Paul has started, for reasons unknown and unexplored, to increase the amount of housework he does. Of course theoretically I do not want to discourage this IN ANY WAY. But we are running into some issues.
When one household member starts to do a chore that has been done by a different household member for, say, thirty years, my opinion is that there needs to be discussion/training/etc. If, for example, I were to suddenly start doing the snow-blowing of the driveway, I would expect to first ask Paul to show me how to use the snow-blower. I would expect to receive an overview of the things he had learned in his years of snow-blowing, and particularly in snow-blowing our particular driveway, and then I would expect to go to him with questions or issues I encountered; I would also expect him to point out things he noticed, for example if I were doing something in a way that would damage the snow-blower or the driveway, or if I were doing things in a way that would take twice as long. This is because I start from the point of view that a chore is a learned skill, and takes effort and wisdom, and that the person doing the chore is doing it in a particular way based on experience and knowledge.
The evidence suggests that Paul is not starting from this point of view. He does not want to be taught to do the chore first; he wants to just start doing it. He does not do AT ALL WELL with any feedback or information: for example, saying “Oh no, wait, that shirt can’t go in the dryer” or “The bowls don’t get clean if they’re blocked by plates” or “The washing machine defaults to hot water; it has to be manually changed to a different temperature.” And he does not notice when the chore itself gives him feedback: for example, if he loads the dishwasher with a plate in front of a bowl, and therefore the bowl does not get any contact with soap/water, he does not notice when unloading the dishwasher that the bowl is not clean, and he puts it away unclean. If I mention that the bowl is not clean, and it’s because it was blocked by a plate, he does not learn from that either, and he continues to load it the way in which the bowl is not cleaned. If I am putting my own dishes into the dishwasher, and I notice that a bowl is blocked by a plate and move the plate or the bowl, he is exasperated and frustrated with me.
You can perhaps see the conundrum. Sorry, I guess I should have been more clear: when I said I wished Paul would do his share of the housework, I should have clarified that I wanted help that resulted in less work for me, not help that resulted in more work for me. I did not want to have to rewash dishes, replace clothing, and set up new systems to protect my things from being ruined. I did not want to deal with a prickly, irritable spouse who wanted credit for doing a chore in a way I would need to redo, and then got more prickly and irritable with me when I redid it. I did not want to have to SNEAK AROUND furtively doing and redoing chores, while no longer getting credit for doing those chores.
Some of you are perhaps wondering why I do not talk to Paul about this. Perhaps you think I have been in this relationship for thirty years without that idea occurring to me. Talking about it does not go well; I have tried many, many times, with many approaches (including saying the things as I have said them in this post), and with many different outcomes, none of which resulted in change. In the past, the combination of his behavior and the impossibility of addressing it has resulted in me actually INSISTING on doing certain chores and asking him PLEASE not to do them; this is obviously a very displeasing outcome, but was better than what we have again now for some inexplicable reason. I had thought that even if he did no housework, at least we didn’t have to fight about it anymore, and at least I was getting credit for doing it. It is hard to know what to do when we are back to this again.
I just read today’s post and then yesterday’s post and find their juxtaposition Very Interesting, even if there was no intended relationship between the two. First, as a person raised Christian, I had never encountered the “pray for something, expect tests of that thing” before, even though it makes complete sense, and I am sort of boggled. I am going to be thinking about this (“It is hard to fully shake that view of the universe: if I want to improve something, I expect to encounter extra opportunities to cultivate improvement, deity or no.”) for a very long time. Some tests are easy and some tests are infuriating.
Re: Infuriating: ARGH PAUL WHY. You have my sincerest sympathy and irritation although I have no solutions at all.
My husband is uncoachable too. He takes any feedback that is not flowing with profuse gratitude and encouragement to be a criticism and responds angrily. I think about divorce over this frequently because it makes him seem like a petulant child and I am not attracted to little boys. Instead I use natural consequences- like if he was a kid. I put the dirty dishes back in the sink and tell him he needs to re-wash them doubling his work. Subtitle hints never work. If the dishes going back in the sink don’t work I might go nuclear and serve him dinner on the dirty dishes/silverwear. I have a few other examples but it would irritate me to enumerate them.
