I was scrolling instagram and saw a post by one of my favorite follows, Paige Connell, talking about how there is an epidemic of women married to “good guys” who are overwhelmed and drowning.
I see this being a trendy subject lately, and to cut through it, what happens if she goes away for a few days, a week?
Mostly nothing. Dad gets done what is needed, that's what I've been hearing. The kids are relaxed and not stressed as they are not on the forced-bataan death march of sippy cups. Some snacks were missed, everyone dealt. Dishes were missed sometimes. No one cared.
This implies 1) These things didn't really need to be done, we should prioritize. 2) The standards are all set by women, who then assume, demand, invent, that this-thing-they-made-up-today is now set down by God. His opinion or preference is so irrelevant as to be laughable. 3) He IS saying it's stressful. But because modern life has very few places to trim back, what he's telling you is to trim back where you can and just decide it's okay, because your LIFE is more important than Instagramming your clean sink no one will ever see but you. That is, he's worried about you, the kids, being STRESSED. And if the only way to keep that below redline is skipping the dishes then skip them. This "Option B" section is not being seen, or availed. In fact, it's being divorced so she can continue with MORE stress in another house alone. In a reversal of gender expectations He cares more about you and the kids as PEOPLE than some pointless objects like folded laundry.
How can I know? Well in my house, I did the dishes, the laundry, the putting away, the lawn, the plumbing, the roof, the toilets, a host of other things. This was not good enough. So with a housecleaner, these were done professionally. That's fine, I can do other things as well. What happened? Instantly the LEVEL of clean doubled, to permit the same amount of stress and unhappy. House objectively cleaner, wife sadder and madder than before, in a stress arms-race. Not everyone gets to cross compare A-B like that. *The stress wasn't from the house at all*, it was probably from work but spilling over to a free-floating cloud of dissatisfaction.
Again, this is what men are trying to tell you. Probably in words at first, but as those will never work, in actions, by showing you things are still okay. You go away: the kids are fine, everything gets done somehow.
Which path is the "Good spouse/Good parent" path? Yelling at everyone all day and getting divorced, or taking it down a notch? Possibly both but consider my premise.
I think this is important. Obviously there are many cases where the article DOES apply, but I also think there are many cases where the wife needs to consider whether
a. The standards of the household are reasonable and mutually agreed upon (noting that the husband and wife will not always agree but you have to find some kind of middle ground that both parties can be ok with)
b. She is allowing her husband to take ownership of the tasks he is doing. I.e. not micromanaging.
That's not to say that women should accept husbands who don't do anything, or have really low standards. But it is also true that if you're stressing over every minor detail (for example, I think I once saw a social media post of a woman dragging her husband for dressing their toddler in an outfit that didn't look good) or constantly telling your husband that the way he does things is wrong, the answer is not simply for him to become exactly like you.
Well, I need to focus on getting my shirt buttons properly matched. And some of the more tense micro moments of my marriage have been as I’ve struggled to fasten the tiny hook at the top of my wife’s dress.
Hilarious! I recognise that it's probably easier for me to see how silly this stuff gets when it comes to clothing because I don't really care that much about style on myself or others so my standards for a child would probably be "clean, weather appropriate, comfortable, done".
I do have other areas that I would struggle with more, most notably food (I want my future kids to be healthy) and cleanliness of the house (being in a messy or dirty environment stresses me out).
Just to come back to this with some extra thoughts - I do think men in this situation would be much better off confronting this head-on and saying, "sorry, your expectations on X are unreasonable and we need to find some kind of compromise here" than begrudgingly agreeing and then not living up to expectations.
It's much easier to trust and respect someone who has boundaries and lays them out than someone who can be steamrolled and then just fails to follow through. And I think part of the problem here is that these wives don't trust or respect their husbands, at least in certain domains.
I'm not saying that's entirely the husbands fault - I imagine that in most cases it's a vicious cycle where the wife had certain expectations, the husband didn't live up to them, the wife starts micromanaging which makes the husband step back more and not take ownership, spiral downwards.
Damn. Yeah it's probably a high risk strategy - either you end up in a better situation or you end up divorced. Keeping quiet is the low risk low reward option.
There was just a Note on how when the woman stepped back to trust and let him act, her stress vanished and this relationship was restored, but I can't bookmark everything. Let's just say that's one possible path.
Been with my wife for 17 years, love her dearly, have the same convos about this stuff at least annually. Never changes. Including being exasperated by it never changing. It’s not always the men, ladies.
This is because of the phrase "if you want something done correctly, do it yourself." Men live by this. If you want something done some specific, assanine way, then do it yourself. Men do this all the time, and don't take it as an offense. They may be a bit irritated, but they do it. They figure the women are doing the same, yet some women take offense when they voluntarily took it on.
This is also the lack of understanding that what is important to one person, may not be important to the other. You have to compromise and meet halfway.
I'm somewhat traditional, so I take full responsibility for the condition of my family. I strategically manage my wife's stress. I jokingly call it, "wife maintenance". I will do some of her normal responsibilities, massage her, take the kids, or do SOMETHING to relieve pressure on her short-term. I try and preemptively massage her before her hips and back lock up entirely. I actually complain when she doesn't tell me before it's bad. Sometimes she needs to be "pounded" into the mattress and sleep in the next morning. I know if I don't preemptively reduce stress levels before it crosses the line, it's like flooding her engine. It's going to take longer for her to get back into the swing of things, and then I get overloaded worse than I already am. Then there are fights like in the article.
Yes, my point was not that no husbands slack. But they're so battered and berated that I can't caveat my statement upfront because it'll be ignored. I have to promote that MEN ARE DOING SOMETHING. So listen. Below vv there is a comment stating 5 men divorced for even SUGGESTING it.
Oh yes. Totally. So he DID tell you, but is smart enough to stop short of divorce because he loves you, hoping something else will come up as an opportunity. Statistically, it doesn't. Women just drive themselves insane, hate, blame, never ask or look. How? 60% divorce rate, 80% caused by women, and that's NOT including all the men who are trying now still married and walking on eggshells. What's the run rate adding those? 80-90%?
Nah, women were sold a bill of goods. It's self-contradictory, and that's being discovered right now. But we're all sold a bill of goods and men have a different one. ...Men's problem is not them "Getting in touch with their feelings" though.
That said, I feel sad about the fall of home standards. Not too much, but just a bit. We go to lunch at someone's home and the food is catered. No one dresses up for Christmas dinner. There aren't animal shaped homecooked foods in lunchboxes. Presents aren't wrapped with nice paper. The cranberry sauce is from a can.
This stuff is hard, yes, but also no one appreciates it when someone does it the hard way. Short term, it makes little difference. Long term, it makes life worth living.
I don't know what the solution is, but it seems like shorter hours at work could help greatly.
The hard stuff / high home standards could only really be done in a 50s household when women were expected to be housewives while the men were expected to be breadwinners, which creates its own set of problems. We could create shorter work hours, but then that means less money for households to spend on the raw materials needed to make the good stuff at home. Trade-offs are unavoidable
If you care and get something out of it, that’s all that matters. I wrap presents in nice paper every year for Christmas and most birthdays (even roped my husband in), and relish the beauty every time. I make at least one nice, non-shortcutted meal each week (and usually when the friends are over if that happens). As a working mom, I don’t have time to do everything the long way, but I pick a few things and enjoy them. If you get something out of it, who cares if nobody else does?
If we actually had things like health insurance NOT tied to work, family leave, and corporations that DIDN'T try to pay one person half the salary a person can live on to do three people's jobs, we could have shorter work hours.
Lot of people spend 11-12 hours per day on commute + work. Not much time for kids, spouse, and keeping up the house.
But I’ve also met a lot of women who work remote who still get overwhelmed, and at that point I don’t know what to tell them other than to chill out….and that’s exactly what they don’t want to hear.
No one cares right now. And I think that’s always been kind of true. No one cares that you made a homemade apple pie for Thanksgiving 2 years in a row- they care when you’ve done it for 40 years and everyone’s fighting for a slice of grandma’s famous pie. Your kids don’t care about the homemade baked goods and note from you in their lunchbox on Fridays right now but they probably will when they’re 38 and raising their own kids and reflecting on mom’s special touches.
These kinds of things matter when they’re done over the course of a lifetime. When all the details add up to a thoughtful, loving, abundant life. And most importantly, these things all have to be done with a generous and loving spirit or your kids will say “ugh remember how miserable mom was when she was running around and yelling at us while making all those Christmas dishes”.
I relate to you because this stuff matters to me too. It’s a really big reason I’m a stay at home mom, so that I can have those higher standards without an insane amount of stress. I really believe a lot of this homemaking work requires having a long-term view of the life you want to create and the childhood you want your kids to look back on.
When I was a kid my mother made her own tuna salad and all I wanted was tuna salad from the store. My kid wrote me a mother's day card thanking me for getting pizza or sushi every Sunday -- that's the one day we don't home-make real food for dinner. Whether kids appreciate things is not the barometer of whether you're doing it "right."
At the same time, they can't really miss what they never knew. If nobody in our circles is home baking pies for Thanksgiving, they're unlikely to consider me remiss for buying. As long as social standards drop in the whole, nobody has to feel bad.
I agree that what children appreciate isn’t inherently about doing things “right” (although I was talking about what adults appreciate about their childhoods in retrospect). No one can perfectly curate the things their kids like and dislike about their childhoods. However, I think there’s something special and good about cooking nice meals from scratch, baking alongside your kids, having special holiday traditions, etc and these things do involve some work. Some examples from my own life include keeping chickens, gardening, and heating our home with a wood burning stove. These things are cozy, nice, require work, and I think my kids will appreciate them later, although I have no way of guaranteeing that!
I also think your last paragraph is interesting because (if I’m understanding correctly) it basically says social standards dropping is a positive phenomenon because it means nobody has to feel guilty. I don’t really think about these things in terms of guilt. I’m personally not much of a baker (the pie example was about my grandmother) and if I get asked to bring a pie, it will be from Costco. But I don’t feel bad about this, not because of what other people do, but because I am comfortable with the things I choose to do “right” and the things I don’t. Other people baking pies isn’t a threat to me and I’m actually grateful my kids have other people in their lives who fill that role. And the idea that kids won’t know what they’re missing because social standards have lowered so much over generations is personally sad to me, not comforting.
It’s fine to have different perspectives and values on these things! Just in case my tone isn’t clear, I’m not offended by anything you said and hope I come off respectful :)
Yeah exactly. I want the time and space to celebrate my festivities appropriately (easier said than done as a Hindu in America when I never get a day off for any of my occasions). I want to spend time thinking about my kid's needs and ensuring she gets the appropriate care and personalization. Like she isn't reading much these days, how can I snap her out of that. Or she seems to be receptive to new vegetables, maybe I should try making okra.
I feel like this makes a difference even like in the span of 6 months. I had a very stressful few months at work and in that short time, my kid just stopped eating vegetables and it's been a hard painful battle to add them back in to her diet.
Agree. I think a lot of it has to with having order, routine, and no drama. This is the stifling order of 1950s that no person every liked ever! 100% of all people, man, woman, child, dog, all hated forevah. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHF8LdiFhW8
No really -- to do these extras you need to have the daily things under control. Automatic. That means by definition it's a habit. But by being a habit it's not like TV: new, interesting, novel, expensive. It means you make egg salad instead of catering Panera every day and your big monthly purchase was one Tupperware bowl you have to now use for 20 years bc you don't have another one.
