Decision Fatigue

[AmeliaNeedsHelp]

The thread about women's emotional work has got me thinking.

I feel like I have decision fatigue, like I'm so sick of making decisions I just want someone else to do it. Not big decisions, but the little ones. What to have for dinner, what to wear for work, does the bathroom need cleaning etc.

I feel like this affects women more than men - partly because of the fact that many of the things are housework related, but also because many of the decisions are things which men simply don't have to make.

I know this isn't AIBU, but am I? Is it a personality thing, or do women actually have to make more decisions than men (by sheer number, not weighting for importance)?

One of the best things when I went on a yoga holiday was that three times a day, meals turned up. I didn't even have to decide from a menu - there was just a main dish and lots of vegetables/salad. I just had to turn up and eat it.

One of my great aunts used to talk about how many meals she'd made over the years - married for X years, 3 meals a day, 365 days a year, minus a small number of meals out and holidays. 50 years of 3 meals a day - it's over 50000 meals.

It does get very tiring, having to make decisions about what food to have, what to wear, which chores need doing next. (And even if one has staff, one has to direct them into which bits of cleaning need doing next.) Sometimes, it would be nice to have someone else making the decisions, doing the looking after. I think you are right that it's women who will be more affected by this, because women still do a higher proportion of housework and cooking. And quite a lot of men who will do their share, or some of their share, of housework, but still expect to be told what to do.

Me too.

Sometimes I don't mind making the decisions (at least to do with dinners ), but I want it known that SOMEBODY DID MAKE THE DECISIONS AND THAT WAS ME. Recently if anyone even slightly cast any slight aspersion on any of these small unimportant things decided by me THEY get to make the decisions instead. Quite liberating.

I think I've taken it to far the other way, sometimes I just want to decide something

Our housework and gardening is just done to the rota - wrote with OH.
Cooking is chosen by the cooker and I only cook once or twice a week.
Shopping is more or less always the same pre typed list we just delete the things we have left from the month before.

god me too!

It's not just decisions IMO it's also those little one-off jobs that have to be remembered by someone - almost always the woman.

Following a massive blowup with DH where I was ready to divorce him due to his unwillingness to participate in running our day to day life, he has taken over a lot of the organisation and remembering of the 'little things' (which aren't actually little because if they don't get done, the big things fall apart).

Recently I said 'Oh I must do the nametags for DS's school stuff' (a job that in the past wouldn't even have been near DH's radar, he wouldn't have even realised things had to be tagged) and he said 'I've already done it.' The relief that just one small job wasn't on my list was immense. Life is so much less drudgey when you know there is someone there tackling things with you, that if you drop the ball they will pick it up. Doing everything, all the time, on your own, is so so lonely.

Dh decides what we eat, if he doesn't I just eat anything quick and easy. I do click and collect when I want anything, wheras Dh likes going out shopping with all the children. All big decisions are up to me. If I said we are moving to Iraq at the end of the week for work dh would go! He would just do whatever as he is just really laid back with the big stuff.

The deciding meals thing does piss me off

Although following another thread in which i said i delegate i think i may delegate the childrens meals (within certain parameters) to the children themselves

I work in the evenings twice a week and dh has a lot of lunches at work so meal planning for the two of us is getting simpler!!

I feel like this a lot lately.

But one of my issues I guess is a sign of how times have changed: DH leaves all the finances to me, he knows nothing about any of it and just goes along with whatever I do. I find it really exhausting - ive been quite pissed off about it and we talked about it, but still I feel like it's all on me.

I know part of it is delegation - I don't technically need to be the one deciding if the bathroom needs cleaning, but if it doesn't get done when MIL anyone pops round I know instinctively that most of the people in my life will assume its my responsibility. Equally, if he forgets to send a birthday card to his side of the family it will be assumed that I should have sent it. Its hard to stop checking that things have been done when I'm aware I'll get the blame if it isn't done! I am working on it though, and he is learning that if he forgets things I won't always pick up the slack.

It probably doesn't help that both of us were brought up in traditional households - SAHMs running the home, seeing to DC and remembering birthdays etc, while WOHDs did very little in the evenings. We're both determined not to fall in to the 'gender roles' trap at home, but its hard work when it's so ingrained!

On delegation: I DON'T WANT TO DO THE DELEGATION! If I do it still means it's MY responsibility, just that someone else is doing it. NO. It's is NOT ALL my responsibility.