Division of labour and genuinely different standards

[AGapInTheMarket]

Hi all,
As I'm pondering the big question of HOW to achieve proper equality at home and as I'm discussing the same with my friends, I am struck by the number who claim that their biggest stumbling block to getting true investment from their (largely male) partners is that of differing standards. In my own relationship, my husband lived alone for 15 years before we moved in together and for much of those 15 years, by his own admission, he lived in a complete shit tip. Bare minimum standards were maintained - his clothes were washed but never folded or put away, his kitchen was dirty, he went years between hooverings. He claims he felt mild consternation if someone was coming over but he also never allowed visits from people who would notice or care, such as his parents, instead going to their house or meeting them out.
Several woman friends have agreed that their husbands and partners also have genuinely much lower living standards. I'm not talking about 'competitive homemakers' who iron sheets or similar, just basic hygiene and cleanliness.
I'm certain it's to do with socialisation and the fact that men are brought up to 'not care' and 'not notice' even when they live alone and there's nobody else to take up the slack. But how does one address it, presuming that the marriage is solid and communication lines are open? "Agreeing on new minimum standards" is such an easy guideline to say but the reality of my and my friends' situations is that the men's internalised minimum is much lower than the women's' - whatever they claim to the contrary!
Thanks for any insights!

I don't know.... Watching for words of wisdom!

To a limited extent, peer pressure works - they do know that in real life people do expect more than what you have described, hence the not inviting people back bit. You are the peer, if something is totally unacceptable you have to say so, repeatedly if necessary, without hiding your true feelings (be that disgust, pity, whatever) to any particular degree.
This wouldn't "fix" everything you describe as the other person needs to genuinely buy in to want to do it themselves, really, but it can resolve specific single behaviours that are actually dirty (etc).

Isn't part of the problem that it's the women trying to figure this out, not the men?

Why don't the men try working on this together? Surely as a group, they can come up with some effective way of recalibrating their attention/standards/etc?

Personally, if I met a man and he lived in a shit tip, that would be a big red flag.
Whatever the cause - socialisation or whatever, it'll always be an uphill struggle to get them to change.
I do agree it's peer pressure or rather to do what is expected of you.
I lived with plenty of women at university who were slobs, but got their act together after getting their own place and married, etc., like they knew it was now expected of them since they had become responsible.
I don't know the answer in your case, though. I think, like financial planning, it's better if a couple has similar standards from the start - both carefeul with their money or both spendthrifts. It's when standards are different that problems arise. Always for the tidy/careful one.

Just a personal observation.
My job takes me into peoples homes and what I have found about widows and widowers is (broadly speaking) that women keep up the standards inside the home and men outside. They tend to maintain the roles they have played in the relationship.
Women still keep a tidy, clean and healthy home but often the fabric of the house, paintwork, guttering and the lawns/ hedges etc start to fall off a cliff.
Men on the other hand maintain the house, car and such like but the interior goes to pot. Living like OPs fella when he was single.
In many a widowers house I'm frightened of touching a hard surface for fear of picking up E.coli.

Don’t move in with men who live in shit tips
Seriously. The only consequences they will listen to are the ones that affect them. So if every woman said ‘no’ to men who are filthy pigs they would up their standards. Why do women think they can change a pig once he has his feet under the table?

There’s no answer unless the person with the lower standards pulls his socks up, and you can’t make them do it.

DH was much tidier than me when we first got married (although I was a more thorough cleaner) and I had to raise my game if I wanted to stay married.

Don’t move in with men who live in shit tips

TBH, this is the solution.

Although, both DP and I have low standards when it comes to tidyness - the trouble is that when children come along, I feel a responsibility to them to ensure they have clean clothes, safe food, that they're not running around in filth etc. DP agrees that they should have all these things, but there's a disconnect between wanting it, and realising that that means he has to step up and do the work to make it happen.

I wish I'd seen it as a red flag when I moved in with my ex - his mum and sister following with his nine Bin bags of dirty washing.

He never changed. Always happy to agree 'new minimum standards', create chore planners etc, but ultimately never stuck to them. An ex for good reason.