Nobody is doing this, living this way at all, you'll get divorced in about 90 seconds if you tell your wife to click off Amazon, but even so, if OTHER people make bad choices, are bad bosses, over-bid up the housing market bc they have no financial skills, don't show up for appointments, it is going to cut in 80% of YOUR life being orderly and under control. ...So you have the bandwidth to dress in a tie and make those Christmas brownies.
So yes, they're not doing it. And yes they are stressing themselves out about stuff they should let go and someone in 1955 would, BUT! You also can't do it alone. I think pulling every trick you'd barely be on the borderline of under control right now because the culture at large is unhinged.
Hey, is this why they ALSO social pressured "Conformity" to have other people do their thing too? So a few people's bad habits of senseless drama wouldn't destroy all of us?
I moved from the east coast to the west coast and it took a long time to make the adjustment. These silly formalities were ingrained! I have learned to use the time and energy these things would have taken more wisely. Not everyone needs to relive their childhood in order to have a good life
I think about this sometimes. I would like my house decorated for holidays but... I don't want to do it. And you know what, my mother didn't actually do it either. She had her old-enough kids handle the task. It wasn't Martha Stewart stuff, but we got into the spirit of things and the house looked festive. My oldest is 8, so we are just approaching the cusp of where I can hand him a box of tinsel and say "make this place festive".
Isn’t that a rosy view of the past though seen through the lens of movies and magazines of middle class and rich homes. Low income people in the past were not having lavish meals and dressing up for holidays. People were also able to live off one income and even hire help. Today’s world is very different. If you like doing more then do it but don’t expect it of others.
It was a lot easier to do when the weekly hours worked in the household was 40-50 total. Whatever empowerment women feel in the workforce, they have to accept the cost of having a much more limited amount of time for domestic tasks.
I know both scenarios well. My ex-husband expected me to do everything, and I did, being he was 15 years my senior and a pastor, I thought he knew better and bought into what our religion was teaching me, all while supporting ministry, PTA, etc.
I divorced him and those ideas (slowly) after 19 years, but was so programmed by them that I found myself sometimes overrunning myself in my new household with a new husband — a GOOD husband — and my ADULT children.
So I began being more intentional about reversing that behavior and allowing my good husband to share the load, letting my adult children be adults, and releasing the need to do everything and creating problems to solve. I am a work in progress.
100%. Neuroticism drives women to expect all sorts of things that basically only cause stress and don't provide any real value. A man is not allowed to point this out, though, because that's a challenge to what's seen as a commandment from the God of Housewives or something.
Men, maybe due to the evolutionary process, tend to try and reduce stress, try to avoid extra work that isn't particularly necessary. Perhaps this comes from the hunter gatherer dynamic from ages ago where the male would have to be ready at an instant to hunt or protect, thus in the meantime would be wise to rest up and keep the stress level low as possible.
A male would ask the female if it's really necessary to fold the kids' underwear and neatly organize them by color or theme. The response would typically be "you're lazy, I guess I'll have to do it myself". The premise of the situation is never questioned, not allowed to be questioned.
The stress shall continue! Don't ask why, it just shall, and any protest means that you are lazy, useless, etc.
It's a common pattern seen with those who exhibit relatively high neuroticism: any resistance to their definition of a problem is seen as not recognizing the problem, when it's actually about how to solve the problem, or to prioritize resources by recognizing that maybe other problems are more important to solve first. I think it's related to neurotic people feeling a need to control their environment.
Thousands of years ago, women would typically be controlling their home environment, and only that. Now they have been freed from this limitation, yet maybe evolution has not had time to catch up yet.
Many men are useless at home, but from what I've seen, a lot of this is related to women who refuse to relinquish control, and are deathly afraid of allowing the man in the house to solve a problem in a different way than they would prefer.
The same happens to the children, they are controlled so much that there is no expectation on them to manage anything on their own, which leads to clingy, dependent children.
Feminism stands in the way of telling the women to chill out and maybe stop trying to control everyone and everything.
Women are hardwired genetically to focus more attention to detail on stuff that men find tedious. Very helpful when sorting mushrooms and berries that might be poisonous, or when doing accounting work.
But in these modern times women can get caught up in “Why won’t anyone care as much as I do about all these little items on my mental list?”
If a husband sits on his ass day after day and doesn’t clean, cook, or change the diapers, he’s definitely an asshole. But if he’s simply not assigning a high priority to little details that aren’t really important to anyone but the wife, maybe she needs to come to terms with that.
It doesn’t make him a bad “good” husband for not remembering little details he’s not hardwired to assign a high priority to.
I don't know, but I've only ever been acquainted with men who didn't see ANY value in EVER vacuuming or dusting, and who left smelly PEE all over the toilet and floor for ME to clean up. My late husband lived here seven years and in all of those years he cleaned the sink and toilet NEVER and scrubbed the shower exactly once. I FUCKING HATED THOSE JOBS. He never dusted, never vacuumed. it was always me.
On average men have a higher tolerance for dirtiness, that is, it's not a priority to them to do something about it unless it reaches a critical level.
On top of that, it's common to get into a routine of expectations about who does what, and women tend to fall into the "I'll just do it myself" trap, which further drives the expectation that this isn't something he is expected to do.
Also, it's common for the man to do some of these tasks and then the woman says they didn't do it "properly" or "good enough" and ends up doing it again anyway, which removes the incentive for the man to do it in the future.
On average the man is expected to do other things that the woman leaves to the man to do in the same manner, such as anything dangerous, requiring large amounts of physical strength or strain, things involving financial risk, etc.
If you truly want to take turns doing these things, expectations need to be set and clear, each person needs autonomy to solve the task in the manner they see fit (within reason), and it has to go both ways.
The most common fallacy I see is that chores are evaluated according to how many minutes they take, yet there are hidden parameters that are actually in play, such as how stressful the task is, how much physical strain is required, the grossness factor, risk (of many kinds), psychological strain (such as having to do a task that has never been done before), etc.
If you set up chores as a market where each part "trades" for which tasks they want to do, I think you'll see that women would gladly "trade" some of the tasks they see as horrible, for a larger amount of smaller, less strenuous, annoying tasks.
If you treat your husband like a child who cannot be trusted to do anything right, they will become a child who cannot do anything right.
The parallel to that is women who never fix anything around the house, who never drive, who never change the tires on the car, who never set up anything technical, who never figure out what expensive things that need to be purchased, who never clean the gutters, etc. A modern trap is for women to expect the men to continue doing all the "man things" but also do half of the rest as well. That's a bad trade.
All that said, it does sound like you've been unfortunate with your men. 😅
You're right that in these situations, the housework is not what the women in these situations are really concerned about, but it's the lack of leadership and responsibility. These men are acting like kids with their wife as mom, and of course they can take care of some things ok when the wife/mom is gone, the problem is they don't when she isn't.
I suggest that if what you are saying is true, and they have a clear vision for reducing stress by being less on top of the home, the wife would usually be totally fine with that, if they'd lead, communicate, and share the plan. The wives are freaking out, and deeply upset and disappointed, because they don't want to be in charge of everything while the husband relaxes and lets them take care of it all every single time.
If my wife is upset about the state of the house, and I'm too tired to do my part in cleaning it up, I tell her so. I tell her I am too tired to do this right now, and I really dislike not being able to do my part. Would you please take it easy, maybe relax in a warm bath, and let it go for today, and we'll take care of it together tomorrow? Tomorrow I will clean the bathrooms and floors, and you do the dishes and kitchen. Then I actually do it, and I get it done first, before she even gets a chance to do her half.
100%. My husband can lead at work, he can lead in community volunteering, but at home he's a follower and someone I have to manage. The only way to get him to take a task seriously is to give him a task that (1) has consequences that hurt him if it's not done and (2) relinquish it entirely so if he doesn't do it then it will never get done. He is completely incapable of sharing a responsibility with me, and I do not micromanage. My motto is "better a crap job by someone else than any job by me."
Have you talked to him about this? I think a lot of men implicitly expect traditional gender roles at home without even thinking about the fact that it was based on the wife not having a job outside the home. On the flip side, I see a lot of professional couples where the wife expects the husband to do half the inside housework, but also all of the stereotypical male jobs like fixing the cars, and maintaining the home- which are also a ton of work, and require learning special skills. I had an ex that said those don’t count because they’re “fun for men.” I did know how to do them, but they weren’t “fun” they were just chores to me. Ultimately couples have to explicitly divide up responsibilities these days and not count on cultural assumptions.
We have explicitely discussed chores many times. I have brought up the leadership thing a couple of times but for the most part I let it go as long as he does his part. And fwiw, I do all the yardwork and more of the home maintenance. But I do that because it's fun for me. ;-)
While some, if not most, of what you say is true, I will counter with this: when I divorced my first husband (a “good” one), my household stress levels went down and my house was cleaner (even with a child). I think the expectation of help and not getting it is worse than no help at all.
Additionally, while the husband and kids might be fine if the wife is away for a short period of time, I promise those little concessions compound. Kid 2 wearing kid 1’s shoes might not be a big deal, but what about when kid 2 falls off the playset and breaks an arm because they tripped over shoes two sizes too big? What may seem like a small, inconsequential thing that mom knows (because she’s put in the time and carries the mental load of knowing what belongs to whom) becomes a big issue. Mom gets called anal or obsessive, but these things do matter. And they can’t be assessed after a short absence.
for sure. When my husband is traveling for work I cheerfully clean the house top to bottom and then sit and enjoy it. Having someone scrolling on the couch while doing same is impossible to enjoy.
I really appreciate this perspective, Arda! Before we got married, I told my husband I’d have as many kids as he could handle on his own for a week. We currently have two and I regularly (2-3 times per year) travel for long weekends or up to a week. The kids are well cared for and have a blast. The house is mostly clean when I come home. Everyone is fed, rested and happy without me leaving a detailed schedule or pre-made meals.
I think a big piece of the equation is not expecting my spouse to do it my way. I’ve learned so much from watching my husband parent. I don’t love everything about his way of doing things (and I know he doesn’t love everything about my way of doing things), but I regularly see ways I’m setting expectations that don’t actually matter or support our core family values.
At 67 years old, I fall into the generation written about in that NYT editorial. I was very involved in coaching my kids sports but my wife carried a much bigger load with the everyday responsibilities (while also working a demanding job). I did far more than my father had done and now I observe my adult son doing far more than I did. My experience is that each generation of men is doing more, moving closer to 50/50 with the current generation of young men.
You make a fair point and sound like a conscientious husband and father. That being said, this does not mean that every woman is similar to your wife or every man is similar to you.
From a cultural perspective there are different for sure, there are many unhappy women cross culturally who remain in unhappy marriages because society/culture dictates or they just believe it's the way it should be.
I was raised within such a family and saw the consequences of that, I don't choose that for myself or for my child. I don't choose it for any woman.
There has to be transparency and openness of communication to discuss what is and isn't helpful without shame, blame or ego, this is the very least and foundation of healthy respect and a mature relationship. If this can't be achieved then it's more healthy for those all around to consider separating. Yes, it's less than ideal - more stressful and more costly but that's because it requires adaptation. The cost to wellbeing and the generational impact is too high to remain in a situation most because it looks like it's easier in the short run.
