I guess I'm a lot more sympathetic to LW's wife than most of the commenters... that "slut" "joke" does not sound funny to me, and neither does his nasty judgemental tone that he's trying to play off as neutral and objective. Like, why does his "slut" bullshit get to be played off as a joke, but her (kind of obviously a defensive joke, IMO!) claim that not cleaning is feminist get treated as Dead Serious Ideology? That looks like a screaming double standard to me.
I do agree with the general concept that she should take some of the responsibility for the household not being disgusting, and that this is something they need to negotiate between them. But I think that negotiation can't happen unless LW admits that he IS resentful and bitter and framing her as a bad lazy terrible person, and drops the judgy bullshit to actually discuss the tasks with a practical, "what would make this possible to do" approach. To quote Miles Vorkosigan, "don't raise the pressure; lower the wall."
We don't get the wife's perspective here, but I definitely feel like she's on the defensive against his judgement, refusing to engage seriously because she feels attacked. If he stops attacking, maybe she'll stop defending, and they can model something other than this petty sniping bullshit for their kid.
(And maybe she *is* neurodivergent and having a really hard time tracking what needs to be done and then actually getting it done, and is defensively declaring her refusal in order to avoid trying and being declared a failure, which is what the "art monster" identification makes me think of. He's preemptively decided that a smart, competent woman like her MUST just be choosing to be lazy and bad, and that sets off so many alarms for me. And even if that's not the issue here, he's still going to get farther by meeting her as an equal rather than passing judgement from his high horse.)
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I do agree with the general concept that she should take some of the responsibility for the household not being disgusting, and that this is something they need to negotiate between them. But I think that negotiation can't happen unless LW admits that he IS resentful and bitter and framing her as a bad lazy terrible person, and drops the judgy bullshit to actually discuss the tasks with a practical, "what would make this possible to do" approach. To quote Miles Vorkosigan, "don't raise the pressure; lower the wall."
We don't get the wife's perspective here, but I definitely feel like she's on the defensive against his judgement, refusing to engage seriously because she feels attacked. If he stops attacking, maybe she'll stop defending, and they can model something other than this petty sniping bullshit for their kid.
(And maybe she *is* neurodivergent and having a really hard time tracking what needs to be done and then actually getting it done, and is defensively declaring her refusal in order to avoid trying and being declared a failure, which is what the "art monster" identification makes me think of. He's preemptively decided that a smart, competent woman like her MUST just be choosing to be lazy and bad, and that sets off so many alarms for me. And even if that's not the issue here, he's still going to get farther by meeting her as an equal rather than passing judgement from his high horse.)