I'm not looking for Prince Charming, I'm looking for Prince...

[Aspidistra]

@Nava

An invitation to a couple weeks in Spain helping me move the furniture so I can be Princess Paints The House. Whenever you’re not moving furniture you get to visit Barcelona, take the day trip bus to Montserrat and the Colonia Güell (really, best bus daytrip one can take from Barcelona), or a train to Castelldefells (great beach) or Sitges (beach, shops and modernisme). And I’ve been wanting to go back to Besalú for-ever but would love to share it with someone, wanna come?

If I hadn’t blown the budget on Iceland/UK four months ago … seriously tempting!

Also tempted now to spend the rest of the afternoon browsing holiday destinations, but that would get in the way of my ambition to become Princess Passes All Her End Of Year Exams!

[Zyada]

@Nava

Only the actual correspondence (one taking into account how the “stick prince” and “stick princess” in tales are named*, and the stereotypical gender-splits of tasks) would have been more along the lines of:

I’m not looking for a Princess… I’m looking for a wife who will

Kill Spiders
…

Manage Our Finances
…

Move The Sofa
…

…what should we really look for in a wife?

• When the Prince is not the central character but is the central female character’s rescuer and eventual spouse, in English he gets to be Prince Charming (in other languages they get different names, for example in Spanish he’s the Blue Prince). When the Princess is the prize given to the central male character, why, she’s just the Princess.

You beat me to it - that’s what I get for replying to a post before reading all the responses.

I may be wrong, but I think “Prince Charming” is a Disney thing, and generally fairy tales are just “the prince”

[EscAlaMike]

@Nava

An invitation to a couple weeks in Spain helping me move the furniture so I can be Princess Paints The House. Whenever you’re not moving furniture you get to visit Barcelona, take the day trip bus to Montserrat and the Colonia Güell (really, best bus daytrip one can take from Barcelona), or a train to Castelldefells (great beach) or Sitges (beach, shops and modernisme). And I’ve been wanting to go back to Besalú for-ever but would love to share it with someone, wanna come?

By “invitation”, you mean that you are paying for the plane ticket?

[Beckdawrek]

Well, at the moment I am Princess-of-deciding what to do about holiday decorating. I am so over this crap, you wouldn’t believe. It upsets the cats, makes more work than I wanna do. Jeez-whiz. But family and the grandkids expect it. Off to the storage shed and closets I go. Once again.

[txjim]

@Beckdawrek

He doesn’t have any interest in pets. He doesn’t mind them, just not for him. My 2 little dogs love him like a god. The cats give him a wide berth.
He has a pack of hunting beagles, I think 15 or so. I haven’t counted them lately. They are not pets.

ETA, yep been married awhile.

I’ve seen the video of your neighbor

[Nava]

@EscAlaMike

By “invitation”, you mean that you are paying for the plane ticket?

If I pay for the plane ticket, will you toss in being Prince Helps Figure Out Where To Hang Pictures?

[EscAlaMike]

@Nava

If I pay for the plane ticket, will you toss in being Prince Helps Figure Out Where To Hang Pictures?

Absolutely I will!

[Zyada]

@MeanJoe

Male, married 5 years, together 10ish. We have 2 girls - 3 month old and 3 years old. And two dogs. This topic is always the biggest point of contention between us.

I do all the cooking. When we first started dating and eventually living together she helped more often but still it was 90% me. This year, in my wife’s annual “bucket list” that she makes for herself each new year she added an item to cook a meal for her family once a month. Yes, cooking one meal once a month is what she considers “bucket list”. Yes, it pisses me off that the best she could offer was one meal, once a month for a family of 3 (the newborn doesn’t count as she’d not eat it). This lasted until April. 4 meals in 4 months. Not once since.

We own a 4500+ square foot home, 5 bedrooms, 3 1/2 baths. Keeping a house of this size clean isn’t a small task. I do nearly all the cleaning, outside of a token half-assed effort for a day or two that she may put in after a large argument over the inequity in work managing our household. Yes, that also includes cleaning the bathrooms - scrubbing toilets, scrubbing shower walls/grout, cleaning mirrors and sink basins. A couple years ago, her solution to this constant pain point between us was to hire a cleaning service to come in once a month without any discussion with me first. Great, sorta. From what I see, this now gives her even further excuse to do nothing at all the rest of the month because “we have cleaners”. Secondly, I had no problem with hiring cleaners IF between the two of us and with the kids we could not keep up with the housekeeping but that was never tried because she won’t do her share of the housework. She sees hiring monthly cleaners as solving a problem. I see it as her just finding a way absolve herself of any responsibility for the work needed to maintain the home.

