Eh… just a thought. 
In my opinion, this is the central issue. What would happen if you suddenly started disliking cooking? If you’d simply stop cooking, then it’s a hobby. If you’d force yourself to do it anyway, then it’s a chore.
The fact that your wife would be fine with crackers is irrelevant. I’m perfectly happy living in a messy house, but I’d never consider tidying it a hobby.
She’s completely full of shit. Grocery shopping and food preparation are most certainly chores. It’s work that needs to be done to have a successful household. She sounds whiny to me.
Ideally, I think the Master List Of All Chores ™ ought to contain everything that any member of the family thinks needs to be done - unless there’s a serious disparity of expectations (in which case setting the minimum necessary standard is a necessary pre-task)
(Mr Aspy’s saying, in our case, which he’s just reminded me of is “In our household, we split the housework 10:10. One of us does 10%, and the other one does the other 10%”. I have no idea how I’d go married to a person with standards…)
The cooking thing does strike a bit of a chord with me, because I’m sort of in the same situation - basically, in a four-person household, there’s only one person who really believes in eating dinner on a regular basis, and that’s me. Most nights at least one of the others will (randomly) decide to be hungry and actually eat something, but it’s by no means guaranteed. However, having dinner is pretty important to me, because I must be fueled-up on a regular basis or I just can’t function.
The way I end up thinking of it is “yeah, ok, I’m doing the cooking for me, because I want to eat, and I’m ok with that. And, hey, while I’m doing it it’s not that much extra work to make extra stuff for other people assuming that this is a night that they might eat something, so why not?”.
I guess I have mentally taken cooking dinner of the list of general household chores, not that we really HAVE an official list, that would be far too organised!
She does have a little bit of a point here, and I say this from “your” side - I like to cook, I especially like people to eat my cooking. So when my boyfriend and I argue about, say, do I have to go to Friends and Family night at the lodge, I say, “Look at all I do for you, I cook, I etc etc etc etc,” and he says “You don’t cook for me, you like cooking.” And that’s, indeed, true. It’s something I contribute to the household, but it isn’t really on par with getting dragged somewhere I don’t want to go, you know?
I was going to start a thread about something like this as well. My wife complains that I do NO household chores even though I keep our two very young daughters every weeknight until she gets home (9pm to midnight+), clean up for an hour every night, do the dishes, pay the bills, mow 1 1/2 acres of lawn, weedeat, garden, landscape, plus lots of incidental things plus repairs. Our house is always spotless.
The last time we had this conversation a few weeks ago, she really and truly scared me. Everything she said was frickin insane and that isn’t a good way to feel about a loved one living in the same house. My wife did basically the same thing that yours did and found a way to dismiss everything I did as not a real chore in some way even though something similar she does is.
Let me ask you about an associated delusion. I can spend hours doing something like vacuuming or weeding or any type of project. She will come in and take a look and find some flaw in the work, say a stray dust bunny, touch it up herself and then claim she did the entire thing herself. It would be grounds for a divorce because it is very disheartening but I remember my mother did the same thing when I was growing up.
As best I can tell, they have a mental dysfunction about this and I just have to keep reminding myself about that.
Well, I’ll say this – she sounds like a pain in the nuts, to me. On this issue, anyway. Cooking and shopping are definately chores, even if you enjoy them.
That said, you do need to come up with some kind of agreement on this or you’ll continue to argue about it.
How about this: agree that you will not discuss chores for the next month. However, you will each keep a list of all the things you do for the upkeep of your home during that time. This way, you’ll have a baseline of what needs doing and who is doing it. You should also jot down how long each item takes to do, so you have a record of how much time each of you is putting into the upkeep of your home.
At the end of the month, sit down and look at both lists, item by item. Shelf the question of whether or not either of you enjoy doing the items. Instead, parse out the items that both of you agree have to be done. No fair arguing about it – if she says cooking is unneccesary, then leave it off the list. If you say that cleaning the bathrooms more than once a week is unneccessary, but she cleans them 3 times a week; then one cleaning a week goes on the ‘have to do’ list and the other two cleanings are left off. Split the ‘have to do’ chore list right down the middle, time-wise. Your objective is for each of you to put approximately the same amount of time per month into what you both agree is the necessary running of your house.
Usually, I would end the experiment right there, with each of you sharing the mutually-agreed-upon essential chores; and either of you having the option to do the non-essential things on your own time, if you wish to do them.
However, since your wife has such extreme views about cooking, I would recommend that you two add a second month to my experiment. During that second month, you both do only the items on the ‘have to do’ list. You both eat crackers and takeout and dry cereal for dinner instead of cooking. The bathroom only gets cleaned once a week, and so on. At the end of the month, you reassess. Maybe you’ll find that the bathrooms really do need to be cleaned more often than once a week. Or maybe she’ll find that once a week is plenty, and her extra two cleaning were uneccesary. And maybe (actually, I’ll bet probably) she’ll discover that homecooked meals are more important to her than she had thought they were – especially since she does the bills and will definately see a difference in your bottom line if you do takeout at all frequently during the month.
You can do all the list making and chore dividing that other folks have suggested, and you might factor in time spent at jobs, if one of you works longer hours than the other. Try dividing the chores along the lines of who is good at what, and who can become good at what. Enjoyment, however, is often a matter of attitude, and shouldn’t determine whether or not something is a necessary chore.
Even if, after good attempts to divide the chores reasonably fairly (and the balance will always be shifting according to circumstances), there is still resentment on the part of one or both partners, it could be a sign that there is some other, underlying issue that needs to be looked at.
It’s never about what she says it’s about.
