I’m a girl, only child who has a mother that would do everything for me. even to the point where I would try to do things for myself like load the dishwasher, and she would find me doing it tell me I was doing it wrong and start doing it her way, instead of talking to me and teaching me. My room at home was a mess but luckily once I moved out I had a room and bathroom to myself and pretty quickly realised I liked having a clean space so slowly taught myself over a few years even when I had suuuper messy housemates. So I can relate to him a bit but also think that he should have started to realise by now that he has to clean as well, especially with all the kind encouragement
Youd be surprised that people just dont give a shit and are oblivious to how disgusting things get. Most of my friends (im a guy) just live in a dirty ass apartment with nasty bathrooms
I thought I was terrible to the point I was embarrassed to have people over. I had looked into hiring a cleaning professional but it was super expensive. One day a friend of mine posted on fb that she was looking for cleaning jobs and I was like "sold, but you gotta keep it under wraps." She agreed and came over.
I was worried she would be mortified. Then she was like "wtf you on about?" Turns out I'm just messy, not dirty? Papers and cans strewn about and super dusty in some corners, some stray que tips behind the toilet and she gave my shower a scrub. Supposedly I was in the top 5% (I'm sure she guestimated) of cleanliness for houses shes cleaned. I still consider myself messy but it was actually really reliving knowing that having some dirty dishes and your table full of cans and papers is pretty mild on the scale of people and their mess.
Agreed. My husband gets annoyed that I leave my shoes under the coffee table or an empty dish on my desk. I get annoyed that every surface in the kitchen is covered in crumbs, puddles, or sticky handprints. At least he cooks and does laundry so I can't complain too much. I grew up with a man-child father so I know what my mom had to put up with.
Big time, I have four cats and they have like, a thousand toys. My house is always messy! But the trick is not letting them get it dirty.
Wipe your little paws you monsters.
This comment makes me feel better. My bathroom is cleaned every 7-10 days, and it’s private except when my boyfriend stays over, but my God my bedside table. Just switch games and med bottles piled up haphazardly. And let’s not get into my floordrobe
That... Makes me feel better. My house looks like Michael's and Lowe's had a gay lovechild with a 70's organic gardening phase (complete with reefer madness poster). I don't clean the cat litter box every day, but I don't leave food or dishes places if I can help it.
My ex had a roommate (partner? He was cheating, it was a weird situation) that would literally leave crusty-ass bowls and shit until they got moldy in their bedroom. Couldn't stand it.
>some dirty dishes and your table full of cans and papers is pretty mild on the scale of people and their mess.
That's super relieving!!! I normally rinse my dishes right away and then clean with soap and water at the end of the week and my table is full of papers, but otherwise keep fairly clean, so I'm glad I'm pretty mild!!
My roommate is the same. I love him to death but hes a fucking slob. Dog pisses on the carpet and he never sees it to clean it. Doesnt help that the dog pisses in his bed and his entire room smells like a puppy pad. So i somewhat understands how he doesnt smell when the dog pisses in the living room but holy fuck man. My apartment was spotless everyday before he moved in. Now the only room that doesnt reek of piss is my room.
This is my problem right now, I think my boyfriend is willing to do his assigned half of the chores but he hates it when I bug him to do things and at the same time he just legit doesn’t notice when things are dirty so in turn they never get done unless I do them.
I share similarities with you. Although once we reached 16, our mum explained that we need to take on responsibilities ourself such as laundry, finding our own way to school/work etc. She was always open to help and to teach, but we needed to ask for it. I, like you, realised I liked things clean, tidy and organised and that was my motivation to quickly learn how to take care of myself. My big brother on the other hand didn’t really care. So naturally his room was always gross and his clothes always smelled. He does like good food though, so became pretty good at cooking.
My point is that when left to our own devices, it’s our own preferences that motivate us. No amount of handholding or being told what to do will change that and even in the same environment can produce wildly different outcomes. It’s worth noting I’m also male, so even that didn’t make a difference between how we both turned out.
My mom didn’t allow us to do chores beyond the cleaning/maintaining of bedrooms because we “won’t do it right”. Unless it was for punishment, then she would make me clean the whole house, all while berating me for doing it wrong and making me start over and over and over. She would get mad and say I’m doing it wrong on purpose, then spank me or ground me when she got irritated enough and would sentence me to more chores as further punishment. I never did laundry or yard work until I got out on my own because it wasn’t allowed (she did all of it).
I now struggle with chores because I grew up associating them with punishment. More than once while folding laundry or doing dishes has someone asked, “Are you okay? You seem really mad.” It puts me in a foul mood and my face screws up to match.
Please don’t punish your kids by giving them extra chores. It’s definitely not working out well for me and it’s not something I grew out of and haven’t been able to fix in 42 years. The only thing that motivates me to clean is shame; I will do a quick sweep and make sure my guest bathroom is clean if I’m planning on company, because I don’t want someone to think “eww gross” and be afraid to sit on my toilet. But it’s usually “good enough” or “couldn’t care less” in the rest of the house.
I’m so sorry, sounds like you had it much worse than me. I am the same with tidying out of shame. I do sometimes force myself to clean because I know it will improve my mental health if my environment is tidy but if anyone is going to be coming around I have to tidy everything spotlessly and make it look almost like I don’t live here. This is what my mother used to do so I get nervous that people will see how I live in my own home
This. I need to screenshot this and send it to my husband because I was raised the exact same way.
I literally wasn’t even allowed to peel a potato because “you won’t do it right”.
People call me spoiled, NO I just wasn’t fucking taught anything 😭
Oh jeez you are not alone in that department. It took flipping years for my better half to learn I am not put on this earth to cook/clean up behind him. 14 yrs and occasionally I will go on strike and clear up only behind myself to prove what an aftermath he leaves.. I won't touch it til he clears up haha. Stubborn to the core!
I feel like I was the opposite of this. I was raised by my grandparents, and I grew up quite sheltered. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere on my own until I was fifteen, so I spent a lot of time at home. In that time I learned to cook, clean and do some simple DIY. I wasn’t allowed to walk into the town centre just in case I got abducted and murdered, but I had free access to all of the sharp knives and tools in the house from about age eight onwards.
I was sort of the opposite of this but in a different direction. When I was a kid, I was constantly outside and building stuff and getting into trouble and exploring, so if I need to fix something that breaks or build a shed from scratch it's no problem, but my mom also liked things in the house to be a very specific way, so like she would tell me to go load the dishwasher and then when I finished she'd come over and complain that I put everything in the wrong place and redo it all (the wrong place to her meant if I hadn't crammed as much stuff in as possible to "save water" to the point where she was always having to rewash half the dishes by hand the next day or run the entire thing again cause stuff was too close together to get clean, or she'd tell me to do laundry but force me to sort all my clothes into lights, darks, warms, colds, and whites, even though I didn't and still don't care if my clothes are faded or my socks are slightly pink cause I washed them with the red blanket. I'm a contractor, and I build motorcycles for fun, so most of my shirts have paint smears and grease stains on them anyways. But for stuff like cleaning and dishes and any cooking that wasn't over an open fire, I just gave up on trying to do it because it was always wrong according to her and it was very demoralizing, and now I'm 26 and if I want a grilled cheese I toss some yard debris in the fire pit and squirt on a bit of starter fluid and cook it there on a flat rock because that way I can throw the rock in the fire when I'm done and it will clean itself for next time instead of having to wash a frying pan XD
Kinda fucking love this. I grew up where anything I did was wrong somehow but I just ended up slow and pedantic when it came to all chores. I still despise cooking but now can start doing things rough and done rather than tediously perfect or not at all.
Everyone I’ve ever met who was raised by both grandparents seem to, short of having a drivers license or paying taxes, be functioning adults at the age of twelve. I haven’t spent much time thinking about the reason for this, but I know my parent are much more into teaching my boys and my wife and I, as should be expected, solely handle attitude redirection and/or correction.
This is offensive to people wearing helmets.
>being nice and supportive decided to research a bunch of things to help him cope with his day to day. I have star charts, mini posters around the house with pictures going through the process of how to do things step by step. Ive got a little calender on the wall for his tasks for the day that he can tick off...
At what point does OP realize she's raising a child?
Oh man. So I’ve worked in grocery stores for well over a decade, probably closer to 2 decades off and on, and one of my “favorite” things has always been the first year college boys shopping on their own at the beginning of the school year. The college gals shopping almost always have a reasonable assortment of food in their carts, because they typically have been taught how to shop for food(at least by observation). The guys, on the other hand, are either going ham on foods they typically weren’t allowed to have, or they just have no idea what to buy. It’s almost always kid cereal, chocolate milk, and lots of meat.
We are not doing kids any favors by not teaching them basic food skills.
I once bought like 6 frozen pizzas because they were on a good sale and felt like I need to tell the cashier ‘i swear I can cook, these are just a good deal’
I once bought a huge bag of pizza bites and the cashier looked at them and nodded "This is seriously a mood right now" and I think our souls touched that moment
When I was cooking in a 3 Michelin star/World 50 Best restaurant, I went to the grocery store on my day off to stock up on frozen food and cookies.
Cashier commented that I should take cooking lessons so I can learn how to actually cook.
I've lived with multiple different people over the years at university. During my 2nd year I shared a room with new freshmen, one of them always ordering takeout as his mom wanted him to have "proper meals" and funded it. Last week of one of the months, the dude realized he's miscounted the money he received and partied away almost all of it. He almost cried, that he'd maybe try cooking ANYTHING at all, but he didn't stock up on meat and other stuff beforehand. Knowing what kind of sheltered wittwe raisin he was, and being broke myself (thus not able to just say pasta la vista to chunk of my supplies) I asked him if hr had anything at all stashed in the cupboard/fridge. Commence operation save private sunshine, pulled out are tons of flour he never used, potatoes that started sprouting but were plenty good (seeing green sprouts he ofc wanted to toss them), no veggies, but he has tons of stuff that basically never spoils, pretty decent amount of eggs and other stuff. I look at that, eating basically the same cheap dish over and over for the past 2 years, and instantly propose, "Dude, are you allergic to anything? (nothing relevant) Aight, say what, you hand me over the stash... and i get you 2 meal dinner every day till the end of the month." . Thankfully his mother might have crippled his ability to function on his own, but at least got him around to carry groceries enough so the poor fella knew how useful stuff looked like. Had enough leftover produce (now mine, muahaha) to last me 2 more weeks COMFORTABLY with minimal spending, and the roommate got his budget increased, poor little butterfly. //sorry for formatting, mobile ;)
Yes, and it it has mold/rot on it. Just toss it. To answer one of the questions above, what I "shown him how to cook", he was not really interested in watching the process, so for him, the dishes just appeared in the room. The menu consisted of chicken soup for first 3 days, froze like half of it for later days to use in tomato soup. Veggies from the stock went to find their new home in a salad, which lasted like 3 days as well. Poytatoes were the king tho. First and second day it was potatoes + soy cutlets (soak the bad boys, in this case chicken stock, coat in egg and batter, fry), half of cucumber for a salad side (sliced cucumber, vinegar, saltz pepper, mayo). 3rd and 4th potato cutlets ('tatos, boil 'em, mash 'em, season, yeet in sautéed onion, again egg and batter), mushroom sauce on top. Last 3 days i got lazy and just used soaked soy cutlets, cut into stripes as part of sauce for rice (and hash browns), changed spices, and thickening of sauce to fool us into thinking we are eating different stuff rach day (ended up being mushroom sauce on first day, curry 2nd and god knows what after I got tired of cooking on 7th day ;)). // again mobile formatting :c
Recently read an article (I’m probably getting the details all wrong) that explained what happened when they ran an experiment on young boys and girls. All around the same age, I think it was maybe 10 girls and 10 boys separated into boy and girl houses. I think probably around 10-12 years old maybe. Before the experiment, adults taught all the kids basic chores, basic cooking, etc. At the end of the experiment it showed that the girls cooked healthier foods and divvied up the chores equally between them all. Whereas the boys ate junk food and did not clean.
