moms need to fight back and just teach these skills to the boys every day. I agree, something has to change, for future women if not ourselves!

No

He doesn’t need lessons or reminders. He knows perfectly well what needs doing and how to do it. He just doesn’t care, and he doesn’t care that it’s important to you. It’s pure selfishness.

You work outside the home 3 days and you work inside all the rest of the hours.

Sit down with a paper and pen and calculate how many hours you each actually work. Include childcare, cleaning, home organization.

List all the tasks each day and ask him to choose those he will be responsible for 30-40%.

He did not do you a favour when you were ill, he shouldered his responsibility, the rest of the time you are shouldering HIS responsibilities and the language you use demonstrates you don't think it fair to expect anything from this apparent adult.

I was just about to say don’t have a baby with this man - agh!
if he’s really as nice as you say then he’ll be willing to go to couples counselling and will care about how much this impacts you and make a plan together for a fair division of labour.
if he won’t invest in that then kick him out.

I'm trying to work out if you are very young or were raised in a different culture to have these extremely low expectations - all the talk of him helping you etc. Its 2025, the people I know with young families at my workplace seem to have a way more even split then even when my children with young - shared parental Ieave, both parents alternsting going part time for a period, father's sharing sick days, drop offs, cooking, cleaning etc.