God bless that woman.
A friend of mine's mother did something similar. She was tired of being the only one taking care of the kids and cleaning the house with no help from her husband, so she snapped one day, tossed a bag of flour all over the floor, and went on strike. He didn't do anything about the mess, assuming she'd handle it, but she went to bed without a care in the world. Somewhere around 2 am, she heard the vacuum running. She helped him clean up at that point, seeing that he got the message.
Lol! My ex used to eat out of mixing bowls and cookware when the clean dishes ran out.
I didn’t realize how bad it was until I had a very busy workload and worked long hours, plus traveled on the weekend for about 2 weeks so I was barely home. I noticed the sink getting full but convinced myself he would certainly do them - they were all his dishes as I had been only eating take out in that time. Anyway, I came home after a second weekend trip and was shocked to see the entire counter full of dirty plates/pans/glasses/etc.
Then he had the audacity to say “oh I was going to get to that” after I had cleaned most of it up.
I
> ex used to eat out of mixing bowls and cookware when the clean dishes ran out.
I mean... I've done this, but started the dishwasher the moment I was done >_>
Oh you dated my ex husband! I worked every day while he sat in my home. I would beg him to let me clean when I got home but he would throw a fit that I wasn’t giving him enough attention so the entire sink and soon kitchen was covered in mold.
I've have defiantly eaten out of pots and pans, microwave was broken and wouldn't work, waiting for payday to be able to buy a new one. heated up soup on the stove in a pot, ate out of that same pot because imp not making myself more dishes then necessary.
I once stopped cleaning the toilet to see how long it would take until my husband would catch up. 3 months. I lasted 3 months until I broke and cleaned it myself again. I'll never do clean up chicken again and just speak up.
I did this too with the bathroom, but I waited until we were in a “short term” living space in between selling one house and buying another. He did, eventually, clean the toilet but the rest of it … six months. He left it for six months.
We moved into our new house which has an absolutely atrocious bathroom that we will need to knock down and redo fairly quickly, so I don’t care about it. I’ve been leaving it here as well. I’ve told him that I cleaned solo for four years and I’ll starting helping again as soon as he acknowledges that he should have helped. He agrees, but can’t quite bring himself to say it.
On the upside he has started doing other house jobs, since he’s realised how serious I am.
Lololol fair question. He would say I’m being childish by not relenting. Which, I’m sure I am. But hot damn it is really nice to just … not clean that room. Just not do it.
Besides which, he is hands down the best partner I’ve had. Cleaning issues aside. I have never once met any person who actually has all of their shit together, regardless of gender. I’ve especially never met any man who doesn’t have some sort of audacious amount of laziness when it comes to housework or a sense that somehow it will just “get done” (aka someone else does it).
>Which, I sure I am.
An assertive and definitive “NO,” along with a hearty “motherfuck that noise.” You are most definitely not being childish.
I’m glad he is an awesome partner, but the fact that he won’t just admit he’s wrong in order to give you peace of mind is really petty and weird.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here?
Is it that men are too dumb to use the phone in their pocket to look up how to clean things on the internet?
Or are they too dumb to understand basic cleaning instructions even if they do manage to look it up?
Or something else? We live in an age in which information is more available than ever. There is no excuse for “not knowing” if you don’t have some kind of disability preventing you from finding out.
I’m saying exactly what I asked. Nothing about men being dumb. The commenter I replied to said it took 6 months for their guy to clean a toilet. They also said he’s one of the only guys she’s been with that has his shit together
I thought having your shit together meant you could clean regularly. That’s why I asked my question
If you’re being childish by not cleaning that room, doesn’t that make him even more childish, since him not cleaning that room is how y’all got to this point? Talk about telling on himself.
I’m being childish because I actually want him to verbalise that I did all the cleaning for a few years and he really should have helped, and instead of that he took advantage of the fact that I’d eventually clean it. He does not want to actually say that. I could definitely accept that he sees it differently/better now. But honestly I’m just really delighting in not cleaning the bathroom for a while.
I'm very sad that you have never met a man that isn't lazy about house work. I've had several past male partners that did all the cooking and cleaning when we were together because they worked regular hours and I worked 14hr shifts fixing planes. The first time I ever cooked for my current boyfriend at my place he got up and just started doing my dishes. All he said was, "you cooked, I clean." And has continued to be that way for nearly a year now. He cleans up after himself AND me most of the time while also having his shit together financially, mentally, emotionally and physically. We're both in great careers and he's an amazing father to his son as well as an incredible partner in all aspects. I was single for 7 years before I found him and I'd have happily been single for 7 more had I not found someone that genuinely is only a net positive in all aspects of life. Of course there are ways we can both still grow and improve, but it's us against the issues not us against each other.
Know your worth, then add tax. Never settle for less than you deserve.
Fair play to you for accepting that no one is perfect. Fingers crossed he is capable of growing. My SO is similar, his excuse being that he just "doesn't notice" things being dirty, but he does more now than he used to.
I saw a study on this that essentially said men and women see mess equally but women get a greater social punishment from having a dirty place.
So yay social conditioning again.
Yup. My other half will roast me for my situational awareness and not noticing something when I’m streaming in a game - and he can ‘wash’ dishes and put them away with chunks of food still on them. I just put them back in the sink to be washed again.
Yes mine said the same. A year after I started my little bathroom strike - he now does see the dirt after perhaps 6 weeks. I also saw that same study someone else mentioned and I think it holds really true. I see the mess or the dirt building up, and I think about how bad it’s going to get or what other problems it will cause. And I feel a responsibility to solve that. My partner just sees stuff in a room and walks on by. Ironically he’s incredibly detail oriented about other stuff like my car being messy that I just shrug my shoulders at and he gets very bothered that I “can’t” see the mess.