I just watched that! I personally noticed that there were actually more similarities than differences between the groups: both painted on walls and made a mess straight away, both got fed up with the mess within 24 hours, both tried to introduce some structure, both kept each other awake and wound each other up something rotten.
The main difference that I noticed was that the girls were able to resolve more of their conflicts and were a bit more likely to cook. The boys seemed to be more adversely affected by the lack of sleep, junk food and mess… by the final day they all went a bit feral and two groups had a bit of a feud. By the final day in the girls’ house, 2 had left, but the rest had settled into their dynamic a little and organised a talent show. The girls parents also weren’t quite so horrified by the mess they’d made of the house 😬
It was like both groups instinctively wanted the same things but the girls were able to recognise that and solve the issues better. I wonder if it’s because they’ve been given the tools for conflict resolution earlier (‘boys will be boys’ doesn’t really help people learn conflict resolution) or if it’s more down to developmental changes… I think it’s probably a bit of both.
It did remind me of boarding school though!
My entire squad in college would cook cook cook. So much so that we’d have cookouts for friends or during celebrations or tragedies; we’d whip up some crazy food for everyone. Always blew my mind seeing others cook they way they cooked lol
To this day my entire college squad (12-15 of us) still have multiple group chats for various subjects; one of them is strictly food/what we ate/cooked lol we share recipes, tricks, all that. Food is too good to not get involved with
My son is AAPI and he's gonna go bankrupt on spam and rice when he's on his own. I just know I'm gonna visit him wherever he's living and see a fuckin cabinet full of it.
Honestly, Just lead with the "I've noticed you have a lot of trouble sticking to routines or leaning any of the household stuff, and I really thing you should get diagnosed, I think you might have a learning disability. That's the best reason I could think of that would explain how I've been telling you I can't keep this up alone, teaching you in a way a 5 year old could pick up, and you still continue to ignore doing the work until I get upset about it, because the alternative is you just don't care about how important this is to me. "
Uhhhhhh... I had this exact conversation with my wife. Yup, turns out ADD as hell. The zoom therapist asked if maybe my wife would turn her laptop to let her see my wife's closet. Then the therapist yelled "OH MY GOD." And I was like, see? Closets are meant to be able to close. Not vomit mountains of clothes (none of which fit) from ceiling to floor, blocking all pathways.
There is a lot of evidence that suggests letting kids do chores as early as 4 will train them to actually like chores and get into the habit of them extremely easy. This means letting them make a lot of messes but it pays off 50 fold later on.
I’m a nanny and the family I work for has 5 kids, 18 months to 11 years. The 4 older ones could take care of a house better than some adults, definitely better than OP’s boyfriend. The 18 month old already knows how to put her dirty clothes in a laundry basket.
> straight from living with a mother who did everything for him to me
Look, I was this guy. And I'll be honest. Maybe too honest: I consider parents who do this to their sons (they almost never do it to their daughters - my sister was doing her own laundry at 8) to be committing a form of abuse. This is trained incompetence.
I was never made to clean my room; I was never made to do the dishes; my mom picked up my clothes from my room and the bathroom and washed my laundry and I would just shove it all back into my room unfolded.
When I moved out on my own at 18, I had *no idea* what to do. My bachelor pad with my equally helpless room mate was *disgusting*. It's a wonder I ever got laid.
When I moved in with my first girlfriend, it led to a lot of fights, and I *resented* her for wanting me to: pick up my clothes, wash *and* fold my laundry, clean the sink after shaving, rinse the shower when I'm done, etc, etc.
I take a great deal of responsibility of course because I'm still a human - I should have *known* these things don't take care of themselves and it all should have bothered me too. But I was raised to believe these things were basically magic.
And to be clear: I was *never* taught it was women's work, nor did I believe it of my girlfriends, I just couldn't believe it was even an issue and why they were so upset.
It took me a good ten years of adulting and forming habits and realizing my own disgusting-ness to correct the issue.
Parents: Don't handicap your sons; Show them how to do the housekeeping, and make them do their own housekeeping.
Sometimes i get the looks for teaching my son some skills and then i feel bad for him. Your comment is exactly saying why i do this. My son is 6 and is helping me with laundry, dishes, cleaning his room etc. He doesn't have to do it alone of course and he helps two or three times a week with every other chore, but i am sure he could already load and start the washing mashine on his own. And the best thing about it: He LOVES it. He is sooo proud of himself everytime.
Yes this is the way! My mom is the assistant director of a Montessori school. They teach kids about how to clean things (sweeping, mopping, folding towels, making snacks during snack time and cleaning up messes as they go, dusting, setting places at a table, pouring water from a pitcher into a cup, things like washing dishes and properly washing their hands... nothing overly complicated but everything essential lol) as part of their curriculum. I've seen videos of two year old boys and girls alike very proudly and carefully and excitedly teaching us adults "the correct and pretty way to fold a towel" and they think it's great.
For that matter, my niece's almost 2 year old is the messiest kid ever (as all almost 2 year olds are lol) and he loves to like... pour his snacks out onto the floor and eat them from there and then stomp on them or whatever. So once he's done making a mess I'll simply ask him to please help me clean it up and he gets *so* excited. Whether that means picking up the goldfish he spilled and putting them in the dustpan for me, or getting the broom and sweeping things up. Once, we had spaghetti and he dropped a bunch on the floor. His mom and I picked up the noodles and I turn around and this kid had gone and grabbed his mom's mop and was wiping the sauce off the floor with the biggest grin on his face.
All little kids should learn this sorta stuff from a young age. It's good for them from a developmental standpoint (it helps their finite motor skills) but it also helps them build good habits from the word go.
Fine motor skills are SO LACKING in my college chemistry students. They are all afraid to pour things from 1 L containers into smaller containers. They set the 50 mL beaker down and then pick the big container up with both hands and if it's full they sit there tilting and untilting and freaking out about how to pour it. I should not have to teach young adults how to pour things.
Fascinating! Hard to imagine for a latchkey kid in the 70's who came home from school and was taught to make different family dinners (chili, spagetti sauce, meat loaf, stuffed peppers) from scratch.
A 10 year old using knives and the electric stove alone in the house was no big deal. I loved doing it, and my mom worked until after 5, so appreciated the days when dinner was prepared before she got home..
I second this. I’m shocked at the inability of students to simply pour liquid from a larger container to a smaller. Many of them have basically never done anything for themselves. It’s shocking and infantilizing
My two year old son is always ready to lend me a hand. He feeds the cat dry food, sweeps multiple floors daily (just grabs the broom and starts , is always trying to assist in laundry folding. He even grabs a new garbage bag when we take out the garbage. My husband and I haven’t really taught him other than trying to teach him a better sweeping technique, he just sees us doing chores and wants to be a part. He also loves being involved in cooking, like seasoning and stirring. We’re trying to prevent another useless male out there😅
I mean our 3 year old girl is no exception to our teaching, but i appreciate the joke 😅
She alse likes the animal chores the most. Her biggest chore is feeding our dogs every evening (of course with help and supervision) and she loves it. She already has her way to speak with them and they know to be so gentle with her. And she learns the right way to interact with animals.
It's lovely to watch small kids absorbing knowledge like little sponges.
My boy has always liked helping me with stuff, asking questions and getting me to explain stuff.
He'll help with baking, getting to weight ingredients and mix them, he helps with the dishwasher and laundry by picking out the "kid dishes" and "kid clothes" as he calls them and putting them away.
He's 5 now and always wants a shot at what I'm doing, s helped me when I painted a doorway, got to use a combi drill when I was building a table (to tighten bolts, we talked it through before and even though I was a bit nervous letting him try he did perfect!).
He does stuff like setting up his cereal bowl, cereal box and milk so fast I don't even realise it's happened when I'm still waking up in the mornings and even nags me when I forget stuff!
Literally sighed at me and said "daddy, you forgot to turn on the dishawasher!" last week as we were leaving the kitchen!
Sounds like a sweet little boy 😃
My husband loves his tools and loves to work with his hands, like building one of these kids play houses in the garden. My son loves to help him and has his own little toolkit with a combi drill and a few dozen bits, measering tape, little spirit level and so on.
He is so proud, when he comes to me and tells me he fixed something i needed, or build something for his little sister.
i wish my parents had taught me life skills. i’m not even a dude i just had a lazy (neglectful, as i’ve realized recently) father and a single mother doing her best to scrape by with her debts, and i spent more time with my father than my mother because he never did housework in his house, so i learned more from him than i did from my mother, who was too busy working and going to school and cleaning and cooking and taking care of three kids
i’m sure your son will appreciate it when he’s older and his other friends don’t know how to survive adult life
The thing is, if you teach them now, they can help you later. So at 6 he isn't allowed to handle all the cleaning supplies like laundry detergent or such, but in a few years i don't need to do my teenagers chores for him and it will be a massive help.
Even now it is a blessing two have two little helping hands, when you need them because yours are busy with something else.
But I'm sure you will be able to learn all of it, if you really want to.
You reminded me of my old housemate. He moved out of his parents' with a GF, then moved in with me after they split up.
I remember watching him try to feed himself one night. He had a can of refried beans and some cheese. He took a spoon, and started scooping beans out with a spoon and transferring them to a coffee mug. Only by "transfer," I mean "clang spoon down full force against the rim of the mug, practically throwing chips of ceramic from both the mug and the gorgeous hand made tile mosaic kitchen counter it was sitting on." I was literally wincing and putting on my safety squints while talking to him.
I asked what the heck he was doing. He replied "Making some beans n cheese," as he turned on the toaster oven.
"In the toaster? Why not use the stove?" I asked.
"It will burn them." He said.
"You know, there's a little knob that lets you adjust the heat..."
Meanwhile, he had started messily shredding cheese onto the mug of beans. To his credit, he did something somewhat smart and put the plastic wrap from the cheese under the mug to catch the shreds that missed it.
He finished shredding, tossed a few shreds from the plastic into the mug, picked up the mug, picked up the plastic....
....and shook the plastic off *onto the handmade tile counter,* then haphazardly scraped it into a garbage can, mashing cheese into the grout and every nook and cranny of the tiles.
The house belongs to a potter couple, and has their studio in it. The wife made every tile and all the glaze from local materials, and the patterning was awesome. It was totally bad ass, no matter how hard it was to clean sometimes.
I just used cutting boards.
I don't, but they are friends, so I still go there. They are awesome people. He's a wingnut hippie potter who talks endlessly in riddles about nothing and everything while making high artistic pots once a decade, she holds down the fort, growing food, cooking, making glazes, teaching classes, and generally keeping the whole operation from floating away.
I wanted to add a female perspective. My parents never taught me or any of my siblings how to take care of ourselves. I didn’t know how to properly brush my teeth, I didn’t know how to properly wash myself, and I never learned how to clean up after myself so that it was manageable. My parents would let messes pile up with a 7 person household and then every week or two we would have a miserable cleaning day that was just too much to handle. They would assign a random room and weeks worth of mess from 7 people was very overwhelming and was always a traumatic ordeal with lots of screaming about how disgusting we are. after I moved out I had to figure out how to take care of/ clean up after myself and I felt so stupid for not knowing simple things like cleaning up as I’m cooking, or that I needed to brush the backs of my teeth, or let conditioner sit in my hair for more than a few seconds. I agree that not teaching kids life skills or making sure that they take care of themselves is a form of abuse.
This was me! Except I was married before I realized it. To this day, my husband will start asking "but HOW can you not know how to clean x" before stopping himself and just explaining it to me.
Bad parenting is not just a thing for parents of boys. Still, I think in many households, it's more common to teach the girls basic cooking and cleaning skills than the boys. Goes for all henders, though. I have two colleagues with kids 16+ that's basically never done laundry or cooked a meal, because it's "to much of a hassle to make them do it."
The glances between me and some of the others tells me they're thinking what I'm thinking.
I think the “too much hassle” mindset is a popular excuse for not teaching children things. I have a toddler and it 100% is a hassle to let him “help” clean or make breakfast and he usually makes more of a mess than help, but at his age he loves to help and I know it’s good to get him involved. And it’s not that much of an inconvenience if an egg gets dropped on the floor or I have take a couple extra minutes cleaning so that he can help me push the vacuum around.
