Housetraining... evolution of a husband...

[LemonDrizzleCake11]

Just thought I'd post a random musing I had regarding my husband's slow improvement in helping with housework to see if anyone is able to offer further hope for the future.

I was just thinking about laundry shows how riveting my life is

So in the first year of our marriage, when I asked Mr LemonDrizzleCake to help more with the laundry, he started putting the majority rather than the minority of his washing into the washing basket, as opposed to leaving it on the floor.

In the second year of marriage, the same request resulted in him starting to put loads of washing into the machine and starting a cycle. But not actually taking it out.

In the third year, a repeated plea for more help with the laundry yielded him discovering the ability to hang washing out on the airer after putting it through the machine.

In our fourth year of marriage, yet another discussion regarding laundry led to him discovering the ability to wash clothes, hang them on airer AND throw fold them into the washing basket again when dry.

Now into our fifth year of marriage my weekly laundry nag our periodic gentle discussion about laundry has helped him progress to putting clothes in the machine, taking them out and hanging them up, putting them in the basket once dry AND carrying the basket back upstairs.

With this stonking rate of evolution, I'm hopeful that in our sixth year of marriage he may manage to start putting the washing away afterwards.

Then maybe I could start working on other housetraining, such as how the bathroom does not self-clean, the hoover is not actually an independent being and important bits of paper sadly cannot self-file.

I'd love to hear others evolution stories!

The slow rate of progress is somewhat explained by the term "help".

While a man is "helping" at home there is no way he'll do housework properly.

Start making him equally responsible for it (and that doesn't mean 50-50, necessarily).

Some people (who don't do much housework) will always

-underestimate the effort and time that goes into routine housework/chores

• assume that if you are doing it without being asked you don't really mind doing it

They therefore think you are 'making a point' when you say something rather than addressing a real issue.

I think the problem for me is that I think I'll be judged if the house is a shit hole. The men I have lived with haven't had the same anxiety.

(Feeling raw after failing to establish decent household routine with three teen boys)

"people have differing views about what's okay and what isn't"

Of course they do.

My standards are pretty low, my house is a total ship tip most of the time.

Unlike many women, I am not remotely troubled by whether anyone judges me for that.

However, I don't think that it is fair or right of me to impose the full extent of my laziness on my husband.

He's a fucking machine when it comes to housework - there is no job he won't do, no job he pretends not to see (unlike me), no job he thinks is beneath him.

And so I need to pull my weight. Because to let him do everything (and he probably would, without complaint) would be disrespectful.

And I could fool myself all day long that I was a just not practically minded or particularly efficient and that I bring other things to the party (all true in their way).

But the reality is that to create mess and leave another adult to clean it up is just disrespectful of their time and their energy.

To be an able bodied adult and to need another adult to look after you because you can't or won't wash your own clothes or cook your own food is just shameful.

Join you have nailed it - need to cut and paste that response - it should be on ALL the lazy partner/housework threads.

I say that as a slattern myself. I had an OCD housework friend over last night and we were laughing about how different we are. I love a clean house, but I find housework difficult, time consuming, hard to fit in etc. And yes I work FT am a SP to 2 DC and can't afford a cleaner, but lets face it I was like this when I was single and child free too. But I do try, I do my best and I'm getting better all the time. Friend just has this magic - when she walks through a room, it simply gets clean and in order behind her. it is mystical to me :)

We are discussing much the same thing on this thread.
Some women have taken to drastic means.
The thread also provides a few links to books and blogs.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1939762-to-just-be-bored-of-it?

If I was to distill one piece of learning which was really helpful to me in recent years, and the view of most counsellors, it is this:

If he doesn't, it's because he doesn't want to. Unpalatable but true. And a revelation in relationships.

What I genuinely don't understand about theses situations is why so many women do domestic stuff for their partners when their partners refuse to do their fair share of domestic chores. if my husband wouldn't do laundry then I certainly wouldn't do it for him, he would have to wear dirty clothes. If he wouldn't cook then I would cook for myself and my DC but he would go hungry. I wouldn't nag or try to train him I just wouldn't do his stuff for him and he would have to suffer the consequences of that.

happy the issue doesn't go away by going on 'strike' if you have children though. I stopped washing XP's clothes, but I still did ALL of the DC's.