Yep, women also tend to set themselves up in these situations. She needs to be a super wife, super mother, super friend.......super woman, while nobody cares about that. Women need to just live life without the element of trying to be the best.
100% all of this and thanks for writing it. I’ve tried to explain it to my wife in basically the same terms. Look how when she’s away, the house is actually calmer, cleaner, and nothing broke. There is an epidemic of undx ADHD/Spectrum women out there that blame the failures of their rigid thinking on their partners.
I’m of two minds on this one, because I know so many women who are trying to do all the things and there’s really no way it can be humanly done. Kids now have so many things going on, and I don’t know how their parents keep up. I suspect many of these families are one of two camps: 1) the woman taking on too much stuff trying to keep up with the Joneses, or 2) having a husband who isn’t actually good and she’s just trying to convince herself he is to make herself feel better about her pick.
Couldn't agree more, although I come from a patriarchal culture and definitely absorbed too much of the 'he doesn't beat you, he doesn't get drunk, he works, what have you got to be unhappy about' and kept the marriage going for far too long. Finally got divorced because he was cheating on me, but the interesting thing is that my sons (then 13 and 11) instantly asked: 'Are you getting divorced because he never does anything around the house?'
The amount of insecure men in these comments who feel like they just have to share their little narratives about why they are really the put-upon good guys in these situations is hilarious.
It's true, men really shouldn't complain, ever. Especially if the audience is women. Whining about one’s problems and seeking emotional validation is a womanly thing.
And that’s part of what makes your gender not just sick and injured as people, but just plain fucking boring…the fact that you think feelings are womanly things. You cut off half of yourself and then blame us for why you’re hurting…and then you treat us like shit, exploit our labor, and rape us because you’re walking around half of a person and in pain.
If you think men should embrace their feelings, maybe calling them insecure for sharing their perspective and telling them to go away isn't going to be a winning strategy.
I know that as a man you’ve been taught to believe from birth that your perspective is automatically the most important thing in the discussion and that women especially should always welcome your comments and perspective (and sexual interests and telling us to smile more and so on), but the reality is that most of us don’t care. If you want us to care, do the work on yourselves *first*, then come talk to us when *we* want to talk to you.
This was a post for women, written by a woman, about a woman’s perspective. You are not wanted. You are not special. Your perspective is not privileged. Go away.
Okay, that’s it, everyone who is either male or doesn’t agree with everything in the original post, show yourselves out.
Actually, hold on a second…I’m being told that it’s not actually true that some random person with an extremely unearned sense of self-importance gets to declare herself the arbiter of everyone’s engagement with a Substack article that she didn’t write and on which commenting was made open to anyone with an account. So, as you were.
Also has anyone ever seen Alice and Kat Highsmith in the same room? I find it hard to believe anyone real is actually like this, whereas it would be trivially easy to train an AI LLM on jezebel.com and Jessica Valenti’s Bluesky account and create a bot from it that would post comments indistinguishable from Alice’s here.
Yes, yes, it’s all an evil conspiracy to trick men into revealing yet again how awful they are. I, a person with a completely different blog with an obviously different writing style and content and who is easily searchable as a separate person is actually the same person as the author. You are truly very clever. You should be proud.
It's not a post for women, if it was it'd be on a website which is only accessible to women to read and comment on. By posting it out in public where it's visible for all, and by having comments open to all, clearly it is a post for all to read and comment on.
Wow, the jump to rape is a bit extreme. I prefer enthusiastic consent, thank you. Don't paint a whole sex as rapists for the like <1% that do.
No, men understand the world does not care about your feelings. Feelings are a luxury. A predator cares not of your fear of death. Starvation doesn't change with feelings. Natural law does NOT care about your feelings.
Men feel that if something bothers us, try and do something to change it, or deal. Feelings are motivational at best. They accomplish nothing on their own.
I think the dynamic that men are reacting (sometimes very badly) to in this kind of discourse is "she decides the grading standard and then he is measured to it". If I understood the gist of the original essay here, it's "there's too much grade inflation."
But there's an irony here - often the complaint is not "he doesn't take out the garbage" but "he doesn't own the responsibility." E.g. she wants help with the management, not just the grunt work.
But there can't be sharing of the responsibility without sharing of the grading standard. "Be more invested and present in this thing with me, but I totally own what the thing is" is a big ask.
I think the main issue here is women give more of a shit on average than men and then expect men to give more shits when they get married.
Women are failing themselves by not clearly defining the level of shits they give before they tie the knot.
They should be asking "Will you clean the house on your own without me asking when it reaches the level of dirtiness I deem unacceptable or will you continue to do it when you deem appropriate even if it upsets me?" It might seem robotic, but "will you help clean?" just really doesn't get the point across about what women are looking for.
People need to find partners who give an equal number of shits. My wife and I have been together for ten years and we both give relatively little shits. It's worked out perfectly. We haven't had a real argument in close to 4 years.
I did, though. I married a guy who very clearly stated that we should be splitting the housework equally since we were both going to do 40hrs a week paid labor. And then... he just didn't. So I structured it as alternating days of dishes/cooking and alternating months of laundry. And again he just... didn't. By that I mean 30 days would pass, the laundry wouldn't get done, and then it would be my turn again, now with backlog. And if I pointed this out I was accused of "keeping score."
I guess so. Or else he didn't change much. However, I too acquired over 30 pairs of underwear and learned to outwait him. He does his part now, but it was a long training process. He's not a shitty guy, but he was a bad partner. That's precisely the problem this post is about. How do you take a generally good guy and get him to be a good partner?
I just left someone (we weren't married, but we were together for seven years. No children.) who I do think would've shared the project manager load with me fairly well. He's neater than I am. He doesn't have too much trouble staying on top of his chores (I do). He can't relax when there's clutter around. He can cook fine and was willing to. He would've been a good dad.
But the EMOTIONAL labor part wasn't there. He was not comfortable being vulnerable with me. I felt like I knew the inner worlds of all my girlfriends (and some guy friends) better than his. He didn't seem to be curious about mine. He wasn't interested in growing as a person or growing our shared relationship.
But I stayed so long because....he would've been a good task manager? He did make my life easier in some ways that having another person to fall back on does. There's so much conversation about men being useless that I thought I had to stay with mine who actually wasn't useless. Until I finally decided that I needed more. I wish I DIDN'T need more and I could just be happy with a task manager, but it's 2025. I want it all or nothing. Maybe this means I will be alone forever.
But in general I just want to encourage women to pick the bar up off the floor. Marriages were meant for so much more, I think. I sure hope so, anyway.
This is another huge piece of it. Emotional labor also takes energy and is tiring when you're the only one putting the effort in. Relationships take emotional effort.
I guess going into emotional labor is the first step to birthing emotional babies.
" Until I finally decided that I needed more." - Why dress this all up in a Disney princess song? If you don't love him and want to leave - leave.
But all of this speaks to a guilty conscience - of leaving for selfish and shallow reasons. "I don't really love him and made a mistake" is enough - you don't need to find whole articles online posing rationalizations - UNLESS - the women want to use all this to look like the true victim and thereby gain concessions in life.
The emotional effort in a healthy relationship is not draining but energizing.
I do have a guilty for conscience for how long I stayed when I wasn't sure. I want marriage and kids VERY badly and I found a pretty good guy by society's standards to do those things with, so yes, it was hard to leave.
How much of a deep, emotional connection can I realistically expect from a man (who was socialized to never show emotions, never be vulnerable)? That was the question I wrestled with and tried to talk to him about.
I'm not a victim in this situation, but I am wondering how well we've equipped men to meet emotional needs for their partners...I don't need a house cleaner or a car fixer as much as I need depth and connection.
> But the EMOTIONAL labor part wasn't there. He was not comfortable being vulnerable with me. I felt like I knew the inner worlds of all my girlfriends (and some guy friends) better than his. He didn't seem to be curious about mine. He wasn't interested in growing as a person or growing our shared relationship.
You kind of make it sounds like getting to know each other’s “inner worlds” are a set of relationship video game achievements you need to earn. There is no relationship ladder, only the relationship you’d like to have. Sounds like he’s just not interested in having the kind of relationship you want. It’s ok to dislike that and end it, but that’s not the only way to have valid relationships.
I think modern people expect too much of our partners sometimes. You have girlfriends you can do this kind of thing with, why does it have to be him? Does he have to be everything to you? If you’re unhappy and can only enjoy very emotionally intense relationships, then that’s alright. You probably did the right thing by ending it. But for those of us who like less intense relationships, we’re not doing life wrong or having growth stunted relationships.
But the "emotional labor part wasn't there" - what you are describing sounds to me like "the emotional *intimacy* wasn't there."
I want to point to this distinction because I while I think emotional intimacy in a relationship takes effort (especially for us men who have sometimes been socially conditioned to _never be emotionally vulnerable_), it's a different from the work that I sometimes see called "emotional labor" of a household (maybe epitomized by "I have to send flowers to my husband's mother on her birthday because he won't bother").
I think the distinction is also important because in the argument about "helps run the household" and husbands who don't pull their weight, the other side of the coin is sometimes husbands not having a say in what the work is. I am strongly of the opinion that if both members of a marriage don't agree on what the husband doing a good job is, that's a bigger problem than whether he does a good job.
By comparison, if you decide you need emotional intimacy in your long term romantic relationship, that's great that you've identified what is important to you. Your partner could say "I don't want that" and maybe y'all aren't compatible, but he can't possibly tell you what your own needs are.
"especially for us men who have sometimes been socially conditioned to _never be emotionally vulnerable"
Men are right not be vulnerable. My psychology professor in college was a marriage and family therapy counselor, and he said that women routinely freaked out when their husbands broke down during therapy.
Hmmm...I don't think that "women routinely freaked out when their husbands broke down during therapy" implies "Men are right not be vulnerable".
I think it does imply "men are playing it safe by not being vulnerable."
Also, can you be more specific about "freaked out"? Since your professor was the counselor running the session, what did he think a good resolution was?
I'm strongly Terry Real-pilled...my view is that men live less full lives for not being emotionally connected to other people, and if there are women who are bothered by men who are not emotionally shut down, they'll have to widen their ideas of what men can be.
(You can gender invert this to get a sense of how I feel about it. "Women are right not to have careers. ...he said that men routinely freaked out when their wives said they prioritize their own careers during therapy.")
By freaked out I mean they didn't know how to react and had a disgust level reaction. Women get the ick at a vulnerable man, and see it as a sign that they will falter in a threatening situation.
So I was going to say that there's a big difference between being open, sharing, and thus vulnerable (on one hand) vs being a dysregulated guy who is overwhelmed by his own strong emotions and is looking for a partner to provide emotional regulation _for_ him.
But if it's in therapy I'd hope that's a safer environment.
But there is a difference. I wouldn’t love my wife any less if she broke down crying after a tough day at work. But most women would if their husband did the same.
I completely agree with all of this. You're right — there is a distinction. I think it's important to talk as specifically as you can about what your expectations (or at least hopes are) for your future partnership and see if that's something the person you're dating can get excited about or on board with. I think a good marriage is a little give and take, a little compromise, and a LOTTTTT of honest communication.