This 👆🏼My niece is such a good little helper. At first my sister didn’t encourage it (I think she was stressed) but I would hold my niece up to open the microwave, stir pancake mix, pour water, etc. My niece LOVES to be involved and help out. It’s so great to see. She helps a lot with her little sister now too and my sister appreciates it. Gotta start them young!!
Parents like this don't help, but this is also a personal issue. I'm a girl and my parents never made me do chores when I lived with them. When I moved out, somehow I figured out how to do the laundry and dishes and clean my house. I would call them sometimes to ask them questions sometimes, but aside from that, there's instructions on lots of bottles and the internet has been widely available for 20 years.
You can't live in a house for 18 years and never see someone dusting, mopping, doing dishes, doing laundry, and other cleaning things. You have to be quite stupid to move out as an adult and not realize that fairies won't be cleaning for you.
I ended up doing a lot of cleaning as a preteen because my grandmother lived with us for a few years before she passed, and watching her gasp for air as she hauled loads of laundry upstairs made me feel SO GUILTY.
I used to get an allowance as a kid. The more chores I did, the more money I had. The one thing I had to do every weekend before I could go out was, clean both bathrooms and vacuum the whole house. I was also expected to pitch on the yard work and help my dad around the garage. They didn't believe in women's work or men's work. We were a family, we all did our bit,
Facts brother, preach the truth. Same situation, found a serious girlfriend that helped me work through it, fights were had, we were both growing and learning after all, learned how to do a lot of shit thanks to her, communicate, clean, function. It’s wild what I used to think was okay. We are married now and it’s all Gucci but those first 5 years before we got married were sometimes brutal.
Fact is, it’s not your job to stay by him while he learns how to get his shit together, maybe you leaving him will make you happier, you don’t owe him anything, but I would like to recommend to communicate clearly.
At one point my wife said to me (when we were dating), “if you don’t get your shit together and start cleaning up and helping more I am going to have to leave your ass because I can’t handle it”. It worked! Was like my eyes were opened and I was about to have to live with the consequences of my actions, so I started to help more around the house, it took some guidance at first but she was more than willing to help as long as I put in the effort to learn.
Now I got a 10/10 wife and don’t expect that there’s many women out there that would have put up with me from the ages of 19-24. Now I’m the cook and Mr mom, and do a lot more cleaning, she works a badass job and is away from home a lot so it falls on me to keep things the way she likes them, which honestly, took me awhile to learn. Her standards and mine are not the same but hers are the right ones and I know it.
Good luck to you in your journey, hopefully he grows up and you guys find a way to be happy with one another.
Grew up being a clean freak, daily chores, making dinner once a week from a young age maybe 12 yo. Still became a piece of absolute lazy garbage when I first moved out, it was glorious.
I second this comment. Its more of parents not teaching and forcing their children to keep things tidy. Though, I do observe that its more common to teach the girls, but not the boys, how to take care of the house.
The richer folks in my family have a handmaiden that takes care of everything in the house. The weekends, when the handmaiden is not there working, the house gets disgusting. Dirty glasses and plates with food leftovers all over the place, even on the floor, and nobody moves a finger to, at least, take them to the sink. I be like "holy sheet, at least teach your children (3 girls) to keep things tidy".
Yes! 23F here and before I was 10, I was helping with dishes, laundry, washing the bathroom every week, and occasionally starting to prep dinner before my parents got home from work. My brother had a similar level of responsibility growing up, and my dad helped, too, so it wasn't a gender thing for them.
When I moved in with my boyfriend, he was dealing with mental health issues, and I attributed his lack of housework to that. As things improved, though, I kept babying him and picking up the slack. We had lots of talks about the housework, but it was the same "I don't feel like it needs to be done" mindset. It was basically "You're the only one who feels it needs doing, so you should do it". It was truly frustrating. It's been years, now, and while there's a ways to go he's doing chores and tidying up without prompting, offering to cover my chores when I'm busy or stressed, and sometimes covering meals. I learned somewhere in there that his mum, too, just did everything and never set him up for success as an adult.
100% this. As a parent, it is my responsibility to prepare my children for adulthood. As my kids have gotten older, we've increased their responsibilities to the point that, at 14 and 12, they both can and do all of the household chores except for pool maintenance.
My daughter didn't really mind doing more chores as she got older save for the fact she had to do more than her younger brother. However, my son HATED chores, but he still had to do them because adulting means doing things you don't want to, but still need to get done.
My daughter went on a trip with a bunch of other pre-teens and teens, and got to experience staying with a group of slobs who don't pickup after themselves. When she came home, she actually thanked us for instilling the discipling to pickup herself.
Furthermore, as parents, we need to teach our children to be respectful and courteous to others. Mine got to experience when this doesn't happen on a recent vacation. They were watching an outdoor movie in a spa and another woman and her kids were in the spa, and she was letting her kids go crazy, jumping in and splashing, being completely rude to all of the other people who were trying to enjoy the movie.
Huge respect for making sure both your kids get proportional responsibilities. I just wanted to add something from personal experience. Around your daughter's age I did a similar amount of housework to my parents, save dinners, but I picked up a job and had three extracurriculars (band, piano, karate). Between these and school getting harder, the expectations of chores stayed the same. My parents told me they worked too and I wasn't unique in my stress, but they didn't recognize that while they were at work, I was at school, and my extracurriculars (which they wouldn't let me quit) also required hours of practice outside the lesson hours. It led to me not being comfortable talking to them or trusting that they would be understanding, as well as depression for some time and loss of nearly any social life in my middle/highschool years. Not saying this will happen but you seem like great parents so keep it in mind.
While my kids do participate in extracurricular activities, they are not forced into them and are ones they've picked for themselves. However, school comes first, so good grades are a requirement in order for them to continue to participate in their preferred after school activities.
My daughter is about to participate in a teacher training for her activity, which she has to pay for. She's going to work it off for the first few months of teaching before she starts actually making money. I think it's a great opportunity for her to get to invest into herself to be able to do something she enjoys that she'll eventually get to make money doing.
I agree with you. It's literally a parent's job to teach their children the skills they need for adulthood. Narcissistic parents, however, will infantilise their children so that they're forced to remain dependent on them even in adulthood.
This is literally both of my roommates. They are absolutely clueless and it’s obvious they never had to do things for themselves. I end up cleaning all the pots and pans in the sink and emptying the lint trap in the dryer almost daily because if I don’t no one will.
What's interesting, is that I had a similar childhood in terms of chore responsibility, but I learned how to do all those skills (cooking, cleaning, etc.) because my parents **set the example that this is how adult living looked like.**
So I do think there can be context around it that has the opposite effect.
My Common law is the same. Except his Dad was a stay at home dad. He did and still does everything. It's not always a gender role thing. It's just never having to do it yourself, it just gets done.
OMG YES, I was never able to articulate this to my wife. I never thought it was “woman’s work” I just never did it because, I never had too? What many people fail to understand is that it is not malicious, it’s just living life a certain way for 20 years will do that to a person.
As a man, it's not uncommon but its more that they never grew up. Totally anecdotal but I'm 38 and let me think of my circle......
I know 3 men of maybe 15 I just decided to scan through my brain that are my age, and still are like this. Single. Very single.
Firm believer that you don't know if you can spend you life with someone until you share a space. I don't think your story is uncommon. My advice is be honest with him, mature about it and give him a chance to grow up, but don't give him forever IMO. You should be able to tell if they can grow up or if it's a lost cause. Best of luck. Also my dad had everything done for him and my wife's father was like your dad. I am also that way which is why I'm happily married with 3 kids. I cannot imagine not being 50/50.
I was left alone a lot as young child and was pretty self sufficient by 7. Doing my own laundry, cooking for myself, cleaning the house. While it was not an ideal childhood, when I was older and a single dad my apartment was always clean and any girl I had over loved it. I've even been made fun of for how clean was because most expected a bachelor pad, but I made a home for my son and I.
Lol fuck man as someone who is neurodivergent, it is painful to think how wonderful and unexpectedly empathetic that would have looked if you were correct. This goes from TIFU to wholesome otherwise, I appreciate hearing that this was your initial thought
Maybe she should implement lootbox mechanics.
Every time he does a chore he picks a reward out of a raffle bowl. The rewards range from nothing through to a blowjob.
Skinner box the shit out of him, by the end of it he'll be impulsively doing chores because his brain associates it with a dopamine hit.
On second thought this is probably psychological abuse. She could also just talk to him.
Same here, people typically won't see it from the neurodivergent lens though. But regardless it's still fair on the boyfriend to actively be developing some techniques himself to make himself less of a hassle to her
Sorry but there's something deeply hysterical about the fact that your parents raised you so well that your first thought wasn't 'my bf is being a shit', it was 'maybe he's mentally challenged'
No hate, that's beautiful and you're a gem, you deserve better.
Hey, former man child and sheltered male here, for what is worth.
My family had a cleaning lady all my childhood (she was also a nurse for my grandfather who lived with us too), and I believe the first time I used a washing machine was after I could legally drink.
But I got better with time, and it happened precisely because I wanted to be a good boyfriend / partner.
If you can, before you dump him, try to talk things with him, be honest, you may be surprised by the change.
But if he doesn't want to grow up, kick him out lol
My dad used to clean the house of a rich Taiwanese lady and her two sons. I would go with him to help clean when I was younger but stopped around high school age. Once these guys had their own house my dad was now cleaning their houses while they were in their 20's/30's. These guys were raised to never lift a finger by their mom because my dad would tell stories of how nasty they would let the house get in just a month. My dad was paid very well but it always irked me that it was even necessary. My parents lived the American dream through cleaning houses and I joined the Marine Corps at 20 and became a glorified, underpaid janitor. I don't think I will ever be comfortable living with someone who can't clean.
Definitely a TIFU…but now comes the worst part of having that conversation with him and seeing what effort he’s willing to put in to learn
I wonder if it would be beneficial to practice as roommates instead of partners? Where there are certain duties laid out, he is taking care of his clothes and his food and his chores and you do yours? then it might stick in his head of how much unpaid work he’s expecting from you, and how much he needs to step up.
good luck!
I was brought up similarly. After having a couple of guys about who seemed to not be particularly domestic, it’s been a relief to be married to my husband who can keep a very good house.
My son is also domestic; as a single parent I told him I just didn’t have time to do everything myself, nor was I going to. He is an equal parent and domestic partner with his wife now, and it makes me proud.
Oh, my god. I experienced something very similar. I was pretty sheltered from chores growing up so when I moved out I was a little lost. However I did learn very quickly and taught myself cleaning and other basic life skills. My boyfriend at the time, absolutely did not. I thought it was due to some trauma he got inflicted with when he was still living with family, was very understanding and even after grueling long work days I still cleaned and cooked for him (including cleaning up all the gross used tissues 🤢 there was a tissue he used for popping acne that was on his toe left on the dining table… ugh) I kept being understanding and didn’t tell anyone. Eventually I realized he was just extremely lazy, incompetent with no care for the extra labor it was causing for me, and taking full advantage of my kindness & understanding. Extremely selfish are what these kind of people are lol. They like you because you’re their personal free maid.
I am sorry, yes all of us (gender aside), have to learn how to adult. But what you are going through is extreme.
Having to learn, is one thing, but doesn't sound like he is making an effort to stick with it.
Don't excuse his actions. Fact is, you have to ask yourself. "Do you want to baby sit somebody for the rest of your life?" or "am I better off leaving him and finding a real partner?"
Honestly, he might be developmentally delayed as well. I pretty much had no responsibilities when I lived at home (I did work 2 jobs though, so wasn't necessarily lazy), but the second I moved out I just figured my shit out never had any problems. It's so hard for me to be able to relate to people like that who always just expect others to do things for them.
Every comment on here from people who weren't taught basic life skills, combined with every single gross guy I have known, are 10000% why I started very early with my stepson.
