More than one person mentioned that she does either yardwork, or is responsible for the care of her own vehicle. The friends of mine at work who had this unequal type of relationship usually ended up making the appointment for both spouses’ vehicles for tune-ups, etc., although a few of them had married home garage mechanics.
Some people divide the home chores in the manner Omniscient describes: lawn care, carpentry and mechanics to the husband and everything else to the wife. If that seems equitable to those people, that is fine.
I have NEVER been a neat freak, as anyone who comes to my house unannounced will attest to. My first ex-husband spent most of his time after work in front of the television, and if I had done that also, we wouldn’t have been able to wade through the mess.
Omniscient then goes on to say
I myself have never used sex for leverage, but I have often been too damn tired and depressed to be very receptive to sexual overtures. That could be another way of looking at what the person you quoted was talking about.
Omniscient, for someone who has only observed your parents’ labor division, you seem to have a lot to say about this, and use fairly strong language:
for someone who has not dealt with this outside the mom/dad dynamic. Does this touch a nerve for some reason?
Why would a 24 year old who has never lived with anyone other than his parents feel that he has the right to call two pages worth of posts a “crap wagon?” Do you really believe you are omniscient?
How can people not talk about this before they get married? Every family I have ever met handles this differently, both in theory and in practice. It is important to know if you want to be happy.
My wife’s family was a whole lot like mine in that if something needs to be done, you do it. If one person thinks it needs to be done, and the other doesn’t, you look at how busy each person is, and where there is slack, and assign it or drop it accordingly. There is a limit to how much can be done in a day (kids change this), so sometimes things get left undone a while. I also see it slow as our parents get older, but the same basic aggreement holds in that they both still do the work they decide to do. We also learn to do things better by sharing experiences, and no tasks get dropped if one person is out of town for a while.
What I really have trouble picturing is one person sitting in front of the TV while the other is working in the next room. If they both went to work that day, how could this be considered fair? If one spouse had a much longer workday, or is sick or something then you cut them a little slack, but what sort of neanderthal (male or female) would assign all the work around the house by gender? Why not interest, or talent, or available time, or anything other than what sort of tackle a person has in their clothes?
This is just bizzare thinking. How is it expressed?
“You have tits, so you are oviously better at cleaning. I got dangling bits, so I am skilled with power tools. I watch TV now. You work. Uggh.”
That is as silly as needing a penis in order to be a priest. “You have to have one so you can avoid using it.” Right. Got it. Perfectly logical. Male horses got big ones, so they would make better priests then, right?
Well I think attitudes are changing. I have never met one Guy in my whole life(26 years) who complained that his wife wasn’t keeping the house clean enough, and quite honestly I assumed it was mostly a creation of drama. I think the biggest problem is perceptions of nessasary. Unsanitary is bad, but clutter isn’t nessasarily, for example, raw chicken in sink, should be thrown out, magazines on coffee table are fine.
Here’s a serious question for people who were talking about old stereotypes. How many females have decided to clean the house because someone was comming over? And how many times did the male person in the house say “who cares what it looks like, they’re our friends”?(something I have seen dozens of times) I see more women contributing to the stereotype that it is a woman’s job to keep the house clean, becuase they act like it is a failure on their part if its not spotless, then I see men. Doing 90% of a job that the other person doesn’t see as required doesn’t earn you points, because the other person just sees that they now have to do 10% of something stupid.
One of the coolest living situations I was ever in involved 12 friends living in 4 apartments next to each other. We just had kind of an unspoken barter system where people would do favors for the other people based on what we enjoyed doing. I like working on cars, computers, fixing stereos and the like. All of the stuff me and my two roomates did(we were the only three guys, the other 9 were chicks), carrying heavy stuff, fixing things, snaking drains, was all of the traditionally manly stuff. Some of the girls would decide to cook everybody dinner, or clean our apartment while we were gone. There was no formal declaration of duties, people just kind of did what was nessasary for the community and they liked(well I didn’t like snaking drains, but I didn’t really mind to much which is why I ended up doing it), so everybody was happy.
The next semester one of the guys and girls moved in together and suddenly sparks started flying. The girl complained that he never cleaned up. Well no shit, when we had an apartment when it got to a really bad point, then we cleaned, but someone else always cleaned it up long before then. As soon as they were formalized into a normal living arangement, the girl assumed that sudenly cleaning was going to be a high prority for him, even though she had said many times that she enjoyed cleaning, and wanted thing spotless. In fact he was really annoyed that she cleaned so often, but he didn’t mention anything to her because he thought is was important to her, he already felt he was compromising by letting her clean up so often. Needless to say it didn’t work out. I guess the point which I lost a while ago is, don’t assume things are become formalized just because they become normal, and just because you think something is important doesn’t mean it is.
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I’ll say this, it makes me nasueaous to listen to anyone using sex as leverage or holding out as punishment. Sex is a expression of love and lust, as well as a damn bit of fun. The second it turns into a tool in your immature power struggle, I think the passion in the relationship has officially burned out. I don’t intend to ever be in that type of relationship, if I am I won’t be staying that way.