I agree that in the emotional labor conversation (and literal household maintenance conversation) the standards that you're holding each other to HAVE TO BE AGREED UPON and partners should try their hardest not to micromanage each other about *how* they get to these standards.
how many more left leaning think pieces like “men bad” does the world need? have these women tried communicating with their husbands? who does this serve exactly? dudes like you who can repost and share to signal you’re One Of The Good Ones? It’s so fucking tiring.
The author says women are “gaslighting themselves”? Because they think their husband is Not That Bad? lol. do women have agency or not?
I can't help but wonder how much of this is about the absence of continual discussion and negotiation between couples. What worked for our relationship twenty years ago doesn't work now. We've both changed, our standards have changed, and the responsibilities we have to our family have changed. Frustration creeps up when the conditions change but the terms of the partnership don't adapt accordingly.
One example I'll share is when we decided it was time for me to return to graduate school. My wife worked full-time to support the family financially. She told me, in no uncertain terms, if she was the full-time bread winner, I was taking most of the responsibility for the home and the kids. In particular, I remember her telling me, "I want a clean bathroom and the floors to be scrubbed at least weekly." It was her job to be clear and direct and my job to listen and respect her needs.
Years later when she went to graduate school (while working full-time), we discussed it again. Since I was also working full-time, we agreed to hire a housekeeper once a month for a deep clean, but I would still up my game a bit while she focused on her studies.
We've been doing this for so long that we can sense when the other is frustrated. Sometimes that means we need to recalibrate our workload distribution. Other times, we just acknowledge that one of us is pissing the other one off. Just saying that out loud takes some of the tension out of the equation--even if we can't make things perfect in that moment.
I don't want to come across as a perfect, but I'll tell you reason that I think my wife is happy with our division of labor. The reason I think we are in a good place now is because, over thirty years of marriage, she has told me when she's unhappy with my contributions. I've done the same with her.
I’m 12 years in versus your thirty, but more and more it seems to me that marriage advice is stupid simple and can be summed up by the cliche “communication.” Probably if you’re already in the hole (and no longer trust each other) it’s more complicated than that. But if you can keep it up enough to stay out of the hole in the first place, it’s simple.
The point of marriage isn't the housework of running a home. It's a soul connection, a meeting of minds, a decision to be together and do the best you can to keep the other happy. Unless you consider a woman's only priority to be housework, a husband not being helpful around the home doesn't matter all that much.
My grandma was horrible around the house. Her food was barely nutritious. She had an awful emotional temperament and raised her kids with issues. She made excellent sweets though. My grandpa otoh made all the money, was an excellent chef because he was a food scientist (his homemade preserves were legendary), and if we'd visit him when grandma was away visiting relatives, the house would be neat as a pin. My dad barely did a thing around the house and I was very shocked when he made me instant noodles once. And I complain about having so much housework but I found i don't even do an hour a day of housekeeping. I'm the one who finds all the Christmas presents and I complain about it, but it involves browsing Etsy and Amazon, is that so hard.
And it's all fine, because the point of marriage isn't housework, just like the point of marriage isn't kids. It's love, connection and whatever it is you agree upon is your contribution to making the other's life better.
My grandpa was no picnic though. He was exacting about standards and the only person who could put up with that was someone whose self esteem was not dependent on those things.
I don't particularly empathize with the women who complain about their husbands not helping around the house tbh. They remind me of my mom. She always complains about her kids being messy, but once we moved out, it hit us we didn't mind tidying, we just didn't want to be tidying around her because in her eyes we were always doing it wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of the whiners were like my mom.
I don't have issues of inequality in my marriage, and that is because I spent the initial few years making my husband feel like the house and what it looks like is also his domain and he gets to pick what art goes on the walls even if it doesnt go with my taste. He grew up in a house where they ate a lot of canned food and cleaned once a week tops because everyone worked long hours, so he's not the best at standards, but he has better follow-through than me. So it works out.
Yeah I don't think the issue is neurotic women, I know plenty of "type B" moms who struggle majorly with this and it's not because they need things to be perfect, it's because they need things to be done. People need clean clothes to wear, food in their lunchboxes, and clean bowls to put cereal in.
The problem isn't type-A or type-B. I see messy houses where the husband is like "oh she has all the ideas, I just stay out of it and do the heavy lifting when she asks". My parents house wasn't the golden standard of tidy either. Being a control-freak isn't about perfection. It's about having an idea in your head about how things are going to go and not enjoying it when it deviates from that idea, and, often, expecting everyone to read your mind for your ideas and then being mad when they don't. They still want to be the sole arbiter of the home domain, because that's how they've seen/experienced it done.
And another part of the problem is just taking on more than you can do and not realizing it. I've been guilty of this. If you're both working long hours and have kids, maybe you're not going to be able to sort laundry into multiple loads (I've talked about this online on multiple women-oriented subreddits, and everyone seems to take laundry more seriously than I do). Maybe you can't handle a lawn, just put down weed cloth and woodchips. Maybe there are going to be barbies on the floor all the time.
I notice generally that women who complain about their husbands being incompetent at home don't actually mind their husbands are incompetent at these things - it makes them feel like domestic goddesses in comparison. The complaining is a kind of bragging or trying to feel better/equivalent - 'oh he might be a big dude at work, but at home, I've to remind him to take the trash out'. I wonder if some of it is a luxury thing - you've made it according to male expectations if your wife can lose money on a business. Maybe you've made it according to female expectations if you can deal with your husband making a giant mess to be happy. The next time some such woman is complaining IRL, try being outraged on her behalf and see how quickly she changes her tone (I've done this earnestly when I didn't know how these things worked).
Bottomline - I believe people are competent and rational. If women are happy being married to men who don't do chores much, it must mean the chores don't matter so much. If it becomes a real issue, people usually hire a cleaner. When that is an option, if people are getting divorced over chores, it usually means other things are wrong in the marriage and the chores are just what you say to your friends.
Your mom sounds a lot like mine. She doesn’t see my version of clean as valid and gets offended if I can clean up quicker than she can, like even if she can’t see how I did it differently from her, somehow it’s cheating to have done it faster.
Boy howdy I'm reminded every day how glad I am that I will not have children.
I'm completely terrified of being the so-called "good husband," and that's just with the two of us here. I can't imagine how much more stressful it would be with kids.
I'm so glad that you've found someone like you have. Aaron is the best of all of us.
I have to remember things at work and at home. Need help with that? Get a planner. Get a calendar. You can literally just go to the calendar app on your phone and put things down so you dont even have to buy one. It even reminds you so you don't have to do all the remembering yourself!
why is every comment from a man about women’s expectations being too high? sick to know y’all will do everything possible except just fucking listen to us.
We need America to dissolve. It should be replaced with warring tribes who constantly raid each other, stealing women to make them wives or concubines. Only then will women realize, “oh, this is why men are different - so that they can fight off the invader, and prevent the desecration that comes with subjugation.”
This article really resonated. I've been with my partner for almost 20 years. Although we're not married, our relationship is the envy of many of our friends, who have cycled through marriages and divorces in the time we've been together. My partner is kind and caring, but almost all the tasks of daily life fall to me, including reminding him to do "his chores," like taking out the garbage. Almost all the groceries, bills, animal care, laundry, house maintenance, car maintenance and social schedule, including stuff for his family, falls to me. His parents call me to schedule things. I'm the one who plans almost everything. It makes me feel more like a mother taking care of a child than an adult in a balanced relationship. When I ask him to help with something it often goes undone for months, and it's just easier if I do it myself. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just stopped... Would he pick up the slack? Or would things fall apart? Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier if I was single. Frankly I fantasize about being with someone who organizes everything, and I don't have to worry or think about bills, oil changes, etc. Wouldn't it be great to have someone else do all the emotional labour?
As a recently divorced woman who was married for more than 30 years, I can say that no, he most likely would not pick up the slack and yes, it's easier to be single. Things are where they are because I chose to leave them there, but often I simply clean up as I go and it never becomes an issue. I have been shocked at how much less mess is in my home, how easy projects are to start (and finish), and how much less stress I feel overall. Not saying you should divorce, but if you would be financially secure and don't have young children, life gets amazingly easier.
I’ve been there too. I felt that pain. Unfortunately it doesn’t change unless you make a change. It’s a physical and mental load. I wish you all the very best.
I see this being a trendy subject lately, and to cut through it, what happens if she goes away for a few days, a week?
Mostly nothing. Dad gets done what is needed, that's what I've been hearing. The kids are relaxed and not stressed as they are not on the forced-bataan death march of sippy cups. Some snacks were missed, everyone dealt. Dishes were missed sometimes. No one cared.
This implies 1) These things didn't really need to be done, we should prioritize. 2) The standards are all set by women, who then assume, demand, invent, that this-thing-they-made-up-today is now set down by God. His opinion or preference is so irrelevant as to be laughable. 3) He IS saying it's stressful. But because modern life has very few places to trim back, what he's telling you is to trim back where you can and just decide it's okay, because your LIFE is more important than Instagramming your clean sink no one will ever see but you. That is, he's worried about you, the kids, being STRESSED. And if the only way to keep that below redline is skipping the dishes then skip them. This "Option B" section is not being seen, or availed. In fact, it's being divorced so she can continue with MORE stress in another house alone. In a reversal of gender expectations He cares more about you and the kids as PEOPLE than some pointless objects like folded laundry.
How can I know? Well in my house, I did the dishes, the laundry, the putting away, the lawn, the plumbing, the roof, the toilets, a host of other things. This was not good enough. So with a housecleaner, these were done professionally. That's fine, I can do other things as well. What happened? Instantly the LEVEL of clean doubled, to permit the same amount of stress and unhappy. House objectively cleaner, wife sadder and madder than before, in a stress arms-race. Not everyone gets to cross compare A-B like that. *The stress wasn't from the house at all*, it was probably from work but spilling over to a free-floating cloud of dissatisfaction.
Again, this is what men are trying to tell you. Probably in words at first, but as those will never work, in actions, by showing you things are still okay. You go away: the kids are fine, everything gets done somehow.
Which path is the "Good spouse/Good parent" path? Yelling at everyone all day and getting divorced, or taking it down a notch? Possibly both but consider my premise.
I think this is important. Obviously there are many cases where the article DOES apply, but I also think there are many cases where the wife needs to consider whether
a. The standards of the household are reasonable and mutually agreed upon (noting that the husband and wife will not always agree but you have to find some kind of middle ground that both parties can be ok with)
b. She is allowing her husband to take ownership of the tasks he is doing. I.e. not micromanaging.
That's not to say that women should accept husbands who don't do anything, or have really low standards. But it is also true that if you're stressing over every minor detail (for example, I think I once saw a social media post of a woman dragging her husband for dressing their toddler in an outfit that didn't look good) or constantly telling your husband that the way he does things is wrong, the answer is not simply for him to become exactly like you.
I once put my toddler daughter's skirt on her head because I thought it was a hat. It has become a family legend.
My husband cannot grasp that girls clothes have buttons that go in the back, not the front.
Even I get that one wrong sometimes lol
Yeah and with how wriggly kids are, it's a wonder to get clothes on at all.
Well, I need to focus on getting my shirt buttons properly matched. And some of the more tense micro moments of my marriage have been as I’ve struggled to fasten the tiny hook at the top of my wife’s dress.
That day, it was a hat.