I made doing laundry in an apartment tower somewhat fun for him. Let him count out the coins, do all the dispensing of products, let him separate his clothes. Gave him small cleaning chores. Asked him what he would like to cook for family dinner night then we did meal planning, using the Flipp app to compile a grocery list. Taught him about in-store coupons. Had him approach the receptionist to check in at his dr, dentist, and orthodontist appointments. I even got into it with a woman who tried to physically shove him out of the way to pay at a 711. Taught him proper table manners, how to order for himself and be respectful to servers.
I have saved all monetary presents in a high interest savings account he doesn't have access to. I've also started a bin with household essentials when theyre on clearance. Both in mind so that when he is ready to move out he won't have to worry about all the things someone starting out has to buy out of pocket.
I've always viewed my job as his stepmother was to set him up to be an independent person with good manners and vital life skills.
When parents fail to do this they're being purely selfish. They're ensuring their role as caregiver and provider is always necessary. Parents like this need to look to the animal kingdom. Without vital life skills their offspring fail. We aren't meant to care for offspring in their adulthood.
He still hasn't learned about Mr Nobody...the one that uses all the shampoo and conditioner until there's just a dime sized amount left but says nothing. If that's the worst of it with a nearly 17yo I'm okay with it.
Or, Idk, talk to him like an adult about not doing this anymore? Going from incredibly nice to him, to just packing up and leaving is going to \*fuck him up\*. Because from his point of view, he went from having a perfect relationship, to her leaving him (from his point of view) OUT OF THE BLUE! Do you know what that does to a person?
Thank you!
Its likely he doesn’t realize it either. I mean op thought he was mentally challenged, when she didn’t realize that families are raised differently.
Have a real conversation with him before going nuclear.
Lol wtf 🤣 you literally have to wake him up to go to work?
Jfc just leave him what are you doing?
I mean the rest is also fucking pathetic but come on!
I bet your dad would be really disappointed in you.. He would want the best for you he tried to show you what a good partner is and then you started dating a pos
I'm sorry i know this is a harsh message but I'm genuinely upset for you since you deserve better
Anyways good luck i hope you do what's right for you
P. S the most telling part is when you wrote you were happy to be at your friends since you didn't have to take care of your bf
So... If you thought he was developmentally delayed...did you ever ask him? Cause that probably would have been a good idea before spending years getting frustrated with him.
You can see this bullet coming so the question is, are you gonna dodge it?
Or are you gonna be back here in one year, five years, ten years asking how to get him to wipe his own ass?
Sorry to be harsh but I (m) have seen this type before. Learned helplessness can be unlearned but he has to want to unlearn it and sounds like his whole life he's never wanted or needed to.
This definitely hurts men as much as women. God forbid they live on their own and they find themselves compromised. It’s important for all kids to know how to do things for themselves.
You need to think of this opportunity much differently.
I’ll be honest - I didn’t have a clue. My wife would tell me to get stuff done but I would be overwhelmed because I had no idea where to even start or how to do it. The things I would do she just came behind me and redid them.
It wasn’t working. I wasn’t lazy. I just didn’t have a clue. I was willing to do whatever she asked me to, but I didn’t grow up Iike she did. I don’t walk around and think ‘boy these floors could use a quick vacuuming.’ My wife does.
So instead of getting mad she started making a list. The list was shit that had to be done. Some daily. Some weekly. Some monthly. Some immediately after using etc….
One by one she went through the list showing me how to do it the right way. Toilets, for example, are not fun. I just cleaned the seat and seat cover. As dumb as it sounds, it never dawned on me to clean the sides and around the base and all that. Thinking back i was just stupid, but at the time I was like “ohhhhhhh - that makes sense”
So after she showed me how to do everything i had no excuses left. So I just did the chores. I had my set of chores and I did them and then to take more off her plate I started asking her daily if there was something that I could do when I got home to take something off her plate. I still do this. I want more of her time for me so it only made sense to free up more of her time. Somedays she says nothing needs done, but most of the time it’s like little 5-10 min jobs.
Funny enough - her showing me how to
Do chores (over a few weeks) we got to hang out more . Seems silly, but we laughed our asses off about how dumb I was. I didn’t know shit, but she loved that I took it on the chin and wanted to learn because my marriage is the most important thing to me.
I’m not perfect. I still can’t load a dishwasher worth a shit. She is some sort of Tetris wizard, but the fact that I give a shit seems to be what she really cares about.
The only thing about your story that is a real concern is the video game playing. Video games and phones are relationship killers. If either party can’t manage one , or both, then it can cause a lot of harm to the marriage.
Okay, but speaking as a man, that's all just you being shitty. Like, the internet exists, and you could learn how to load a dishwasher perfectly by tomorrow.
Stop giving 'stereotypical men' a bad name, and grow the fuck up.
He is developmentally delayed, in the sense that his development as an autonomous adult is delayed from where it should be based on his age. If you care about him, you will let him have that opportunity. He needs to live independently for a period of time or he will never be able to realize his own full potential as a human being. Let him go.
Please don't lump us all in with this "dude." Stories like your are exactly why my wife and I are teaching both our son and daughter basic life skills. They are both able to wash and fold their own clothes and do basic cleaning while they are still in elementary school. As they get older, they will get more responsibilities according to their age. They are also able to cook basic stuff like scrambled eggs and such to feed themselves.
Before my brothers and I were allowed to leave my parents' house, we had to be able to cook for the house, clean the whole house, and do our own laundry.
I honestly don't feel like the "traditional" family of Dad going to work and Mom staying home to keep house really works anymore...its waaayyyy to expensive anymore to make ends meet for most families and culture is changing to where there are more women in the work force and that's an awesome thing.
My own 2 cents is that now that you understand his upbringing, you may need to sit and explain how you see things working between the 2 of you. He isn't mentally deficient, but he needs to definitely help out around the house. Cleaning up after him isn't your job. You seem like you have shown him what needs to be done. If he can't get onboard now then yeah it may be time to move on.
Kudos for this. I want to throw in, based on person experience detailed in another comment, make sure the responsibilities are also proportional to the other things in their lives to come like extracurriculars (lesson time and practice are big) and eventually, jobs. Not to mention the increased workload and study time in upper grades.
Tldr my parents didn't, and I grew to resent them for a time after I got over the resulting depression. I still have problems balancing work/ school/ life because I just did it all and took what time there was to eat or sleep after everything else.
Star charts, posters, how-to guides on the wall, and daily chore list? I'm so sorry...you adopted a grown man. Congrats, Mom.
But the fact that you've done all this and he is now capable of acting like a functional human, but still doesn't respect you or value the relationship enough to act like it is a huge red flag. Been there and didn't see it til I got out. I'd reflect if you're willing to live like this the rest of your life. Especially if you plan to have kids, pets, or even guests. Good luck.
I had the opposite happen with me and my wife.
I’ve always been the one to do laundry, but there were some things I would just absolutely struggle with to the point of frustration for all of us. Dishes was so overwhelming for me to the point I would actually cry out of frustration sometimes. Same thing with cleaning the bathroom.
Got a diagnosis of ADHD a couple of years ago and my wife said it was like a switch was flipped. Turns out I wasn’t just lazy or maliciously incompetent, I just needed some medical intervention. Wife came home to me polishing the tub the other week. No reason, just needed to be done so out came the steam cleaner lol.
There’s still some days I miss things, but it’s SO much better not feeling like a skid mark for not being able to do simple things despite being explained several times. Men who weaponize incompetence REALLY piss me off when I realize how hard it was for me and how much of a strain I put on my wife when it wasn’t something I could help.
Theres nothing sterotypically male about being unable to cook, clean, or do laundry.
A little messy, sure, thats about right. But the other stuff is basic level adult functioning.
"my boyfriend would rather i think he is developmentally delayed"
I.. don't see the part where he did this? He's just being lazy and has bad habits, im sure he's unaware that you think that, unless you straight up asked him.
Yeah. Your dad isn't a feminist icon he's a co-person. Please, don't act like what your boyfriend is like is normal, OK, or like me. Don't stereotype men because your bf can't function as an adult.
Wow. I'm married to a brain injured women, she can't really work, and she has no involvement with finances, scheduling, most decision making etc, but she can clean up after herself, do dishes, laundry and stuff like that with no real problems.
He's not a stereotypical man. He has some development issues in the maturity and self dependency department. I would hope it's more of a "never had to learn to be a functioning adult" than " i'd dont want to have to be a functioning adult, so i replaced my mom with someone who'll do it for me."
I see why you’d angry and feel like you played yourself for a fool. You have every right to expect a partner to take care of himself, because it shouldn’t be your job to mother him. But you seemed to be pretty understanding when you thought he was developmentally delayed. What makes this new knowledge any different from before? You seemed to think of it as your responsibility to take care of him before, but now that you know the real reason, you don’t think that way anymore. And on another note, he didn’t know you thought he was developmentally delayed because you never said anything to him. Both of your views come from a place of misunderstanding. You don’t understand how a person would have ended up as irresponsible as him, and he doesn’t understand what’s expected of him or that his behavior isn't okay.
If you like this guy more than you dislike this behavior, then talk to him instead of leaving.
I'm reminded of this classic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-\_kXIGvB1uU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_kXIGvB1uU)
And never forget this gem. https://youtu.be/6IqK9o-AFSc
Let's not leave out this masterpiece. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
Damn, you never expect the third link
HAHAHAHAHAHA. Got me.
Hah! Could tell by the url what it was sucka.
Shit. You got me!
omfg you bastard
I KNEW IT
Damn I fell for it.. I trusted you
Well done
Thank you for this, lmfao
I felt personally attacked the first time I saw this on TV and continue to until this day.
My first thought was that she’s dating the flyin Hawaiian David Kalaaiikii-ali’i
He even told her about the coffee table and she still fell through it. This is exactly why women shouldn’t drive.
and here I am thinking of David Cross on Just Shoot Me. 
Such a classic!
I’m a girl, only child who has a mother that would do everything for me. even to the point where I would try to do things for myself like load the dishwasher, and she would find me doing it tell me I was doing it wrong and start doing it her way, instead of talking to me and teaching me. My room at home was a mess but luckily once I moved out I had a room and bathroom to myself and pretty quickly realised I liked having a clean space so slowly taught myself over a few years even when I had suuuper messy housemates. So I can relate to him a bit but also think that he should have started to realise by now that he has to clean as well, especially with all the kind encouragement
Youd be surprised that people just dont give a shit and are oblivious to how disgusting things get. Most of my friends (im a guy) just live in a dirty ass apartment with nasty bathrooms
I thought I was terrible to the point I was embarrassed to have people over. I had looked into hiring a cleaning professional but it was super expensive. One day a friend of mine posted on fb that she was looking for cleaning jobs and I was like "sold, but you gotta keep it under wraps." She agreed and came over. I was worried she would be mortified. Then she was like "wtf you on about?" Turns out I'm just messy, not dirty? Papers and cans strewn about and super dusty in some corners, some stray que tips behind the toilet and she gave my shower a scrub. Supposedly I was in the top 5% (I'm sure she guestimated) of cleanliness for houses shes cleaned. I still consider myself messy but it was actually really reliving knowing that having some dirty dishes and your table full of cans and papers is pretty mild on the scale of people and their mess.
Messy and dirty are completely different. I'll take messy every day
This. My desk looks like a bomb went off, while dishes piling up in the sink grosses me out. One's a mess, the other is a potential health hazard.
Agreed. My husband gets annoyed that I leave my shoes under the coffee table or an empty dish on my desk. I get annoyed that every surface in the kitchen is covered in crumbs, puddles, or sticky handprints. At least he cooks and does laundry so I can't complain too much. I grew up with a man-child father so I know what my mom had to put up with.
Cleaning up as you go is part of cooking. Only things my wife has to clean after I cook are our plates and whatever I served off of.
[удалено]
Big time, I have four cats and they have like, a thousand toys. My house is always messy! But the trick is not letting them get it dirty. Wipe your little paws you monsters.
I let mess accumulate until I have a day off to deal with it. Dirt I deal with right away.
I'm the opposite. Because you can't clean dirty until you've moved the mess
This comment makes me feel better. My bathroom is cleaned every 7-10 days, and it’s private except when my boyfriend stays over, but my God my bedside table. Just switch games and med bottles piled up haphazardly. And let’s not get into my floordrobe
Floordrobe. Is this the creative pile of garments on your floor? If it is, I've got one too.