I force our boys to each play a sport so they learn to take feedback (unlike him).
Serve him dinner on the dirty dishes HAHAHAHAHAHA – truly I laughed out loud. Winning. :)
YES. I too find the petulance unattractive in the extreme. What a good idea about sports; I wish I had done that for the kids.
What prompted Paul to start doing chores? Sometimes people do things to irritate others on purpose, like he MUST know all these things about you after 30 years – we know this about you – and we’ve only known you for like 15 years (or more? 20? who’s counting). It doesn’t seem likely that he suddenly was thinking, “Oh, I should do more to help around the house…” but if he did: why? Has he done something he feels shame about so he’s trying to alleviate it by suddenly being a ‘helpful’ spouse? I don’t know. I’m with you though, all of that is enraging and would make me want to move out and get my own place, without leaving a forwarding address.
I have wondered about this, too. I have heard that men have a hormonal shift around the same age as women go through menopause, and that it can make them more domestic as their testosterone decreases?? Maybe this is bull. But I have wondered, especially as some of my friends’ husbands start fussing about paint colors and furniture choices and vacuum cleaners and so forth.
I am not sure how to productively add to this conversation because I suspect I am the Paul in my relationship. My husband has very specific ways of doing many of the things around the house, and my patience for being taught how to do them by him is very low – there is an alternate universe where I married someone else, or never married at all, and I do not think I am starving as the house burns around me in that universe. But it is also hard to make direct comparisons of the specificity of my husband’s way of doing things vs. yours, and the depths of my incompetence vs. Paul’s, so maybe I am identifying with Paul and it isn’t warranted. And we’ve been married for less time, so it seems unlikely that I’d have any particular insight. Some things have gotten better with time though. He’s given up on correcting me for thinking it might be ok to sit on my own bed (it squishes the fluffiness of the comforter), and I have more respect for the benefits of chemical cleaning supplies than I used to.
But for some reason, folding the laundry is my job. And when he does it, he does it wrong.
Yes, I can’t know either, but I suspect you are not a Paul. If Paul just had a different way of doing dishes that resulted in clean dishes, there would be no issue here; if he did the laundry in a way that resulted in nothing ruined, but liked to use a different water temperature / wash cycle / detergent / whatever, there’d be no problem. It’s not that he and I have different ways of doing a chore and I want him to do it MY way; it’s that he does it a way that results in the chore objectively not being done (e.g., dishes still dirty)—or worse, as when things are ruined. I suspect you and I could be perfectly happy roommates; I have no negative feelings at all about squashing comforters, especially on one’s own bed!
My guess is also that I am less extreme than Paul. My husband is a “do everything just so so that nothing ever breaks or gets damaged” type of person, and I am a “I am willing to be careful up to a point, but also if something breaks that might be a sign it was too delicate/finicky for my life” kind of person. But HE is allowed to have things that are too delicate/finicky for my life, and I try to be careful of them. But if he tried to replace something that I used equally with something I had to be very careful of, I would be annoyed. (We just got our first new car ever. I am not allowed to lean on it because it might damage the paint. I am trying, even though the paint is going to get scratched eventually and we don’t live somewhere with snow so I am not sure how much it matters how long we put it off).
I am also intrigued by what it means that the dishes aren’t getting clean in the dishwasher, and how Paul thinks about it…hard caked-on bits that are technically sterile so it’s silly (in his mind) to worry about them? Filmy residue that he’s not noticing/doesn’t think is important? Or does he have the same standards for how clean dishes should be, but somehow thinks it makes sense to put dishes that are going to need to be washed again away initially (to maintain momentum on a task), and then deal with them later – maybe when he is looking for a dish and has used all the actually clean ones (I am pretty sure I have done this with hard caked-on bits before).
Although whatever his logic, I don’t think plate cleanliness is something you should have to compromise on.
Have you come across the Fair Play book/method? That has the idea of an agreed minimum standard of jobs. But I suspect if Paul was willing to read a book or do the card divvying bit of the book / cards then you wouldn’t be having this problem!
