Are We Really Splitting Up Over Chores?

housework is not bulls*%t and getting divorced over dishes

My post about how our Fair Play discussion signaled the end of my marriage is my most popular post, by far. It has also brought me the most vitriol. People calling me a narcissist, or a privileged white woman pretending at oppression, others belittling the idea that writing could ever be considered work and not just a hobby (ironic on a website currently valued at $650M that literally exists thanks to the writing of writers). One man even claimed that my post made him realize that marriage was a trap… for men.

In fact, I thought about doing a post just about some of these comments, because I was shocked that here in 2024, such misogyny still exists. (This was of course before the election which proved just how alive it really is).

Like a commenter who start his comment with: I don’t know if this comment is helpful… (which is always a sign). He did say I could delete it if it wasn’t! Then he continued:

“The wife wants us to do some work; but we must do it her way; and if we don't, we are judged very harshly. It's very unpleasant!…As a result, I do no housework at all…Housework is bullshit, and I think that like me, many men are not willing to do it if we will only be judged harshly for it.”

Sadly, this comment was liked 73 times!

Also surprising: many people think if a man is the sole financial provider, he shouldn’t have to carry any of the “second shift,” aka the hours from when work ends to when kids go to bed. That working full time is hard, and he is tired at the end of the day.

zachmentalloadcoach

A post shared by @zachmentalloadcoach

The same man who said marriage was a trap for men said: “I mean, I know the value of caregiving, but I also know the value of being provided for.”

Honestly my whole body tenses up when I even read these comments, which I have kept up due to the interesting discourse of other readers trying to put this man in his place (even though honestly, some men are a lost cause.) I said this in response:

I want you to consider the value of being provided for. There is financial provision. And then, there is: a meal on the table when you get home from work. Toilet paper always there to wipe your ass and you didn't have to buy it. Children who get picked up from school every day at 2:30 so that you can continue to keep working.

Who is providing here, really? Both people. Read my post on the value of unpaid labor. Both people are financially providing. One with a paycheck. The other by not having to pay others to do the work she/he is doing for free.

I think there are several issues at the heart of what my post was dissecting. One, when only one parent works outside of the home, does that entitle them to a pass on the second shift? Another is about the economic value of care and whether it is truly a job. A third is whether building a writing career is actually work (and most people seem to think, no). And finally, why do men and women still seemingly have very different standards for the state of their homes?

I’ve touched on these topics throughout this newsletter’s existence, but thought I would investigate this last one given that Anne Helen Petersen recently interrogated this issue in a newsletter, “What Makes Women Clean?”

Petersen’s writes the post upon the release of new data compiled from The Gender Policy Institutes’ new analysis of the Time Use Survey about how Americans allocate their time. You don’t have to read her entire post to pick up on the themes (she has the most pertinent stats in text boxes). Namely how much more time women spend on household tasks than men. Twice as much. And it starts early, by the time girls are 18. Overall women have 13% less free time than men.

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(I unpacked some of this in this post from 2022).

Is Marriage Bad for Mothers?

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She wants to know why this is and her takeaway seemed to be that clean culture is a bit like diet culture, keeping women trapped pursuing a standard that is impossible. But while I agree we can likely forgo our ironing days, and we don’t always need to have a tidy home to have people over, her takeaway seemed to leave the onus of change yet again with women. We need to let go of our high standards. Let things fester. Become more comfortable with filth (okay, I exaggerate a bit).

When I introduced my frustration via Notes, I was fortunate to have Petersen weigh in.

The short answer: men aren’t stepping up, so what are we going to do to save our own sanity?

I know, I know, she is also saying the state of our home should have nothing to do with our value, and I agree! Yet what I disagree with is assuming that we should be fine living with mess. Can’t a household with two adults share the load? I think about a co-living situation like a mommune where there are a number of adults, sadly all raised female, stepping in and seeing and doing what needs to be done, no nagging or asking or reminding required.

Right around this same time,

Claire Zulkey

shared a guest post from

Kathleen Donahoe

called Things you don’t do. It was about how she has learned to lower her own standards for her house post-pandemic and after a diagnosis of MS. For example, she no longer folds laundry. And that works for her. But I know I love the feeling of accomplishment I get when I tidy my daughter’s drawer of t-shirts and can finally see what is in there. I could never not fold my laundry. It would drive me nuts (plus I wouldn’t have room for my clothes in my dresser).

I agree that we do not need picture perfect homes and a little clutter and mess isn’t going to hurt anyone (within limits). Yet I don’t think the only answer is to lower our standards because we don’t think men will ever be up to the task.

I believe this is why women, once divorced or widowed, are electing not to cohabitate with men again. Why more and more women are remaining single. They know the fight that comes and they are unwilling to waste their lives in an uphill battle.

And it is a battle. One I got tired of fighting.

I’ve now identified three pillars of what went wrong in my marriage, three issues that led to the inevitability of our divorce. And yes, one of them was The Fair Play Conundrum. One of them was about… chores.