Is "hygiene" subjective? There are set standards for food storage/dating and cross contamination and such. But as can be seen in AIBU, there is a wide range of opinion regarding things such as dusting and clothing care.

My DH and I were both lackadaisical about housework and we remain a bit confounded by it. I certainly don't blame men or this particular man as I know some extremely house proud and "house-active" men.

I do feel the guilt though, I admire his ability to welcome people into mess whilst I am cringing at the state of my house. I think that's where I have been affected by social conditioning.

I hate housework with a passion, so does Dh. It's so mindnumbingly boring, but yes I feel more social pressure about doing it. I like to keep things hygienic especially in the kitchen but am not bothered about tidiness /dust / ironing until someone's due to visit. Slightly off topic, but my HV told me that the current theory is that houses are too clean and this could be behind the recent increases in allergies. She said that in her experience the dirtiest houses she went to are the ones where the kids are never sick!

For a relationship to really work, both partners have to be willing to agree on what's important and compromise if necessary on those important things. Money is a good example - if one person is a spender and the other is a saver they have to agree that this is an important issue and then come to some sort of compromise where both feel happy that their needs are served as much as possible. If that doesn't happen then one partner will inevitably feel resentful and the relationship won't function well.

When it comes to housework, the issue is often in the first step of getting men to agree that it's even an important aspect of life at all. That's because they've been raised in a misogynistic world that sees shitwork as the preserve of lowly women, not something that men should even bother about. If that's how a man feels (and men will rarely even admit that, never mind do anything about it) then you're entirely fucked, there's going to be no compromise and the relationship is going to suffer.

Where patriarchy has really done a number on women is where it's made them feel that their concerns about housework are pointless and petty. What a great way to get an army of compliant slaves to wash men's socks!

I want to point out here that it's not the case that one partner (woman or man) should demand a certain standard from the other. What I'm saying is that no matter what the issue is - money, religion, holidays, housework - whatever, they have to acknowledge the other person's feelings on it and then work from there to make a sensible solution. If no sensible solution can be found then there's a massive problem. When the issue is money most people will acknowledge that that's dealbreaker, but the when it comes to housework the subtle message is that if you leave a man for doing nothing around the house you're petty and leaving him for no good reason. Again, great training for the housework fairies, ever bound to put their men's skiddy pants in the wash.

I couldn't give a fuck what men do. I just want women to know that if you say to your partner in good faith that you want a compromise on an issue that really affects you (no matter what that issue is) and she or he just ignores you then you need to get out of that relationship before being treated that way breaks you.

Exactly this - Sparrowhawk - "I just want women to know that if you say to your partner in good faith that you want a compromise on an issue that really affects you (no matter what that issue is) and she or he just ignores you then you need to get out of that relationship before being treated that way breaks you".

My cousin divorced her husband a year into their marriage precisely because he couldn't be bothered doing anything. A year of weekly arguments/'reminders' was more than she could take. I could only applaud her!

What a great way to get an army of compliant slaves to wash men's socks!

And also got women to police each other as well! It's my mum who tells me I should iron for DH, not DH*, and other women I hear call women slobby or houseproud or whatever.

*Neither I nor DH iron at all, which seems to cause my mum much vexation, but really, most stuff is iron-free these days? MIL irons underwear .
Sorry, ironing is a pet peeve, I see so many women slaving over it and it really doesn't seem necessary.

I'm certain it's to do with socialisation and the fact that men are brought up to 'not care' and 'not notice' even when they live alone and there's nobody else to take up the slack.

And no male gay couples I know live in squalor with no clean socks. I was raised by a gay man. He has absolutely equal housekeeping and 'mental load' capacity to my mother. Gay friends of all ages the same.

It's about straight men having at the back of their minds that these things are 'women's work' - and if there isn't a woman to do it then it doesn't get done, which also relies on the squalor eventually pressuring some woman in their life somewhere, be it mother, friend, whatever, will be unable to stand it any more and do it for them.

I watched with nausea at college while male peers in my year looked pathetic and wailed about ironing until the female cleaners mummied them and did it all for them. The female students had the apparent capacity to figure out the whole putting up an ironing board/ plugging the iron in/ put hot side against clothes mental challenge even if they came from homes where they'd never ironed before.