You can’t lean on it? I understand being super careful about not scratching/scraping the paint, but you can’t even LEAN on it?!? Holy crap!
I very much appreciate that this is someone’s reaction.
I think leaning on your own car and sitting on your own bed are things that should be allowed!!! I do not think you are a Paul, for what it’s worth, Kerry <3
My husband has a fancy- ass car and he won’t let me open the trunk because I used the spoiler on it as a handle once, and he complains that I close the air vent the A/C is coming out of “too aggressively” when I tap it shut.
But you really shouldn’t complain about this, because some people have husbands who never load the dishwasher. And some people’s husbands are DEAD.
(I have been reading long enough to remember you writing about the exact same problem with Paul, and that was the response of one commenter!!
Anyway, I was probably 18 then. Now I am 39 and have my own husband who also does not notice when his dishwasher work has resulted in dirty dishes. Life is a rich tapestry.)
“some peoples husbands are DEAD!” *crying emoji*
LMAO
I love that I’m not the only one who remembers this. Wasn’t that an amazing moment in being online?
Right up there with Temerity Jane’s story of having a UTI and needing to pee on the side of a highway and the corresponding comment of “Well, at least you HAVE kidneys!!”
Another treasure!
I remember this too (or at least, I think it was the same post), and i think about it ALL THE TIME. What i remember was the commenter telling you that you were expecting too much, and he could do it however he wanted, at least he was doing something. And you were patiently trying to explain that there’s a difference between doing it a different way and doing it wrong (i.e. the dishes weren’t getting clean), but the commenter wasn’t having any of it.
Anyway, I still think of this all the time, and frequently have this argument with myself inside my head (there’s a difference between doing it wrong and doing it differently than I’d want!). I have a lot of arguments with myself inside my head.
It’s the expected chore credit that drives me nuts. My DH will wash dishes, without being asked, in fact even when I ask him specifically NOT to wash dishes, and then expect me to be impressed with his Helpfulness. It’s not reducing my household workload to wash a couple plates – I like to fill the dishwasher so it’s worth running it at the end of the day! Moreover, he does not wash them with soap and hot water, it’s more of a rinse. There are MANY other little chores I would like him to do, but no, he prefers to wash a couple dishes and give himself a gold star. We have talked about it, futilely.
“There are MANY other little chores I would like him to do, but no, he prefers to wash a couple dishes and give himself a gold star.”
This made me laugh in a way I needed. Thank you!
Ugh, I’m sorry. This sounds so frustrating. My first thought was that this must be weaponized incompetence (the thing where one person does a chore badly on purpose so the other person will just give up and do it for them), but it seems like he WANTS to do the chores himself??? So I got nothing. What the hell, Paul.
Maybe it’s a new fun kind of weaponised incompetence, where you do something badly and then complain when you’re told it was done badly, just for the delight of driving your spouse insane?
I have no idea why I spelled weaponized like I am British when I am not, in fact, British.
The dishwasher thing drives me absolutely BONKERS!! How many times have I explained, that no, you can’t load it that way. How many times has he watched me re-arrange whatever insane configuration he has created in there and he STILL doesn’t get it.
I swear there should be some kind of dishwasher loading course before you are allowed to get married. Because this will be the thing that sends me completely over the edge.
I wonder if perhaps this helpfulness energy could be distractible. Could you put a snack, a pen and a Sudoku book on top of the dishwasher? Could you purchase a Paul-sized hamster wheel?
“Paul-sized hamster wheel”. Snort!
Yeah, no, I am not going to try to give advice on this. Like you said, thirty years. I am going on the assumption that you just need a place to put this – my blog is where I put stuff like this. Although Meg’s comment is funny and cute. My husband usually does the dishwasher, and for the most part does it really well – the only thing about ‘dishwasher’ that irritates me when I hear it is remembering how, when he told me that the flower plates from IKEA could not go on the bottom rack because the petals fell down onto the heating element, he only had to tell me once and I never put a flower plate on the bottom rack again. However, when I told him that bathing suits don’t go in the dryer or that I would prefer that canned food be put in a tupperware before going in the refrigerator, rather than a can being put in with tinfoil on it, I had to tell him, um, somewhat more than once.
