How are we supposed to do ALL of this?

[cakestop2016]

Modern society is completely screwed up for modern women as far as I'm concerned. Why are we expected to go to work AND juggle all of the housework AND take care of the children's needs? Why haven't men caught up in assisting us? My DP is slowly learning that he needs to do more but why am I having to write him to-do lists, why can't he think for himself? Why does he fail to notice the greasy finger marks on the kitchen cupboards when he 'cleans' the kitchen?
why is it like this? Why does all the meal planning get left to me? I'm now seriously contemplating leaving DP and taking our DD with me because I can not live like this anymore.
what's the answer for modern women?

Thank goodness someone else who doesn't give a flying one about a colleagues mug. I can't get worked up about fingerprints on cupboard doors either & would really resent my DH if he tried to make me care & imposed lists & rules on me.

Bobochic, it's not an intelligent approach to avoid every direct question asked and then claim someone is a man hater. That's not a very high standard of debate, if you don't mind me saying so.

Why don't you answer some of my questions, instead of projecting your own negative feelings about men, onto me? (I'm not the one who appears to believe that it's such an insurmountable problem to get them to take responsibility for their own mess, that it's best to avoid all discussion and simply outsource it. I think men are perfectly capable of engaging with routine, normal life.)

whatthe, the point about Mug Woman (as I shall henceforth think of her ) is not whether people get worked up about it (most don't, they just think it's rude), it's her behaviour that is under the microscope- not other people's responses to it. The guy who sits next to her gets really pissed off with her, most other people don't care, they just wouldn't do it themselves because it's generally considered bad manners to not clear your own mess up in a shared space.

In the same way, I think it's more interesting to analyse the behaviour of someone who is clearly doing something wrong, than the response of someone else to that wrong behaviour.

In the same way, I think it's more interesting to analyse the behaviour of someone who is clearly doing something wrong, than the response of someone else to that wrong behaviour

Why is MugWomen "clearly doing something wrong " ? You think she is wrong. I don't.

And I don't think it's rude. I have no opinion whatsoever on whether or not a colleague washes her mug every day.

I'm with Lass on this one, I don't get why Mug woman's behaviour is 'under the microscope' - I think it is the people that are getting worked up about it that are the strange ones (a bit like the posters being upset by finger markets on cupboard doors. I mean, really, let it go).

Although I am tidy and hate a cluttered surface, I am mug woman! At home and work. I'm not doing it because I'm lazy/important/busy.....l simply forget. Once drunk l forget about the entire thing. Then I'm quite amazed to find it tbh!

What l find weird though is other people's investment in a mug😁

Really?

You think there's nothing wrong with leaving a mess when you've been told it annoys people and have been asked not to?

I think if you've been told something's annoying your colleagues and you carry on doing it, you are inconsiderate and rude, unless there is a specific reason you can't do anything about it.

In the same way, I think if you live with someone and you carry on doing something that they have told you over and over again, really upsets them, you are probably not a very nice person.

AskBasil - you cannot change another adult's behavior by criticizing it or condemning it according to your own values.

AskBasil - you cannot change another adult's behavior by criticizing it or condemning it according to your own values.

But... you can change another adults behaviour by paying a third adult to make the problem invisible?

(Is your outsourced cleaner a man or a woman, btw?)

you cannot change another adult's behavior by criticizing it or condemning it according to your own values.

This is key, for me. Who gets to decide in the relationship what is, or isn't, acceptable. If my DH got on my case about fingermarks on cupboards, I would be royally ticked off. It doesn't bother me, if it bothers him he can wipe them off, or leave them, because I don't care. According to AskBasil this makes me an abusive sexist patriarchal man. Except I am not. I am a laid back, happy, feminist woman in a loving strong relationship.

You have to accept people have different standards of acceptable cleanliness and no one is 'right'. As in everything about relationships, it is compromising moves us along. As a feminist, in general I think woman are best served looking outside of the home for their accomplishments and not over investing in house beautiful.

But why would they be right, and me wrong?

