Are chores really such a huge fucking deal to couples?

sadomasochrist · 2019-08-09T18:48:53+00:00

No. It's not the chores themselves. It's the conflict between value systems, neuroticism and usually the relationship itself. The primary issue that I see when it comes to chores is that one person has higher standards they expect to enforce on the other or one of them wants to be chore boss.

e.g. 1 : He's fine with throwing clothes in the laundry room to get them done later, she demands they be in a basket. Usually some degree of compromise here balances things out if the person with higher standards isn't OCD\neurotic.

e.g. 2 : He's fine with the duties of XYZ, but she expects it done this way. Well okay, then do it yourself. And it has to be done on wednesday. Okay... well Wednesday we had plumbing work to get done so.... you never... okay, now it's your job.

My general observation of this is that women have much higher standards of cleanliness and they expect those standards to be met and often in their way. Which is not realistic, and fosters the sort of view of marriage that is frequently portrayed in media.

We have an almost 3Ksqft house and keeping it perfect is almost a part time job. It is absolutely not worth that. But she thinks she wants that. And it would be nice but then, what are you going to do with that 20 hours a week gone?

My personal belief on this matter is that sitcoms have done their part in giving people an expectation that their house looks like a real estate listing while they live in it. It's just not realistic. Make bacon, your stovetop is wrecked and needs a half an hour to get perfect again.

It's just more sane to give it a reasonable wipe and do a full clean in the next month. But now you're a "slob."

Here's the thing though, the severity of these issues was at its peak in blue pill land. Once you make that transition, none of that stuff becomes important anymore. So in a way, chores like many people point out here are just a dog whistle that something else is wrong.

But regardless, I don't see this issue as solvable without the guy being a clean freak or willing to covertly subjugate himself if she has high cleaning standards.

Definitely something I would consider in any new relationship. The busy body, shoulder pad, everything has got to be clean, type-a woman is a pain in the ass to manage. It ain't worth her paycheck.

jax006 · 2019-08-09T17:32:16+00:00

I was visiting a cousin & his wife....it was decided that we were going to have chicken salad for dinner. One was thinking mayo and celery style, the other Caesar salad style. This developed into one of the most hideous proxy wars I've ever seen. I don't know what they were fighting about, but damned sure wasn't over chicken salad!

ArborioRice · 2019-08-09T18:28:50+00:00

I have a hypothesis, 2 actually, beyond the very true attraction theory:

Some women select for manchildren for some inexplicable reason, and then get angry the manchildren act like children. These women probably want to baby something prior to having an actual baby so they pick a man they need to treat like a baby, the novelty of which wears off quickly for obvious reasons. These same women are the ones screeching the loudest about housework and the husband not doing "enough".
In our modern era of the strong mommy, independent woman echo chamber hive mind of female supremacy, these same women come up with each next self-reinforcing yardstick by which to measure their men. Chores, "emotional labor", not enough romance & attention, not doing enough in any sense, etc all become the convenient bludgeons for women to complain about their men on social media and mommy blogs while completely abandoning any objective measure of his contributions to the household. tl;dr: it's never enough.

I posit SAHMs and career women alike share the exact. same. complaints. about how the husbands don't do enough by any arbitrary measure.

DemonConsulting · 2019-08-09T20:06:40+00:00

In my experience the issues start once kids are in the mix. Two adults who work outside the house don't make much mess to begin with. If they have a 9-5 job they both have a reasonable amount of free time each day + the entire weekend to do what little chores there are. They are more likely to have disposable income to hire a cleaner or a maid, and even if things don't get done, no one really gets hurt by a bit of dirt and clutter.

The thing with kids is, they start in hard mode as far as care is concerned and only gradually get more independent (= less work) over the next 18 years. So from one day to another, you suddenly have to care for a screaming potato all day and night that seems to be creating an unimaginable amount of mess. Said mess needs to be taken care of in a state of sleep deprivation because failure to do so suddenly has seriously consequences. Can't leave the bottles unwashed or you can't make food for your screaming potato, can't leave clothes scattered on the floor or you might fall and drop the potato while going for the 3rd feed or diaper change at night, can't leave clutter around or potato will try to eat it and choke to death. Potato keeps pooping, peeing, and vomiting on all available clothes and bedsheets leading to way more laundry that can't be left sitting around or it will start smelling and you run out of clothes. Potato produces large amounts of soiled diapers that can't be left in the trash for too long or else they start smelling but really the trashcan is probably full way before that so taking out the trahs and remembering to put them out pickup day is suddenly a vital task. Now you might think that a parent staying home would have more time to do chores to compensate for that but the problem is that the more time the kid is home, the more mess it makes that needs to be continuously taken care of and while child is awake, it tends to require attention which drastically reduces the time for chores (first mostly screaming and wanting to be held all day, then supervision so it doesn't kill itself). In my experience houses with kids aged 0-5 are always messy in some way and chores are never truly done before the new ones start piling up.