I also do all the laundry. All of it.

I also pay all the household bills, with exception of the monthly house cleaning, from our joint account. A joint account where none of her money is located. I earn more than her so I don’t expect a 50/50 split in household expenses. She is also a college educated professional earning a 6-figure salary. She recently also took on daycare costs with the addition of our 2nd, which is not an insignificant amount, but there has been at least 7 years prior to kids where again i shouldered nearly all of the “shared expenses” of living together.

Oh, and you know… we don’t have sex with any frequency at all.

Do you hear the years of built up resentment?

You want Prince Charming? I want a reasonably equitable relationship where I don’t feel like “the hired help”. What I have is “The Worst Roommate Ever”. If it wasn’t for our girls, I would probably have pulled the plug by now and I still worry that is exactly where we’ll end up anyway. I don’t want that, if no other reason at this point than for what it would do to our girls. I still love her, I want to be her husband. But I’m just so tired of this situation. The irony is that if any of my wife’s female friends went through these same complaints above about their husbands, every single one of them would sympathize and vilify the bastard of a boyfriend/husband.

MeanJoe

I’m sorry this is going on, and it does sound from what you say that your wife is taking advantage of you. And I apologize that this triggered you - it was never my intention to imply that I wanted someone to do all of the work for me, I just wanted to

In respect to your children, consider this: you aren’t just providing them a home, you and your wife are teaching them what they are supposed to expect from a marriage. Consider what you are currently teaching them with you and your wife’s interaction.

A lot of people in this thread have been saying that the person who is more bothered by a chore not being done will do a chore first. If that works out equitably, that’s great. But it can work out to be where one person is doing all the work because they are more quickly bothered by things not being done, or one person is doing more of the generally valued work than the other. Or one person does something a couple of times, and the other person just assumes the first one will always be doing that.

How does your wife react when you ask her to do something? (Honestly, I get the feeling you aren’t even asking. If you aren’t, why?) And if you are doing her laundry, why?

[begbert2]

@Zyada

A lot of people in this thread have been saying that the person who is more bothered by a chore not being done will do a chore first. If that works out equitably, that’s great. But it can work out to be where one person is doing all the work because they are more quickly bothered by things not being done, or one person is doing more of the generally valued work than the other. Or one person does something a couple of times, and the other person just assumes the first one will always be doing that.

You left out the last step - ‘and the person doing all the work begins to resent the lazy slob who doesn’t.’

My fear/expectation of this is a large part of why I haven’t ever deliberately* attempted to enter the dating pool. If a partner decided I wasn’t holding up my end of the ladder I would have no real argument - and I suspect I would also be strongly resistant to getting my hands dirtier than I currently do in my single life. It could get ugly - and I don’t like ugliness, particularly in relationships. Better to avoid it entirely.

• the two times it happened were by accident.

[Zyada]

@begbert2

You left out the last step - ‘and the person doing all the work begins to resent the lazy slob who doesn’t.’

My fear/expectation of this is a large part of why I haven’t ever deliberately* attempted to enter the dating pool. If a partner decided I wasn’t holding up my end of the ladder I would have no real argument - and I suspect I would also be strongly resistant to getting my hands dirtier than I currently do in my single life. It could get ugly - and I don’t like ugliness, particularly in relationships. Better to avoid it entirely.

• the two times it happened were by accident.

If you can’t communicate and negotiate such things before resentment sets in, you’re going to have problems even if your chore handling is considered completely fair by both parties.

Mind you, I don’t know what percentage of couples have their shit together to the point where they can achieve a reasonable level of that sort of healthy communication.

[johnod]

@Aspidistra

I’m Princess Carries-Spiders-Gently-To-The-Backyard-Where-They-Can-Live-Happily-Eating-Flies, mother to Princess I-will-lift-the-HEAVY-end-of-the-sofa-and-if-you-try-to-stop-me-I-will-FIGHT-YOU! What do we win?

I carry the spiders , and various bugs out too.
My girl friend says I’m a looney.
O well…

[Beckdawrek]

6’3" , 250+lbs Mr.Wrekker does not like spiders. I am not crazy about them either. I usually am the one with a paper towel, a lunch sack and an evil agenda. So I get that chore. He will shoot a snake in the yard if he thinks it’s poisonous. I am not sure I trust his book-learning on snake discerning. I’ve been here a few years and not been poisoned by viper, so I guess he is killing the bad ones. I hope.