I stumbled upon a google doc recently called Therapy Thoughts. I had completely forgotten about this document but over the course of a year, I’d written down thoughts about what was going on in my own individual therapy or in our couples therapy. The first time I saw it, I could not read a word. I knew that within these musings were real time accounts of me reckoning with my marriage and trying to find a way to cope that didn’t require burning everything to the ground.

When I finally allowed myself to peruse the 26 page document a few days later, I found an account of a situation that encapsulated so much of the frustration in my marriage:

I’m leaving with the kids and he asks whether there was anything specific around the house I wanted him to do. I said, not that I can think of. Because I was already halfway out the door and to me, I would look around and see what needs to be done. There were piles of laundry on the couch that I had just folded. Both dishwashers were full of clean dishes. There are towels in the wash.

But I get back and none of that is done. It is like, because I didn’t give him a specific assignment, he doesn’t even look for things.

I don’t want to have to tell him. I want him to see it.

Will this fight go on forever?

And the thing is, it would have. I know that all couples have their fights, their own patterns and some are more exhausting than others. But at some point I got tired of banging my head against the wall. My forehead was bruised and battered. I wanted to do something else with my life. I was ready to move on.

Now, that day I did not leave. That was not my moment of clarity. In fact, it would take many more months, and likely countless other fights, and some serious therapy before I could acknowledge the truth. I no longer could stay in this marriage.

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Eve Rodsky, creator of Fair Play, was recently on The Bright Side podcast. Each person on the podcast picked a card and then Rodsky asked them what that particular task/job brought up for them in their childhoods. Did they have any memories related to cleaning, or holidays, or gifts? One person picked the card - Meals - breakfast. And she went into this story of how her dad always made the breakfasts and what those memories meant to her, the smoothies they would make together and the moments they shared because of it.

They didn’t go into - who does it at your house and is that fair. Rodsky was trying to bring light to the different stories we have in our bodies about these elements of running a household. Some of the disconnect between spouses is gender. But some of it is their divergent experiences in their families of origin. Rodsky talks openly about how she did not eat nutritious meals growing up. She often had the same bagel from the bodega every day before school. Now, this experience could shape her expectations in her own family a few different ways. 1) She could choose to prioritize meals and nutrition in her family because that was something she didn’t get. Or 2) she could feel like meals and healthy foods aren’t that important. She never had family meals growing up and subsisted on carbs on carbs. So why get all worked up about vegetables?

Neither reaction to her past is wrong. And yet, these reactions inform her expectations for her family, how she thinks each Fair Play card should be executed. These beliefs impact the “minimum standard of care” Rodsky talks about in the book. I think many couples spend too much time dividing cards and not enough agreeing to the minimum standard of care. Interrogating WHY we feel the way we do about the tasks required to run a household and family is important. And it explains why we sometimes have such different standards.

Therapists are now starting to use the Fair Play deck in this way, not to assign cards and balance the scales but to talk about the underlying trauma or beliefs or memories that inform the way we want our own households to run.

I think back on my own marriage. I was always frustrated that I was in charge of the food. What we would have for each meal, creating the grocery list, and then sending my husband to the store. I wanted that mental load to not always be mine. But since separating and seeing my ex live on his own, I see that he still doesn’t prioritize food. Now I realize that he doesn’t care about food. It’s not a priority. Food is fuel for him, where for me, eating = pleasure. I’m often thinking about what I will eat for my next meal hours ahead of time. My family was big on home cooked meals and homemade desserts while his mom is the same way he is. She doesn’t really cook, but picks up prepared foods at the grocery store. I remember the first time I met his family, it was Thanksgiving and I just about fell out of my chair to hear they were going to a hotel restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner. So here we were, with vastly different values around food and vastly different experiences in our childhoods. It’s no wonder we butted heads around meals.

I’m not sure how things might have shifted if we could have just named our different stories around food in therapy, but it certainly makes more sense to me now why that was such an issue for us. But our marriage therapist didn’t know that it wasn’t just about the chores, it was about the story behind the chores! Instead, it seems like both of my stints in marriage therapy were focused on my unrealistic expectations.

And I don’t think I’m alone. I think sometimes women get shamed for their high expectations instead of being invited to investigate why they feel the way they do.

Which is what Anne Helen was trying to interrogate, and which she does, very well. But there is a difference between having our value tied to the state of our house and enjoying living in a home where you know where everything is, where you aren’t constantly stepping on crumbs. I don’t agree that we lower our standards, thinking men will never meet them. Then they get to be like that commenter and think housework is bullshit, mainly because clearly someone else was doing it for him.

Women are tired and we’re fed up and we’re not willing to just clean up after everyone anymore. We don’t want to give up on men.

But until they get the memo, we may give up on living with them.¹

mindfullyready

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Related posts:

What Makes Women Clean

"He'll never see it"

Actually, good communication is not enough to save your marriage

1. I don’t want to make sweeping generalizations and each household and man is different. I walked into one friend’s house and noted how neat it was and she was like: Yeah, that’s my husband. He needs it tidy. Another friend invited me over for election night and her husband got excited thinking about what he could serve for dinner. I was thrilled, saying: “I think being cooked for is my love language.” He said: “cooking for people is mine!” I then joked: “Well, gosh, maybe we should have married each other!”