I am so mad on your behalf
I had a rather enjoyable commiseration session with the appliance salesman a couple years ago on the subject of loading dishwashers properly. We came to the conclusion that the people who had to do the dishes as a chore when they were growing up were far more concerned with loading the dishwasher such that the largest number of dishes were able to fit with the least number of dishes needing to be re-washed. Because, as a child, did you WANT to have to re-clean dishes or have more to handwash or have to remember to empty and reload because you were inefficient at loading? No!
When we moved into this house, that came with a dishwasher, just over a year ago, the previous owners had left a package of all the instruction booklets that came with the appliances. And those appliances were all only one year old, so much nicer than the last time I had a dishwasher.
So I Read The Instructions.
And there was a helpful “loading diagram”. It showed where to put everything for maximum efficiency.
I digested this information.
My husband of 31 years “does not read instructions” as a point of MANLINESS. And he loads the dishwasher wrong.
If I go to turn a plate around, or move a dish (and he can see me) he gets “snippy”, and says that he will leave it to me. (And I think “YES!”) But then he does it again the next week.
WHY???
I did ask him. He said that he doesn’t think it matters to the outcome. So he won’t change what he’s doing if he doesn’t think it matters. That it matters To Me is obviously unimportant.
Oh gosh that last paragraph. Yes.
My wife works full time and I work part time, so the bulk of the housework falls to me to either do or delegate to the two young adults living in the house. But in about six months, my wife is retiring and I am not, so we’ve discussed redistributing domestic responsibilities, no specifics so far, just saying we will do it. I have wondered a lot about how it will shake out. I am not anticipating anything like this, but it is a big unknown.
This is too relatable! The dynamic of not being able to take criticism was in my family household when I was a child and I’ve been guilty of being overly defensive regarding suggestions or criticisms with family members, even my spouse. I *think* I’ve gotten better over time. It’s impossible to be functional at my workplace without accepting through constructive criticism. And I had to reorient myself at home too just to get stuff more efficienty together as a family. Certain types of communication / criticism get my defenses up still and I have to watch for that.
I tend to jump to defensiveness first as well, and it’s haaard to break that pattern. In my family now (just me and the kiddo) we start a constructively critical sentence with “With all the love in my heart…” It’s like a cue that we notice the effort, the following sentence comes only with good intentions, and yet there is still room for improvement. And we both say it to each other.
Okay writing it out sounds cheesy, but it helps us, lol.
I love the phrasing and intention with your preamble to criticism. Softly worded constructive criticism lands so much better!
Love a husband commiseration opportunity! Because mine is not dead either but it won’t be long if he keeps washing the (1 or 2) dishes in the sink by hand instead of just putting them in the dishwasher (maybe even unloading it first if necessary!?). His way sounds nice to a point but the thing is he NEVER EVER EVER puts the clean dishes he’s left in the drainer away in the cabinets. So the drainer has random dishes in it all the time that I THEN am expected to put away because he also never takes them out of there and reuses them PLUS the clean ones in the dishwasher or still there for me to unload. So if I don’t do something all our dishes will either be dirty or in a giant pile in the dish drainer.
Thank you for listening! And mad respect to any one who serves his/her partner dinner on a dirty plate that they washed wrong:) If I could bear to leave dishes to pile up for weeks I certainly would but I CAN’T. However now I have new inspiration to find a different petty way to take out my frustration:)
I am frustrated and annoyed on your behalf and understand there isn’t a satisfying solution to this issue.
I forced my husband to listen to Fair Play by Eve Rodsky on audiobook together on some of our longer car trips. I’m not suggesting that Paul would take kindly to the suggestion that he read it, but you might enjoy reading it and feel validated in your perspective.
One of my biggest takeaways was an “agreed upon minimum standard of care for tasks” – I had to understand that for the chores that husband was responsible for, he got to choose how to do them. But we did have to come to an agreement on what “acceptable” meant for both of us. Wiping down the shower with your wet hand while you are showering yourself was not acceptable for “cleaning the shower” (yes, really, I had to have this conversation).