This sudden increase of work in both childcare and chores, coupled with sleep deprivation, quickly leads to frustration and disagreements over who is doing (or not doing) what. It also highlights issues within the marriage that could previously be overlooked but suddenly matter more, became worse, or simply become harder to tollerate when you have exhausted all of your patience dealing with the responsibilities of life. At the same time their free time as a couple is often reduced to 0 in the beginning which adds stress to the relationship. People feel unappreciated for all the extra work they're suddenly doing, for the lack of attention they're getting, for having to stay home or having to work or everything in between.

Some couples work this out with chore charts or whatever, some have money to outsource work to maids, nannies, daycare. Some just suck it up or have these arguments during the hard parts but move on when the kids are older. The traditional solution is having relatives or neighbors/friends around to help watch the kids or do the chores (mostly mothers, grandmas, aunts, sisters, teenage cousins and nieces/nephews, etc.) but with today's very individualist society and families living far apart that's not really an option for many. Unfortunately a lot of people are unable or unwilling to resolve their issues or so averse to direct confrontation that they just let their frustration build up and end up carrying it throughout their whole marriage, even long after the children have grown out of their most needy phase.

lefactorybebe · 2019-08-09T17:49:47+00:00

I do most of the chores cause I work less. When my bf and I were working near equally I still did most of the chores and yeah I got annoyed. I don't think he has cleaned the bathroom once since we've moved in together. Idk what's going to happen when I graduate and get a job, but he's going to have to start doing more. I do refuse to do his laundry cause that's shit your mother does, I'm not doing that.

WestsideMoonWalker · 2019-08-09T18:23:56+00:00

The crackpot theories about women and chores kill me. In my LTR, I am by far the cleaner one, while my SO tends to be rather messy. To answer your questions.

Very few. Usually it takes me 10 minutes. If I'm doing a deep clean it takes me two hours total and those are every few months.
Pretty much this
Money
I'm bothered when stuff is lying around all over the place, so I just proactively put stuff away if it's bothering me. She is learning to be less messy.

Our system is basically to take care of stuff as it is needed. I'm doing the majority of chores now since I'm between jobs, but we split evenly when both are working. I took a smaller chore load then she did during my last job which worked me to death.

decoy88 · 2019-08-09T17:52:28+00:00

I think it’s different when kids are involved. Do you have kids?

I imagine that after running around tending to the child all that time, then there’s all the extra mess they made to deal with.

EDIT: many black/african households have a culture of making the kids clean stuff up from a young age

Notanalt4859384 · 2019-08-09T17:30:53+00:00

In my experience no, but man everyone here gets so up in arms about it.

Orange_Paisley · 2019-08-09T17:33:04+00:00

The only chore we ever fight about is whose turn it is to do the dishes. I hate doing them so much.

[deleted] · 2019-08-09T18:12:24+00:00

Yes, it's an issue. I have cohabited with a man and it was a huge issue. If you had to clean after a man for months, you would understand.

SunflowerBurst · 2019-08-09T17:33:37+00:00

Am a woman, it’s never been something that came up. But I care a lot less and what I do care about a lot, I’m willing to do myself.

But I’ve also never dated a man who was lazy and filthy. I did have friends that lived in a layer of dirt, literally, the owner of the house they rented from was also a hoarder, and there were lots of roaches. I cleaned the entire kitchen myself even with no plumbing on my visit. I couldn’t live with that.

blackedoutfast · 2019-08-09T18:35:37+00:00

no, but it's an easy way to do passive aggressive bullshit and start fights

philomexa · 2019-08-09T18:45:20+00:00

No. I can't remember the last time my husband and I fought over chores. In fact, I don't think we ever have.

We take care of the things that we're good at, are important to us, and we like doing; he does big deep cleans every 3 weeks or so, I prefer daily clutter management. He cooks, I grocery shop, we split dish washing. He takes care of the fish, I do laundry. I take care of life admin (bills, insurance, appointments, etc.) he handles our social calendar. Trash is taken out by whomever is heading out. He mops, I vacuum. We both take care of our son (feeding, bathing, potty training, school stuff, dr. appointments, etc). I'm mindful of daily car maintenance, he takes it to the mechanic for big ticket items.

It's not hard, I'm bewildered by all this grief and moaning about simple adult tasks.

buartha · 2019-08-09T21:00:56+00:00

To couples without kids it's usually not a big deal. I do all the housework and cooking and it takes me at max about 20 hours a week including errands, usually a bit less.

To couples with kids, particularly young kids, it can become a much bigger deal because usually both of them are working, trying to keep track of the kids and keep house at the same time, and for the person who has to do more work on the housework side of things it becomes tempting to think about how much less stressful everything would be if there were one less person to pick up after and that feeling of resentment is where the arguments come from.

we-are-men-with-ven · 2019-08-09T21:17:21+00:00

It really depends whether or not kids are in the mix, it also depends on the size of your house and HOW you choose to raise your kids.