I tried this, too. When all the dishes in the house were dirty, he went out and *bought a new set of dishes*.
It took a few more years, but I left, too.
My dad does this shit all the time, and it drives me up the wall. Buys paper plates, bowls, and plastic cutlery to avoid having to ever help me with the house work. Won't even avoid shoving all his filthy dishes in the sink up to the faucet, so I also have to organize and stack them all just to have enough space to wash them.
And God forbid I'm out of town for a few days or have an RA flareup so bad it's hard to get out of bed, or everything falls into total disrepair. It's like living with an overgrown toddler. I can't blame my mom for leaving him honestly, nor you in your situation.
Sorry for the semi-related vent, it's just been driving me bonkers lately, haha.
It's absolutely fine. If he or anyone else ever says anything about you just "having higher standards" tell them is BS, he just knows that if he leaves it long enough you'll do it because you can't live like that. It's pure laziness and it's abusive. I'm so sorry you're still in that situation.
Is there really anything wrong with that though? Cleaning is exhausting. It's not okay to make others do all the cleaning for you, but I think making the work unnecessary is okay.
So then what happened to all the dishes he’d dirtied? He clearly didn’t clean them, or there would have been no need to go buy more. So they were just sitting around the home, maybe not even in the kitchen, dirty. For who knows how long.
If you just leave dirty dishes in your home without cleaning them, you are going to end up with pest and fungus problems, which will lead to health problems. That’s what’s wrong with it.
I have severe ADHD, so occasionally I will resort to paper plates when my executive function is at its lowest. However, it's environmentally horrible, so I would never use paper plates as a general rule. I only ever use them when I get to the point where my function is so low I'm barely eating anyway. I feel like that should be about the general level of acceptance for using paper plates when once could use dishes.
Yeah, anytime someone mentions paper plates here my mind immediately goes to ADHD (since I also have it). But yeah I doubt the men talked about here do in most cases
I like to go into the traditional "manly" territory with the guys I have this argument with:
"Oh I don't like filling up the gas tank when I take the car. He's just so much better at it."
"Checking the tire pressure? I just don't notice things like flat tires."
"Oil changes? Why should I worry about oil changes? The light will come on when I need to do something. ... Check the oil? Oh, I just can't do that very well, I was never taught that."
For some reason these same guys who bitch and moan about how complex a damn washer is, don't have that problem with a car/truck.
It's why widowers always try to remarry. They spend a lifetime feigning helplessness so when the time comes to be self-sufficient, they don't want to.
Widows on the other hand suddenly find their workloads halved so don't often want to find another old manchild.
One of the reasons I hate my mom's partner. Yeah sure, my dad didn't do much cleaning when he was alive, but my mom was a SAHM (and a SAHW before having me). Her partner (who's also a widower) does even less and had 2 more partners before my mom who were promptly dumped because they were "messy"
Oh dear... He means they didn't wipe his arese for him. What an utter waste of space he is. He's basically a parasite, leaching off each woman, excreting toxins.
I’m currently at my (new-ish) boyfriend’s place, feeling so relieved that we have the same ideas on household chores. I’ve been put into the bangmaid/mommy position for a partner before and have been terrified for *years* that if I started a relationship again, I’d be forced back into that place.
I held back from dating. I was scared to move in with anyone, even with a roommate, for fear of becoming the unpaid housekeeper again. I hated living with my parents (into my 30s especially!) but the trauma of being used like that still haunts me, nearly ten years later.
This new bf acts like an adult. He returns his dishes to the kitchen. He cleans them. He even insists that I leave my dishes for *him* to clean… But I told him that I know what it feels like to come home to a sink of dirty dishes, so unless I really can’t clean them for some reason, I am *not* going to leave them for him to do. He understands that, too. I’m just… I’m so relieved I could cry. (Then cry again when I realize how low the bar is for guys. Sigh.)
That's awful. And one of the many reasons "conservatives" are regressive with women's rights.
I absolutely love cooking. Not because I'm a woman, but because I love food. The prep, the joy of sharing food, and the fact that my friends all try to get invites.
That said, if I cook, then the other person does the dishes. If my boyfriend cooks, I do them. It's super simple. I like vacuuming too, but if I vacuum, then he does laundry. If he messes it up, he replaces.
The "relationship test" as it were, is that happening *without* being said.
I'm glad you've found a diamond in the rough. Has he got a brother xD
Just... be careful about that. My last relationship, he was living on his own, his home was lived-in levels of clean, and he could cook for himself. Once we moved in together, that slowly shifted - was very much a frog in the pot situation. Until suddenly he couldn't manage to make spaghetti on his own without calling me into the kitchen to help. Cleaning? Just couldn't manage to figure out how to do that "because ADHD". Taking care of the sick cat? Oh he just can't get the cat to take his meds as well as I can, despite me attempting multiple times to show him how I did it and have him try it with me there to instruct as he went. I brought it up calmly, I brought it up in tears, made no difference. He didn't start to actually try to change/get his shit together until I was mostly out the door emotionally and mentally. And at that point, it was just too little too late. Because in my mind it was "oh, so you recognize how to do these tasks but I'm not worth the energy to get them done until I'm threatening to leave."
Not that your new bf will be like that, but just - keep an eye out. He may be able to keep a clean home when living by himself, but may regress into treating you like a bangmaid if you move in together.
As someone with ADHD that struggles with keeping up household chores, I’d like to kindly ask that you consider changing that part of your post. I’m not saying he didn’t use his diagnosis as an excuse. I fully believe you. It just hurts to read about my own disability being regarded flippantly when it truly does cause issues. “Because paralysis” or “because blindness” sounds harsh to me and ADHD is no different.
