What, like he does for her? All those thanks for getting the kids up and dressed, hugs and a beer for getting the laundry done, an intimate gesture for cleaning out the garage?
I think your point is generally a good one, in fact, but I also think it points up a bit of a double standard. Women do their share around the house as a matter of course, and no one seems to think they need or deserve extra encouragement for doing it. But men you have to motivate.
I hate this kind of shit. I’m too tired to figure out who is pimping whom out and who is acting the whore in your situation, but I want no part of it. It’s demeaning. It’s unrealistic. I see no reciprocity in this at all–sure he gets a hummer, but when does she get what she wants? Oh, the stopped up sink or the repaired lamp is enough for her? I don’t think so.** Jodi** nailed it–wives are expected to do XYZ as a matter of course, with no reward implied or expected.
How about practically every time he did it? I was reared to say please and thank you. I do show my appreciation. Sometimes (as any parent will tell you)–that ain’t enough to motivate someone. Lynn–I’m not comfortable with it, but I don’t argue with results. If it works for you both, that’s great.
Sailor–Round tuits are a stupid joke. See demeaning and silly above. Yup–I expected my husband, who knows how to fix almost anything to install a closet system which I was unwilling to do. Such a bitch am I! I fully expect in any partnership that either party will play to their strengths and use them to benefit themselves and their partnership. How unreasonable of me.
I do indeed think that this is generational and I hope my kids have learned that either gender can do any chore–that includes my daughter doing outside “heavy” stuff, as well as knowing her way around a toolbox. My boys know how to iron, do laundry, clean and cook (basics). None of my kids know how to sew… oops. Forgot something there.
And for the last time: this is not about wives vs husbands. It’s about one spouse being promised X and then being let down repeatedly by the other spouse. I am left wondering why folks here insist this is some kind of feminist/man bashing thread. It could have just as easily been started by a man about his wife. The genders are irrelevant.
Funny you mention a housekeeper. My husband said he would get me a once a month housekeeper as my Christmas present.
self-hijack- Cazzle, Muffin looks exactly like my Hedwig! Except Wiggy’s tongue is always hanging out. He must be a burmese-type, more then a siamese. I think the cat pictures do a very nice job of modulating the frustration in this thread 
For those of you whose spouses volunteer to do a job and then never do it, how about (another behaviorist technique) a schedule? Ask him when he will have time to clean out the garage. Then put it on the calendar: garage cleaning, Saturday at 10 a.m. If you don’t think he will stick to it, a few more “prompts” are not out of order. When Saturday at 10 rolls around, you can say, “Oh hey, do you need any rags, cleaning stuff, a mop, to clean out the garage? I can get that ready for you.” And prompt him to complete the project, check back in once in a while and reinforce with affection, assistance, or cookies.
To those who protest at these techniques being demeaning or like training a dog, I say, think of it this way: you are not “training” him. You are changing YOUR behavior so that he will change his behavior. Nagging and asking again and again does not work. Stewing in silence does not work.
Behaviorism at its heart really boils down to making simple, direct requests, and then providing positive reinforcement for completion of the task. Upthread it was pointed out that when spouses do get around to completing a task, they are probably being punished for it, rather than reinforced. “Why couldn’t you do that earlier, I asked you so many times!” “Why did you do it that way? You always screw everything up!” If you think about it, the only reason anybody does anything is because they are getting something out of it. Some people clean the house because they receive enjoyment from a tidy space. For other people, a tidy space is not a motivator, so they need something else to motivate them to clean the house. This is where spouses need to assist in motivating each other to complete household chores.
I personally don’t think cleaning out the garage equals an intimate gesture; more of a beer and a hug after it’s done, though. Just let him know that you noticed and let him know that it meant a lot to you. Double standard? Maybe, but then again, I don’t see men asking their wives how they look in a pair of jeans and a shirt, and then being upset if the wife just says “Fine.”
It’s obvious to all that their are differences between men and women, not just physical, but emotional as well and that you should look to each other as compliments to each other, not tear them down for their deficiencies. The sooner those are addressed, the better off each spouse is. I am simply stating that a man would do more and more often if his wife actually lets him know how appreciative she actually is.
Heh, thanks. It’s probably an appropriate punchline that he bought out my share of the house, malfunctioning doorbell and all, and I got to keep the cat.
I bet you’re tired all right…because your energy is wasted on anger and nagging and he’s tuned you out because you do not know (or refuse) how to be actually nice to each other, thinking that HE HAS TO CHANGE HIS HABITS BEFORE YOU CHANGE YOURS. Well, how’s that working for you? You are truly banging you head against the wall, so why are you still trying to browbeat him into doing what you want? Positive reinforcement trumps negative any day. A verbal gesture or bringing a beer is whoring? As for an intimate gesture, that’s your decision when you want to be intimate, not his.