Or,
If you loved me/weren’t so selfish/were a better man, you’d understand what’s really bothering me. Can’t you take the hint that I am waiting for you to improve?
It’s a chore when you can’t go without doing it without it causing trouble.
The OP didn’t mention what other chores he was doing. I can see her getting annoyed if he is grocery shopping and cooking in addition to, say, gardening, while she is stuck cleaning the toilets. It’s a sad truth that women, even working women, still end up doing most of the housework. Two friends of mine, a girl and a boy, were living together for over a year before he realized that the apartment didn’t magically dust itself.
(I think Jess’s idea is pretty good.)
OP, I think your wife is wrong. It’d be interesting to see what happens if you do stop cooking for two. Perhaps the reality of eating crackers every night for dinner would get to her. And if it doesn’t, then you’ll never have to worry about her likes or dislikes with respect to food because you’ll always be cooking whatever you want.
Just because you enjoy doing something doesn’t make it not a chore. I enjoy cooking, too, but it’s also still a contribution - my cooking will hopefully help my son like healthier food when he gets older and will hopefully contribute to keeping me and my husband healthy for a long time.
Also, I get freakishly satisfied when I finish cleaning the kitchen, but it’s still necessary to avoid raunchy smells and prevent us from getting sick.
This is something of a bone of contention between me and my husband in my household, too. I strongly feel I do more than he does around the house while he feels we do equal amounts of work. After having several discussions about it, we came to the following conclusions:
-
We’re not going to agree.
-
If I need help, I need to ask for it before I get bent out of shape about it instead of expecting my husband to read my mind (I’m still working on this one - having been taught from an early age to feel guilty about everything, it’s hard to ask for help when I need it).
-
If I ask for help, my husband needs to help me.
-
I need to be specific - what do I want done? When do I want it done?
-
Even though I need to be specific about the what and the when, I can’t tell my husband how to do it. (This works out well since he’s a lot more thorough about certain things than I am, so he usually does an even better job than I do.)
Unwritten rule 6. ALWAYS, ALWAYS acknowledge when the other person has helped and let them know how much you appreciate it. It’s polite, lets the other person know you don’t take them for granted and it makes them more likely to want to help you in the future.
Depending on how your chores are split, I can see her point to some extent.
It’s really REALLY annoying when someone seems to cherrypick the chores they don’t mind doing and then the rest gets dumped on the other person. There are chores that no one ever wants to do; if those chores are always dumped on one person because the other is already doing “their share” it can be really frustrating.
Assuming the OP is doing more than cooking and grocery shopping, his wife is on crack. Her argument is basically, “I’m suffering more, therefore, I’m doing more chores,” which is bullshit. If your household work benefits people beyond yourself, then it’s a chore, no matter how much enjoyment is derived from it.
She doesn’t like cooking, and is ambivalent on grocery shopping. So, if I stopped doing these, it’s not like they would be picked up and enjoyed. In other words, she likes paying bills about as much as she likes cooking, which is to say, not at all. She would shop out of necessity, and not cook at all.
In terms of hours of contribution, if we count cooking and shopping, there is no doubt (and she would agree to this) that I spend considerably more hours on housework than her. It’s just that much of this time she sees as unnecessary because cooking isn’t “necessary”.
Things might change when we have kids though. Then cooking is a bit more of a necessity, I would think.
“Chore” has a negative connotation to it. Change the word to “task” and divvy everything up beginning with tasks you least hate and work your way down into the bowels of household drudgery.
wait a minute. she’d rather eat crackers than your cooking? you should find out what’s bothering her.
I just thought of another thing - your wife clearly appreciates your cooking. It’s something you do that benefits her, too. But she can’t have it both ways: what’s the point in bragging about you to friends while privately berating you for the exact same thing? And if she had guests over and you weren’t cooking, would she insist on crackers for dinner then, too?
overlyverbose, I really like your rules. Especially Rule 6.
I definitely do more around the house than my husband. This used to bother me a lot, but I’ve come to realize that I do more because I care more. I’m the one who thinks that the bathroom needs to be cleaned once a week, even if it doesn’t look that dirty. I’m the one who worries about what the neighbors think if the grass gets too tall. He’s a wonderful husband and a good man, so I make a conscious effort not to let the chore thing get to me. Sometimes it’s a struggle, though.
overlyverbose, when you go grocery shopping you buy things that your wife uses as well, right? How can she possibly claim that you’re not contributing to the household by buying things that you both use?
A couple of questions and comments.
How is the split outside of cooking and shopping? This also goes along with a question of how much time is spend on cooking a shopping. For example, let’s go with an extreme case that you spend three hours per meal cooking gourmet dishes. So if you cook say 8 meals a week, that’s 24 hours of housework.
Great – and some women would be completely happy with just that – but then if you say that is your sole contribution to housework, then she’s right. While you are doing something valuable, then part of the time is hobby and can’t count as contribution to the household.
This was one of the problems that I had with my ex-wife, except that it was her religion. She thought that her hours volunteering for her religion should count as equal to the time I spend at work. If we both agreed on the merits of spending time for a religion, then it would be fine, but I thought that her religion as almost a cult, so I saw that time as negative.
Households need to share contributions from everyone, and make sure that no one is getting stuck with all the unpleasant tasks. As jsgoddess and others have mentioned, it can’t be that only one person is stuck with all the yucky things.
OTOH, if you aren’t dumping everything else on her, then she needs to understand that just because a person likes something, it doesn’t mean that it’s all hobby. My wife actually likes to clean , which I find to be a chore, and laundry, which I don’t mind, but don’t really like, but that in no way means that those hours are discounted from her contribution to the household.