There's definitely some complicated intersectional stuff going on here with gender expectations, class and wealth, and whatever other stuff LW and spouse have going on. I'm not ruling out the idea that growing up with housekeepers taught her that housework is something OTHER people do and it's beneath her! Even if that's why, though, his attitude isn't going to get him anywhere, because he's already in "I'm going to claim I'm Totally Fine doing the cleaning but also make misogynist jokes about this a lot, demonstrating that I am NOT fine but actually want to punish her for every dirty dish" territory.
Like. The "slut" joke and the "male maid" signoff are SUCH red flags. The whole tone of the letter is so contemptuous. He's really angry at her, in a really gendered way. (It is, in fact, sexist as fuck for him to constantly throw in her face the idea that she's failing as a woman by not being a good housekeeper! That is the not-very-sub subtext of the slut joke and the maid joke and the comment about the "price of being with her"! Literally none of that would even be in his arsenal if the genders were reversed. She's NOT WRONG that the whole history of feminism and gendered labor is relevant here, even if she's being a jerk about it.)
That doesn't mean she hasn't been behaving badly, or that she hasn't made asshole jokes of her own, or that she's not being a privileged twit about who does the dirty work of the household. But she's not the one who wrote in - and my advice to LW specifically would be "take some accountability for your own hostility and reconsider your approach, before you sabotage your marriage even worse than you already are."
Hopefully they actually do like each other enough to work together on solving the housework problem, if they can get out of the loop of "you suck because you're a slob!" "you suck because you have sexist expectations!"
ETA: personal context - the "lazy slob" thing also does push some personal buttons for me, too, so that's relevant. I'm a disabled and depressed person who does rely on other people to do some "basic" household maintenance stuff, and I have some kneejerk defensiveness when that kind of language gets thrown around, because it's been used against me both directly and indirectly (people talking about what "a decent person" should be able and willing to do re: cleaning often stings pretty badly, because, well. I'm not a decent person, by that reckoning!)
So when LW gets nasty about what a slob his wife is, my immediate reaction is "what's this look like from her side? is she not seeing the dirt, and needs to retrain her eyes? is she seeing it but not acting on it for some reason? what's the reason? what's preventing her from cleaning, and what can be changed to make it easier or more possible?" - basically viewing it as an accessibility issue rather than an issue of bad character. Shame is just not useful here! It doesn't help!
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Like. The "slut" joke and the "male maid" signoff are SUCH red flags. The whole tone of the letter is so contemptuous. He's really angry at her, in a really gendered way. (It is, in fact, sexist as fuck for him to constantly throw in her face the idea that she's failing as a woman by not being a good housekeeper! That is the not-very-sub subtext of the slut joke and the maid joke and the comment about the "price of being with her"! Literally none of that would even be in his arsenal if the genders were reversed. She's NOT WRONG that the whole history of feminism and gendered labor is relevant here, even if she's being a jerk about it.)
That doesn't mean she hasn't been behaving badly, or that she hasn't made asshole jokes of her own, or that she's not being a privileged twit about who does the dirty work of the household. But she's not the one who wrote in - and my advice to LW specifically would be "take some accountability for your own hostility and reconsider your approach, before you sabotage your marriage even worse than you already are."
Hopefully they actually do like each other enough to work together on solving the housework problem, if they can get out of the loop of "you suck because you're a slob!" "you suck because you have sexist expectations!"
ETA: personal context - the "lazy slob" thing also does push some personal buttons for me, too, so that's relevant. I'm a disabled and depressed person who does rely on other people to do some "basic" household maintenance stuff, and I have some kneejerk defensiveness when that kind of language gets thrown around, because it's been used against me both directly and indirectly (people talking about what "a decent person" should be able and willing to do re: cleaning often stings pretty badly, because, well. I'm not a decent person, by that reckoning!)
So when LW gets nasty about what a slob his wife is, my immediate reaction is "what's this look like from her side? is she not seeing the dirt, and needs to retrain her eyes? is she seeing it but not acting on it for some reason? what's the reason? what's preventing her from cleaning, and what can be changed to make it easier or more possible?" - basically viewing it as an accessibility issue rather than an issue of bad character. Shame is just not useful here! It doesn't help!