It looked like a hat that one of Santa’s helpers might wear!
Perhaps it was always a hat, and never a skirt
Hilarious! I recognise that it's probably easier for me to see how silly this stuff gets when it comes to clothing because I don't really care that much about style on myself or others so my standards for a child would probably be "clean, weather appropriate, comfortable, done".
I do have other areas that I would struggle with more, most notably food (I want my future kids to be healthy) and cleanliness of the house (being in a messy or dirty environment stresses me out).
Hahaha I needed this today. Still a great job in my opinion
Just to come back to this with some extra thoughts - I do think men in this situation would be much better off confronting this head-on and saying, "sorry, your expectations on X are unreasonable and we need to find some kind of compromise here" than begrudgingly agreeing and then not living up to expectations.
It's much easier to trust and respect someone who has boundaries and lays them out than someone who can be steamrolled and then just fails to follow through. And I think part of the problem here is that these wives don't trust or respect their husbands, at least in certain domains.
I'm not saying that's entirely the husbands fault - I imagine that in most cases it's a vicious cycle where the wife had certain expectations, the husband didn't live up to them, the wife starts micromanaging which makes the husband step back more and not take ownership, spiral downwards.
The five steamrolled husbands I know are all divorced now for speaking up. At all. Arda's points stand.
I've always thought it's more interesting to inquire what about our culture made the wives this way? I'm sure it's a confluence of stuff.
Of course the original article stands as well. Just providing $ and not cheating doesn't make a good husband.
Damn. Yeah it's probably a high risk strategy - either you end up in a better situation or you end up divorced. Keeping quiet is the low risk low reward option.
There was just a Note on how when the woman stepped back to trust and let him act, her stress vanished and this relationship was restored, but I can't bookmark everything. Let's just say that's one possible path.
Been with my wife for 17 years, love her dearly, have the same convos about this stuff at least annually. Never changes. Including being exasperated by it never changing. It’s not always the men, ladies.
It's hardly ever the men.
You have to take the feedback and boundaries with grace. Many, if not most, women fail at this.
This is because of the phrase "if you want something done correctly, do it yourself." Men live by this. If you want something done some specific, assanine way, then do it yourself. Men do this all the time, and don't take it as an offense. They may be a bit irritated, but they do it. They figure the women are doing the same, yet some women take offense when they voluntarily took it on.
This is also the lack of understanding that what is important to one person, may not be important to the other. You have to compromise and meet halfway.
I'm somewhat traditional, so I take full responsibility for the condition of my family. I strategically manage my wife's stress. I jokingly call it, "wife maintenance". I will do some of her normal responsibilities, massage her, take the kids, or do SOMETHING to relieve pressure on her short-term. I try and preemptively massage her before her hips and back lock up entirely. I actually complain when she doesn't tell me before it's bad. Sometimes she needs to be "pounded" into the mattress and sleep in the next morning. I know if I don't preemptively reduce stress levels before it crosses the line, it's like flooding her engine. It's going to take longer for her to get back into the swing of things, and then I get overloaded worse than I already am. Then there are fights like in the article.
Maybe those men are all totally weak willed and incapable of basic assertion, or perhaps many of them justifiably don't feel safe to do so?
Yes, my point was not that no husbands slack. But they're so battered and berated that I can't caveat my statement upfront because it'll be ignored. I have to promote that MEN ARE DOING SOMETHING. So listen. Below vv there is a comment stating 5 men divorced for even SUGGESTING it.
Oh yes. Totally. So he DID tell you, but is smart enough to stop short of divorce because he loves you, hoping something else will come up as an opportunity. Statistically, it doesn't. Women just drive themselves insane, hate, blame, never ask or look. How? 60% divorce rate, 80% caused by women, and that's NOT including all the men who are trying now still married and walking on eggshells. What's the run rate adding those? 80-90%?
YOU DON'T HAVE AN INSTAGRAM LIFE. You MUST CHILL!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMV_r4LjQIo
This is what husbands are for, and why you have them. Take the W.
Women don't want peace. They loathe it. They want control. Women are the problem.
Nah, women were sold a bill of goods. It's self-contradictory, and that's being discovered right now. But we're all sold a bill of goods and men have a different one. ...Men's problem is not them "Getting in touch with their feelings" though.
This is extremely extremely true.
That said, I feel sad about the fall of home standards. Not too much, but just a bit. We go to lunch at someone's home and the food is catered. No one dresses up for Christmas dinner. There aren't animal shaped homecooked foods in lunchboxes. Presents aren't wrapped with nice paper. The cranberry sauce is from a can.
This stuff is hard, yes, but also no one appreciates it when someone does it the hard way. Short term, it makes little difference. Long term, it makes life worth living.
I don't know what the solution is, but it seems like shorter hours at work could help greatly.
The hard stuff / high home standards could only really be done in a 50s household when women were expected to be housewives while the men were expected to be breadwinners, which creates its own set of problems. We could create shorter work hours, but then that means less money for households to spend on the raw materials needed to make the good stuff at home. Trade-offs are unavoidable
See i want to do at least some of the stuff the hard way, but NO ONE CARES. And life as a result is less beautiful.
If you care and get something out of it, that’s all that matters. I wrap presents in nice paper every year for Christmas and most birthdays (even roped my husband in), and relish the beauty every time. I make at least one nice, non-shortcutted meal each week (and usually when the friends are over if that happens). As a working mom, I don’t have time to do everything the long way, but I pick a few things and enjoy them. If you get something out of it, who cares if nobody else does?
If we actually had things like health insurance NOT tied to work, family leave, and corporations that DIDN'T try to pay one person half the salary a person can live on to do three people's jobs, we could have shorter work hours.
Lot of people spend 11-12 hours per day on commute + work. Not much time for kids, spouse, and keeping up the house.
But I’ve also met a lot of women who work remote who still get overwhelmed, and at that point I don’t know what to tell them other than to chill out….and that’s exactly what they don’t want to hear.
Remote jobs can be much more stressful. I worked one which didn't leave me enough time to even take a walk to relax.
That is also true. My wife has entire weeks where it looks like she’s glued to her chair in our home office due to workload
No one cares right now. And I think that’s always been kind of true. No one cares that you made a homemade apple pie for Thanksgiving 2 years in a row- they care when you’ve done it for 40 years and everyone’s fighting for a slice of grandma’s famous pie. Your kids don’t care about the homemade baked goods and note from you in their lunchbox on Fridays right now but they probably will when they’re 38 and raising their own kids and reflecting on mom’s special touches.
These kinds of things matter when they’re done over the course of a lifetime. When all the details add up to a thoughtful, loving, abundant life. And most importantly, these things all have to be done with a generous and loving spirit or your kids will say “ugh remember how miserable mom was when she was running around and yelling at us while making all those Christmas dishes”.
I relate to you because this stuff matters to me too. It’s a really big reason I’m a stay at home mom, so that I can have those higher standards without an insane amount of stress. I really believe a lot of this homemaking work requires having a long-term view of the life you want to create and the childhood you want your kids to look back on.
When I was a kid my mother made her own tuna salad and all I wanted was tuna salad from the store. My kid wrote me a mother's day card thanking me for getting pizza or sushi every Sunday -- that's the one day we don't home-make real food for dinner. Whether kids appreciate things is not the barometer of whether you're doing it "right."
At the same time, they can't really miss what they never knew. If nobody in our circles is home baking pies for Thanksgiving, they're unlikely to consider me remiss for buying. As long as social standards drop in the whole, nobody has to feel bad.
I agree that what children appreciate isn’t inherently about doing things “right” (although I was talking about what adults appreciate about their childhoods in retrospect). No one can perfectly curate the things their kids like and dislike about their childhoods. However, I think there’s something special and good about cooking nice meals from scratch, baking alongside your kids, having special holiday traditions, etc and these things do involve some work. Some examples from my own life include keeping chickens, gardening, and heating our home with a wood burning stove. These things are cozy, nice, require work, and I think my kids will appreciate them later, although I have no way of guaranteeing that!
I also think your last paragraph is interesting because (if I’m understanding correctly) it basically says social standards dropping is a positive phenomenon because it means nobody has to feel guilty. I don’t really think about these things in terms of guilt. I’m personally not much of a baker (the pie example was about my grandmother) and if I get asked to bring a pie, it will be from Costco. But I don’t feel bad about this, not because of what other people do, but because I am comfortable with the things I choose to do “right” and the things I don’t. Other people baking pies isn’t a threat to me and I’m actually grateful my kids have other people in their lives who fill that role. And the idea that kids won’t know what they’re missing because social standards have lowered so much over generations is personally sad to me, not comforting.
It’s fine to have different perspectives and values on these things! Just in case my tone isn’t clear, I’m not offended by anything you said and hope I come off respectful :)
Yeah exactly. I want the time and space to celebrate my festivities appropriately (easier said than done as a Hindu in America when I never get a day off for any of my occasions). I want to spend time thinking about my kid's needs and ensuring she gets the appropriate care and personalization. Like she isn't reading much these days, how can I snap her out of that. Or she seems to be receptive to new vegetables, maybe I should try making okra.
I feel like this makes a difference even like in the span of 6 months. I had a very stressful few months at work and in that short time, my kid just stopped eating vegetables and it's been a hard painful battle to add them back in to her diet.
Agree. I think a lot of it has to with having order, routine, and no drama. This is the stifling order of 1950s that no person every liked ever! 100% of all people, man, woman, child, dog, all hated forevah. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHF8LdiFhW8
No really -- to do these extras you need to have the daily things under control. Automatic. That means by definition it's a habit. But by being a habit it's not like TV: new, interesting, novel, expensive. It means you make egg salad instead of catering Panera every day and your big monthly purchase was one Tupperware bowl you have to now use for 20 years bc you don't have another one.
Nobody is doing this, living this way at all, you'll get divorced in about 90 seconds if you tell your wife to click off Amazon, but even so, if OTHER people make bad choices, are bad bosses, over-bid up the housing market bc they have no financial skills, don't show up for appointments, it is going to cut in 80% of YOUR life being orderly and under control. ...So you have the bandwidth to dress in a tie and make those Christmas brownies.
So yes, they're not doing it. And yes they are stressing themselves out about stuff they should let go and someone in 1955 would, BUT! You also can't do it alone. I think pulling every trick you'd barely be on the borderline of under control right now because the culture at large is unhinged.
Hey, is this why they ALSO social pressured "Conformity" to have other people do their thing too? So a few people's bad habits of senseless drama wouldn't destroy all of us?
What are animal shaped home cooked foods?
dont know but I sure can carve a pizza! 😁
Oh like you make vegetable or meat patties in the shape of a cat or horse or unicorn so your kid eats them
You could just add more butter and salt
Implying they'll somehow taste it first when it looks like a regular piece of food
I have never heard of this.
It's all over Instagram.
Oh.
This is all capitalism related.
I moved from the east coast to the west coast and it took a long time to make the adjustment. These silly formalities were ingrained! I have learned to use the time and energy these things would have taken more wisely. Not everyone needs to relive their childhood in order to have a good life
I think about this sometimes. I would like my house decorated for holidays but... I don't want to do it. And you know what, my mother didn't actually do it either. She had her old-enough kids handle the task. It wasn't Martha Stewart stuff, but we got into the spirit of things and the house looked festive. My oldest is 8, so we are just approaching the cusp of where I can hand him a box of tinsel and say "make this place festive".
