Originally posted by: BlueFlamme
Originally posted by: lizardth
I already cook, clean dishes, clean house, wash clothes, put away laundry, and take care of the yard. Now he has asked me to start ironing his uniforms.
Do you have kids? And what do you mean by "take care of the yard", are you out there mowing/hedging or just taking care of your flower garden?
Honestly I had this issue with my wife before we had our daughter. The issue isn't how much time she spent on the house, it was how effective her time was. If I worked that slow at the office, I'd be fired (except I work for the govt, but anywhere else).
When I am home I can finish everything she does in a day by 10 because that is how the work environment is. She would finish it around 3-4 because of her approach. I don't try and force her to do it in a "work" mindset, but I did require it to be done since she was staying at home with a degree and no kids. Now that we have kids I don't require as much.
A degree with no kids? I'd actually probably draw the line there. Without kids, the house shouldn't require much attention anyway. If each of the two people would simply pick up after themselves (something my wife has yet to learn, though), it would just be a matter or sweeping/dusting once a week. If my wife would have suggested staying home before we had kids, I would have literally laughed my ass off. Seriously. I would have laughed so hard that my ass would have literally fallen off. I'd have to pick it up and reapply it my posterior.
When we had our first child she wanted to stay home. I proceeded with extreme caution. On paper, it sounds great to the whole team. In reality, it turned into a gameshow-watching 6 month vacation. It was a nightmare. I'd get home and the house would look like it got fscked by Godzilla. It was in the worst imaginable shape. Inevitably, I'd come home, trip over a ton of sh*t (my wife's sh*t usually had my son's sh*t far outnumbered), kick it from one side of the room to the other because I was pissed, then we'd get into a fight, and she'd tell me I was expecting too much. WTF. NOTHING would get done. Seriously. A monkey could accomplish more in 5 minutes than she did in a day. My expectations were simple: don't have food on the walls and please provide a visible path from the door to the living room. Seriously. I wasn't asking for a Mr. Clean house. I already knew she wasn't capable of that after 5 years of living together, so my expectations were natually subdued. I just wanted her to at least PRETEND to be doing something other than polishing off potato chip bags while watching the Price Is Right. She would always tell me that she was too busy with our son to clean up. Hello! He takes 2 three hour naps a day!!!!! Of the 9 hours I'm gone, you have 3 that you're coping with our son!!!!!!! WTF are you doing the rest of the time!!!!!! It helped my case significantly that I'd have the house spotless in one day (Saturday); accomplished while our son was napping.
Anyway, after one particularly nasty fight, I said "Look. This isn't working. I know you enjoy staying at home with our son, as would I, but you're accomplishing nothing. You are going back to work, and that's final. He's going back to daycare [he had been in daycare a bit before the decision was made, and it was a nice place], you're going back to work, and we're not debating a shred of it."
We're not a "traditional" couple in the sense that I state the rules and she follows them - quite the contrary - but that was one time where I just said "fsck it, I'm putting my foot down, and if you're underneath it, so be it." I was that pissed and that fed up. I can't begin to describe the resentment that built up inside me. Hell, my blood is boiling now just thinking about it, and this was two years ago.
There are obviously many different kinds of people. Some have an innate desire to be getting something done, others need shocked with a cattleprod just to wipe their ass. The latter of the two are simply not fit to be left to supervise their own productivity.
. i can iron though
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