Or you could just wait for him to be struck by lightning and miraculously become your personal man-servant…good luck with that.
And speaking of which, what’s this “Intimate gesture = hummer” bullshit? How about being a little more creative…there are lots of ways to be intimate without “whoring”, but you are failing to see beyond your perceived obligatory sucking and fucking.
I believe that both genders can virtually do any chore or project…I’m not arguing that. But how one shows appreciation for the other will be different between the sexes…that’s what I’m getting at. My wife prefers sleeping in on the weekend while I make a big breakfast for the kids and I serve her breakfast in bed. She totally digs this, and I have no problem doing it. I certainly don’t feel like a servant when I do this, because I actually want to do it as a gesture of love and appreciation. Now, would I like her to do the same for me? NO. I would prefer a backrub, and verbal flirting with the possibility of it being more physical. See? Totally different without any demeaning acts by either party.
It has a lot to do with emotions, as you say-see how you bring that breakfast that makes her feel all happy and loved? Imagine how she would feel if you told her on Thursday that she could sleep in on Saturday, because you would feed the kids, then on Saturday-you didn’t. And the kids come in the bedroom all crabby-hungry and wake her up. It is not “your job” or “her job” stuff. The same way doing something can make a spouse feel loved - blowing off something promised makes a spouse feel un-appreciated.
I no longer expect him to change his habits. I think you might be conflating my posts with others. Do I have residual anger about the years where I did expect X and didn’t get it? You bet. But I learned to move on and solve the problem. This thread got me thinking about those years and the old resentment bubbled up. But I think you are misreading it–it’s more like looking back at an old injustice, rather than a current problem. That said, I won’t apologize for having such feelings.
No, the “intimate reward” or however you phrased it was what I was referring to as pimping/whoring. Funny how you think I’m shrewish for assertively asking for what I need. I don’t browbeat people, not even my husband. Look back and find where I said I did. I don’t even nag. I work around him by hiring a handyman. Problem solved.
You have completely missed the point of this thread. I don’t want a man servant; I wanted a partner who would deliver on the promises he made–afterall, I upheld my end of the deal. I also don’t want to be a servant.
Huh? You added intimate gesture after you mentioned the hug and beer. Define intimate gesture? To me it read as a euphemism for a sexual reward (which is commonly given advise to women on “how to make your man want to help you”–see women’s magazines). I don’t count a hug as an intimate gesture between spouses–maybe I hug wrong. IMO, sucking and fucking is never obligatory–but that’s another thread!
I have no quarrel with this at all–I completely agree with you. We all appreciate different types of recognition for our efforts. Me, I’d love breakfast made etc, IF that included breakfast cleaned up as well. Or I’d take the back rub. (or both. Heh).
I think the most important point is that a couple has to figure out what works for them and do it. Expectations are funny things and they can cause a lot of grief, but not as much grief as assumptions.
See, I’m one of the people expressing frustration with my spouse here and I think Yeticus (and a few others) have the wrong end of the stick.
If my husband were to sit down with me and just say “You know, I am never, ever going to spontaneously do housework. I know it drives you fucking nuts that I say I’m gonna do things and then fail to follow through - and I understand why that’s the case. We need to find a workaround so that you’re not driven fucking crazy and that I don’t have to feel guilty for failing to follow through on my promises.” and then we plotted out some sort of system to avoid it all that was functional, I would be perfectly content never to have him do a goddamn thing that resembled housework again. I don’t want him trained to do my bidding. I don’t want a man-servant. If I wanted a man-servant, I would damn well hire myself one.
I (and eleanorigby, and a few of the other ladies in this thread) want him to do what he says he will do. If he says he’s going to take care of something, I want it taken care of!* And I want it taken care of in some kind of reasonable timeframe without my having to continually intervene. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to be frustrated and angry when someone tells you they’re going to do something and then never actually freaking does it. And I never, ever want to be in the position where it’s necessary to bribe my husband into keeping his damn promises. With sex or anything else. How can that possibly be a good habit to encourage?
I’m having a hard time seeing why the advice “Keep your promises and I’ll give you X” is good advice, unless there’s a flat-out misunderstanding the source of the frustration we’re venting here.
I know goddamn well that my husband agrees to perform tasks (or even volunteers to do them) because he loves me and wants to be a fully contributing partner in our household endeavors. I also know that, left to his own devices, it would never dawn on him that household tasks should ever be performed. He is not a domestic soul. I appreciate that he’s making an effort by the mere act of agreeing or volunteering to do them. Even armed with this knowledge, it frustrates and angers me that he says he’s going to do shit and then doesn’t follow through. If you have no intention of doing it, then don’t open your mouth. Help me find another way to get everything done that doesn’t involve me shouldering 100% of the load. But don’t make promises you don’t intend to keep and expect me to shrug it off.