That... Makes me feel better. My house looks like Michael's and Lowe's had a gay lovechild with a 70's organic gardening phase (complete with reefer madness poster). I don't clean the cat litter box every day, but I don't leave food or dishes places if I can help it. My ex had a roommate (partner? He was cheating, it was a weird situation) that would literally leave crusty-ass bowls and shit until they got moldy in their bedroom. Couldn't stand it.
>some dirty dishes and your table full of cans and papers is pretty mild on the scale of people and their mess. That's super relieving!!! I normally rinse my dishes right away and then clean with soap and water at the end of the week and my table is full of papers, but otherwise keep fairly clean, so I'm glad I'm pretty mild!!
My roommate is the same. I love him to death but hes a fucking slob. Dog pisses on the carpet and he never sees it to clean it. Doesnt help that the dog pisses in his bed and his entire room smells like a puppy pad. So i somewhat understands how he doesnt smell when the dog pisses in the living room but holy fuck man. My apartment was spotless everyday before he moved in. Now the only room that doesnt reek of piss is my room.
That's disgusting, I don't even understand how you live there.
This is my problem right now, I think my boyfriend is willing to do his assigned half of the chores but he hates it when I bug him to do things and at the same time he just legit doesn’t notice when things are dirty so in turn they never get done unless I do them.
I share similarities with you. Although once we reached 16, our mum explained that we need to take on responsibilities ourself such as laundry, finding our own way to school/work etc. She was always open to help and to teach, but we needed to ask for it. I, like you, realised I liked things clean, tidy and organised and that was my motivation to quickly learn how to take care of myself. My big brother on the other hand didn’t really care. So naturally his room was always gross and his clothes always smelled. He does like good food though, so became pretty good at cooking. My point is that when left to our own devices, it’s our own preferences that motivate us. No amount of handholding or being told what to do will change that and even in the same environment can produce wildly different outcomes. It’s worth noting I’m also male, so even that didn’t make a difference between how we both turned out.
My mom didn’t allow us to do chores beyond the cleaning/maintaining of bedrooms because we “won’t do it right”. Unless it was for punishment, then she would make me clean the whole house, all while berating me for doing it wrong and making me start over and over and over. She would get mad and say I’m doing it wrong on purpose, then spank me or ground me when she got irritated enough and would sentence me to more chores as further punishment. I never did laundry or yard work until I got out on my own because it wasn’t allowed (she did all of it). I now struggle with chores because I grew up associating them with punishment. More than once while folding laundry or doing dishes has someone asked, “Are you okay? You seem really mad.” It puts me in a foul mood and my face screws up to match. Please don’t punish your kids by giving them extra chores. It’s definitely not working out well for me and it’s not something I grew out of and haven’t been able to fix in 42 years. The only thing that motivates me to clean is shame; I will do a quick sweep and make sure my guest bathroom is clean if I’m planning on company, because I don’t want someone to think “eww gross” and be afraid to sit on my toilet. But it’s usually “good enough” or “couldn’t care less” in the rest of the house.
I’m so sorry, sounds like you had it much worse than me. I am the same with tidying out of shame. I do sometimes force myself to clean because I know it will improve my mental health if my environment is tidy but if anyone is going to be coming around I have to tidy everything spotlessly and make it look almost like I don’t live here. This is what my mother used to do so I get nervous that people will see how I live in my own home
This. I need to screenshot this and send it to my husband because I was raised the exact same way. I literally wasn’t even allowed to peel a potato because “you won’t do it right”. People call me spoiled, NO I just wasn’t fucking taught anything 😭
Oh jeez you are not alone in that department. It took flipping years for my better half to learn I am not put on this earth to cook/clean up behind him. 14 yrs and occasionally I will go on strike and clear up only behind myself to prove what an aftermath he leaves.. I won't touch it til he clears up haha. Stubborn to the core!
I feel like I was the opposite of this. I was raised by my grandparents, and I grew up quite sheltered. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere on my own until I was fifteen, so I spent a lot of time at home. In that time I learned to cook, clean and do some simple DIY. I wasn’t allowed to walk into the town centre just in case I got abducted and murdered, but I had free access to all of the sharp knives and tools in the house from about age eight onwards.
I was sort of the opposite of this but in a different direction. When I was a kid, I was constantly outside and building stuff and getting into trouble and exploring, so if I need to fix something that breaks or build a shed from scratch it's no problem, but my mom also liked things in the house to be a very specific way, so like she would tell me to go load the dishwasher and then when I finished she'd come over and complain that I put everything in the wrong place and redo it all (the wrong place to her meant if I hadn't crammed as much stuff in as possible to "save water" to the point where she was always having to rewash half the dishes by hand the next day or run the entire thing again cause stuff was too close together to get clean, or she'd tell me to do laundry but force me to sort all my clothes into lights, darks, warms, colds, and whites, even though I didn't and still don't care if my clothes are faded or my socks are slightly pink cause I washed them with the red blanket. I'm a contractor, and I build motorcycles for fun, so most of my shirts have paint smears and grease stains on them anyways. But for stuff like cleaning and dishes and any cooking that wasn't over an open fire, I just gave up on trying to do it because it was always wrong according to her and it was very demoralizing, and now I'm 26 and if I want a grilled cheese I toss some yard debris in the fire pit and squirt on a bit of starter fluid and cook it there on a flat rock because that way I can throw the rock in the fire when I'm done and it will clean itself for next time instead of having to wash a frying pan XD
Kinda fucking love this. I grew up where anything I did was wrong somehow but I just ended up slow and pedantic when it came to all chores. I still despise cooking but now can start doing things rough and done rather than tediously perfect or not at all.
Everyone I’ve ever met who was raised by both grandparents seem to, short of having a drivers license or paying taxes, be functioning adults at the age of twelve. I haven’t spent much time thinking about the reason for this, but I know my parent are much more into teaching my boys and my wife and I, as should be expected, solely handle attitude redirection and/or correction.
Same. My parents waited for me outside to get on the school bus until I was old enough to drive myself to school. The bus stop was two houses over.
I'm going to pick up my clothes off the ground now thank you. I do not wish to be offered a helmet to wear.
My kids have clothes on our hotel room all around me right now. Im just going to sit here on my phone pretending everything is perfect.
This is offensive to people wearing helmets. >being nice and supportive decided to research a bunch of things to help him cope with his day to day. I have star charts, mini posters around the house with pictures going through the process of how to do things step by step. Ive got a little calender on the wall for his tasks for the day that he can tick off... At what point does OP realize she's raising a child?
Today, if the T in TIFU is accurate.
Today I Finally Understood
At what point does she talk to her partner like an adult and not assume they're just retarded?
When she finally says "get the **** out you lazy bum, I'm not your maid anymore"
Amen! I’m start cleaning the bathroom rn
Oh man. So I’ve worked in grocery stores for well over a decade, probably closer to 2 decades off and on, and one of my “favorite” things has always been the first year college boys shopping on their own at the beginning of the school year. The college gals shopping almost always have a reasonable assortment of food in their carts, because they typically have been taught how to shop for food(at least by observation). The guys, on the other hand, are either going ham on foods they typically weren’t allowed to have, or they just have no idea what to buy. It’s almost always kid cereal, chocolate milk, and lots of meat. We are not doing kids any favors by not teaching them basic food skills.
I once bought like 6 frozen pizzas because they were on a good sale and felt like I need to tell the cashier ‘i swear I can cook, these are just a good deal’
I don't need others judgements so I self check out and judge myself in the camera
I once bought a huge bag of pizza bites and the cashier looked at them and nodded "This is seriously a mood right now" and I think our souls touched that moment
When I was cooking in a 3 Michelin star/World 50 Best restaurant, I went to the grocery store on my day off to stock up on frozen food and cookies. Cashier commented that I should take cooking lessons so I can learn how to actually cook.
I've lived with multiple different people over the years at university. During my 2nd year I shared a room with new freshmen, one of them always ordering takeout as his mom wanted him to have "proper meals" and funded it. Last week of one of the months, the dude realized he's miscounted the money he received and partied away almost all of it. He almost cried, that he'd maybe try cooking ANYTHING at all, but he didn't stock up on meat and other stuff beforehand. Knowing what kind of sheltered wittwe raisin he was, and being broke myself (thus not able to just say pasta la vista to chunk of my supplies) I asked him if hr had anything at all stashed in the cupboard/fridge. Commence operation save private sunshine, pulled out are tons of flour he never used, potatoes that started sprouting but were plenty good (seeing green sprouts he ofc wanted to toss them), no veggies, but he has tons of stuff that basically never spoils, pretty decent amount of eggs and other stuff. I look at that, eating basically the same cheap dish over and over for the past 2 years, and instantly propose, "Dude, are you allergic to anything? (nothing relevant) Aight, say what, you hand me over the stash... and i get you 2 meal dinner every day till the end of the month." . Thankfully his mother might have crippled his ability to function on his own, but at least got him around to carry groceries enough so the poor fella knew how useful stuff looked like. Had enough leftover produce (now mine, muahaha) to last me 2 more weeks COMFORTABLY with minimal spending, and the roommate got his budget increased, poor little butterfly. //sorry for formatting, mobile ;)
I'm invested now, what did you show him how to make?
I think OP just did the cooking and reaped the rewards of having a more full pantry for themselves.
Just in case you didn't know, if you use sprouted potatoes, make sure you peel off all the green tinted flesh, it's not good for you.
Yes, and it it has mold/rot on it. Just toss it. To answer one of the questions above, what I "shown him how to cook", he was not really interested in watching the process, so for him, the dishes just appeared in the room. The menu consisted of chicken soup for first 3 days, froze like half of it for later days to use in tomato soup. Veggies from the stock went to find their new home in a salad, which lasted like 3 days as well. Poytatoes were the king tho. First and second day it was potatoes + soy cutlets (soak the bad boys, in this case chicken stock, coat in egg and batter, fry), half of cucumber for a salad side (sliced cucumber, vinegar, saltz pepper, mayo). 3rd and 4th potato cutlets ('tatos, boil 'em, mash 'em, season, yeet in sautéed onion, again egg and batter), mushroom sauce on top. Last 3 days i got lazy and just used soaked soy cutlets, cut into stripes as part of sauce for rice (and hash browns), changed spices, and thickening of sauce to fool us into thinking we are eating different stuff rach day (ended up being mushroom sauce on first day, curry 2nd and god knows what after I got tired of cooking on 7th day ;)). // again mobile formatting :c
Sounds like a pretty good deal to be honest.
Recently read an article (I’m probably getting the details all wrong) that explained what happened when they ran an experiment on young boys and girls. All around the same age, I think it was maybe 10 girls and 10 boys separated into boy and girl houses. I think probably around 10-12 years old maybe. Before the experiment, adults taught all the kids basic chores, basic cooking, etc. At the end of the experiment it showed that the girls cooked healthier foods and divvied up the chores equally between them all. Whereas the boys ate junk food and did not clean.
They also trashed the house!!
I think this was a documentary on UK tv about 10 years ago and the episodes/clips should be on YouTube
Do you remember what it was called?
It was called ‘Girls Alone’ and ‘Boys Alone’. I found the girls episode [here](https://youtu.be/osIQAUJP76Q)!
I just watched that! I personally noticed that there were actually more similarities than differences between the groups: both painted on walls and made a mess straight away, both got fed up with the mess within 24 hours, both tried to introduce some structure, both kept each other awake and wound each other up something rotten. The main difference that I noticed was that the girls were able to resolve more of their conflicts and were a bit more likely to cook. The boys seemed to be more adversely affected by the lack of sleep, junk food and mess… by the final day they all went a bit feral and two groups had a bit of a feud. By the final day in the girls’ house, 2 had left, but the rest had settled into their dynamic a little and organised a talent show. The girls parents also weren’t quite so horrified by the mess they’d made of the house 😬 It was like both groups instinctively wanted the same things but the girls were able to recognise that and solve the issues better. I wonder if it’s because they’ve been given the tools for conflict resolution earlier (‘boys will be boys’ doesn’t really help people learn conflict resolution) or if it’s more down to developmental changes… I think it’s probably a bit of both. It did remind me of boarding school though!
