My partner H and I have been together for almost five years, and have lived together for about a year. We have a strong and healthy relationship, and although we often light-heartedly bicker we make up quickly and rarely ever have serious arguments.
I do not claim to be a tidy housemate: I am terrible at leaving clothes, keys, shopping all over the place, and often will leave the washing up for a day or two. H is a fantastic cook and stays on top of the laundry, but for other chores – namely cleaning the kitchen, washing up and taking out the bins – he is useless. He puts off these chores to the point that it makes the house difficult to be in (no clean plates, stinking rubbish bin etc), and if I ask him to do it, he can quickly snap, or worse, shut me out and be in a mood for the rest of the day. He argues that he does things in his own time, but his “own time” can be days, often to the point where I give in and wash up or take the bin out myself, which just feels unfair.
I don’t understand why he doesn’t seem to see or care about the mess. When I try to speak to him about it, he accuses me of being a nag, of mothering him, but it’s really affecting how I feel at home. I hate to live in a messy environment, but I don’t want to keep arguing with him. What can I do?
Although this is a really common problem, it’s actually not so easy to resolve. Who decides what’s right in terms of chores? H stays on top of a lot of things, you say, and you leave the washing up for a day or two. What are your chores? We each have our own ways of thinking and the other person may disagree or may have a history of doing things differently.
I went to Joanna Harrison, former divorce lawyer, psychotherapist and author of The Five Arguments All Couples (Need to) Have: And Why the Washing-Up Matters.
She said that we have ways of looking at chores through “the lens of our own backgrounds”. These attitudes can go back to how our parents did things and if someone else doesn’t do them it can seem like a personal affront when in fact, that other person just has a different way of doing things.
Harrison added, “This is an issue so many couples face and it’s always going to be a work in progress. But with domestics they can easily become a stage for underlying tensions, so a question to ask yourself is, ‘Is this a way for other feelings to express themselves?’”
The not-doing of things can often be used as a silent protest. When one person (or both) feels out of control, or not listened to, it’s amazing what is used in the couple warfare. The withholding of anything on purpose (sex, money, information, chores) is about control. So I would just be wary that this isn’t what’s going on here. The nagging/mothering comment bothered me – this is lazy language and says more about him than you.
Harrison’s first suggestion was to “make the conversation between the two of you less defensive. Can you reflect on the way you communicate about this? Is it only in the heat of the moment that you have this argument?”
If we wait until we are full of rage to communicate, that rarely helps and it also sets the temperature for future communications about that topic. And it’s not that I think it’s up to you to sort this – but you’re the one who has written in.
When people share a house in whatever capacity, I’m a big fan of house meetings where you have a scheduled, short meeting once a week/month to talk about things to do with the house. It’s a great time to bring up matters like this and hopefully the conversations stay contained. Also no one can then pretend they “didn’t know” that something annoyed the other. Because it’s scheduled, emotions tend to be more neutral, too.
But, without wanting to be too analytical, if you have a history of not feeling considered, it may pierce at something a little deeper when your partner is not doing the chores you think they should.
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