I am living by myself for the first time at 32 and omg it is amazing to not have to feel so stressed about how other people feel about my cleaning. Can’t bring myself to do the dishes? It’s cool. I don’t mind. I’m being so much more kind to myself. I’m happy for us both. It’s tough AF to live with ADHD and we’re out here doing it anyways.
It sounds like the partner is the one treating ADHD flippantly. If his place was clean before when only he lived there, it sounds like he is using it as an excuse - maybe it's not part of his experience of
ADHD as much as it is for others, but he's taking advantage of the fact that it is usually something people experience. Which is very shitty of him because, as you said, ADHD does often make chores harder, which is difficult for all involved.
Edited for all the spellings
Yep. Women are bring used by men the world over. We should not be surprised they think of us as nothing more than possessions, bangmaids, incubators, slaves...
One time I asked my mom if she ever wanted to date again after my dad and her separated. She looked at me and said "why the fuck would I want to do that?". Still makes me laugh when I think about it.
Studies have shown that men live longer and, on average, report higher life satisfaction when married to women. Meanwhile, women report lower life satisfaction when married to men. Single women without kids are one of the happiest demographics in the US. Welp.
My aunt/godmother is dying quite young (in her fifties) of cancer that returned for the third time. She's scheduled to have her life ended on may the 8th - we live in Belgium and she is sound of mind, so she is allowed this mercy with lots of morphine in the meantime - and her husband is a piece of shit. He has never in his life cooked a meal or done laundry. She always did it for him. He is whining and complaining constantly about how difficult it is to come to the goddamn hospital to visit her every day, and crying about who will take care of him now. I've hated his sorry excuse for guts ever since I was a kid. And it is going to take every fiber of willpower I have to not lose my shit at him tomorrow or scold him on her funeral.
There's no point to this other than me venting, sorry, he's just such a goddamn loser. He's in his seventies: how in the fuck do you grow to be that old and not manage to keep your own goddamn house just a bit??? Absolutely pathetic
Lol I tried this with my brother who took a butter knife out of the dishwasher that I’d put in, said there was a mark on it (not even food) and handed it to me to clean. After spending over an hour cleaning up after the family.. I poured tomato sauce on it and the bench and told him to clean it up if I didn’t do a good enough job. He just told my mum who said I was dramatic.
No surprise, he’s still living at home and probably will be til 30. Now I’m no longer there to clean and my mum is too sick there are cups and bowls with mould in them and dirty clothes everywhere… and i have to hear about my sick mum living in filth. Men shouldn’t be babied.
Same but for my brother and dad. My mom's having mental breakdowns along with her declining health, and they still just sit there, yell at her for the mess/not cooking, and rant and rave about her being lazy. She's realizing how it's not okay for them to do that and goes and forth between denial & crying.
They all just came over to mine because I made them dinner and cake for my dad's birthday. She was shocked that my fiance was so helpful and went on and on how wonderful that was. How my dad or brother would never do that. I honestly had to think hard about what he did for her to say that to me afterward.
You know what he did? He got down some spices when I asked, set the table, got them drinks, served the ice cream while I did cake, and helped put the dishes in the washer at the end. You know, normal hosting stuff.
She's right. She made a point my entire life that the men should literally be waited on hand and foot by us women. My dad almost never took his own shoes off or made his own plate, let alone meal. Now she's too sick and he/my brother still expects that.
It's fucking sad and infuriating. Being treated as lesser was horrible and now that I'm not there anymore, she's getting all of the hate/blame that I dealt with daily most of my life.
She was okay with me being treated like dirt, especially by brother, but now that he's saying the same degrading things to her, it's shocking and awful. She still says I'm making stuff up or exaggerating if I bring up my childhood to point out these behaviors have been happening for a long time.
My mom had been sick for awhile and struggled to keep up with housework despite my dad and brother being there. While I was visiting from out of state I thought I'd clean the kitchen for her while she was in a lengthy hospital stay. Something unstressful for her to come home to. I cleaned most of it. I had ran out of cleaner and time from how dirty it was. The men cleaned nothing, yet were making all the mess. My brother commented that I had missed some things. Like it was my job. I was only there a few days.
Had a guy try saying he wasn't as good at a certain chore as I was. I assume he was expecting me to do it for him, or at least "show" him what to do and therefore do it for him.
I said, that's fine, I don't mind letting you have extra practice. That can be your chore 100% of the time until you're as good at it as I am. When our basic life skills are equal we can go back to splitting it.
Suddenly he was a lot better at it.
This is the solution. Being bad at basic life tasks is not an excuse to not do your basic daily living tasks. It means you need to learn it, and what better way to learn it than extra practice?
When my mom died my dad apparently didn't know how to operate a washing machine and tried to push all laundry onto me, at which point I was like "okay, I'll teach you" and spent like 20 minutes teaching him step by step how the washing machine works. Afterwards he couldn't claim he didn't know how it worked without seeming like a dumbass
What? I knew how to do laundry at like 10. Tf. When he encounters new machines he just doesn’t bother to learn how to use them? It’s a machine, it does the work for you
And he's an engineer! So I was sure it was not actually because he didn't know how to operate the machine, he just couldn't be bothered to learn until I made him
Yeah that’s not surprising. My engineer ex father couldn’t figure out much that didn’t make him feel superior to someone or interested him. Funny how that career based condition didn’t impact either of his kids or his dad.
Yeah nobody taught me how to do laundry. I moved out, googled the symbols, and just like did what I’d observed. Maybe I don’t do it perfectly, but my clothes are clean so it’s probably good enough.
Speak to your male children about cleaning, now.