Isn’t that a rosy view of the past though seen through the lens of movies and magazines of middle class and rich homes. Low income people in the past were not having lavish meals and dressing up for holidays. People were also able to live off one income and even hire help. Today’s world is very different. If you like doing more then do it but don’t expect it of others.
I'm talking about things my mom did.
It was a lot easier to do when the weekly hours worked in the household was 40-50 total. Whatever empowerment women feel in the workforce, they have to accept the cost of having a much more limited amount of time for domestic tasks.
I know both scenarios well. My ex-husband expected me to do everything, and I did, being he was 15 years my senior and a pastor, I thought he knew better and bought into what our religion was teaching me, all while supporting ministry, PTA, etc.
I divorced him and those ideas (slowly) after 19 years, but was so programmed by them that I found myself sometimes overrunning myself in my new household with a new husband — a GOOD husband — and my ADULT children.
So I began being more intentional about reversing that behavior and allowing my good husband to share the load, letting my adult children be adults, and releasing the need to do everything and creating problems to solve. I am a work in progress.
100%. Neuroticism drives women to expect all sorts of things that basically only cause stress and don't provide any real value. A man is not allowed to point this out, though, because that's a challenge to what's seen as a commandment from the God of Housewives or something.
Men, maybe due to the evolutionary process, tend to try and reduce stress, try to avoid extra work that isn't particularly necessary. Perhaps this comes from the hunter gatherer dynamic from ages ago where the male would have to be ready at an instant to hunt or protect, thus in the meantime would be wise to rest up and keep the stress level low as possible.
A male would ask the female if it's really necessary to fold the kids' underwear and neatly organize them by color or theme. The response would typically be "you're lazy, I guess I'll have to do it myself". The premise of the situation is never questioned, not allowed to be questioned.
The stress shall continue! Don't ask why, it just shall, and any protest means that you are lazy, useless, etc.
It's a common pattern seen with those who exhibit relatively high neuroticism: any resistance to their definition of a problem is seen as not recognizing the problem, when it's actually about how to solve the problem, or to prioritize resources by recognizing that maybe other problems are more important to solve first. I think it's related to neurotic people feeling a need to control their environment.
Thousands of years ago, women would typically be controlling their home environment, and only that. Now they have been freed from this limitation, yet maybe evolution has not had time to catch up yet.
Many men are useless at home, but from what I've seen, a lot of this is related to women who refuse to relinquish control, and are deathly afraid of allowing the man in the house to solve a problem in a different way than they would prefer.
The same happens to the children, they are controlled so much that there is no expectation on them to manage anything on their own, which leads to clingy, dependent children.
Feminism stands in the way of telling the women to chill out and maybe stop trying to control everyone and everything.
Women are hardwired genetically to focus more attention to detail on stuff that men find tedious. Very helpful when sorting mushrooms and berries that might be poisonous, or when doing accounting work.
But in these modern times women can get caught up in “Why won’t anyone care as much as I do about all these little items on my mental list?”
If a husband sits on his ass day after day and doesn’t clean, cook, or change the diapers, he’s definitely an asshole. But if he’s simply not assigning a high priority to little details that aren’t really important to anyone but the wife, maybe she needs to come to terms with that.
It doesn’t make him a bad “good” husband for not remembering little details he’s not hardwired to assign a high priority to.
I don't know, but I've only ever been acquainted with men who didn't see ANY value in EVER vacuuming or dusting, and who left smelly PEE all over the toilet and floor for ME to clean up. My late husband lived here seven years and in all of those years he cleaned the sink and toilet NEVER and scrubbed the shower exactly once. I FUCKING HATED THOSE JOBS. He never dusted, never vacuumed. it was always me.
On average men have a higher tolerance for dirtiness, that is, it's not a priority to them to do something about it unless it reaches a critical level.
On top of that, it's common to get into a routine of expectations about who does what, and women tend to fall into the "I'll just do it myself" trap, which further drives the expectation that this isn't something he is expected to do.
Also, it's common for the man to do some of these tasks and then the woman says they didn't do it "properly" or "good enough" and ends up doing it again anyway, which removes the incentive for the man to do it in the future.
On average the man is expected to do other things that the woman leaves to the man to do in the same manner, such as anything dangerous, requiring large amounts of physical strength or strain, things involving financial risk, etc.
If you truly want to take turns doing these things, expectations need to be set and clear, each person needs autonomy to solve the task in the manner they see fit (within reason), and it has to go both ways.
The most common fallacy I see is that chores are evaluated according to how many minutes they take, yet there are hidden parameters that are actually in play, such as how stressful the task is, how much physical strain is required, the grossness factor, risk (of many kinds), psychological strain (such as having to do a task that has never been done before), etc.
If you set up chores as a market where each part "trades" for which tasks they want to do, I think you'll see that women would gladly "trade" some of the tasks they see as horrible, for a larger amount of smaller, less strenuous, annoying tasks.
If you treat your husband like a child who cannot be trusted to do anything right, they will become a child who cannot do anything right.
The parallel to that is women who never fix anything around the house, who never drive, who never change the tires on the car, who never set up anything technical, who never figure out what expensive things that need to be purchased, who never clean the gutters, etc. A modern trap is for women to expect the men to continue doing all the "man things" but also do half of the rest as well. That's a bad trade.
All that said, it does sound like you've been unfortunate with your men. 😅
You're right that in these situations, the housework is not what the women in these situations are really concerned about, but it's the lack of leadership and responsibility. These men are acting like kids with their wife as mom, and of course they can take care of some things ok when the wife/mom is gone, the problem is they don't when she isn't.
I suggest that if what you are saying is true, and they have a clear vision for reducing stress by being less on top of the home, the wife would usually be totally fine with that, if they'd lead, communicate, and share the plan. The wives are freaking out, and deeply upset and disappointed, because they don't want to be in charge of everything while the husband relaxes and lets them take care of it all every single time.
If my wife is upset about the state of the house, and I'm too tired to do my part in cleaning it up, I tell her so. I tell her I am too tired to do this right now, and I really dislike not being able to do my part. Would you please take it easy, maybe relax in a warm bath, and let it go for today, and we'll take care of it together tomorrow? Tomorrow I will clean the bathrooms and floors, and you do the dishes and kitchen. Then I actually do it, and I get it done first, before she even gets a chance to do her half.
100%. My husband can lead at work, he can lead in community volunteering, but at home he's a follower and someone I have to manage. The only way to get him to take a task seriously is to give him a task that (1) has consequences that hurt him if it's not done and (2) relinquish it entirely so if he doesn't do it then it will never get done. He is completely incapable of sharing a responsibility with me, and I do not micromanage. My motto is "better a crap job by someone else than any job by me."
Have you talked to him about this? I think a lot of men implicitly expect traditional gender roles at home without even thinking about the fact that it was based on the wife not having a job outside the home. On the flip side, I see a lot of professional couples where the wife expects the husband to do half the inside housework, but also all of the stereotypical male jobs like fixing the cars, and maintaining the home- which are also a ton of work, and require learning special skills. I had an ex that said those don’t count because they’re “fun for men.” I did know how to do them, but they weren’t “fun” they were just chores to me. Ultimately couples have to explicitly divide up responsibilities these days and not count on cultural assumptions.
We have explicitely discussed chores many times. I have brought up the leadership thing a couple of times but for the most part I let it go as long as he does his part. And fwiw, I do all the yardwork and more of the home maintenance. But I do that because it's fun for me. ;-)
While some, if not most, of what you say is true, I will counter with this: when I divorced my first husband (a “good” one), my household stress levels went down and my house was cleaner (even with a child). I think the expectation of help and not getting it is worse than no help at all.
Additionally, while the husband and kids might be fine if the wife is away for a short period of time, I promise those little concessions compound. Kid 2 wearing kid 1’s shoes might not be a big deal, but what about when kid 2 falls off the playset and breaks an arm because they tripped over shoes two sizes too big? What may seem like a small, inconsequential thing that mom knows (because she’s put in the time and carries the mental load of knowing what belongs to whom) becomes a big issue. Mom gets called anal or obsessive, but these things do matter. And they can’t be assessed after a short absence.
The expectation of help and not getting it is worse than no help at all. Yes.
for sure. When my husband is traveling for work I cheerfully clean the house top to bottom and then sit and enjoy it. Having someone scrolling on the couch while doing same is impossible to enjoy.
Do you live in my house? *looks around*
I really appreciate this perspective, Arda! Before we got married, I told my husband I’d have as many kids as he could handle on his own for a week. We currently have two and I regularly (2-3 times per year) travel for long weekends or up to a week. The kids are well cared for and have a blast. The house is mostly clean when I come home. Everyone is fed, rested and happy without me leaving a detailed schedule or pre-made meals.
I think a big piece of the equation is not expecting my spouse to do it my way. I’ve learned so much from watching my husband parent. I don’t love everything about his way of doing things (and I know he doesn’t love everything about my way of doing things), but I regularly see ways I’m setting expectations that don’t actually matter or support our core family values.
Love this!!
At 67 years old, I fall into the generation written about in that NYT editorial. I was very involved in coaching my kids sports but my wife carried a much bigger load with the everyday responsibilities (while also working a demanding job). I did far more than my father had done and now I observe my adult son doing far more than I did. My experience is that each generation of men is doing more, moving closer to 50/50 with the current generation of young men.
Facts
🙄
You make a fair point and sound like a conscientious husband and father. That being said, this does not mean that every woman is similar to your wife or every man is similar to you.
From a cultural perspective there are different for sure, there are many unhappy women cross culturally who remain in unhappy marriages because society/culture dictates or they just believe it's the way it should be.
I was raised within such a family and saw the consequences of that, I don't choose that for myself or for my child. I don't choose it for any woman.
There has to be transparency and openness of communication to discuss what is and isn't helpful without shame, blame or ego, this is the very least and foundation of healthy respect and a mature relationship. If this can't be achieved then it's more healthy for those all around to consider separating. Yes, it's less than ideal - more stressful and more costly but that's because it requires adaptation. The cost to wellbeing and the generational impact is too high to remain in a situation most because it looks like it's easier in the short run.
Yep, women also tend to set themselves up in these situations. She needs to be a super wife, super mother, super friend.......super woman, while nobody cares about that. Women need to just live life without the element of trying to be the best.
This is unbelievably accurate.
100% all of this and thanks for writing it. I’ve tried to explain it to my wife in basically the same terms. Look how when she’s away, the house is actually calmer, cleaner, and nothing broke. There is an epidemic of undx ADHD/Spectrum women out there that blame the failures of their rigid thinking on their partners.
There is such a thing as "good enough". I have yet to meet a woman who was familiar with this concept.
I’m of two minds on this one, because I know so many women who are trying to do all the things and there’s really no way it can be humanly done. Kids now have so many things going on, and I don’t know how their parents keep up. I suspect many of these families are one of two camps: 1) the woman taking on too much stuff trying to keep up with the Joneses, or 2) having a husband who isn’t actually good and she’s just trying to convince herself he is to make herself feel better about her pick.
Omg, EXACTLY. Brilliant. Thank you for writing this.
