Washing dishes is actually difficult to do if you've never done it before, though? I grew up with dishwashers, and when I first started living alone in apartments without them I didn't do much cooking so it was generally "rinse out the mug and bowl" and you're done; even having been taught at grandparents' houses as a child, when I started living in an apartment with no dishwasher and doing serious cooking there was a huge learning curve. What needs to soak? What doesn't? How do you know when something is clean? How often do you need a new sponge/how do you take care of the dishrag? What actually is the point of these ten different brush/scrubby/sponge/towel things? What temperature of water do you use for different things? How long is it ok for different things to sit, what things *need* to sit? Which of the three different kinds of soap here should I be using, how much? How does the #$%#$ sink drain work and why does it not do what it's supposed to? How does garbage disposal? What's a 'basin'? How do you handle drying in this house? Etc.
If you learned from someone else and you've been doing it a long time, it seems easy, but if you just put someone in front of a sink who's never done it before and say "clean the dishes"??? They are going to be lost. I mean, they can probably figure out "wipe things with soapy rag" but that's not really the same thing as knowing how to clean dishes well. And if you've got executive function issues, every one of those "what is the right way to do this?" decisions that isn't routine for you yet is going to drain your executive function down a little bit farther until you can't anymore. (Double so if you know there is someone watching who will criticize you because it's easy and you're messing it up. My mom still says I'm doing it wrong because I have massive sensory objections to putting my hands in a sink with dirty water with hidden slimy things floating in it.)
That's not an excuse for LW's wife - they have been married long enough that she should have been able to say "please teach me how you do the dishes, show me how to help" and learn his way in just a couple nights, except for like, cast iron - but saying "Washing the dishes is easy even if you've never done it before" helps nothing.
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If you learned from someone else and you've been doing it a long time, it seems easy, but if you just put someone in front of a sink who's never done it before and say "clean the dishes"??? They are going to be lost. I mean, they can probably figure out "wipe things with soapy rag" but that's not really the same thing as knowing how to clean dishes well. And if you've got executive function issues, every one of those "what is the right way to do this?" decisions that isn't routine for you yet is going to drain your executive function down a little bit farther until you can't anymore. (Double so if you know there is someone watching who will criticize you because it's easy and you're messing it up. My mom still says I'm doing it wrong because I have massive sensory objections to putting my hands in a sink with dirty water with hidden slimy things floating in it.)
That's not an excuse for LW's wife - they have been married long enough that she should have been able to say "please teach me how you do the dishes, show me how to help" and learn his way in just a couple nights, except for like, cast iron - but saying "Washing the dishes is easy even if you've never done it before" helps nothing.