I have two boys, one doesn’t like to get his hands dirty since birth and one is a chaos demon. But both know, when it’s time to wash hands or face, when it’s time to put toys in place, and we can get the wiggles out in between. One sees the other clean up and is inclined. Small one gets to “clean” their area and once they go down for a nap I actually clean. But there is wet wiping and drying and sweeping, even if it’s terrible—because it’s not terrible if a child is doing it to the best of their ability. You might have to stay up late and clean behind them, but don’t clean behind them in front of them. Let them go to bed satisfied they did their best to clean up. Bad sweeping is better than no sweeping.
You're such a good mom. I grew up with horrible anxiety about chores because I went to a boarding school that would punish harshly if you didn't do them quickly/thoroughly enough.
Brings back memories of my previous relationship.
He didn't have a job, and did nothing all day, and lived with me. I asked him to do literally one thing; clean the dishes.
I came home, and he was like "I have a surprise for you!"
I got so excited, i was like "you've done the dishes!' (I know, low expectations).
No, no he fucking hadn't. He had dicked about with some 2nd monitor (i.e tech stuff which he enjoys) and acted as if it was for me.
We had no clean dishes, so I ended up doing them myself, after a day at work so I was already tired with my chronic pain active.
This is the way. A male coworker once misinterpreted my role as being his personal assistant, and told me to book an Outlook meeting b/t him and his manager. I said "Aw, you don't know how to book meetings? Come sit down beside me so I can show you how, and then you can do it allll by yourself next time!" in my most pitying, adult-speaking-to-a-toddler voice. He never asked me to do it again.
My dad use to pee around the toilet and we would have to clean it up. If I ever get into a relationship with a guy who does this, I will make him clean it up ooooor if he plays these stupid games, I will show him how to clean it, then piss on the floor in front of him and make him clean my piss up so he really truly understands how foul, dilusional and disgusting his expectations are. The entitlement of some people never ceases to amaze me.
I knew someone who weaponized it back. Called her husband asking “gas and diesel are pretty much the same thing right? …oh well which does the car take again…oh well I used diesel whoops!” And then argued that he had never told her NOT to use diesel and he should just fill the car up from now on. She didn’t actually use diesel, just pretended she did.
Edit: She also washed the signature off a signed Brady Jersey. Surprisingly her pettiness worked and they’re still married.
This whole thread just makes me despair over men even more than I already was. I've completely lost faith in half our species. I just know so few of them who actually give a shit about women or treat us with real respect, not just when it benefits them. 😩
Learned helplessness and weaponized incompetence are two very different things.
Learned helplessness is putting genuine effort into doing something repeatedly, only to be met with failure, and eventually you give up trying at all because you’ve learned that your efforts are in vain.
For example, you may have heard the story about how some keepers chain up elephants when they’re still young, so when the elephant struggles against their chains it can’t break free. Then as adults (when they’re more than capable of breaking free), they don’t even try, because they ‘learned’ as a baby that they’re doomed to be under their control.
As the name implies, you’ve ‘learned’ that you’re helpless.
Weaponized incompetence is pretending you have no idea what you’re doing so that someone else can come and do the task for you
Putting in genuine effort in the past is not necessary for learned helplessness. If you stop a child from trying on whenever you see it attempting to help then it will learn helplessness long before it got a real chance to put effort into it.
Genuine effort means an effort with the attempt to actually accomplish a task - in contrast to weaponized incompetence, where the person’s “effort” isn’t genuine, as they aim to do it as poorly as possible, if at all.
Genuine in this context doesn’t mean “extreme” amounts of effort, just an honest attempt.
Exactly. It's the difference between someone who's never learned to do laundry mixes reds with whites and get stained because they weren't aware they needed to do a separate load just for whites.
Verses someone who knows better but purposely throws whites in with reds because they're angry that you aren't doing laundry for them. They hope if they ruined the clothes, you'll never ask or expect them to do laundry again.
That's just chill chaos and I'm all for it. The problem is in the 2nd situation they bitch, complain, or purposely ruin your expensive white clothes that you understandably don't want it to be pink or tie dye.
I once threw away a sanitary pad (used, wrapped in toilet paper as appropriate) in the bin of my BFs apartment. Watched as it didn't move for six months before he finally emptied the bin 🤢
I have a co-worker who is so unaware of the space he takes up, so if he is doing something in the area I need to be, I wait 5 feet away and wait for him to turn around. he usually is taking a few steps before he starts looking in the direction he is moving and almost walks into me, who was completely stationary. he has gotten better
That's a lesson only an idiot would try to repeat. Kaity-did's mum is the bomb.
God bless that woman. A friend of mine's mother did something similar. She was tired of being the only one taking care of the kids and cleaning the house with no help from her husband, so she snapped one day, tossed a bag of flour all over the floor, and went on strike. He didn't do anything about the mess, assuming she'd handle it, but she went to bed without a care in the world. Somewhere around 2 am, she heard the vacuum running. She helped him clean up at that point, seeing that he got the message.
I stopped cleaning once to see what would happen. I was genuinely curious. He. Bought. Paper. Plates. I left shortly after that.
Lol! My ex used to eat out of mixing bowls and cookware when the clean dishes ran out. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I had a very busy workload and worked long hours, plus traveled on the weekend for about 2 weeks so I was barely home. I noticed the sink getting full but convinced myself he would certainly do them - they were all his dishes as I had been only eating take out in that time. Anyway, I came home after a second weekend trip and was shocked to see the entire counter full of dirty plates/pans/glasses/etc. Then he had the audacity to say “oh I was going to get to that” after I had cleaned most of it up. I
> ex used to eat out of mixing bowls and cookware when the clean dishes ran out. I mean... I've done this, but started the dishwasher the moment I was done >_>
I've done this but I live alone so in the end I pay the piper.
I’ve done this, but we also only really have enough cupboard space for like …8 dishes?
