Are You Fighting About Housework?

“I didn’t expect marriage to be a bed of roses,” says Aimee, 34, a former travel agent and the mother of 4-year-old twin daughters. “But neither did I expect to marry a man who’s such a throwback to another generation.”

Bob, a technical writer who works in the computer industry, simply refuses to do housework, Aimee reports. “Bob usually pleads incompetence. He’ll say things like, ‘I wish I knew how to cook, but I just don’t.’ Particularly galling is the way he seems to think that when he does something - only after several requests - he’s doing her a huge favor and deserves a gold star.

“I don’t appreciate having him announce proudly, ‘Well, I did your banking for you today,’ if I asked him to drop off a deposit, or, ‘I cleaned up your kitchen.’ We have a family and a home to take care of together, I assumed.”

Nonetheless, Bob is in full command of all the other important family responsibilities.

“Ever since I stopped working, he doles out money to me by the month and warns me about spending too much.

“Bob decided what area we should live in, which house to buy, how much to spend on renovating and decorating it,” she says.

Aimee can’t believe fighting over housework could destroy a marriage, but the resentment she feels and the bitterness of their arguments cast a pall on their happiness. “I’m fed up,” she says, “and that’s why I dragged my husband here.”

Thirty-five-year-old Bob looks like he doesn’t know what hit him. “I feel as if the wrath of God descended on me because I forgot to put my gym socks in the hamper,” he says.

“We agreed Aimee would stay home and take care of the kids and the house. I work 16-hour days and, when I come home, my head is spinning. I feel I’m holding up my share of the bargain and she isn’t.”

Aimee, he says, makes it seem like he’s hatching some sinister plot to cause her stress and anxiety. “The truth is, unless I’m out of underwear, it doesn’t cross my mind that the laundry is piled up. But Aimee takes my failure to notice personally as a sign I don’t love her.”

And whenever Bob does make an attempt to straighten up the kitchen or the bedroom, Aimee marches in after him and changes it. “How can something so stupid matter to her so much?” he asks.

Real men do housework

“Couples are always shocked to find themselves warring over housework,” says Evelyn Moschetta, a marriage therapist in New York City and Long Island. “Yet it is precisely these seemingly unimportant issues that resonate throughout a relationship, triggering no end of problems unless partners learn to talk about them and negotiate compromises.”

These days couples are supposed to be equal partners, yet women still carry the lion’s share of responsibility at home even if they work full time. Adding to the problem was the fact that Aimee was raised to squash her feelings. However, once she had children, she began to feel the relationship was unbalanced, and her husband’s refusal to see this, plus his belittling remarks about things that were important to her, took on great importance in her mind. Despite Bob’s attempts to be a ‘90s guy, he is in many ways a throwback to a previous generation. And many of his complaints are echoed by husbands who say they’re trying but that their efforts go unrecognized.

What can a wife do to motivate her husband to help out more? Consider the following suggestions:

Let go a little. Like Aimee, the challenge for many women is to relinquish control. So let your partner fold the laundry his way and don’t make more work for yourself by redoing what’s already done.

Don’t criticize. If Aimee discovered that the sink wasn’t as clean as she would have liked it to be, she lit into Bob. Discuss standards when you’re calm. Likewise, Bob must stop putting Aimee down because he doesn’t agree with her priorities. Making demeaning comments only puts your partner on the defensive and sabotages rational discussion.

Share your views on housework. If you really hate doing one particular chore and your husband doesn’t mind doing it, swap it for one of his.

Consider the big picture. If necessary, make a list of each person’s responsibilities. If your husband fixes the plumbing, does the gardening and takes the car into the shop for repairs, the work load may be more balanced than it seems.