How do those of you with domestically lazy husbands still find them attractive?

[EightChalk]

This is something that comes up day in, day out on here and in many other female-centric communities: women posting for advice about their relationships with men who do not do their fair share of childcare, cleaning, cooking and other domestic drudgery (or who think that they do because they do occasional performance cookery that leaves the woman washing up every pan in the kitchen, or they do the garden maintenance twice a year and consider that equivalent to keeping the house clean every single day, or they do the DIY - grudgingly and weeks after it's needed in many cases - and similarly consider these occasional tasks equivalent to the regular upkeep of a home).

Often both partners work, but the drudgery still defaults to the woman (look up the statistics on this; it's horrifying). These husbands/partners often also have non-negotiable hobbies that take up loads of time. They consider looking after the children by themselves a favour to their female partner. We've all read about these setups dozens of times.

If you are in one of these unbalanced relationships, how can you look at him and think "yes, that's the man for me"? How can you have an intimate relationship with someone who shows such a lack of respect?

The worst is when these men dare to accuse their exhausted, overworked, underappreciated female partners of not having sex with them often enough. How can they think they are sexually attractive? How do look at themselves as decent people when they treat their partners like that?

This isn't a wide-eyed "but I don't understand" post - I genuinely don't understand. How does the attraction not just dry up when they treat you like a mother-maid combination?

I think that’s a perfectly fair question. I don’t understand it either. So many posters on here post about something they deem to be a problem in their relationship, and it emerges almost incidentally on the thread in response to questions hat the spouse/partner in question does no cooking, cleaning or laundry, and only very specific elements of parenting. But the OP thinks that normal, and not the ‘problem’.

I don’t get it either.

I find him far less attractive. You're right.

Yes, because it always happens just like that. Whatever you say your motives are, your post just smacks of judging women who find themselves in this situation. That's not naivety, it's just needling for the sake of it.

Do you take the same line with women in domestically violent situations? It's abhorrent to me.

If you really care (for the women involved) then put together a checklist for future relationships so that women can reference and check for themselves before they're in too deep (and get out). Better that than the finger-wagging tirade you're dying to dispense.

I don’t think they do find him sexually attractive (which is usually one of the other problems in the relationship, not much sex and frustrated husband) but by the time you’re a couple of kids and a mortgage in, often reliant on his income, separating probably seems impossible.

I've stayed in an abusive relationship, even though I knew it was abusive and was harming me. I know it's hard to leave.

I'm not asking about why they don't leave, I'm asking whether and how they still find their partners attractive. I think women in these relationships are victims of sexist, lazy men, who often don't show their true colours until it's late enough that it's hard to leave (children, financial entanglements, or the woman has given up work or taken on much lower paid part-time work). I also think it's so culturally ingrained that it's normal for relationships to work like this that lots of people don't even see it as wrong. I also don't understand how someone could want to sleep with someone who doesn't respect them in this specific way, or, more to the point but I guess no one's going to admit to being one of those men and tell me, how those men could possibly think that their partner would still want them in that way.

Might be a boiling frog analogy. The woman's so busy maintaining the house and family, she doesn't notice the lack of attraction until it's much further down the line. Then she goes to an online forum for advice.

I think some women are so grateful that their man 'provides' financially that allows her to work part time

You seem to forget that attraction usually comes before domestic partnership. By the time people are living together they will share a bond that supercedes straightforward attraction.
Even though your post describes males failing to do their share, you still sound as if you are blaming women for putting up with it. Not a very supportive attitude.

The attraction dried up, I couldn’t get turned on by him, so I left. The laziness was chronic but he did get worse with it over the course of the relationship. I do wish I’d gone sooner.

I guess there is no way to ask how someone is ok with a situation without it sounding like I'm blaming them for not leaving that situation. That's not sarcastic. I tried to phrase my post to make it clear that I condemn the behaviour of the men in these relationships, not the women, but clearly didn't succeed.

I think your looking for a simplistic answer to a complex situation.
It's easy to look from the outside and say I wouldn't do that.
The first man I ever lived with could be horrible and abusive but he could also make me feel beautiful and wanted and that's the bit I was attracted to. When you want that person to love you and want you and for a while they do it's easy to push the horrible stuff they do to the back of your mind.

It’s almost always a “boiled frog” situation.
The attraction goes away and you’re buried under household chores but you don’t necessarily connect the two straight away and then you feel pressure to still put in “effort” because that’s what you’re expected to do. Very easy to see when you’re out of the situation, but honestly some of these guys are masters of bullshit and gaslighting.

This is honestly why I think I’m gonna be alone for the rest of my life. I’m done taking care of anyone who isn’t me or my kid, and it seems like literally no relationship I know or have been in has equal division of labour.

A very honest essay on emotional labour included the added necessity of having regular sex, even if unwanted, and usually having to pretend to enjoy it to get it over with quicker, or to avoid bruising the man child’s ego.

I suspect the answer to your question is that the women in these situations don’t find their partner attractive, nor do they want to have sex with him, but do it for a quiet life.