It's only a mug, with possibly nothing in it. Why are they so worked up and over invested in it? How can an empty mug be offensive or rude? I just don't get it.

I think they should just live and let live and learn a bit of tolerance tbh. It's only a mug.

Paying for outsourcing is quite an effective negotiation technique, yes!

We pay for all sorts of domestic help (I like specialized help of a very high standard rather than having a FT housekeeper which is what most of our friends choose) and some of it is male and some of it is female but, tbh,mI don't pay much attention to whether the ironing is done by a man or a woman.

You avoid all the problems about behavioural change if you follow my advice - the pre relationship due diligence, the avoiding sexist pigs or dirty messy spouses in the first place, if that matters to you.

I am a reformed MugWoman at work. There are plenty of MugPeople and of course it is very annoying behaviour! Leaving cups out so that there are none for others in the staff room. Or leaving dirty mugs so someone else has to wash them up.

I am not a spoon stealer though. They are the lowest of the low!

If you're a messy person the best thing you can do is not live with someone else and inflict your standards on others.

Matilda - it is a fact of life that women are poor at negotiating a better deal for themselves and resort to self-sabotaging tactics like criticism and nagging when they haven't got what they want.

Well then, Bobo, you said yourself you can't change adults behaviour by criticizing it, so why don't you stop nagging us? Leave us alone to our unelightened man hating and dirty toilets that we're too poor to afford a housekeeper to swill out

(PS, Matilda, fab posts on this thread!)

I expect women are supposed to negotiate better by lavishing praise on men for doing what they were supposed to do in the first place, and by just waiting for ever until they decide to do it, is that it?

“AskBasil - you cannot change another adult's behavior by criticizing it or condemning it according to your own values.”

I’m not sure why you’re telling me this. I agree with you. I still don’t understand why you think men are incapable of cleaning their own toilets without nagging and therefore the only way to get a clean toilet without the woman of the house doing it, is to outsource it.

“You avoid all the problems about behavioural change if you follow my advice - the pre relationship due diligence, the avoiding sexist pigs or dirty messy spouses in the first place, if that matters to you.”

Have you not read the thread? This has already been discussed, most men do not start dumping an unfair percentage of domestic tasks on the women they live with, until they have children. Their behaviour changes from what it was when you did your due diligence.

With regards to the greasy hands argument, Whattheseithakasmean I think that very much depends on a) how crazy-making your DH would find it and b) whether you doing that is part and parcel of a wider pattern of behaviour that distresses and annoys your DH on an ongoing basis. Nowhere have I said that merely leaving greasy marks on its own, is the sign of an abusive relationship and you’ve not read my posts properly if that’s what you’re taking from them; what I’ve said is that if you choose to do something every single day which you know deeply distresses and upsets someone you live with, without even trying to not do that thing, then that is probably abusive behaviour. (Obviously subject to the caveat of it not being a mad Monica-type demand.) I’m open to the line that it may not be abusive, but what would you call it, how would you describe it, when someone continually does something that makes the other person they live with, feel like shit every day, when they know how much it upsets the other person? I did ask this question further down the thread but surprise surprise, no-one answered it.

Well, maybe being nagged about dirty fingerprints everyday makes someone feel like shit? I'm not getting why caring about wiped cupboard doors is by default 'correct'. Not in my universe it isn't.

Did you not read the rest of my post?

Why are you ignoring what I'm actually saying?

Your posts are very long & I don't feel like writing an essay in my spare time. My basic premise is that people shouldnt over invest in a clean house & set themselves up as the guardians of acceptable standards. It is a hiding to nothing, especially for women who are better served seeking status & satisfaction out with the ideal home. If I have the time I'll copy and paste a Denise Riley poem which is a more nuanced expression of what I am trying to convey but basically boils down to stop sweating about a mug.

So you haven't read my posts then.

Because if you had, you'd remember that I said my level of concern is 1 while someone else's is 10.

So telling me not to sweat a mug is unnecessary. As I've already said I don't.

No-one has yet answered my question about how they would define behaviour which deliberately causes the person they live with, ongoing distress.

And I suspect that no-one will.

I wonder why not.