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Yes, sex is an expression of love and lust, but how likely is it that someone feels either of these things if they’re angry, exhausted and feeling taken advantage of? I’m making a wild generalization here, but I think men tend to have an easier time separating sex from everything else than women do.To use a example of a day that gets me pissed, if I get up in the morning, take the kids to school,work all day,pick kids up from afterschool,leave one home with my husband while I take the other to some activity,get home around 8:30-9pm to find that my husband hasn’t made sure homework was done or cooked dinner ( or anything else except watch TV),make sure the homework is done while he cooks,do some laundry and get ready for the next day, when I finally fall into bed, I want sleep, not sex.I get a few days in a row like that, I’m so mad I wouldn’t be interested in sex even if I wasn’t tired. On the other hand, if I was ever able to get my husband to follow that schedule for a few days, he’d be mad as hell, but I don’t think it would affect his sexual desires at all.
Forgive me, I don’t have a very permissive attitude when it comes to man bashing. Guess in your eyes that means I have issues huh?
Back up a bit there Spidey. I said I was 24, and only had my parents as a reference to clarify that I was single and haven’t had a string of marriages to speak on. I have in fact lived in quite varied, and complicated situations. In college I dealt with no less than 20 different male and female roommates excluding the 50 frat guys in the house, so I know a little about managing chores and understanding male vs. female opinions on several topics. Between 1 roommate dorm life, 1-2 roommate frat life, 3 roommate apartment life and a house with 7 guys and 6 girls sharing 2 bathrooms, 1 kitchen and a living room, I’d say I have plenty of right to speak my mind. Sorry if no ones ever questioned if you might be being unfair, but when I see a one sided arguement, I’m not going to pat you on the head and tell you everythings ok.
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You’d be amazed at the things people don’t talk about before getting married. I have a friend who didn’t talk to his (now ex)wife about whether she wanted kids. He did, and assumed she did, too. She didn’t. Frankly, I was amazed when he told me this, because he’s very intelligent in many ways. Now, I tease him about whether he asks the woman on a first date “I was wondering if you’d mind having my baby.” He told me that once he brought up having kids on a first date. I said, “There wasn’t a second date, right?” Of course I was right.
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FTR, I never meant to imply that you should always be in the mood for sex. It is rational to assume that these types of domestic issues would numb the desire in the bedroom, and thats acceptable (but I’d damn well hope you have some motivation to fix the problem), but I am stressing that whne you start vocalizing these feelings as the reason your not in the mood, and possibly being straightforward in saying you need to clean in order to get sex is the lowest level a relationship can reach.
While it’s true that I offered my perspective on what how some males take advantage of a situation, not every poster agreed with that. I spoke from my experience, personal and observed.
Are you saying that you don’t believe it every happens? Do you believe that all men are perfect paragons who, when both spouses are working, contribute fully to the childcare and running of a household?
As you can see if you carefully read the posts on this thread, there are several men who do try their best to do this, and I and others express our admiration for them.
So where is the one-sided argument? Should somebody be sticking up for the poor guy who wants to come home and vegetate on the couch while his spouse, who has also been working all day, cooks the meals and cares for the kids? In the area where I live, this does happen. I am not talking about the neatness of the house here. I am talking about guys who refuse to change a diaper, wash a dish, cook a meal or run any laundry because they STILL believe that is woman’s work. And it doesn’t matter if they do all the outside work, because if he still has time to lay around and watch her work, it ain’t equal.
You say
How can you question it when all you know is what I told you about myself, and my friends? Are you questioning my slant on things because you don’t think it is possible for things like this to happen?
Hopefully, because things are changing (slower around here than in some places, it seems), this will be something that you and people of your age won’t have to deal with. But that doesn’t mean it never happened to anyone.
…there is no need to hold a telethon for MisterTot and his little guy. I wasn’t 100% serious when I made that remark, sometimes you get so damned frustrated and you say things that might be misconstrued.
Maybe I’m deluding myself, but it seems that all marriages have issues, this is ours. We came into this marriage with our own baggage, and frankly, I don’t see it all disappearing overnight. And what worked for us 7, 5 or even 1 year ago, might not work today. We’ve both changed a lot during our time together, and constant readjustment is needed to keep us happy as a couple.
Omni, I appreciate your points, but frankly, I don’t see any man-bashing going on in here. MisterTot bashing, maybe, but he’s a big boy, he can handle it. I think it’s been very clear that each of us is talking only about our own situations.
And sometimes bitching about housework is just bitching about housework. In my case, I don’t think it is a sign of some underlying weakness in our relationship. A marriage can be strong and still have problems. In our case, I think it’s part of the growth process, and that in the end our marriage will be strengthened by figuring out how to overcome these problems.
We both work. He does the housework and yardwork. It seems to make him happy. I do things that would make his back hurt, like mopping the kitchen floor.
I am very lucky.
I think it’s been very clear that each of us is talking only about our own situations.