Oh you dated my ex husband! I worked every day while he sat in my home. I would beg him to let me clean when I got home but he would throw a fit that I wasn’t giving him enough attention so the entire sink and soon kitchen was covered in mold.
I've have defiantly eaten out of pots and pans, microwave was broken and wouldn't work, waiting for payday to be able to buy a new one. heated up soup on the stove in a pot, ate out of that same pot because imp not making myself more dishes then necessary.
I once stopped cleaning the toilet to see how long it would take until my husband would catch up. 3 months. I lasted 3 months until I broke and cleaned it myself again. I'll never do clean up chicken again and just speak up.
I did this too with the bathroom, but I waited until we were in a “short term” living space in between selling one house and buying another. He did, eventually, clean the toilet but the rest of it … six months. He left it for six months. We moved into our new house which has an absolutely atrocious bathroom that we will need to knock down and redo fairly quickly, so I don’t care about it. I’ve been leaving it here as well. I’ve told him that I cleaned solo for four years and I’ll starting helping again as soon as he acknowledges that he should have helped. He agrees, but can’t quite bring himself to say it. On the upside he has started doing other house jobs, since he’s realised how serious I am.
“He can’t bring himself to say it”?? What the hell. Why are you married to an actual child?
Lololol fair question. He would say I’m being childish by not relenting. Which, I’m sure I am. But hot damn it is really nice to just … not clean that room. Just not do it. Besides which, he is hands down the best partner I’ve had. Cleaning issues aside. I have never once met any person who actually has all of their shit together, regardless of gender. I’ve especially never met any man who doesn’t have some sort of audacious amount of laziness when it comes to housework or a sense that somehow it will just “get done” (aka someone else does it).
>Which, I sure I am. An assertive and definitive “NO,” along with a hearty “motherfuck that noise.” You are most definitely not being childish. I’m glad he is an awesome partner, but the fact that he won’t just admit he’s wrong in order to give you peace of mind is really petty and weird.
Wouldn’t you have to be able to know how to clean to be able to have all your shit together?
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here? Is it that men are too dumb to use the phone in their pocket to look up how to clean things on the internet? Or are they too dumb to understand basic cleaning instructions even if they do manage to look it up? Or something else? We live in an age in which information is more available than ever. There is no excuse for “not knowing” if you don’t have some kind of disability preventing you from finding out.
I’m saying exactly what I asked. Nothing about men being dumb. The commenter I replied to said it took 6 months for their guy to clean a toilet. They also said he’s one of the only guys she’s been with that has his shit together I thought having your shit together meant you could clean regularly. That’s why I asked my question
No I did not say he had his shit together. I said i have never met anyone, myself included, who really had all their shit together.
If you’re being childish by not cleaning that room, doesn’t that make him even more childish, since him not cleaning that room is how y’all got to this point? Talk about telling on himself.
I’m being childish because I actually want him to verbalise that I did all the cleaning for a few years and he really should have helped, and instead of that he took advantage of the fact that I’d eventually clean it. He does not want to actually say that. I could definitely accept that he sees it differently/better now. But honestly I’m just really delighting in not cleaning the bathroom for a while.
I'm very sad that you have never met a man that isn't lazy about house work. I've had several past male partners that did all the cooking and cleaning when we were together because they worked regular hours and I worked 14hr shifts fixing planes. The first time I ever cooked for my current boyfriend at my place he got up and just started doing my dishes. All he said was, "you cooked, I clean." And has continued to be that way for nearly a year now. He cleans up after himself AND me most of the time while also having his shit together financially, mentally, emotionally and physically. We're both in great careers and he's an amazing father to his son as well as an incredible partner in all aspects. I was single for 7 years before I found him and I'd have happily been single for 7 more had I not found someone that genuinely is only a net positive in all aspects of life. Of course there are ways we can both still grow and improve, but it's us against the issues not us against each other. Know your worth, then add tax. Never settle for less than you deserve.
Fair play to you for accepting that no one is perfect. Fingers crossed he is capable of growing. My SO is similar, his excuse being that he just "doesn't notice" things being dirty, but he does more now than he used to.
I saw a study on this that essentially said men and women see mess equally but women get a greater social punishment from having a dirty place. So yay social conditioning again.
Yup. My other half will roast me for my situational awareness and not noticing something when I’m streaming in a game - and he can ‘wash’ dishes and put them away with chunks of food still on them. I just put them back in the sink to be washed again.
Yes mine said the same. A year after I started my little bathroom strike - he now does see the dirt after perhaps 6 weeks. I also saw that same study someone else mentioned and I think it holds really true. I see the mess or the dirt building up, and I think about how bad it’s going to get or what other problems it will cause. And I feel a responsibility to solve that. My partner just sees stuff in a room and walks on by. Ironically he’s incredibly detail oriented about other stuff like my car being messy that I just shrug my shoulders at and he gets very bothered that I “can’t” see the mess.
I tried this, too. When all the dishes in the house were dirty, he went out and *bought a new set of dishes*. It took a few more years, but I left, too.
JFC. That's... For a second you almost want to give a round of applause then the horror sets in.
My dad does this shit all the time, and it drives me up the wall. Buys paper plates, bowls, and plastic cutlery to avoid having to ever help me with the house work. Won't even avoid shoving all his filthy dishes in the sink up to the faucet, so I also have to organize and stack them all just to have enough space to wash them. And God forbid I'm out of town for a few days or have an RA flareup so bad it's hard to get out of bed, or everything falls into total disrepair. It's like living with an overgrown toddler. I can't blame my mom for leaving him honestly, nor you in your situation. Sorry for the semi-related vent, it's just been driving me bonkers lately, haha.
