The world is an amazing place, I had a very different impression of the situation at Chez Leaf (based of course, on nothing other than Leaffan’s postings on a message board, so that is to say, not much, but on the other hand, it is what we have to work with). From previous posts, I had gotten the idea that Leaffan routinely does more of the routine work around the house, the kind of work that simply has to be done, like getting the garbage together and taking it out. And I would be frustrated too.
With the household tasks mentioned here, it’s true that neither one is a big deal in and of itself, but if it’s all the time, and symptomatic of an imbalance of basic household chores, then it’s a bigger issue.
On the one hand, in every marriage there are things each person needs to let go of. Let me tell you about my husband and peanut butter. It would seem that the best peanut butter is at the bottom of the jar, even in a brand new jar. It is of distinctly higher quality than the peanut butter at the top of the jar, so he needs to dig his knife all the way down to the bottom, resulting in the entire knife blade and one half of the handle (the handle!) being covered in peanut butter. Which he does not scrape off on the side of the jar … no, once it is on the knife it is no longer pristine so it cannot touch the rest of the peanut butter, so the knife goes into the sink. With enough peanut butter on it to make an entirely new sandwich.
But I digress. The point is that I have had to let go of this because it’s NOT going to change NOR do I think it’s part of a larger campaign to make me crazy (as far as I know) or show disrespect. There are plenty of other areas where I’m sure he picks up MY slack. So despite the absolute dumbassedness of the peanut butter knife, at the end of the day I don’t feel any big disparity in the efforts we are making to live in a house together like two civilized adults.
But on the other hand, little things do make a difference. If the TP and garbage are making** Leaffan** unhappy, I think he has a reasonable expectation that if he talks to his wife about them (and to be honest, I’m assuming it’s a larger issue of keeping on top of a house with two adults and two children), she should respond in a way that shows she takes his concerns seriously. That day probably wasn’t today… perhaps neither of them were unemotional about the incidents, but at some point, in a calm conversation that is more distanced from an actual incident.
And it’s possible her response will be to point out other areas where she DOES contribute things to their home life that perhaps he was not noticing or appreciating, or maybe she says this and he still thinks he’s juggling 90% of the work … and then there’s a serious situation that they need to figure out if their relationship has a future (well, it obviously has a future as they have two kids, but what kind of future it will be remains to be seen). But it’s not going to be fixed by “Dude, get over the TP already.”
And grabbing the kids to go out to dinner is a bit of a dick move, that’s for sure. He was already making dinner, it’s not as if he stormed out, leaving the kids to forage for nuts and berries in the backyard. It IS a good idea sometimes for one person to take a walk or take a drive to cool down, but I don’t feel like you necessarily have to bring the children along with you. That’s a little too “in your face” for my tastes.
So anyway Leaffan, I’m sorry you had a bad day and I hope it continues to improve and I hope you and your wife come to a better resolution of these issues.