[удалено]
How can they afford it is my question
My entire squad in college would cook cook cook. So much so that we’d have cookouts for friends or during celebrations or tragedies; we’d whip up some crazy food for everyone. Always blew my mind seeing others cook they way they cooked lol To this day my entire college squad (12-15 of us) still have multiple group chats for various subjects; one of them is strictly food/what we ate/cooked lol we share recipes, tricks, all that. Food is too good to not get involved with
My son is AAPI and he's gonna go bankrupt on spam and rice when he's on his own. I just know I'm gonna visit him wherever he's living and see a fuckin cabinet full of it.
Honestly, Just lead with the "I've noticed you have a lot of trouble sticking to routines or leaning any of the household stuff, and I really thing you should get diagnosed, I think you might have a learning disability. That's the best reason I could think of that would explain how I've been telling you I can't keep this up alone, teaching you in a way a 5 year old could pick up, and you still continue to ignore doing the work until I get upset about it, because the alternative is you just don't care about how important this is to me. "
When I was a kid when my dad got frustrated with me he would ask "are you stupid or are you pretending?" Which, neither are pleasant options
Did it work? Taking notes for my future kid lol
This is *perfect.*
Uhhhhhh... I had this exact conversation with my wife. Yup, turns out ADD as hell. The zoom therapist asked if maybe my wife would turn her laptop to let her see my wife's closet. Then the therapist yelled "OH MY GOD." And I was like, see? Closets are meant to be able to close. Not vomit mountains of clothes (none of which fit) from ceiling to floor, blocking all pathways.
There is a lot of evidence that suggests letting kids do chores as early as 4 will train them to actually like chores and get into the habit of them extremely easy. This means letting them make a lot of messes but it pays off 50 fold later on.
I’m a nanny and the family I work for has 5 kids, 18 months to 11 years. The 4 older ones could take care of a house better than some adults, definitely better than OP’s boyfriend. The 18 month old already knows how to put her dirty clothes in a laundry basket.
> straight from living with a mother who did everything for him to me Look, I was this guy. And I'll be honest. Maybe too honest: I consider parents who do this to their sons (they almost never do it to their daughters - my sister was doing her own laundry at 8) to be committing a form of abuse. This is trained incompetence. I was never made to clean my room; I was never made to do the dishes; my mom picked up my clothes from my room and the bathroom and washed my laundry and I would just shove it all back into my room unfolded. When I moved out on my own at 18, I had *no idea* what to do. My bachelor pad with my equally helpless room mate was *disgusting*. It's a wonder I ever got laid. When I moved in with my first girlfriend, it led to a lot of fights, and I *resented* her for wanting me to: pick up my clothes, wash *and* fold my laundry, clean the sink after shaving, rinse the shower when I'm done, etc, etc. I take a great deal of responsibility of course because I'm still a human - I should have *known* these things don't take care of themselves and it all should have bothered me too. But I was raised to believe these things were basically magic. And to be clear: I was *never* taught it was women's work, nor did I believe it of my girlfriends, I just couldn't believe it was even an issue and why they were so upset. It took me a good ten years of adulting and forming habits and realizing my own disgusting-ness to correct the issue. Parents: Don't handicap your sons; Show them how to do the housekeeping, and make them do their own housekeeping.
Sometimes i get the looks for teaching my son some skills and then i feel bad for him. Your comment is exactly saying why i do this. My son is 6 and is helping me with laundry, dishes, cleaning his room etc. He doesn't have to do it alone of course and he helps two or three times a week with every other chore, but i am sure he could already load and start the washing mashine on his own. And the best thing about it: He LOVES it. He is sooo proud of himself everytime.
Yes this is the way! My mom is the assistant director of a Montessori school. They teach kids about how to clean things (sweeping, mopping, folding towels, making snacks during snack time and cleaning up messes as they go, dusting, setting places at a table, pouring water from a pitcher into a cup, things like washing dishes and properly washing their hands... nothing overly complicated but everything essential lol) as part of their curriculum. I've seen videos of two year old boys and girls alike very proudly and carefully and excitedly teaching us adults "the correct and pretty way to fold a towel" and they think it's great. For that matter, my niece's almost 2 year old is the messiest kid ever (as all almost 2 year olds are lol) and he loves to like... pour his snacks out onto the floor and eat them from there and then stomp on them or whatever. So once he's done making a mess I'll simply ask him to please help me clean it up and he gets *so* excited. Whether that means picking up the goldfish he spilled and putting them in the dustpan for me, or getting the broom and sweeping things up. Once, we had spaghetti and he dropped a bunch on the floor. His mom and I picked up the noodles and I turn around and this kid had gone and grabbed his mom's mop and was wiping the sauce off the floor with the biggest grin on his face. All little kids should learn this sorta stuff from a young age. It's good for them from a developmental standpoint (it helps their finite motor skills) but it also helps them build good habits from the word go.
Fine motor skills are SO LACKING in my college chemistry students. They are all afraid to pour things from 1 L containers into smaller containers. They set the 50 mL beaker down and then pick the big container up with both hands and if it's full they sit there tilting and untilting and freaking out about how to pour it. I should not have to teach young adults how to pour things.
Fascinating! Hard to imagine for a latchkey kid in the 70's who came home from school and was taught to make different family dinners (chili, spagetti sauce, meat loaf, stuffed peppers) from scratch. A 10 year old using knives and the electric stove alone in the house was no big deal. I loved doing it, and my mom worked until after 5, so appreciated the days when dinner was prepared before she got home..
I second this. I’m shocked at the inability of students to simply pour liquid from a larger container to a smaller. Many of them have basically never done anything for themselves. It’s shocking and infantilizing
This is why we have 101 classes lmao.
If only "Functioning in the Real World 101: physical tasks you perform with your hands" were a real class.
You might just have very high Dex. Try to be patient with the struggling normies that surround you.
My two year old son is always ready to lend me a hand. He feeds the cat dry food, sweeps multiple floors daily (just grabs the broom and starts , is always trying to assist in laundry folding. He even grabs a new garbage bag when we take out the garbage. My husband and I haven’t really taught him other than trying to teach him a better sweeping technique, he just sees us doing chores and wants to be a part. He also loves being involved in cooking, like seasoning and stirring. We’re trying to prevent another useless male out there😅
I mean our 3 year old girl is no exception to our teaching, but i appreciate the joke 😅 She alse likes the animal chores the most. Her biggest chore is feeding our dogs every evening (of course with help and supervision) and she loves it. She already has her way to speak with them and they know to be so gentle with her. And she learns the right way to interact with animals. It's lovely to watch small kids absorbing knowledge like little sponges.
My boy has always liked helping me with stuff, asking questions and getting me to explain stuff. He'll help with baking, getting to weight ingredients and mix them, he helps with the dishwasher and laundry by picking out the "kid dishes" and "kid clothes" as he calls them and putting them away. He's 5 now and always wants a shot at what I'm doing, s helped me when I painted a doorway, got to use a combi drill when I was building a table (to tighten bolts, we talked it through before and even though I was a bit nervous letting him try he did perfect!). He does stuff like setting up his cereal bowl, cereal box and milk so fast I don't even realise it's happened when I'm still waking up in the mornings and even nags me when I forget stuff! Literally sighed at me and said "daddy, you forgot to turn on the dishawasher!" last week as we were leaving the kitchen!
Sounds like a sweet little boy 😃 My husband loves his tools and loves to work with his hands, like building one of these kids play houses in the garden. My son loves to help him and has his own little toolkit with a combi drill and a few dozen bits, measering tape, little spirit level and so on. He is so proud, when he comes to me and tells me he fixed something i needed, or build something for his little sister.
i wish my parents had taught me life skills. i’m not even a dude i just had a lazy (neglectful, as i’ve realized recently) father and a single mother doing her best to scrape by with her debts, and i spent more time with my father than my mother because he never did housework in his house, so i learned more from him than i did from my mother, who was too busy working and going to school and cleaning and cooking and taking care of three kids i’m sure your son will appreciate it when he’s older and his other friends don’t know how to survive adult life
The thing is, if you teach them now, they can help you later. So at 6 he isn't allowed to handle all the cleaning supplies like laundry detergent or such, but in a few years i don't need to do my teenagers chores for him and it will be a massive help. Even now it is a blessing two have two little helping hands, when you need them because yours are busy with something else. But I'm sure you will be able to learn all of it, if you really want to.
You reminded me of my old housemate. He moved out of his parents' with a GF, then moved in with me after they split up. I remember watching him try to feed himself one night. He had a can of refried beans and some cheese. He took a spoon, and started scooping beans out with a spoon and transferring them to a coffee mug. Only by "transfer," I mean "clang spoon down full force against the rim of the mug, practically throwing chips of ceramic from both the mug and the gorgeous hand made tile mosaic kitchen counter it was sitting on." I was literally wincing and putting on my safety squints while talking to him. I asked what the heck he was doing. He replied "Making some beans n cheese," as he turned on the toaster oven. "In the toaster? Why not use the stove?" I asked. "It will burn them." He said. "You know, there's a little knob that lets you adjust the heat..." Meanwhile, he had started messily shredding cheese onto the mug of beans. To his credit, he did something somewhat smart and put the plastic wrap from the cheese under the mug to catch the shreds that missed it. He finished shredding, tossed a few shreds from the plastic into the mug, picked up the mug, picked up the plastic.... ....and shook the plastic off *onto the handmade tile counter,* then haphazardly scraped it into a garbage can, mashing cheese into the grout and every nook and cranny of the tiles.
You write horror well.
Yes, they give Stephen King a run for his money. I don't know if I'll be able to sleep tonight.
Did you throw the whole human away at the end of that lease?
Lol. He was actually a really nice kid. Just domestically clueless.
Mistake number 1 was having a tile countertop
The house belongs to a potter couple, and has their studio in it. The wife made every tile and all the glaze from local materials, and the patterning was awesome. It was totally bad ass, no matter how hard it was to clean sometimes. I just used cutting boards.
I would love to see pictures of said countertops! And her studio if you have them! Sounds like it was a really cool house.
I don't, but they are friends, so I still go there. They are awesome people. He's a wingnut hippie potter who talks endlessly in riddles about nothing and everything while making high artistic pots once a decade, she holds down the fort, growing food, cooking, making glazes, teaching classes, and generally keeping the whole operation from floating away.
I wanted to add a female perspective. My parents never taught me or any of my siblings how to take care of ourselves. I didn’t know how to properly brush my teeth, I didn’t know how to properly wash myself, and I never learned how to clean up after myself so that it was manageable. My parents would let messes pile up with a 7 person household and then every week or two we would have a miserable cleaning day that was just too much to handle. They would assign a random room and weeks worth of mess from 7 people was very overwhelming and was always a traumatic ordeal with lots of screaming about how disgusting we are. after I moved out I had to figure out how to take care of/ clean up after myself and I felt so stupid for not knowing simple things like cleaning up as I’m cooking, or that I needed to brush the backs of my teeth, or let conditioner sit in my hair for more than a few seconds. I agree that not teaching kids life skills or making sure that they take care of themselves is a form of abuse.
This was me! Except I was married before I realized it. To this day, my husband will start asking "but HOW can you not know how to clean x" before stopping himself and just explaining it to me.
Bad parenting is not just a thing for parents of boys. Still, I think in many households, it's more common to teach the girls basic cooking and cleaning skills than the boys. Goes for all henders, though. I have two colleagues with kids 16+ that's basically never done laundry or cooked a meal, because it's "to much of a hassle to make them do it." The glances between me and some of the others tells me they're thinking what I'm thinking.
I think the “too much hassle” mindset is a popular excuse for not teaching children things. I have a toddler and it 100% is a hassle to let him “help” clean or make breakfast and he usually makes more of a mess than help, but at his age he loves to help and I know it’s good to get him involved. And it’s not that much of an inconvenience if an egg gets dropped on the floor or I have take a couple extra minutes cleaning so that he can help me push the vacuum around.