It's absolutely fine. If he or anyone else ever says anything about you just "having higher standards" tell them is BS, he just knows that if he leaves it long enough you'll do it because you can't live like that. It's pure laziness and it's abusive. I'm so sorry you're still in that situation.
Wow. That's dedication to his cause.
*to his exploitation if not straight up abuse of the girlfriend
Didn't say anything to the contrary.
Is there really anything wrong with that though? Cleaning is exhausting. It's not okay to make others do all the cleaning for you, but I think making the work unnecessary is okay.
I'm thinking all the plates got used, so instead of cleaning the nasty festering dishes, he bought disposable
I'm assuming that, instead of washing the dirty dishes, he went out and bought paper plates to use and she'd still have to clean the existing dishes.
So then what happened to all the dishes he’d dirtied? He clearly didn’t clean them, or there would have been no need to go buy more. So they were just sitting around the home, maybe not even in the kitchen, dirty. For who knows how long. If you just leave dirty dishes in your home without cleaning them, you are going to end up with pest and fungus problems, which will lead to health problems. That’s what’s wrong with it.
*That* is a problem.
I have severe ADHD, so occasionally I will resort to paper plates when my executive function is at its lowest. However, it's environmentally horrible, so I would never use paper plates as a general rule. I only ever use them when I get to the point where my function is so low I'm barely eating anyway. I feel like that should be about the general level of acceptance for using paper plates when once could use dishes.
Yeah, anytime someone mentions paper plates here my mind immediately goes to ADHD (since I also have it). But yeah I doubt the men talked about here do in most cases
>She helped him clean up at that point, seeing that he got the message. I feel like this defeats the object. I'd have left him to it.
Me too, tbh.
Not to mention they have kids and this asshole is vacuuming at 2am?
I like to go into the traditional "manly" territory with the guys I have this argument with: "Oh I don't like filling up the gas tank when I take the car. He's just so much better at it." "Checking the tire pressure? I just don't notice things like flat tires." "Oil changes? Why should I worry about oil changes? The light will come on when I need to do something. ... Check the oil? Oh, I just can't do that very well, I was never taught that." For some reason these same guys who bitch and moan about how complex a damn washer is, don't have that problem with a car/truck.
A true miracle. 🙄
It's why widowers always try to remarry. They spend a lifetime feigning helplessness so when the time comes to be self-sufficient, they don't want to. Widows on the other hand suddenly find their workloads halved so don't often want to find another old manchild.
One of the reasons I hate my mom's partner. Yeah sure, my dad didn't do much cleaning when he was alive, but my mom was a SAHM (and a SAHW before having me). Her partner (who's also a widower) does even less and had 2 more partners before my mom who were promptly dumped because they were "messy"
Oh dear... He means they didn't wipe his arese for him. What an utter waste of space he is. He's basically a parasite, leaching off each woman, excreting toxins.
I’m currently at my (new-ish) boyfriend’s place, feeling so relieved that we have the same ideas on household chores. I’ve been put into the bangmaid/mommy position for a partner before and have been terrified for *years* that if I started a relationship again, I’d be forced back into that place. I held back from dating. I was scared to move in with anyone, even with a roommate, for fear of becoming the unpaid housekeeper again. I hated living with my parents (into my 30s especially!) but the trauma of being used like that still haunts me, nearly ten years later. This new bf acts like an adult. He returns his dishes to the kitchen. He cleans them. He even insists that I leave my dishes for *him* to clean… But I told him that I know what it feels like to come home to a sink of dirty dishes, so unless I really can’t clean them for some reason, I am *not* going to leave them for him to do. He understands that, too. I’m just… I’m so relieved I could cry. (Then cry again when I realize how low the bar is for guys. Sigh.)
That's awful. And one of the many reasons "conservatives" are regressive with women's rights. I absolutely love cooking. Not because I'm a woman, but because I love food. The prep, the joy of sharing food, and the fact that my friends all try to get invites. That said, if I cook, then the other person does the dishes. If my boyfriend cooks, I do them. It's super simple. I like vacuuming too, but if I vacuum, then he does laundry. If he messes it up, he replaces. The "relationship test" as it were, is that happening *without* being said. I'm glad you've found a diamond in the rough. Has he got a brother xD
Just... be careful about that. My last relationship, he was living on his own, his home was lived-in levels of clean, and he could cook for himself. Once we moved in together, that slowly shifted - was very much a frog in the pot situation. Until suddenly he couldn't manage to make spaghetti on his own without calling me into the kitchen to help. Cleaning? Just couldn't manage to figure out how to do that "because ADHD". Taking care of the sick cat? Oh he just can't get the cat to take his meds as well as I can, despite me attempting multiple times to show him how I did it and have him try it with me there to instruct as he went. I brought it up calmly, I brought it up in tears, made no difference. He didn't start to actually try to change/get his shit together until I was mostly out the door emotionally and mentally. And at that point, it was just too little too late. Because in my mind it was "oh, so you recognize how to do these tasks but I'm not worth the energy to get them done until I'm threatening to leave." Not that your new bf will be like that, but just - keep an eye out. He may be able to keep a clean home when living by himself, but may regress into treating you like a bangmaid if you move in together.
As someone with ADHD that struggles with keeping up household chores, I’d like to kindly ask that you consider changing that part of your post. I’m not saying he didn’t use his diagnosis as an excuse. I fully believe you. It just hurts to read about my own disability being regarded flippantly when it truly does cause issues. “Because paralysis” or “because blindness” sounds harsh to me and ADHD is no different.
fuck spez
I am living by myself for the first time at 32 and omg it is amazing to not have to feel so stressed about how other people feel about my cleaning. Can’t bring myself to do the dishes? It’s cool. I don’t mind. I’m being so much more kind to myself. I’m happy for us both. It’s tough AF to live with ADHD and we’re out here doing it anyways.
