Yeah, yeah. For richer or poorer. In sickness or health. Love honor and obey. All that stuff they actually put in the marriage vows.
But they tend to leave out the quirky yet critical to partnership happiness stuff. As in:
The stronger person HAS to willingly open jars. No formal requests to be needed, just holding out the jar does it.
Ditto for the taller person needing to fetch stuff from the high shelves.
The less-flusterable person must step in and handle things when a relative is having an emotional breakdown. Yes, even when it’s the other person’s relative.
The more dexterous person does the gift wrapping.
The less queasy one gets to clean up the vomit (and major baby diaper blowouts.)
My wife is the physically strong one. I am dextrous and handy. So when renovating, she does all the ripping out tiles and clearing up the mess, I do all the edge painting, picture hanging and wiring in new lights.
In our house (no babies or pets) it’s fairly straightforward. My husband does all the cooking and grocery shopping for the household, and about 90% of the cleaning and yard work (weeding, watering, etc.). I do everything that involves dealing with outside parties (governments, contractors, financial institutions, utilities, medical, vacation arrangements) including all computer interactions, handyman chores, bill paying, anything requiring height or strength. I go with him to his doctor’s appointments to help with communication (mostly to make sure he doesn’t misunderstand doctor instructions). He drives himself, I drive myself or the two of us together.
My wife has weird anxieties and phobias about sensitive body parts and bodily functions.
All through our kids’ younger childhoods, for example, I always trimmed their nails. My wife couldn’t do it. Gave her the heebie jeebies.
Currently, our younger kid is dealing with those stubborn little warty things on the bottoms of her feet. So it’s my job to apply the salicylic solution and trim out the dead skin every week. My wife doesn’t even want to know it’s happening.
My partner has terrible eyesight so it’s my job to read things on the tv to him, like signs and screens. It’s also usually my job to drive but I’d do that anyway cuz I always know where I’m going and I like to drive.
I pay all the bills and keep our financial house in order. My wife has never had much interest in that. Neither do I, but someone has to do it.
My wife does all the cooking. The only thing I know how to make is tuna fish salad, which I make to perfection. She also does the laundry. I used to help with that but we got new machines and I’ve never learned how to use them.
I take almost all the care of our cats. One of them must take a pill twice a day to control seizures, evenly spaced. I get up every morning at 7, give him his pill, wash their dishes and feed the two of them. I give them their lunch and occasional snacks during the day, and a midnight snack before bedtime. Every evening at around 7, I give him his second pill and give them their dinner. I also clean their litter boxes and clean up their occasional barf.
Despite all this, when the younger one, the one that gets the pill, wants to snuggle, he snuggles with my wife. Cats just don’t appreciate all you do for them.
I take care of the yard and any outside stuff around the house (e.g. small projects, finding contractors for this or that), and minor maintenance for the cars (e.g. topping off the tires before a trip, fluids monitoring, wiper blade replacement, determining it’s time for new tires). She does all the financial stuff (e.g. taxes, paying bills, managing household accounts (altho we share management of the long-term savings)) and she does most of the cooking and grocery shopping, as well as interior decorating (if you can call it that LOL). We shared decently most of the child-rearing duties, altho she did most of the doctor visit-type things since I was working. Note that we are and have been a single-income household for the last 25 years by plan (me being the breadwinner).
My wife does the taxes; I want nothing to do with it and would likely screw it up. She has a degree in finance and I have a degree of certainty that I’d end up in jail. Also, I’ve never been able to balance a checkbook. It’s probably because I figure that as long as the check amount entered is in the right neighborhood, it’s good enough, which is like nails on a chalkboard for her.
I handle the two above. My wife is quite vertically challenged and I’m about average male height with longer-than-average arm length!
A subset of the first is that I get to take the trash out, due to weight and the difficulty of manhandling the largish container out of the garage around the cars when they’re both parked inside.
I load the dishwasher, because I care about efficiency in maximizing the load. She unloads. I handle washing and drying most of the laundry, especially since cleaning the lint screen out of the dryer weirds her out. She puts away 90 % of the laundry because I hate folding clothes!
I am in charge of all weird night-time cat noises and freakouts until 12 midnight. She is in charge from 12:01 until 6am.
I am in charge of all software based updates, computing, and troubleshooting (phones and computers). She is in charge of all small, fiddly bit of detail work on user-serviceable mechanical devices and electronics (I have stupid fingers I’m afraid).
I do most of the cleaning (laundry, dusting, vaccing, dishes, etc), light repairs and investments/retirement planning, my wife does the shopping and (most of the) cooking. She also deals with making doctor appointments, handling the taxes and other situations where calls are necessary (I hate talking on the phone). I’ve handed off the pet-poop duty, shoveling, mowing and weed-whacking to the teenaged Lendervedders, but before they were old enough, those duties fell to me.
we have very few rules, each of us just fills in where our natural abilities, interests, and availability take us. So, yes, I generally do the shopping, cooking, and house maintenance, and she generally handles most of the cleaning and school duties for the kids, but each of us will step in as needed for the other. The key is to not “keep score” or try to make sure everything is absolutely equal all the time, because that way lies resentment.
Well, that’s a bit unrealistic. I’m not 25 anymore.
I load the dish washer and help clean up the kitchen, Vacuum, help with folding laundry, hang clothes in the closet, kill the bugs and mice. I mow the yard and other maintenance around the house.
My partner unloads the dish washer, mops, sorts laundry & loads the washer/dryer, cooks, dusts, and organizes the house.
We split a lot of tasks – washing dishes, taking out trash, planning and cooking dinner, putting away the dishes, feeding the cat, washing clothes, cleaning.
However, I get to do the shoveling of snow (we all pitch in, but I’m clearly the main snow guy), raking of leaves, general hardware upkeep around the house (carpentry, plumbing, repairs). I’m also the Opener of Stubborn Lids and Caps. And the Main Chauffeur if it’s a long drive.
