Having certain expectations—especially unrealistic or unfair ones—can be seriously detrimental in a relationship. For example, expecting one partner to always cover the bill can lead to fights, as can expecting your significant other to do more around the house without having mutually agreed to it.
The latter is what happened to this redditor’s girlfriend. The netizen wanted her to take on a larger chunk of the chores now that she was unemployed and “living her best life”, but she didn’t think it was fair.
Expecting your partner to clean up after you might lead to some troublesome situations
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This man hoped that his girlfriend would do more chores now that she’s unemployed
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Chores are a subject many couples fight over
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Living together with a romantic partner can be great, as more times than not, it allows couples to enjoy more time together. However, sharing a home also means sharing certain responsibilities, be it financial matters or good old chores.
While said aspects are usually not the most romantic topics to discuss, they should definitely be talked about, as not dividing up the load can lead to misunderstandings, fights, or even resentment. As a matter of fact, money and chores are both among the five most common reasons couples—in the US, at least—fight, according to a YouGov survey. (The rest of the top five comprises a certain tone of voice, communication styles, and family relationships.)
Some studies even suggest eliminating chores from a couple’s life altogether in order to increase people’s well-being, consequently positively affecting their relationship, too. The way to do that, according to the research, is to hire someone from the outside to take care of said chores. Spending money, which is often dedicated to something more palpable when one wants to treat themselves, would result in buying time, which can be a game changer, as according to the researchers, “The more time-pressed you feel, the lower your well-being”.
Sharing certain tasks around the house is arguably the best way to go
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But even if one of the partners had the time—as the OP’s girlfriend arguably did being unemployed—to take care of all the chores on their own, dividing them seems to be the better option.
“The number of equally shared tasks matters a great deal for both men’s and women’s relationship quality,” Daniel L. Carlson, Associate Professor at the Department of Family and Consumer Studies at University of Utah, wrote in a briefing paper prepared for the Council on Contemporary Families.
According to him, for both men and women, the number of equally shared tasks is linked with a sense of their relationship being fair to both parties, as well as with satisfaction with their housework arrangement and their relationship overall.
Comparing egalitarian relationships, where partners take care of roughly equal amounts of the housework, versus traditional relationships, where men tend to do less than 40% of what needs to be done, Carlson found that partners who took on specific chores separately weren’t as satisfied as those who shared at least three tasks and tackled them together.
Even though sharing the chores—or at least some of them—seems to be what’s best for couples, few of them take care of things around the house together. According to Gallup’s data, women continue to handle a bigger piece of the pie in regards to chores, which include such tasks as cleaning the home, doing laundry, and preparing meals. Men are, however, the ones to take care of such things as keeping the car in good condition and doing yard work more often.
Despite the OP’s girlfriend already doing more than half of the chores in their home, the redditor believed she should have been doing even more as being unemployed, she arguably had the time for it. However, his opinion was not well-received by his girlfriend, nor was it well-received by the online community, which unanimously deemed the OP a jerk.
Fellow netizens unanimously agreed that the redditor was the jerk in the situation