I get where your coming from, and can see your frustration. Especially with the dishwasher ( I don’t have one), this happens at work. People just haphazardly put their stuff in their, and sometimes when I go to empty it; things aren’t always clean, or they put a plastic bowl in there and it is full of water. My husband basically does all the chores, since he is retired and I am not yet. We have been married 45 years. Now I don’t really care anymore how he does the chore and he doesn’t care how I do it, as long as it happens, but it hasn’t always been that way. However, I do get irritated when he does the laundry, but doesn’t hang them up to dry (we don’t have a dryer), because to me that is the hardest/longest part. He also doesn’t put them away either. Then he says, oh I did the laundry. But I don’t want to complain because I really appreciate the effort. He has been for a few months this summer, and I have to do everything.
Oh for goodness sakes! It’s like I forgot how to write. “stuff in there” not their, and He has been gone (not dead, just traveling) not been.
This post set me off. My husband and I met with a marriage counselor in the early days. I mentioned that when said husband did the dishes they were not fully clean, like pieces of dried food or whatever would still be on them and he would try and place them in the cabinets with the clean dishes. The male therapist looked at me and said that people have different ways of doing things. Doing dishes differently didn’t mean they were done the wrong way.
It has been over 10 years since that experience and I am still angry about it. Yes, there are some things that can be done multiple ways and still be ok. But when it comes to if something is actually clean or not, there is not room for debate! If I went to a restaurant and was given a glass with a previous users lipstick on it, I would not accept that the dishwasher just had a different definition of what clean is!
We did not return to that particular therapist and the dishes being clean, or not!, is still an issue.
I am resisting the urge to relive the glory of earlier posts on the topic or various moments of point-missing in the comments, though they are burned on my heart.
I am not expounding on the decision tree of outcomes when I ask my spouse to do things differently (as in correctly), though I have composed one in my head.
I will say that I do chores that need doing in a way that makes things better, and my husband does the chores he wants to do in the way he wants to do them.
I wish I had advice for you on this, but I just signed divorce papers last week because my ex refused to mask in crowded spaces (I have chronic asthma) and threw a hissy fit every time the cleaners came if they so much as moved a pike of his crap an inch to the left. We never had the cleaners go into his bedroom so there were dust bunnies as big as my hand.
And he never really washed his hands after going to the bathroom and before cooking. More of a dibble in the water from the faucet.
And when he wiped down a counter, it was basically just a swipe, leaving all the crumbs still lying there.
It was either divorce him or kill him, I could not live with him one more week when he brought COVID home last December. And frankly, I should have divorced him 20 years ago.
I internally rubbed my hands in commiseration anticipation and the comments have not disappointed.
My husband started taking antidepressants for anxiety a couple of years ago and is in his Self Care Era. This means that, in addition to being a lot better to live with, he has started doing things differently, mostly good: he makes the bed when he gets up, he added conditioner and beard oil to his personal regimen, most astonishing of all HE BECAME VEGETARIAN!
But there was awhile there when he decided to start doing his own laundry (probably at least partly because he doesn’t know which of my and my daughter’s clothes need to be washed a certain way and/or hung to dry), which meant that he no longer felt he had to help with his usual folding of family laundry. So I still had to sort and wash the rest of the household clothes and linens, but now I didn’t necessarily have enough of any one category to have a full load and we were therefore doing more laundry loads overall and using more soap/water/energy than before. So we had a talk and mostly went back to the old way. The only annoying holdover is that he is no longer in the habit of taking dirty underwear and socks out of his hockey bag and bringing them up to the hamper – they just lie in a smelly pile beside his bag in the basement until I sweoop them up to add to the laundry on my way by.
I am still waiting for “self care” to extend into “care of my surroundings” so he will actually start more frequently doing the chores that have evolved as “his” over the years. I’m lucky if he vacuums more than 2x a year, but I refuse to pick up yet more slack around the house. Nor will I start mowing the lawn, which he hasn’t done in over a month. I do SO MUCH, I just REFUSE to start doing what’s supposed to be his stuff too!
Guess whose lawn still hasn’t been mowed…