Couldn't agree more, although I come from a patriarchal culture and definitely absorbed too much of the 'he doesn't beat you, he doesn't get drunk, he works, what have you got to be unhappy about' and kept the marriage going for far too long. Finally got divorced because he was cheating on me, but the interesting thing is that my sons (then 13 and 11) instantly asked: 'Are you getting divorced because he never does anything around the house?'
The amount of insecure men in these comments who feel like they just have to share their little narratives about why they are really the put-upon good guys in these situations is hilarious.
No one cares. Go away. The women are talking.
It's true, men really shouldn't complain, ever. Especially if the audience is women. Whining about one’s problems and seeking emotional validation is a womanly thing.
And that’s part of what makes your gender not just sick and injured as people, but just plain fucking boring…the fact that you think feelings are womanly things. You cut off half of yourself and then blame us for why you’re hurting…and then you treat us like shit, exploit our labor, and rape us because you’re walking around half of a person and in pain.
Good job, masculinity. You’re just awesome. 🤮
If you think men should embrace their feelings, maybe calling them insecure for sharing their perspective and telling them to go away isn't going to be a winning strategy.
I know that as a man you’ve been taught to believe from birth that your perspective is automatically the most important thing in the discussion and that women especially should always welcome your comments and perspective (and sexual interests and telling us to smile more and so on), but the reality is that most of us don’t care. If you want us to care, do the work on yourselves *first*, then come talk to us when *we* want to talk to you.
This was a post for women, written by a woman, about a woman’s perspective. You are not wanted. You are not special. Your perspective is not privileged. Go away.
Okay, that’s it, everyone who is either male or doesn’t agree with everything in the original post, show yourselves out.
Actually, hold on a second…I’m being told that it’s not actually true that some random person with an extremely unearned sense of self-importance gets to declare herself the arbiter of everyone’s engagement with a Substack article that she didn’t write and on which commenting was made open to anyone with an account. So, as you were.
Also has anyone ever seen Alice and Kat Highsmith in the same room? I find it hard to believe anyone real is actually like this, whereas it would be trivially easy to train an AI LLM on jezebel.com and Jessica Valenti’s Bluesky account and create a bot from it that would post comments indistinguishable from Alice’s here.
Yes, yes, it’s all an evil conspiracy to trick men into revealing yet again how awful they are. I, a person with a completely different blog with an obviously different writing style and content and who is easily searchable as a separate person is actually the same person as the author. You are truly very clever. You should be proud.
It's not a post for women, if it was it'd be on a website which is only accessible to women to read and comment on. By posting it out in public where it's visible for all, and by having comments open to all, clearly it is a post for all to read and comment on.
Like most men, you don’t seem to know when you’re not wanted.
You don't need to care about my opinion, but I expect the fact of your own self-contradiction is evident enough to those reading our exchange.
Maybe this comments section isn't for me, but is it for you? It seems like the article was aimed at women who want to be in relationships with men.
Exploiting women’s labor is my favorite hobby. Really grateful for these articles so I can learn to get better at it.
Wow, the jump to rape is a bit extreme. I prefer enthusiastic consent, thank you. Don't paint a whole sex as rapists for the like <1% that do.
No, men understand the world does not care about your feelings. Feelings are a luxury. A predator cares not of your fear of death. Starvation doesn't change with feelings. Natural law does NOT care about your feelings.
Men feel that if something bothers us, try and do something to change it, or deal. Feelings are motivational at best. They accomplish nothing on their own.
“Go away. The women are talking.” This says it all.
Are the husbands invited to the discussion or not? (This is a non-rhetorical question.)
Why not? Don't let one loud woman speak for all of us.
Well said. :-)
I think the dynamic that men are reacting (sometimes very badly) to in this kind of discourse is "she decides the grading standard and then he is measured to it". If I understood the gist of the original essay here, it's "there's too much grade inflation."
But there's an irony here - often the complaint is not "he doesn't take out the garbage" but "he doesn't own the responsibility." E.g. she wants help with the management, not just the grunt work.
But there can't be sharing of the responsibility without sharing of the grading standard. "Be more invested and present in this thing with me, but I totally own what the thing is" is a big ask.
And yet here you are. Obviously, you care, as you type that you don’t.
I think the main issue here is women give more of a shit on average than men and then expect men to give more shits when they get married.
Women are failing themselves by not clearly defining the level of shits they give before they tie the knot.
They should be asking "Will you clean the house on your own without me asking when it reaches the level of dirtiness I deem unacceptable or will you continue to do it when you deem appropriate even if it upsets me?" It might seem robotic, but "will you help clean?" just really doesn't get the point across about what women are looking for.
People need to find partners who give an equal number of shits. My wife and I have been together for ten years and we both give relatively little shits. It's worked out perfectly. We haven't had a real argument in close to 4 years.
I did, though. I married a guy who very clearly stated that we should be splitting the housework equally since we were both going to do 40hrs a week paid labor. And then... he just didn't. So I structured it as alternating days of dishes/cooking and alternating months of laundry. And again he just... didn't. By that I mean 30 days would pass, the laundry wouldn't get done, and then it would be my turn again, now with backlog. And if I pointed this out I was accused of "keeping score."
Well thats just a shitty guy who was being a bad partner. Didn't live together long enough to find out these habbits before getting married.
How did he go 30 days without doing laundry? Did he have 30 pairs of underwear?
I guess so. Or else he didn't change much. However, I too acquired over 30 pairs of underwear and learned to outwait him. He does his part now, but it was a long training process. He's not a shitty guy, but he was a bad partner. That's precisely the problem this post is about. How do you take a generally good guy and get him to be a good partner?
KP has expressed this very well.
Sorta. The key is relatively little shits.
I just left someone (we weren't married, but we were together for seven years. No children.) who I do think would've shared the project manager load with me fairly well. He's neater than I am. He doesn't have too much trouble staying on top of his chores (I do). He can't relax when there's clutter around. He can cook fine and was willing to. He would've been a good dad.
But the EMOTIONAL labor part wasn't there. He was not comfortable being vulnerable with me. I felt like I knew the inner worlds of all my girlfriends (and some guy friends) better than his. He didn't seem to be curious about mine. He wasn't interested in growing as a person or growing our shared relationship.
But I stayed so long because....he would've been a good task manager? He did make my life easier in some ways that having another person to fall back on does. There's so much conversation about men being useless that I thought I had to stay with mine who actually wasn't useless. Until I finally decided that I needed more. I wish I DIDN'T need more and I could just be happy with a task manager, but it's 2025. I want it all or nothing. Maybe this means I will be alone forever.
But in general I just want to encourage women to pick the bar up off the floor. Marriages were meant for so much more, I think. I sure hope so, anyway.
This is another huge piece of it. Emotional labor also takes energy and is tiring when you're the only one putting the effort in. Relationships take emotional effort.
I guess going into emotional labor is the first step to birthing emotional babies.
" Until I finally decided that I needed more." - Why dress this all up in a Disney princess song? If you don't love him and want to leave - leave.
But all of this speaks to a guilty conscience - of leaving for selfish and shallow reasons. "I don't really love him and made a mistake" is enough - you don't need to find whole articles online posing rationalizations - UNLESS - the women want to use all this to look like the true victim and thereby gain concessions in life.
The emotional effort in a healthy relationship is not draining but energizing.
I do have a guilty for conscience for how long I stayed when I wasn't sure. I want marriage and kids VERY badly and I found a pretty good guy by society's standards to do those things with, so yes, it was hard to leave.
How much of a deep, emotional connection can I realistically expect from a man (who was socialized to never show emotions, never be vulnerable)? That was the question I wrestled with and tried to talk to him about.
I'm not a victim in this situation, but I am wondering how well we've equipped men to meet emotional needs for their partners...I don't need a house cleaner or a car fixer as much as I need depth and connection.
I'm sure if you aim for that as an early must have priority it'll work out. Pretty hard to fake vs the other roles.
He was settling and so was she. Neither was being honest to themselves about it
> But the EMOTIONAL labor part wasn't there. He was not comfortable being vulnerable with me. I felt like I knew the inner worlds of all my girlfriends (and some guy friends) better than his. He didn't seem to be curious about mine. He wasn't interested in growing as a person or growing our shared relationship.
You kind of make it sounds like getting to know each other’s “inner worlds” are a set of relationship video game achievements you need to earn. There is no relationship ladder, only the relationship you’d like to have. Sounds like he’s just not interested in having the kind of relationship you want. It’s ok to dislike that and end it, but that’s not the only way to have valid relationships.
I think modern people expect too much of our partners sometimes. You have girlfriends you can do this kind of thing with, why does it have to be him? Does he have to be everything to you? If you’re unhappy and can only enjoy very emotionally intense relationships, then that’s alright. You probably did the right thing by ending it. But for those of us who like less intense relationships, we’re not doing life wrong or having growth stunted relationships.
This. All of this.
The 'emotional labor' thing is just a euphemism for soft control, aka narcissistic neuroticism.
But the "emotional labor part wasn't there" - what you are describing sounds to me like "the emotional *intimacy* wasn't there."
I want to point to this distinction because I while I think emotional intimacy in a relationship takes effort (especially for us men who have sometimes been socially conditioned to _never be emotionally vulnerable_), it's a different from the work that I sometimes see called "emotional labor" of a household (maybe epitomized by "I have to send flowers to my husband's mother on her birthday because he won't bother").
I think the distinction is also important because in the argument about "helps run the household" and husbands who don't pull their weight, the other side of the coin is sometimes husbands not having a say in what the work is. I am strongly of the opinion that if both members of a marriage don't agree on what the husband doing a good job is, that's a bigger problem than whether he does a good job.
By comparison, if you decide you need emotional intimacy in your long term romantic relationship, that's great that you've identified what is important to you. Your partner could say "I don't want that" and maybe y'all aren't compatible, but he can't possibly tell you what your own needs are.
"especially for us men who have sometimes been socially conditioned to _never be emotionally vulnerable"
Men are right not be vulnerable. My psychology professor in college was a marriage and family therapy counselor, and he said that women routinely freaked out when their husbands broke down during therapy.
Hmmm...I don't think that "women routinely freaked out when their husbands broke down during therapy" implies "Men are right not be vulnerable".
I think it does imply "men are playing it safe by not being vulnerable."
Also, can you be more specific about "freaked out"? Since your professor was the counselor running the session, what did he think a good resolution was?
I'm strongly Terry Real-pilled...my view is that men live less full lives for not being emotionally connected to other people, and if there are women who are bothered by men who are not emotionally shut down, they'll have to widen their ideas of what men can be.
(You can gender invert this to get a sense of how I feel about it. "Women are right not to have careers. ...he said that men routinely freaked out when their wives said they prioritize their own careers during therapy.")
By freaked out I mean they didn't know how to react and had a disgust level reaction. Women get the ick at a vulnerable man, and see it as a sign that they will falter in a threatening situation.
So I was going to say that there's a big difference between being open, sharing, and thus vulnerable (on one hand) vs being a dysregulated guy who is overwhelmed by his own strong emotions and is looking for a partner to provide emotional regulation _for_ him.
But if it's in therapy I'd hope that's a safer environment.
But there is a difference. I wouldn’t love my wife any less if she broke down crying after a tough day at work. But most women would if their husband did the same.
