deputychairman replied to your post “klyaksa1
via http://ift.tt/2op1s3B:deputychairman replied to your post “klyaksa1 replied to your post “klyaksa1 replied to your post “well…”
As far as I know neither me nor my dude has any MH problems and this sounds a lot like how we live, so maybe a given percentage of the issue is The Patriarchy which lets dudes gaze upon filth in their own home and say, meh, not my problem, if I just leave it eventually a woman will clean it, right? They may not be aware that’s what they’re thinking, but they still are thinking it.
That is undeniably a factor. I mean, undeniably. I don’t have to pick his socks up off the floor, usually, but only because the literal first thing I did when we moved into this house was to put a laundry basket in the hallway and say all dirty clothes go in this and i will wash them, if they are not in this i will not wash them, which probably wouldn’t have worked except that when he lies in bed and takes his socks off, if he flings them straight forward, they go out the door, hit the wall, and fall into that basket. (And I do do every load of laundry.)
It was only when I completely broke down and said in order not to think about food i will literally buy dog food and eat it from a can every day so that i don’t have to think about this that he took over, and now he does virtually all of the cooking. And he makes me feel like shit about it, but he does it, and i haven’t really caved. I cook only occasionally. And he does almost all of the dishes, because I have a skin condition and actually wound up with a horrible infection that the antibiotics for gave me anaphylaxis and full-body hives and so after a while, he got more chill about doing the dishes. He complains sometimes, and I step in once in a while, but- here’s the thing, he only washes them immediately before preparing a meal. But he washes them.
So that means there are filthy dishes stacked high next to the sink literally all the time, because he washes them and then fills the sink again right away by cooking. But I’ve stood firm. This is just how I live. There’s constantly filthy dishes. But the dishes do get washed. So.
He recently tried to complain about this and I asked him to describe how our washing machine works, and he stopped complaining. We’ve lived here fifteen years and he’s run a load of laundry precisely once, when I had two sprained ankles and couldn’t get down the stairs to the laundry room, and the lack of socks hit a crisis point.
In college I postulated that there was a belief in The Housework Fairy that went completely unexamined in the minds of people, particularly male ones, whose mothers did too much for them, and this is borne out by a lot of observation since. It’s not even that a woman will do it for them, it’s a literal willful blindness that goes totally unacknowledged. The Fairy picks up dishes and socks, unloads the dishwasher, puts the remote back where it goes; waiting for a woman to do it would require that you acknowledge that the woman does anything at all. These sorts of tasks just Happen, as if performed by some corporeal extension of a benevolent universe.
As far as I know neither me nor my dude has any MH problems and this sounds a lot like how we live, so maybe a given percentage of the issue is The Patriarchy which lets dudes gaze upon filth in their own home and say, meh, not my problem, if I just leave it eventually a woman will clean it, right? They may not be aware that’s what they’re thinking, but they still are thinking it.
That is undeniably a factor. I mean, undeniably. I don’t have to pick his socks up off the floor, usually, but only because the literal first thing I did when we moved into this house was to put a laundry basket in the hallway and say all dirty clothes go in this and i will wash them, if they are not in this i will not wash them, which probably wouldn’t have worked except that when he lies in bed and takes his socks off, if he flings them straight forward, they go out the door, hit the wall, and fall into that basket. (And I do do every load of laundry.)
It was only when I completely broke down and said in order not to think about food i will literally buy dog food and eat it from a can every day so that i don’t have to think about this that he took over, and now he does virtually all of the cooking. And he makes me feel like shit about it, but he does it, and i haven’t really caved. I cook only occasionally. And he does almost all of the dishes, because I have a skin condition and actually wound up with a horrible infection that the antibiotics for gave me anaphylaxis and full-body hives and so after a while, he got more chill about doing the dishes. He complains sometimes, and I step in once in a while, but- here’s the thing, he only washes them immediately before preparing a meal. But he washes them.
So that means there are filthy dishes stacked high next to the sink literally all the time, because he washes them and then fills the sink again right away by cooking. But I’ve stood firm. This is just how I live. There’s constantly filthy dishes. But the dishes do get washed. So.
He recently tried to complain about this and I asked him to describe how our washing machine works, and he stopped complaining. We’ve lived here fifteen years and he’s run a load of laundry precisely once, when I had two sprained ankles and couldn’t get down the stairs to the laundry room, and the lack of socks hit a crisis point.
In college I postulated that there was a belief in The Housework Fairy that went completely unexamined in the minds of people, particularly male ones, whose mothers did too much for them, and this is borne out by a lot of observation since. It’s not even that a woman will do it for them, it’s a literal willful blindness that goes totally unacknowledged. The Fairy picks up dishes and socks, unloads the dishwasher, puts the remote back where it goes; waiting for a woman to do it would require that you acknowledge that the woman does anything at all. These sorts of tasks just Happen, as if performed by some corporeal extension of a benevolent universe.