I’m getting tired of being the household beast of burden. Last night I decided to try and make just ONE damned chore in the house equitable. I assigned one kid to empty the dishwasher, the other to fill it, and my husband to wash whatever large items wouldn’t fit in the dishwasher. We discussed it. He agreed it was fair. I HATE a dirty kitchen and can’t cook when it’s filthy and I’m tired of doing all the cleanup before slaving away at the stove and then repeating.
Spoiler: he did not wash the dishes. He played video games and then went to bed. I washed them this morning.
I was mildly annoyed (read this happens constantly so I’m used to it) and told him just now that since I washed those dishes, could he please put them away. He’s doing that now, but his response has me fucking fuming.
“Why wouldn’t you just wait until I washed them? Why did you HAVE to do the dishes just to make me feel bad about it?”
I was mildly annoyed before and now I’m just fucking furious. He has no idea why I would even consider that manipulative. I’m so mad right now I can’t even find the words to productively explain to him why that statement was so offside.
Help me, sisters. I can’t even find the words.
Dude, seriously, he needed to wash two salad bowls and two frying pans. This is not a case of unreachable goals or unrealistic expectations.
That’s not exactly what I’m saying. I’m not saying your goals for him are unrealistic. But are they his goals?
In his head he’s probably going “it’s only 4 items why does it block cooking I can just do it later”.
And my guess is that you are trying to communicate the problem and either he’s not listening or he’s not hearing. The former there’s not much you can do about. But the latter means you might need to explain things a different way.
That’s what I’m here for. Feedback on how to explain it a different way. Things get very twisty when we talk about things he is defensive about, so helping have itemized thoughts keeps me focused.
"I don’t like to cook in a messy kitchen. You might not understand why this bothers me. And it might not bother you, but it bothers me a lot. So when I ask you to put the dishes away, and they aren’t put away by the time I next want to cook, it makes me feel disrespected and ignored.
How can we work together to fix this?"
I want this thing bc I like it is a totally valid feeling. Don’t get bogged down in an argument about how it doesn’t matter if the kitchen is messy. It matters to you and that is important in and of itself. Bc you’re never going to get him to understand why you care about this. He doesn’t and will try to convince you that you also shouldnt worry about this. You need to reframe as “I want this thing, help me get it”
I say this bc I’m the partner that goes “we don’t need to do X bc …”. I try to avoid this type of problem by proactively asking my partner is this something you’re trying to solve or something you want don’t bc that’s how you like it.