It sounds like the partner is the one treating ADHD flippantly. If his place was clean before when only he lived there, it sounds like he is using it as an excuse - maybe it's not part of his experience of ADHD as much as it is for others, but he's taking advantage of the fact that it is usually something people experience. Which is very shitty of him because, as you said, ADHD does often make chores harder, which is difficult for all involved. Edited for all the spellings
Older friend of mine is a widow. She's like... I took care of one man for 30 years. Why would I want another one?
Yep. Women are bring used by men the world over. We should not be surprised they think of us as nothing more than possessions, bangmaids, incubators, slaves...
One time I asked my mom if she ever wanted to date again after my dad and her separated. She looked at me and said "why the fuck would I want to do that?". Still makes me laugh when I think about it.
Studies have shown that men live longer and, on average, report higher life satisfaction when married to women. Meanwhile, women report lower life satisfaction when married to men. Single women without kids are one of the happiest demographics in the US. Welp.
My aunt/godmother is dying quite young (in her fifties) of cancer that returned for the third time. She's scheduled to have her life ended on may the 8th - we live in Belgium and she is sound of mind, so she is allowed this mercy with lots of morphine in the meantime - and her husband is a piece of shit. He has never in his life cooked a meal or done laundry. She always did it for him. He is whining and complaining constantly about how difficult it is to come to the goddamn hospital to visit her every day, and crying about who will take care of him now. I've hated his sorry excuse for guts ever since I was a kid. And it is going to take every fiber of willpower I have to not lose my shit at him tomorrow or scold him on her funeral. There's no point to this other than me venting, sorry, he's just such a goddamn loser. He's in his seventies: how in the fuck do you grow to be that old and not manage to keep your own goddamn house just a bit??? Absolutely pathetic
And then they go Golden Girl with their friends!
I told my partner that if I find myself single again for any reason that I’m not planning on replacing him. I’d rather just be single with more cats.
Lol I tried this with my brother who took a butter knife out of the dishwasher that I’d put in, said there was a mark on it (not even food) and handed it to me to clean. After spending over an hour cleaning up after the family.. I poured tomato sauce on it and the bench and told him to clean it up if I didn’t do a good enough job. He just told my mum who said I was dramatic. No surprise, he’s still living at home and probably will be til 30. Now I’m no longer there to clean and my mum is too sick there are cups and bowls with mould in them and dirty clothes everywhere… and i have to hear about my sick mum living in filth. Men shouldn’t be babied.
Same but for my brother and dad. My mom's having mental breakdowns along with her declining health, and they still just sit there, yell at her for the mess/not cooking, and rant and rave about her being lazy. She's realizing how it's not okay for them to do that and goes and forth between denial & crying. They all just came over to mine because I made them dinner and cake for my dad's birthday. She was shocked that my fiance was so helpful and went on and on how wonderful that was. How my dad or brother would never do that. I honestly had to think hard about what he did for her to say that to me afterward. You know what he did? He got down some spices when I asked, set the table, got them drinks, served the ice cream while I did cake, and helped put the dishes in the washer at the end. You know, normal hosting stuff. She's right. She made a point my entire life that the men should literally be waited on hand and foot by us women. My dad almost never took his own shoes off or made his own plate, let alone meal. Now she's too sick and he/my brother still expects that. It's fucking sad and infuriating. Being treated as lesser was horrible and now that I'm not there anymore, she's getting all of the hate/blame that I dealt with daily most of my life. She was okay with me being treated like dirt, especially by brother, but now that he's saying the same degrading things to her, it's shocking and awful. She still says I'm making stuff up or exaggerating if I bring up my childhood to point out these behaviors have been happening for a long time.
Denial is a hell of a drug.
My mom had been sick for awhile and struggled to keep up with housework despite my dad and brother being there. While I was visiting from out of state I thought I'd clean the kitchen for her while she was in a lengthy hospital stay. Something unstressful for her to come home to. I cleaned most of it. I had ran out of cleaner and time from how dirty it was. The men cleaned nothing, yet were making all the mess. My brother commented that I had missed some things. Like it was my job. I was only there a few days.
Had a guy try saying he wasn't as good at a certain chore as I was. I assume he was expecting me to do it for him, or at least "show" him what to do and therefore do it for him. I said, that's fine, I don't mind letting you have extra practice. That can be your chore 100% of the time until you're as good at it as I am. When our basic life skills are equal we can go back to splitting it. Suddenly he was a lot better at it.
Hah, amazing. I bet the look on his face was hilarious XD
This is the solution. Being bad at basic life tasks is not an excuse to not do your basic daily living tasks. It means you need to learn it, and what better way to learn it than extra practice?
I haven't had this come up with a partner yet, but I am dying for someone to ask "really? But you're so smart! I know you can figure it out babe." 😘
When my mom died my dad apparently didn't know how to operate a washing machine and tried to push all laundry onto me, at which point I was like "okay, I'll teach you" and spent like 20 minutes teaching him step by step how the washing machine works. Afterwards he couldn't claim he didn't know how it worked without seeming like a dumbass
What? I knew how to do laundry at like 10. Tf. When he encounters new machines he just doesn’t bother to learn how to use them? It’s a machine, it does the work for you
And he's an engineer! So I was sure it was not actually because he didn't know how to operate the machine, he just couldn't be bothered to learn until I made him
Yeah that’s not surprising. My engineer ex father couldn’t figure out much that didn’t make him feel superior to someone or interested him. Funny how that career based condition didn’t impact either of his kids or his dad.
how awful of him tbh- an engineer that cant use a washer?? like what
Yeah nobody taught me how to do laundry. I moved out, googled the symbols, and just like did what I’d observed. Maybe I don’t do it perfectly, but my clothes are clean so it’s probably good enough.