*For the record, I don’t give a red rat’s ass how he takes care of it. Hires someone else, does it himself, summons up demonic minions from the underworld - whatever. As long as it gets done and works within our established household budget, the mechanism of completion matters not at all to me.
This thread has become fascinating. It’s very hard to tread in here because I understand that every individual situation is different, and that this is a sensitive subject for many, but nonetheless, once more into the breach…
Here’s an honest question: have you ever sat down with your husband and said, “I know you’re never, ever going to spontaneously do housework, but it’s driving me fucking nuts when you say you’re gonna do things and then they don’t get done. I hope you can understand that. We need to find a workaround so that I’m not driven fucking crazy and so that you don’t have to feel guilty for failing to follow through on your promises.” In those (or very similar) words? And then discussed it until you have your workaround? If you have, then I have no quibble. If you haven’t, though, then I do.
But to me, you’re still taking the path of most resistance. A real-life example from my own life. My wife brings in the mail every day; when she does, she sorts the things that need immediate attention (bills) from the assorted “other” and stacks the “other” in a mail sorter on a desk right inside our front door. Over time, pretty much any piece of paper, magazine, folder, newspaper clipping, art project, or what have you that my wife takes out will find it’s way into that mail sorter. The pile will eventually spill out across the desk.
Now, I hate that pile. I think it looks sloppy and puts our lives out on display for anyone who happens to come over. My wife doesn’t really mind it. Now, technically, that pile is “her” mess. Sometimes in the morning, I’ll say, “hey, Shannon, the Evil Desk Pile is getting out of hand, can you go through it when you get home and straighten it up?” And she says, “sure.”
Now the night comes. She gets home and has to use the bathroom, and get our daughter settled in. We eat; I clean the dishes while she gives Elizabeth a bath. She’s tired, and stressed. She sits down at the computer to play this strange Tetris-ish online game that I don’t really understand, because she wants some pointless diversion. The Evil Desk Pile is still unsorted. It taunts me. At this point, I have two options:
1. I can let my blood pressure slowly rise, watching my wife do something that I don’t think should be important to her right now instead of something that I think is important.
Or 2. I can clean up Evil Desk Pile myself.
I pick #2, and I do so with no resentment. Do you know why? Because tomorrow, the roles will be reversed and there will be some stupid chore that I was supposed to do, but I’m trying to catch up on Mafia (I play it, too!) and I don’t get to it. And she will also go with option #2, and everything gets done, and we don’t spend our lives playing weird games trying to get each other to do things on the sheer stubborn principle of the thing. So what if she said she’d clean the Evil Desk Pile, then never got to it? Shit happens. Let it go.
As a general rule, if something is not important enough to me to do it myself, it’s not important enough to me to get mad at my wife for not doing it, is what I’m saying here. And I refuse to judge the ways she chooses to spend her time, relative to the ways I think she should be. I don’t understand the online Tetris-ish game, and she doesn’t understand Mafia, but I know she enjoys the former and she knows I enjoy the latter, and if she’s playing her game it’s because that’s what she needs/wants to be doing. And I respect her enough to let her apply her own judgment.
Do you really think your husband literally “doesn’t intend to keep” his promises when he makes them? Do you think he thinks, Nah, I’ll never do this, but it’s easier to pretend I will then to say I won’t? Or do you think he intends to do what he says he’ll do, then gets sidetracked by things that feel - to him - more important?
I think the piece of the puzzle you’re missing here, storyteller, is that not only do the husbands not do what they say they will do, but they actively get upset when the job they said they would do is done by anyone else (even when it happens months after they said they would do it and didn’t). I didn’t marry my husband for his house cleaning or house fixing abilities, and I don’t understand why he volunteers to do things he doesn’t want to do, doesn’t do them, and then gets upset when someone else does them. It seems to me the path of least resistance is admitting to yourself and your spouse that you are never going to enjoy house work or house repairs and you can both move on from there.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess there is something going on with the guys that us ladies are not getting, because it seems to be more common in men than your statistical averages would account for.
I agree with featherlou. It’s not that he won’t do housework I ask him to. I don’t really ask him to. I don’t need a spotless house. He cooks, I hate cooking and I am grateful, so I do the cleaning. He is anal about laundry and I am determined to get it done, so I do the laundry.
Just…he won’t hang pictures or things on the wall, even though he won’t let me, and it really frustrates me. Chiefly because once this job is done, it is done. It isn’t recurring.