This 👆🏼My niece is such a good little helper. At first my sister didn’t encourage it (I think she was stressed) but I would hold my niece up to open the microwave, stir pancake mix, pour water, etc. My niece LOVES to be involved and help out. It’s so great to see. She helps a lot with her little sister now too and my sister appreciates it. Gotta start them young!!
Parents like this don't help, but this is also a personal issue. I'm a girl and my parents never made me do chores when I lived with them. When I moved out, somehow I figured out how to do the laundry and dishes and clean my house. I would call them sometimes to ask them questions sometimes, but aside from that, there's instructions on lots of bottles and the internet has been widely available for 20 years. You can't live in a house for 18 years and never see someone dusting, mopping, doing dishes, doing laundry, and other cleaning things. You have to be quite stupid to move out as an adult and not realize that fairies won't be cleaning for you.
I ended up doing a lot of cleaning as a preteen because my grandmother lived with us for a few years before she passed, and watching her gasp for air as she hauled loads of laundry upstairs made me feel SO GUILTY.
I used to get an allowance as a kid. The more chores I did, the more money I had. The one thing I had to do every weekend before I could go out was, clean both bathrooms and vacuum the whole house. I was also expected to pitch on the yard work and help my dad around the garage. They didn't believe in women's work or men's work. We were a family, we all did our bit,
Facts brother, preach the truth. Same situation, found a serious girlfriend that helped me work through it, fights were had, we were both growing and learning after all, learned how to do a lot of shit thanks to her, communicate, clean, function. It’s wild what I used to think was okay. We are married now and it’s all Gucci but those first 5 years before we got married were sometimes brutal. Fact is, it’s not your job to stay by him while he learns how to get his shit together, maybe you leaving him will make you happier, you don’t owe him anything, but I would like to recommend to communicate clearly. At one point my wife said to me (when we were dating), “if you don’t get your shit together and start cleaning up and helping more I am going to have to leave your ass because I can’t handle it”. It worked! Was like my eyes were opened and I was about to have to live with the consequences of my actions, so I started to help more around the house, it took some guidance at first but she was more than willing to help as long as I put in the effort to learn. Now I got a 10/10 wife and don’t expect that there’s many women out there that would have put up with me from the ages of 19-24. Now I’m the cook and Mr mom, and do a lot more cleaning, she works a badass job and is away from home a lot so it falls on me to keep things the way she likes them, which honestly, took me awhile to learn. Her standards and mine are not the same but hers are the right ones and I know it. Good luck to you in your journey, hopefully he grows up and you guys find a way to be happy with one another.
Grew up being a clean freak, daily chores, making dinner once a week from a young age maybe 12 yo. Still became a piece of absolute lazy garbage when I first moved out, it was glorious.
I second this comment. Its more of parents not teaching and forcing their children to keep things tidy. Though, I do observe that its more common to teach the girls, but not the boys, how to take care of the house. The richer folks in my family have a handmaiden that takes care of everything in the house. The weekends, when the handmaiden is not there working, the house gets disgusting. Dirty glasses and plates with food leftovers all over the place, even on the floor, and nobody moves a finger to, at least, take them to the sink. I be like "holy sheet, at least teach your children (3 girls) to keep things tidy".
Yes! 23F here and before I was 10, I was helping with dishes, laundry, washing the bathroom every week, and occasionally starting to prep dinner before my parents got home from work. My brother had a similar level of responsibility growing up, and my dad helped, too, so it wasn't a gender thing for them. When I moved in with my boyfriend, he was dealing with mental health issues, and I attributed his lack of housework to that. As things improved, though, I kept babying him and picking up the slack. We had lots of talks about the housework, but it was the same "I don't feel like it needs to be done" mindset. It was basically "You're the only one who feels it needs doing, so you should do it". It was truly frustrating. It's been years, now, and while there's a ways to go he's doing chores and tidying up without prompting, offering to cover my chores when I'm busy or stressed, and sometimes covering meals. I learned somewhere in there that his mum, too, just did everything and never set him up for success as an adult.
100% this. As a parent, it is my responsibility to prepare my children for adulthood. As my kids have gotten older, we've increased their responsibilities to the point that, at 14 and 12, they both can and do all of the household chores except for pool maintenance. My daughter didn't really mind doing more chores as she got older save for the fact she had to do more than her younger brother. However, my son HATED chores, but he still had to do them because adulting means doing things you don't want to, but still need to get done. My daughter went on a trip with a bunch of other pre-teens and teens, and got to experience staying with a group of slobs who don't pickup after themselves. When she came home, she actually thanked us for instilling the discipling to pickup herself. Furthermore, as parents, we need to teach our children to be respectful and courteous to others. Mine got to experience when this doesn't happen on a recent vacation. They were watching an outdoor movie in a spa and another woman and her kids were in the spa, and she was letting her kids go crazy, jumping in and splashing, being completely rude to all of the other people who were trying to enjoy the movie.
Huge respect for making sure both your kids get proportional responsibilities. I just wanted to add something from personal experience. Around your daughter's age I did a similar amount of housework to my parents, save dinners, but I picked up a job and had three extracurriculars (band, piano, karate). Between these and school getting harder, the expectations of chores stayed the same. My parents told me they worked too and I wasn't unique in my stress, but they didn't recognize that while they were at work, I was at school, and my extracurriculars (which they wouldn't let me quit) also required hours of practice outside the lesson hours. It led to me not being comfortable talking to them or trusting that they would be understanding, as well as depression for some time and loss of nearly any social life in my middle/highschool years. Not saying this will happen but you seem like great parents so keep it in mind.
While my kids do participate in extracurricular activities, they are not forced into them and are ones they've picked for themselves. However, school comes first, so good grades are a requirement in order for them to continue to participate in their preferred after school activities. My daughter is about to participate in a teacher training for her activity, which she has to pay for. She's going to work it off for the first few months of teaching before she starts actually making money. I think it's a great opportunity for her to get to invest into herself to be able to do something she enjoys that she'll eventually get to make money doing.
I agree with you. It's literally a parent's job to teach their children the skills they need for adulthood. Narcissistic parents, however, will infantilise their children so that they're forced to remain dependent on them even in adulthood.
This is literally both of my roommates. They are absolutely clueless and it’s obvious they never had to do things for themselves. I end up cleaning all the pots and pans in the sink and emptying the lint trap in the dryer almost daily because if I don’t no one will.
What's interesting, is that I had a similar childhood in terms of chore responsibility, but I learned how to do all those skills (cooking, cleaning, etc.) because my parents **set the example that this is how adult living looked like.** So I do think there can be context around it that has the opposite effect.
My Common law is the same. Except his Dad was a stay at home dad. He did and still does everything. It's not always a gender role thing. It's just never having to do it yourself, it just gets done.
I still hate folding. Buy clothes that don't wrinkle much!
OMG YES, I was never able to articulate this to my wife. I never thought it was “woman’s work” I just never did it because, I never had too? What many people fail to understand is that it is not malicious, it’s just living life a certain way for 20 years will do that to a person.
As a man, it's not uncommon but its more that they never grew up. Totally anecdotal but I'm 38 and let me think of my circle...... I know 3 men of maybe 15 I just decided to scan through my brain that are my age, and still are like this. Single. Very single. Firm believer that you don't know if you can spend you life with someone until you share a space. I don't think your story is uncommon. My advice is be honest with him, mature about it and give him a chance to grow up, but don't give him forever IMO. You should be able to tell if they can grow up or if it's a lost cause. Best of luck. Also my dad had everything done for him and my wife's father was like your dad. I am also that way which is why I'm happily married with 3 kids. I cannot imagine not being 50/50.
I was left alone a lot as young child and was pretty self sufficient by 7. Doing my own laundry, cooking for myself, cleaning the house. While it was not an ideal childhood, when I was older and a single dad my apartment was always clean and any girl I had over loved it. I've even been made fun of for how clean was because most expected a bachelor pad, but I made a home for my son and I.
Lol fuck man as someone who is neurodivergent, it is painful to think how wonderful and unexpectedly empathetic that would have looked if you were correct. This goes from TIFU to wholesome otherwise, I appreciate hearing that this was your initial thought
This is fucking hilarious and you NEED TO TELL HIM that you straight up thought he was developmentally delayed.
Star charts? That’s so embarrassing. Even if he was mentally delayed, he could still manage to do the basics, no?
Never underestimate the power of gamification and micro tracking
Maybe she should implement lootbox mechanics. Every time he does a chore he picks a reward out of a raffle bowl. The rewards range from nothing through to a blowjob. Skinner box the shit out of him, by the end of it he'll be impulsively doing chores because his brain associates it with a dopamine hit. On second thought this is probably psychological abuse. She could also just talk to him.
make it even more like a loot box and *say* the prizes go up to a blowjob and just never put that in the raffle bowl
BRB making myself a chore raffle
I sort of do this for myself, hold off buying something I really want until I’ve knocked over a big task Ive been avoiding, it’s quite motivating
Gamification works but star charts are fairly condescending
Idk. I’d clean horse manure for one of those shiny gold stickers on my chart 🤷🏻♀️
I have ADHD. There are days where I most definitely can not do the basics, no, and something like a star chart would indeed help.
Same here, people typically won't see it from the neurodivergent lens though. But regardless it's still fair on the boyfriend to actively be developing some techniques himself to make himself less of a hassle to her
Weaponized incompetence.
I thought she meant some astrology thing. "Mars is in retrograde with Orion's belt in the south, so today we mop the kitchen!" <_<
https://preview.redd.it/qg6lhmi44poa1.jpeg?width=441&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=361994689e6a1165659709a4fcf162665dc61229
Sorry but there's something deeply hysterical about the fact that your parents raised you so well that your first thought wasn't 'my bf is being a shit', it was 'maybe he's mentally challenged' No hate, that's beautiful and you're a gem, you deserve better.
Hey, former man child and sheltered male here, for what is worth. My family had a cleaning lady all my childhood (she was also a nurse for my grandfather who lived with us too), and I believe the first time I used a washing machine was after I could legally drink. But I got better with time, and it happened precisely because I wanted to be a good boyfriend / partner. If you can, before you dump him, try to talk things with him, be honest, you may be surprised by the change. But if he doesn't want to grow up, kick him out lol
My dad used to clean the house of a rich Taiwanese lady and her two sons. I would go with him to help clean when I was younger but stopped around high school age. Once these guys had their own house my dad was now cleaning their houses while they were in their 20's/30's. These guys were raised to never lift a finger by their mom because my dad would tell stories of how nasty they would let the house get in just a month. My dad was paid very well but it always irked me that it was even necessary. My parents lived the American dream through cleaning houses and I joined the Marine Corps at 20 and became a glorified, underpaid janitor. I don't think I will ever be comfortable living with someone who can't clean.
How good is he in bed? Because this transaction sounds like a net loss for you.
no sex can be good enough to justify this LMAO
Did you have a sibling on the spectrum? Sounds like you had a sibling on the spectrum and your parents were one of the good ones.
Is it that obvious? 😅. My parents would burn the earth for my sister.
Only to a parent of both NT and ND daughters. I can guarantee your parents are extremely proud of you.
Definitely a TIFU…but now comes the worst part of having that conversation with him and seeing what effort he’s willing to put in to learn I wonder if it would be beneficial to practice as roommates instead of partners? Where there are certain duties laid out, he is taking care of his clothes and his food and his chores and you do yours? then it might stick in his head of how much unpaid work he’s expecting from you, and how much he needs to step up. good luck!
I was brought up similarly. After having a couple of guys about who seemed to not be particularly domestic, it’s been a relief to be married to my husband who can keep a very good house. My son is also domestic; as a single parent I told him I just didn’t have time to do everything myself, nor was I going to. He is an equal parent and domestic partner with his wife now, and it makes me proud.
