Carolyn Hax: not really helpful

[xenacryst]

Dear Carolyn: My husband tries to be helpful around the house. But he seems to have rather large blind spots. I’ve learned he truly doesn’t see the packages piled up on the porch when he walks inside. He cleans up the kitchen, but misses the pots on the stove and the countertops with spills and crumbs. He doesn’t remember when trash day is so he never gets the can to the curb.

I have tried to point out some of these in a gentle way, but he gets upset that I don’t appreciate how much he does around the house.

But when the job is half-done, I feel resentful that I have to always remember — and finish — the household jobs. He will do anything I ask, but I’m tired of asking. I want him to recognize and carry some of the load with me.

Half-Done Household

Half-Done Household: He is carrying some of the load. He might even argue he’s carrying more than his half — because you have to ask, half of what whole?

If he were expecting to live in a sparkly clean environment on your labors alone, that would be one thing. But from what you describe, he’d be content to live amid his crumbs and spills. That’s a different problem for you, for both of you, altogether.

So before you envision a fair division of labor, you need to reconcile your way to a fair vision of the outcome. Your standard of “clean enough,” his, or somewhere in between?

Another discussion point: If you insist — for the sake of argument — on surgical cleanliness, does he still need to do half of whatever that requires? Or is the one with higher standards responsible for the aboves-and-beyonds?

With housekeeping, the tendency is to think vertically: You do dishes, I do laundry; I vacuum, you take out the trash; each job done to completion.

Maybe the answer here is to agree to think horizontally instead: You tend to dishes, laundry, vacuum and trash to your standards, and I finish them to mine. He cuts, you style.

You can also close any resentment-breeding gaps with professional help. And, a smartphone: His can ping him weekly on trash night. Marriages have been rescued by less.

Comments

[xenacryst]

Soooo, I have some thoughts about this. On the one hand, it's good to acknowledge that the two might have differing standards for "done" and what constitutes a clean house, and if they've acknowledged that and agreed on the division of labor, that's fine. But HDH lists things like not taking out the garbage, not picking up packages delivered to the front door - these aren't things that are only done to the satisfaction of some and not others, they are things that are simply not done. You don't take out the trash and you end up with unusable trash cans. You don't pick up the packages and they get rained on, stolen, forgotten until too late.

In addition, HDH says they've tried to talk to the husband about this, but he gets upset. This ... isn't about the bits of household maintenance, anymore, is it? She Divorced Me Because I left My Dishes by the Sink goes into a lot more detail (with a side helping of mildly problematic sexism, but the point remains) - husband isn't incapable of remembering these things, but he hasn't made it a priority, and that speaks to having not made respecting HDH a priority. And a smart phone isn't going to help with that.

[vass]

Yeah. If he wanted to remember but couldn't, he'd have set his own smartphone.

[xenacryst]

And, unless there's something HDH is not saying about how they're asking for these things, the response shouldn't be upset but, "I'll try; it's hard for me, but can we work out a way to make it easier?" or even "I hear you, but here's why I simply can't; can we work with that?"

[recessional]

Yeah I am hardcore into . . . this is not an advice-column situation, this is a couples' therapy situation. Like my absolute first impulse is, I want to know what ALL other factors are here? like what's the overall context? what about other areas of life? who works most outside the home? (note that I do not say "who is bringing in most money", but "who works most" - ie who is or isn't THERE without other things to do during the day) etc etc etc . . .

Not, note, that I expect those necessarily to exonerate/excuse OR to further condemn the husband but because it could be either or neither - like if you have the above on top of, he works fewer hours and he's a crappy emotional support and so on, then that's one situation; if you have the above and he does ten hour manual labour shifts that's another; and so many other things and other than that he's genuinely crap at doing basic housework that's obvious in the letter, there's not much else to indicate to my eye.

(There are trends in general and assumptions we can make/knee-jerk stuff we can assume from own past experience, but the letter itself is pretty sparse.)

Just because it FEELS like there is more here than just housework, and that housework is just the place where it's bubbling to the surface.

[madripoor_rose]

Oh hell, I'm in the middle of this with my father who I share housing with and this is one hundred percent control issues and wanting the brownie points for doing something, but refusing to do it right when that takes actual work.

[havocthecat]

I just want to link HDH to selected highlights of the emotional labor discussion and suggest that talk with a therapist and the husband, rather than just saying "lower your standards."

[minoanmiss]

As someone who is, if anything, on the husband's "side" of this, I disagree with this advice.

My roomate keeps cleaner standards than I do. I fall short for various reasons, ranging from eyesight issues to human nature, and I can't claim I don't sometimes get annoyed. But when I'm thinking straight I realize that compromise involves my working up to her as well as her yielding a little to me. At least much of the time I try to see a few more steps beyond what I consider "clean enough" because she lives here too.

That said, I agree with the commenter (Recessional?) who said that this is likely a symptom of something more.

(Also, I don't know how one cleans a kitchen without washing the pots and pans OR wiping up the crumbs and spills.)

[ambyr]

I think this is one of those cases where the advice columnist has to provide advice to the person writing in, not to the other person involved in the situation. Like, yes, it would be great if her husband started doing more, started being less defensive, gained an understanding of emotional labor. But that's on the husband. The LW can't control any of that. All she can control is her own expectations, and whether or not she wants to stay in this relationship.