Good news though - last night I got out the hammer and nails and three of the pictures and told him I was hanging them up. He wouldn’t let me, of course, and he finally hung them up for me.
I even break it down for him. No need to do all of them at once! So maybe this system will work. But I still feel I shoudn’t have to babysit an adult like that. Oh well.
Actually, we’ve had a few iterations of this conversation. It gets worked out, and then circumstances change and we have it again (the last change of circumstance was his not working and then working-almost-exclusively-from-home). Also, we haven’t been married all that long - I imagine this’ll work itself out over time and repeated conversations on the same theme. As frustrations go, it’s not a huge one, but it’s a recurring and irksome one and one I saw getting pretty grossly mischaracterized upthread.
Actually, it’s because his memory is heinously bad. I’m sure he means it when he says it, but he fails to follow through, and then gets pissed with himself the next time I mention it to him because he didn’t do it the last time. Which is why he gets upset when I just do it myself - because he knows damn well he said he’d do it and then forgot and is frustrated with his own delinquency. I know this. However, it doesn’t actually help a whole lot when faced with a window that doesn’t get fixed for six months or the TV that’s apparently taken up residence in the middle of my living room floor, if you see what I’m getting at.
Pretty much. Guys my age (mid-30’s) tend to get all butthurt about it. Having grown up with the women’s movement, they on the one hand feel that they ought to be shouldering their fair share of the household work. Implying or outright stating that they’re unwilling or unable to do so…it’s an insult. On the other hand, they’re generally not so het up about it that they’re actually going to, you know, spontaneously do much housework. No matter which way you jump, you still wind up with the shit end of the stick.
My husband once snapped at me for going around behind him and tidying up after he’d made a sandwich. (In the kitchen I’d just finished cleaning. With all his stuff left lying out on the counter. With the cabinet doors standing open.) Because, love his heart, he didn’t want me running around behind him like his scullery maid. It makes him feel bad, like he’s not pulling his weight around the house. However, putting that stuff up would drop completely off his radar within 2 minutes of finishing that sandwich, never to return, and we both knew it. And I just flat-out told him, “Look, let’s be practical about this. We both know you’ll forget all about this stuff and I’ll wind up putting it away. I can do it now while I’m able to be fairly pleasant about it and get to have a clean kitchen for a little while. Or I look at it for the next three days and be completely pissy by the time I clean it up. We’ll go with whichever option you prefer, but I WILL NOT listen to you bitch at me for cleaning it up.” (In the interests of fairness, I should note that he is approximately 30 million times better about pitching in with household stuff than pretty much any other man I have ever dealt with. Also, he was having a bad day that day and would not ordinarily have fussed at me.)
I think, ultimately, it’s the feeling that you’re fucked no matter what that leads to a lot of the resentment you tend to find in threads like this. Nobody likes being put in a no-win situation, and that’s exactly how this stuff tends to play out for women. If you leave guys to their own devices, you either wind up dealing with the extra mess (or stuff that doesn’t work or whatever) and being annoyed and inconvenienced or you wind up doing everything yourself and being completely exhausted. Either way, it sucks. If you intervene, you’re either a nag, or you’re attempting to train them like animals. Those options also suck. And if you complain about how those options all suck, you’re not properly appreciative of whatever your guy is willing to do around the house and should coddle his feelings more.
Trying to figure out which of your shitty options is the least shitty sucks. And it could generally be avoided by very minimal effort on the part of the procrastinator. So when you’re prioritizing computer time or whatever over the chore you said you’d do (which I totally understand and do sometimes myself), you’re frequently also prioritizing it over not putting your partner in a shitty situation.
Very well said, crazycatlady! And I contend that if the genders are reversed, it’s just as aggravating. This has never (for me) been about Men Are Pigs or whatever. It’s the lack of follow through and the feeling that you can’t “win” that is so anger inducing.
Lee, your scotch tape story is hilarious! Thanks for sharing!
And I am simply stating that the same can be said for women, but many people don’t seem to think a woman is entitled to extra appreciation or that not receiving it excuses her inaction. This POV is infantalizing of men and aggravating to women – because, once again, if he doesn’t “do more, and more often,” it’s her fault: she didn’t show him enough appreciation. If a woman lets the kids go to school in their pajama pants, either because she doesn’t notice or because she doesn’t know pajama pants when she sees them, despite having seen the kids in them every night for months, no one says “Gosh, I bet she’d do better if her husband was more appreciative.” No one finds her inattention amusing, or excusable, because she’s not a man. There is still a clear double standard where household chores and family life is concerned. Not all men take advantage of it, and not all men who do take advantage of it do so knowingly or intentionally or consciously – but it’s still there, and generally the burden of it rests of women.
What? Who here is expressing a double standard?