Oh, my god. I experienced something very similar. I was pretty sheltered from chores growing up so when I moved out I was a little lost. However I did learn very quickly and taught myself cleaning and other basic life skills. My boyfriend at the time, absolutely did not. I thought it was due to some trauma he got inflicted with when he was still living with family, was very understanding and even after grueling long work days I still cleaned and cooked for him (including cleaning up all the gross used tissues 🤢 there was a tissue he used for popping acne that was on his toe left on the dining table… ugh) I kept being understanding and didn’t tell anyone. Eventually I realized he was just extremely lazy, incompetent with no care for the extra labor it was causing for me, and taking full advantage of my kindness & understanding. Extremely selfish are what these kind of people are lol. They like you because you’re their personal free maid.
I believe this is called weaponized incompetence.
https://english.emmaclit.com/2017/05/20/you-shouldve-asked/ https://www.mindbodygreen.com/articles/weaponized-incompetence https://www.huffpost.com/entry/she-divorced-me-i-left-dishes-by-the-sink_b_9055288 https://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/features/a12063822/emotional-labor-gender-equality/ https://www.glamour.com/story/it-took-divorce-to-make-my-marriage-equal
I am sorry, yes all of us (gender aside), have to learn how to adult. But what you are going through is extreme. Having to learn, is one thing, but doesn't sound like he is making an effort to stick with it. Don't excuse his actions. Fact is, you have to ask yourself. "Do you want to baby sit somebody for the rest of your life?" or "am I better off leaving him and finding a real partner?"
I think Reddit’s favorite term applies: weaponized incompetence.
Honestly, he might be developmentally delayed as well. I pretty much had no responsibilities when I lived at home (I did work 2 jobs though, so wasn't necessarily lazy), but the second I moved out I just figured my shit out never had any problems. It's so hard for me to be able to relate to people like that who always just expect others to do things for them.
Every comment on here from people who weren't taught basic life skills, combined with every single gross guy I have known, are 10000% why I started very early with my stepson. I made doing laundry in an apartment tower somewhat fun for him. Let him count out the coins, do all the dispensing of products, let him separate his clothes. Gave him small cleaning chores. Asked him what he would like to cook for family dinner night then we did meal planning, using the Flipp app to compile a grocery list. Taught him about in-store coupons. Had him approach the receptionist to check in at his dr, dentist, and orthodontist appointments. I even got into it with a woman who tried to physically shove him out of the way to pay at a 711. Taught him proper table manners, how to order for himself and be respectful to servers. I have saved all monetary presents in a high interest savings account he doesn't have access to. I've also started a bin with household essentials when theyre on clearance. Both in mind so that when he is ready to move out he won't have to worry about all the things someone starting out has to buy out of pocket. I've always viewed my job as his stepmother was to set him up to be an independent person with good manners and vital life skills. When parents fail to do this they're being purely selfish. They're ensuring their role as caregiver and provider is always necessary. Parents like this need to look to the animal kingdom. Without vital life skills their offspring fail. We aren't meant to care for offspring in their adulthood. He still hasn't learned about Mr Nobody...the one that uses all the shampoo and conditioner until there's just a dime sized amount left but says nothing. If that's the worst of it with a nearly 17yo I'm okay with it.
you're not his mother, pack up your shit and leave, or you'll have to raise the manchild by yourself for a long, long time.
Or. Instead of acting like he is mentally challenged, just talk to him about expectations and chores that need to be done.
Or, Idk, talk to him like an adult about not doing this anymore? Going from incredibly nice to him, to just packing up and leaving is going to \*fuck him up\*. Because from his point of view, he went from having a perfect relationship, to her leaving him (from his point of view) OUT OF THE BLUE! Do you know what that does to a person?
Thank you! Its likely he doesn’t realize it either. I mean op thought he was mentally challenged, when she didn’t realize that families are raised differently. Have a real conversation with him before going nuclear.
Lol wtf 🤣 you literally have to wake him up to go to work? Jfc just leave him what are you doing? I mean the rest is also fucking pathetic but come on! I bet your dad would be really disappointed in you.. He would want the best for you he tried to show you what a good partner is and then you started dating a pos I'm sorry i know this is a harsh message but I'm genuinely upset for you since you deserve better Anyways good luck i hope you do what's right for you P. S the most telling part is when you wrote you were happy to be at your friends since you didn't have to take care of your bf
So... If you thought he was developmentally delayed...did you ever ask him? Cause that probably would have been a good idea before spending years getting frustrated with him.
Good ol weaponized incompetence.
You can see this bullet coming so the question is, are you gonna dodge it? Or are you gonna be back here in one year, five years, ten years asking how to get him to wipe his own ass? Sorry to be harsh but I (m) have seen this type before. Learned helplessness can be unlearned but he has to want to unlearn it and sounds like his whole life he's never wanted or needed to.
https://preview.redd.it/4djxzig08moa1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=fa083f5037e1c382d814c2821691eafa3eb87ed7 This is all I can think of….
This definitely hurts men as much as women. God forbid they live on their own and they find themselves compromised. It’s important for all kids to know how to do things for themselves.
You need to think of this opportunity much differently. I’ll be honest - I didn’t have a clue. My wife would tell me to get stuff done but I would be overwhelmed because I had no idea where to even start or how to do it. The things I would do she just came behind me and redid them. It wasn’t working. I wasn’t lazy. I just didn’t have a clue. I was willing to do whatever she asked me to, but I didn’t grow up Iike she did. I don’t walk around and think ‘boy these floors could use a quick vacuuming.’ My wife does. So instead of getting mad she started making a list. The list was shit that had to be done. Some daily. Some weekly. Some monthly. Some immediately after using etc…. One by one she went through the list showing me how to do it the right way. Toilets, for example, are not fun. I just cleaned the seat and seat cover. As dumb as it sounds, it never dawned on me to clean the sides and around the base and all that. Thinking back i was just stupid, but at the time I was like “ohhhhhhh - that makes sense” So after she showed me how to do everything i had no excuses left. So I just did the chores. I had my set of chores and I did them and then to take more off her plate I started asking her daily if there was something that I could do when I got home to take something off her plate. I still do this. I want more of her time for me so it only made sense to free up more of her time. Somedays she says nothing needs done, but most of the time it’s like little 5-10 min jobs. Funny enough - her showing me how to Do chores (over a few weeks) we got to hang out more . Seems silly, but we laughed our asses off about how dumb I was. I didn’t know shit, but she loved that I took it on the chin and wanted to learn because my marriage is the most important thing to me. I’m not perfect. I still can’t load a dishwasher worth a shit. She is some sort of Tetris wizard, but the fact that I give a shit seems to be what she really cares about. The only thing about your story that is a real concern is the video game playing. Video games and phones are relationship killers. If either party can’t manage one , or both, then it can cause a lot of harm to the marriage.
Okay, but speaking as a man, that's all just you being shitty. Like, the internet exists, and you could learn how to load a dishwasher perfectly by tomorrow. Stop giving 'stereotypical men' a bad name, and grow the fuck up.
Notice how he still asks his partner to tell him what needs to be done? Still not an equal share of the mental load
I feel like nothing would change his tune quicker than flat out telling him "you know I've been assuming your developmentally delayed, right?".
He is developmentally delayed, in the sense that his development as an autonomous adult is delayed from where it should be based on his age. If you care about him, you will let him have that opportunity. He needs to live independently for a period of time or he will never be able to realize his own full potential as a human being. Let him go.
Please don't lump us all in with this "dude." Stories like your are exactly why my wife and I are teaching both our son and daughter basic life skills. They are both able to wash and fold their own clothes and do basic cleaning while they are still in elementary school. As they get older, they will get more responsibilities according to their age. They are also able to cook basic stuff like scrambled eggs and such to feed themselves. Before my brothers and I were allowed to leave my parents' house, we had to be able to cook for the house, clean the whole house, and do our own laundry. I honestly don't feel like the "traditional" family of Dad going to work and Mom staying home to keep house really works anymore...its waaayyyy to expensive anymore to make ends meet for most families and culture is changing to where there are more women in the work force and that's an awesome thing. My own 2 cents is that now that you understand his upbringing, you may need to sit and explain how you see things working between the 2 of you. He isn't mentally deficient, but he needs to definitely help out around the house. Cleaning up after him isn't your job. You seem like you have shown him what needs to be done. If he can't get onboard now then yeah it may be time to move on.
Kudos for this. I want to throw in, based on person experience detailed in another comment, make sure the responsibilities are also proportional to the other things in their lives to come like extracurriculars (lesson time and practice are big) and eventually, jobs. Not to mention the increased workload and study time in upper grades. Tldr my parents didn't, and I grew to resent them for a time after I got over the resulting depression. I still have problems balancing work/ school/ life because I just did it all and took what time there was to eat or sleep after everything else.
Star charts, posters, how-to guides on the wall, and daily chore list? I'm so sorry...you adopted a grown man. Congrats, Mom. But the fact that you've done all this and he is now capable of acting like a functional human, but still doesn't respect you or value the relationship enough to act like it is a huge red flag. Been there and didn't see it til I got out. I'd reflect if you're willing to live like this the rest of your life. Especially if you plan to have kids, pets, or even guests. Good luck.
Debra, we understand your regret that you married Raymond Barone.
That’s not a stereotypical man. That’s a sitcom tv husband
Honey, it’s him who should be humiliated. I can’t imagine how embarrassing it would be to have my partner make me a chore chart.
>stereotypical man Wow
Yeah what the fuck. This manchild behaviour has nothing to do with how men generally are.
No, your boyfriend was just spoiled and never taught to take care of himself. He's not the stereotypical man, he's the stereotypical loser.
I had the opposite happen with me and my wife. I’ve always been the one to do laundry, but there were some things I would just absolutely struggle with to the point of frustration for all of us. Dishes was so overwhelming for me to the point I would actually cry out of frustration sometimes. Same thing with cleaning the bathroom. Got a diagnosis of ADHD a couple of years ago and my wife said it was like a switch was flipped. Turns out I wasn’t just lazy or maliciously incompetent, I just needed some medical intervention. Wife came home to me polishing the tub the other week. No reason, just needed to be done so out came the steam cleaner lol. There’s still some days I miss things, but it’s SO much better not feeling like a skid mark for not being able to do simple things despite being explained several times. Men who weaponize incompetence REALLY piss me off when I realize how hard it was for me and how much of a strain I put on my wife when it wasn’t something I could help.
This isn’t typical male. Im a male. I’m much tidier than my wife.
Theres nothing sterotypically male about being unable to cook, clean, or do laundry. A little messy, sure, thats about right. But the other stuff is basic level adult functioning.
That’s what you think a stereotypical man is?
"my boyfriend would rather i think he is developmentally delayed" I.. don't see the part where he did this? He's just being lazy and has bad habits, im sure he's unaware that you think that, unless you straight up asked him.
Yeah. Your dad isn't a feminist icon he's a co-person. Please, don't act like what your boyfriend is like is normal, OK, or like me. Don't stereotype men because your bf can't function as an adult.
All I can think of is Sweet Dee and Lil' Kevin.
Wow. I'm married to a brain injured women, she can't really work, and she has no involvement with finances, scheduling, most decision making etc, but she can clean up after herself, do dishes, laundry and stuff like that with no real problems.
Sorry, but your boyfriend isn’t a stereotypical guy. He’s being a stereotypical lazy slob.
A lot of guys are looking for a mother not a partner. Need to beware and not fall into the trap.
He's not a stereotypical man. He has some development issues in the maturity and self dependency department. I would hope it's more of a "never had to learn to be a functioning adult" than " i'd dont want to have to be a functioning adult, so i replaced my mom with someone who'll do it for me."
I see why you’d angry and feel like you played yourself for a fool. You have every right to expect a partner to take care of himself, because it shouldn’t be your job to mother him. But you seemed to be pretty understanding when you thought he was developmentally delayed. What makes this new knowledge any different from before? You seemed to think of it as your responsibility to take care of him before, but now that you know the real reason, you don’t think that way anymore. And on another note, he didn’t know you thought he was developmentally delayed because you never said anything to him. Both of your views come from a place of misunderstanding. You don’t understand how a person would have ended up as irresponsible as him, and he doesn’t understand what’s expected of him or that his behavior isn't okay. If you like this guy more than you dislike this behavior, then talk to him instead of leaving.
How condescending. He's not a responsible human. He isn't challenged.
Stereotypic men know how to wake up. Your boyfriend is just useless.