I completely agree with all of this. You're right — there is a distinction. I think it's important to talk as specifically as you can about what your expectations (or at least hopes are) for your future partnership and see if that's something the person you're dating can get excited about or on board with. I think a good marriage is a little give and take, a little compromise, and a LOTTTTT of honest communication.
I agree that in the emotional labor conversation (and literal household maintenance conversation) the standards that you're holding each other to HAVE TO BE AGREED UPON and partners should try their hardest not to micromanage each other about *how* they get to these standards.
This is an interesting comment. I feel like a guy like that is more rare? It seems like we have to pick between one or the other.
Took you seven years to figure that out?
It’s a privileged position. Good thing, means life’s not heard enough to have nowhere to go. Use it wisely.
Single dad here. Life is easier doing everything yourself than living with a perpetually dissatisfied woman.
If she has this attitude that you owe it to her to make her happy you can never win no matter how hard you.try. Do yourself a favor and move on.
nice, another take about Bad Men and Bad Husbands from someone with Taylor Swift in their bio lmao
I'd be interested in reading your rebuttal, alex.
how many more left leaning think pieces like “men bad” does the world need? have these women tried communicating with their husbands? who does this serve exactly? dudes like you who can repost and share to signal you’re One Of The Good Ones? It’s so fucking tiring.
The author says women are “gaslighting themselves”? Because they think their husband is Not That Bad? lol. do women have agency or not?
I guess I'll take them in order.
Well that depends. How many more left-leaning thinkpieces do you think the world needs until men learn how to step it up?
Yes, "these women" tried communicating with their husbands.
This serves the people who have been shouldering the majority of the everyday responsibility for most of human history.
Dudes like you who get a little chubby by signalling you're One Of The Bad Ones are so fucking tiring.
What do you know about gaslighting? How do you think gaslighting interacts with agency?
I’m a woman
LMFAO
BRO THAT IS SO MUCH WORSE WHAT THE FUCK HAHAHAHAHAHA
Oh man I don't know why I didn't see this coming. You truly sniped me with that one.
Yeah bro I don't really know what to tell you. This is institutionalization levels of weaponized self-loathing
Forget about it
The delusion & sense of entitlement are too thick to cut through
I can't help but wonder how much of this is about the absence of continual discussion and negotiation between couples. What worked for our relationship twenty years ago doesn't work now. We've both changed, our standards have changed, and the responsibilities we have to our family have changed. Frustration creeps up when the conditions change but the terms of the partnership don't adapt accordingly.
One example I'll share is when we decided it was time for me to return to graduate school. My wife worked full-time to support the family financially. She told me, in no uncertain terms, if she was the full-time bread winner, I was taking most of the responsibility for the home and the kids. In particular, I remember her telling me, "I want a clean bathroom and the floors to be scrubbed at least weekly." It was her job to be clear and direct and my job to listen and respect her needs.
Years later when she went to graduate school (while working full-time), we discussed it again. Since I was also working full-time, we agreed to hire a housekeeper once a month for a deep clean, but I would still up my game a bit while she focused on her studies.
We've been doing this for so long that we can sense when the other is frustrated. Sometimes that means we need to recalibrate our workload distribution. Other times, we just acknowledge that one of us is pissing the other one off. Just saying that out loud takes some of the tension out of the equation--even if we can't make things perfect in that moment.
I don't want to come across as a perfect, but I'll tell you reason that I think my wife is happy with our division of labor. The reason I think we are in a good place now is because, over thirty years of marriage, she has told me when she's unhappy with my contributions. I've done the same with her.
Just my two cents here.
I’m 12 years in versus your thirty, but more and more it seems to me that marriage advice is stupid simple and can be summed up by the cliche “communication.” Probably if you’re already in the hole (and no longer trust each other) it’s more complicated than that. But if you can keep it up enough to stay out of the hole in the first place, it’s simple.
The point of marriage isn't the housework of running a home. It's a soul connection, a meeting of minds, a decision to be together and do the best you can to keep the other happy. Unless you consider a woman's only priority to be housework, a husband not being helpful around the home doesn't matter all that much.
My grandma was horrible around the house. Her food was barely nutritious. She had an awful emotional temperament and raised her kids with issues. She made excellent sweets though. My grandpa otoh made all the money, was an excellent chef because he was a food scientist (his homemade preserves were legendary), and if we'd visit him when grandma was away visiting relatives, the house would be neat as a pin. My dad barely did a thing around the house and I was very shocked when he made me instant noodles once. And I complain about having so much housework but I found i don't even do an hour a day of housekeeping. I'm the one who finds all the Christmas presents and I complain about it, but it involves browsing Etsy and Amazon, is that so hard.
And it's all fine, because the point of marriage isn't housework, just like the point of marriage isn't kids. It's love, connection and whatever it is you agree upon is your contribution to making the other's life better.
Do you think your grandma made your grandpa's life better? She sounds kinda terrible.
I agree that the point of marriage isn't housework, the point of marriage is building a shared life.
My grandpa was no picnic though. He was exacting about standards and the only person who could put up with that was someone whose self esteem was not dependent on those things.
I don't particularly empathize with the women who complain about their husbands not helping around the house tbh. They remind me of my mom. She always complains about her kids being messy, but once we moved out, it hit us we didn't mind tidying, we just didn't want to be tidying around her because in her eyes we were always doing it wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if 80% of the whiners were like my mom.
I don't have issues of inequality in my marriage, and that is because I spent the initial few years making my husband feel like the house and what it looks like is also his domain and he gets to pick what art goes on the walls even if it doesnt go with my taste. He grew up in a house where they ate a lot of canned food and cleaned once a week tops because everyone worked long hours, so he's not the best at standards, but he has better follow-through than me. So it works out.
Yeah I don't think the issue is neurotic women, I know plenty of "type B" moms who struggle majorly with this and it's not because they need things to be perfect, it's because they need things to be done. People need clean clothes to wear, food in their lunchboxes, and clean bowls to put cereal in.
The problem isn't type-A or type-B. I see messy houses where the husband is like "oh she has all the ideas, I just stay out of it and do the heavy lifting when she asks". My parents house wasn't the golden standard of tidy either. Being a control-freak isn't about perfection. It's about having an idea in your head about how things are going to go and not enjoying it when it deviates from that idea, and, often, expecting everyone to read your mind for your ideas and then being mad when they don't. They still want to be the sole arbiter of the home domain, because that's how they've seen/experienced it done.
And another part of the problem is just taking on more than you can do and not realizing it. I've been guilty of this. If you're both working long hours and have kids, maybe you're not going to be able to sort laundry into multiple loads (I've talked about this online on multiple women-oriented subreddits, and everyone seems to take laundry more seriously than I do). Maybe you can't handle a lawn, just put down weed cloth and woodchips. Maybe there are going to be barbies on the floor all the time.
I notice generally that women who complain about their husbands being incompetent at home don't actually mind their husbands are incompetent at these things - it makes them feel like domestic goddesses in comparison. The complaining is a kind of bragging or trying to feel better/equivalent - 'oh he might be a big dude at work, but at home, I've to remind him to take the trash out'. I wonder if some of it is a luxury thing - you've made it according to male expectations if your wife can lose money on a business. Maybe you've made it according to female expectations if you can deal with your husband making a giant mess to be happy. The next time some such woman is complaining IRL, try being outraged on her behalf and see how quickly she changes her tone (I've done this earnestly when I didn't know how these things worked).
Bottomline - I believe people are competent and rational. If women are happy being married to men who don't do chores much, it must mean the chores don't matter so much. If it becomes a real issue, people usually hire a cleaner. When that is an option, if people are getting divorced over chores, it usually means other things are wrong in the marriage and the chores are just what you say to your friends.
Your mom sounds a lot like mine. She doesn’t see my version of clean as valid and gets offended if I can clean up quicker than she can, like even if she can’t see how I did it differently from her, somehow it’s cheating to have done it faster.
Boy howdy I'm reminded every day how glad I am that I will not have children.
I'm completely terrified of being the so-called "good husband," and that's just with the two of us here. I can't imagine how much more stressful it would be with kids.
I'm so glad that you've found someone like you have. Aaron is the best of all of us.
Men who are bad husbands are not worried about being bad husbands ❤️ I think you’re in the clear!
this is unrelated, but you have some of the most shining talent i've ever seen at pissing off the worst dudes you can imagine.
The world is also grateful that you will not have children.
Woman-brain is definitely the belief that remembering things is work
It is work.
Facebook literally does it for you
You’re not tired from remembering things nobody needed you to remember, you’re tired because you stay up late on your phone
I have to remember things at work and at home. Need help with that? Get a planner. Get a calendar. You can literally just go to the calendar app on your phone and put things down so you dont even have to buy one. It even reminds you so you don't have to do all the remembering yourself!
why is every comment from a man about women’s expectations being too high? sick to know y’all will do everything possible except just fucking listen to us.
>why is every comment from a man about women’s expectations being too high?
That's false, here are some counterexamples:
https://www.emilysversion.com/p/hes-not-a-good-husband/comment/118435906
https://www.emilysversion.com/p/hes-not-a-good-husband/comment/118285649
https://www.emilysversion.com/p/hes-not-a-good-husband/comment/118482206
https://www.emilysversion.com/p/hes-not-a-good-husband/comment/118288816
>sick to know y’all will do everything possible except just fucking listen to us.
Just because I'm listening to you doesn't mean I agree with you. Perhaps what you really meant to say is: "just fucking agree with us."
Or, as another female commenter aptly put it in this thread: "No one cares. Go away. The women are talking."
I guess this must be the "emotional labor" I keep hearing about.
We need America to dissolve. It should be replaced with warring tribes who constantly raid each other, stealing women to make them wives or concubines. Only then will women realize, “oh, this is why men are different - so that they can fight off the invader, and prevent the desecration that comes with subjugation.”
Why are you assuming the husbands are the problem and not the women?
When was the woman ever the problem?
This article really resonated. I've been with my partner for almost 20 years. Although we're not married, our relationship is the envy of many of our friends, who have cycled through marriages and divorces in the time we've been together. My partner is kind and caring, but almost all the tasks of daily life fall to me, including reminding him to do "his chores," like taking out the garbage. Almost all the groceries, bills, animal care, laundry, house maintenance, car maintenance and social schedule, including stuff for his family, falls to me. His parents call me to schedule things. I'm the one who plans almost everything. It makes me feel more like a mother taking care of a child than an adult in a balanced relationship. When I ask him to help with something it often goes undone for months, and it's just easier if I do it myself. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just stopped... Would he pick up the slack? Or would things fall apart? Sometimes I wonder if it would be easier if I was single. Frankly I fantasize about being with someone who organizes everything, and I don't have to worry or think about bills, oil changes, etc. Wouldn't it be great to have someone else do all the emotional labour?
As a recently divorced woman who was married for more than 30 years, I can say that no, he most likely would not pick up the slack and yes, it's easier to be single. Things are where they are because I chose to leave them there, but often I simply clean up as I go and it never becomes an issue. I have been shocked at how much less mess is in my home, how easy projects are to start (and finish), and how much less stress I feel overall. Not saying you should divorce, but if you would be financially secure and don't have young children, life gets amazingly easier.
I’ve been there too. I felt that pain. Unfortunately it doesn’t change unless you make a change. It’s a physical and mental load. I wish you all the very best.
The bar is certainly low AF for men!
I have an actual good one. :)