I just couldnt be in a relationship like that happyhev. Him just being responsible for his own washing and cooking and you doing everything for the dcs. What about his share of childrens cooking and washing? It was a huge factor in the break up between exp and I. I had to ask him to do anything and when he did it was bare minimum effort. That was a good symbol of how much respect he had for me through every aspect of out relationship.

"The respect thing directly linked to housework? You'd seem then to have a very fragile sense of respect then, imho."

This is an excellent example of the dismissiveness which enables men to get away with not pulling their weight in the home. It frames any acknowledgement of the relationship dynamics involved in housework, as neurotic. And so it silences women because it leaves them feeling stupid about feeling so angry about the way the men they live with, who say they love them, treat them so fucking shabbily.

Recognising that doing your fair share to ensure that the environment in which you and the people you love live, is healthy, comfortable and user-friendly and so therefore contributes to everyone being happier and less stressed, is not an indicator of a fragile sense of respect, it's actually the opposite - it's being able to recognise when you are being treated with utter contempt while being told that the way you are being treated has nothing to do with how much contempt or respect the person treating you in that way has for you. Women are gaslighted about this issue on a grand scale. Housework is framed as so trivial that it's not worth getting angry about - certainly not worth breaking up a relationship about.

But it's not about the housework. It's about the attitudes behind it. Attitudes which the people who are benefiting from the gaslighting, are determined to deny exist.

This story sounds just like us, with me being in the place of your DH.

I'd imagine it could be a bit of a generation thing.

DH's dad is in his 70's. Never lifted a finger in the house - at all. Not even to make a cup of tea I think. DH wasn't taught by his Mum to do any household stuff at all. He then lived in mucky houseshares where he got by. But, he truly doesn't have a clue about the most basic household chores. He can do his job because at some point, he studied it and was taught it at work.

I blame his mother entirely and curse her under my breath on a weekly basis. My DS is being trained up already and I will insist he knows all I know before leaving home.

Totally agree Askbasil

AsBasil its because I get to rub shoulders with eloquent thought provoking people like you that I love MN!!

ASKBasil

Someone helped me years ago by telling me about the way to ask men to do something.

We say 'the bin needs emptying'. A woman knows this means 'empty the bin'. A man thinks 'yeah, it does'. That's it.

DH and I work on this more from both sides. So, I try to say 'Empty the bin when you've finished that please'. If I say 'could you empty the bin?', again he thinks 'yes, I can'. He doesn't empty the bin though cos it was the wrong question I asked.

I find the direct communication works well with both DH and DS who just don't get the subtleties of the way women communicate.

Basket, you can teach your son all you know about domestic work but he may still be influenced by the wider culture which tells him that it's women's work and therefore beneath him.
Parents can do their best but there are many other influences which interact on various ways to determine how kids turn out

becool

He doesn't empty the bin though cos it was the wrong question I asked.
Emptying the bin is still essentially seen as YOUR responsibility though.

You are sounding rather too 'Venus and mars' there Basket

BeCool - Nope, I don't dirty my hands with the bin :) He always empties it, was just an example.

Lazysuzanne - I'm worried he'll pick up bad habits from DH but my Dad wasn't amazing at doing stuff, but my lil bro is cos my Mum insisted, girls or boys, we would all learn.
Never read the book myself, but I do think we communicate slightly differently. It was a tip given to me by a military wife. She found that her husband was used to direct orders all day and so anything more subtle was lost on him. DH agrees tho and says that he just doesn't hear 'empty the bin' when I say 'the bin is full'. We both try harder - Me to phrase things more directly and him to interpret my 'do you think you could...' into an actual delegated task.

So you saying 'do you think you could Hoover the sitting room' would lead to your husband thinking 'yes I could, theoretically, do that. I wonder why she asked me a question on my capabilities like that'

REALLY?

Basket do you really believe your DH is incapable of following the thought "yes it does" with "I'll put it out" - that is simply not true.

Do you believe he is even incapable of putting something in a full bin, realizing it is full and putting it out and putting a fresh bag in the bin? Do you think so little of him that you believe this to be true?

It doesn't require training, or asking, it simply requires giving a damn.

Venus and mars is utter bullshit, evolutionary psychology aka 'just so' stories.
It's all learned behavior and cultural constructs, point is that bins are your problem and you are the one who has to find a strategy to get him to do domestic work.

X-post - when I say "your DH" read men!