Its sad, harsh and true. I was once on that situation but couldn’t bear the thought of decades more so I took a hard decision to leave. New Mr Crazy may not be perfect but it is amazing how much sexier a man is when he pulls his weight around the house and recognises when he needs to improve without being told.

There was a meme a couple of years ago about ‘every woman needs a Daryl’ I will see if I can find it.

I think many don't! However I think many women who have fully on board 50% of housework partners etc- also don't find their partners sexually attractive anymore - I don't think it's necessarily a housework thing- other factors creep in- lack of care, massive weight change, personal habits (sits gaming all night/porn habits/putting themselves first/meanness/over spending/secrecy etc -or the individual woman's biological make up means she simply doesn't value sex particularly at certain life points. There are many reasons and it's rarely just housework

People make compromises in their lives @EightChalk . Ask a woman if she's ok with that situation and she'll probably say no and that she would love to have back the more attractive version of her husband before domestic drudgery set in and he turned into a lazy bum. But she's also invested in the bigger picture like her marriage, DC and the house. So her compromise will be that she finds some other aspect of him appealing?

A combination of not expecting that from a man in the first place so it doesn't get in the way, but also, it does kill your attraction after a while although you probably wouldn't put it down to that if nobody points out the connection.

I remember with my ex I didn't know why I didn't want sex, I just felt like I had no sex drive/annoyed by his pestering as his drive had remained higher than mine was towards the end. But I think it was just that I wasn't attracted to him any more. Attraction changes, it's not like when you're first fancying/dating someone you're thinking "Phwoar, I bet he does his own laundry!" (Well... maybe I would now I'm a bit older and wiser...) but now I've been with DH a long time it is the teamwork and mutual care that I value.

Society has a lot of tropes about women not really wanting sex or seeing sex as a chore after marriage/kids so I think even that can go unnoticed, you just assume it's normal and everyone is going through that. You don't think oh of course it's because my husband is a lazy disrespectful POS. Especially if you think all men are like that.

Do you think the men in these situations KNOW that their wives are pretending to enjoy it? Do you think they care? That's something else I find a horrifying thought, that they can have sex with women they know aren't really wanting to do it, and don't see anything wrong with that.

Oh well, if he was paying for a cleaner and a nanny to make up for his lack of help/care, I would probably still find him attractive but not at all if all the nitty gritty of the work was dumped on me.

I stopped finding my cunt of an ex attractive after DS was born. He was and still is a lazy and entitled man. I stopped having sex with him and we divorced. I parented my child as single person when we were married and he contributes nothing of any value to DS now.

@EightChalk I think a lot of men in that situation are very good at fooling themselves. The male ego is a strange and resilient beast.

I think it’s the boiling frog thing. Men are often inherently more lazy and less interested in domestic duties. Women get all loved up and want to do things that show how much they love their partners.

They cook lovely meals, make the home beautiful. When there are no children in the mix it doesn’t seem so bad. But if the woman ends up working and doing the majority of house stuff and childcare, resentment starts to build.

Very often after children, a couples sex life reduces. Many men don’t seem to make the connection that a tired and exhausted wife isn’t dreaming of sexy times. And it goes from there. Husband resents lack of sex, wife resents lack of help. I think it’s possible many women consent to sex just to keep their husbands happy, and want to get it over with, not because they find their husbands attractive.

Then sooner or later the resentment get so much, the wife no longer even likes her partner let alone finds him attractive.

And here I am, a post menopausal women, asking for a divorce.

I think so many of these men are so entitled that they do not really care.

But the problem is that the only way to make them care is change yourself (stop providing for every need) but this can bring up major problems or a split that many women prefer to avoid for the sake of stability even if that makes them unhappy.

I'm a man (in case that's relevant) and I think part of the answer to your question is that a lot of people have quite low expectations of men and set the bar quite low for us. I do make sure to do at least 50% of kid and house stuff (and often more) but I'm aware that I get a disproportionate amount of credit for that. People will say to me "wow, you do your fair share with the kids - you're an amazing dad!" whereas my wife has sometimes been criticised for "only" doing 50%. Some people just seem to expect that women will do most of the kid/house work, so they might not see a not-particularly-helpful man as unattractive because they just think that's normal and OK somehow.

Also if a lot of women think that most men are lazy then they may feel that their partner is better than the average out there, so their man may appear more attractive in their eyes because they seem relatively good out of the men available out there. (I'm not saying that it's right for things to be this way at all - just saying that this is what may be happening.)

I saw the opposite once - a mainly American thread on Reddit, maybe - in which a (I suspect yee-haw Conservative type) woman was saying she was turned off by the sight of a man doing domestic chores, as it was Unmanly And She Needed A Real Man. She got a fair amount of supportive replies from other women, and of course some push-back.

I think a lot of it depends on how you like to be shown love. There are lots of different love languages - some people like to be bought thoughtful presents, some people like to be touched, some like to have stuff done for them. As long as he's showing he cares in a way that works for you it doesn't need to be housework to make him stay attractive to you.