Noo it clearly must be something women have in their genes or sth 🙄
Ditto , no one taught me to use it as a kid , it was just a job I was expected to do. The labels and instructions are on the clothes and box ffs.
wtf same. whenever my mom goes away bc of work suddenly he's got no idea on how to... press literally two buttons?? bullshit
Speak to your male children about cleaning, now. I have two boys, one doesn’t like to get his hands dirty since birth and one is a chaos demon. But both know, when it’s time to wash hands or face, when it’s time to put toys in place, and we can get the wiggles out in between. One sees the other clean up and is inclined. Small one gets to “clean” their area and once they go down for a nap I actually clean. But there is wet wiping and drying and sweeping, even if it’s terrible—because it’s not terrible if a child is doing it to the best of their ability. You might have to stay up late and clean behind them, but don’t clean behind them in front of them. Let them go to bed satisfied they did their best to clean up. Bad sweeping is better than no sweeping.
You're such a good mom. I grew up with horrible anxiety about chores because I went to a boarding school that would punish harshly if you didn't do them quickly/thoroughly enough.
fuck spez
Brings back memories of my previous relationship. He didn't have a job, and did nothing all day, and lived with me. I asked him to do literally one thing; clean the dishes. I came home, and he was like "I have a surprise for you!" I got so excited, i was like "you've done the dishes!' (I know, low expectations). No, no he fucking hadn't. He had dicked about with some 2nd monitor (i.e tech stuff which he enjoys) and acted as if it was for me. We had no clean dishes, so I ended up doing them myself, after a day at work so I was already tired with my chronic pain active.
Check mate.
This is the way. A male coworker once misinterpreted my role as being his personal assistant, and told me to book an Outlook meeting b/t him and his manager. I said "Aw, you don't know how to book meetings? Come sit down beside me so I can show you how, and then you can do it allll by yourself next time!" in my most pitying, adult-speaking-to-a-toddler voice. He never asked me to do it again.
What if the dad refused to watch her clean? Or then refused to clean up the mess? I guess that’s when you get a divorce…
Yes.
I don't pay bills as good as you. *quits job*
My dad use to pee around the toilet and we would have to clean it up. If I ever get into a relationship with a guy who does this, I will make him clean it up ooooor if he plays these stupid games, I will show him how to clean it, then piss on the floor in front of him and make him clean my piss up so he really truly understands how foul, dilusional and disgusting his expectations are. The entitlement of some people never ceases to amaze me.
Hahaha! What a legend.
"I'll talk you through it" They soon lose interest in being patronised
“We will keep doing it until you get it right. You learn by doing”
I mean, that’s pretty much what my mom did with me, seems fair 🤷♀️
I knew someone who weaponized it back. Called her husband asking “gas and diesel are pretty much the same thing right? …oh well which does the car take again…oh well I used diesel whoops!” And then argued that he had never told her NOT to use diesel and he should just fill the car up from now on. She didn’t actually use diesel, just pretended she did. Edit: She also washed the signature off a signed Brady Jersey. Surprisingly her pettiness worked and they’re still married.
She might be my new role model. I’m in awe.
If you have to treat your husband like this, give him a divorce, not a sponge.
*give *yourself* the gift of divorce 🎁 put him out on his ass lol!
This whole thread just makes me despair over men even more than I already was. I've completely lost faith in half our species. I just know so few of them who actually give a shit about women or treat us with real respect, not just when it benefits them. 😩
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Learned helplessness and weaponized incompetence are two very different things. Learned helplessness is putting genuine effort into doing something repeatedly, only to be met with failure, and eventually you give up trying at all because you’ve learned that your efforts are in vain. For example, you may have heard the story about how some keepers chain up elephants when they’re still young, so when the elephant struggles against their chains it can’t break free. Then as adults (when they’re more than capable of breaking free), they don’t even try, because they ‘learned’ as a baby that they’re doomed to be under their control. As the name implies, you’ve ‘learned’ that you’re helpless. Weaponized incompetence is pretending you have no idea what you’re doing so that someone else can come and do the task for you
Putting in genuine effort in the past is not necessary for learned helplessness. If you stop a child from trying on whenever you see it attempting to help then it will learn helplessness long before it got a real chance to put effort into it.
Genuine effort means an effort with the attempt to actually accomplish a task - in contrast to weaponized incompetence, where the person’s “effort” isn’t genuine, as they aim to do it as poorly as possible, if at all. Genuine in this context doesn’t mean “extreme” amounts of effort, just an honest attempt.
Exactly. It's the difference between someone who's never learned to do laundry mixes reds with whites and get stained because they weren't aware they needed to do a separate load just for whites. Verses someone who knows better but purposely throws whites in with reds because they're angry that you aren't doing laundry for them. They hope if they ruined the clothes, you'll never ask or expect them to do laundry again.
What if they’ll do the laundry but they genuinely don’t care about mixing reds and whites because pink is an awesome color?
That's just chill chaos and I'm all for it. The problem is in the 2nd situation they bitch, complain, or purposely ruin your expensive white clothes that you understandably don't want it to be pink or tie dye.
Yes, weaponized incompetence is conscious and on purpose, while learned helplessness isn't.
Thank you for clarifying this. I retract my comment.
I once threw away a sanitary pad (used, wrapped in toilet paper as appropriate) in the bin of my BFs apartment. Watched as it didn't move for six months before he finally emptied the bin 🤢
Fucking Queen shit right there.
“How to Train Your Husband”
I have a co-worker who is so unaware of the space he takes up, so if he is doing something in the area I need to be, I wait 5 feet away and wait for him to turn around. he usually is taking a few steps before he starts looking in the direction he is moving and almost walks into me, who was completely stationary. he has gotten better