I've studied children, and what I have learned is that children learn through playing with physical objects and freely exploring. This means that they will make a big fucking mess. For example, she will put a load of spices and herbs in a bowl and mix it with washing up liquid. Next she will move on to lego, and an hour later she is making barbie outfits out of balloons. On top of this, she's covered the floor with crumbs, and covered the floor with shit that she pulled out of the drawers whilst selecting things to play with..

Now I COULD just plonk her in front of th TV and save all this stress, but I think doing that is not good for her development, and would also mean that she's not fully immersed in th best years of her life.

On top of that, there's obviously all th day to.day stuff like laudry, dishes ect ect.

Running a house is a job in itself, and it's a very tedious and thankless job at that.

Nodoxxintoxin · 2019-08-10T01:51:03+00:00

Are chores a big fucking deal? It’s like sex, it only a big fucking deal if it’s not getting done. When it’s not getting done it can tear two people apart.

Btw, everyone should get a maid.

findingfemininity · 2019-08-09T17:37:32+00:00

I'm starting to wonder if this is a generational difference? I've never had an issue with how my fiance does chores and none of my female friends complain about their live-in SOs ability to do domestic tasks. This seems to be more of a thing with Gen X'ers and above.

Ofourkind · 2019-08-09T18:13:58+00:00

It's only a big deal if one person isn't pulling their weight. I've been in relationships where chores were almost never spoken about, and one in which my partners messiness and laziness directly lead to our breakup.

I cant respect a man who needs a mommy or a maid to clean up after him, and I can't fuck a man I don't respect.

My husband and I have a good routine. Both of us wash our dishes as we soil them. Whoever notices the trash is getting smelly or full first takes it out. We both cook. I do the laundry during the week and he washes all the bedding and towels on the weekends. We each do a deep clean about once a week (at least. we have pets). He's not a manchild so I've never had to pester him to keep things tidy. I don't believe we've ever argued about it.

CainPrice · 2019-08-09T17:33:08+00:00

Chores are never the issue. The issue is always attraction.

If a woman thinks you're the sexiest man alive, in looks, body, and personality, she'll smile while she picks up your dirty underwear from the floor and fantasize about what she wants to do with you when you get home from work. She'll appreciate everything that you do help with around the house and shrug off what you don't do. 6-12 months down the line when she's gotten comfortable and her attraction has faded, everything you do will annoy her and she won't understand what changed, look for something to blame, and decide it's the division of chores.

Likewise, if a man is living with a girl who's a total slob, but she's hot and sucks his dick every night and is exceptionally pleasant to be around, he'll be just fine cooking dinner and folding the laundry. But once she stops fucking him and turns bitchy, or once he gets bored with her, he'll get sick of doing all the chores.

Nobody seriously gives a shit about folding laundry. It's always about attraction. And nobody understands what attraction is based on. They think, "I feel disrespected when you don't fold the laundry, therefore I'm not attracted to you and don't want to have sex" sounds logical. But that hot guy from the bar never folded laundry or cooked dinner and he got laid. And the hot boyfriend never folded laundry or cooked dinner for the first six months of the relationship, and he got laid. The laundry and cooking, or lack thereof, was never the source of attraction.

BPremium · 2019-08-09T17:40:30+00:00

Yes. Yes they are

[deleted] · 2019-08-09T17:52:08+00:00

As long as no one is a hoarder, I can overlook many sins.

Pagemaster1998 · 2019-08-09T19:12:36+00:00

My rule is always if you’re the only one who uses the area, then you’re the only one who needs to be concerned and anyone else can fuck off. If other people use the area, then clean up after yourself, or, at least, tell the others to remind you later if you didn’t have time. Lastly, when we decide to do a deep cleaning of the house/apartment, everyone pulls their own weight.

SparrowInAHurricane · 2019-08-09T20:09:58+00:00

I agree there should never be drama over chores. I also think setting expectations so resentment doesn't build is important. For example, I know my SO will cut the grass. It is helpful to know whether his plan is to to do it it before or after we get the letter from the HOA telling us to do it. I don't need to know it is every Saturday at 11 am. We've had several maid services and it is always a nightmare. Everything from theft, not showing up, one lady decided she couldn't use any cleaning products because she was pregnant but no matter what if you are nice they slowly start doing less work. If everyone takes care of their own stuff, it usually isn't a big deal.

PMmeYourHopes-Dreams · 2019-08-09T20:54:19+00:00

I have been a single guy for over a decade now and I have been taking care of my own shit because I have to. If I ever get in another relationship and she tries to give me grief about such and such not getting done around the house....I'm just going to explain that to her.

SUCKITGRANDPA · 2019-08-10T01:31:41+00:00

I think a lot of it is resentment building over time from badly assessed information at the start/middle stages of a relationship, and on both sides the resentment becomes seen as a general lack of respect. The clean party thinks that the messy person doesn't respect them because they leave them to do all the work (which is as likely to be true as not true, in my experience), and the dirty party thinks that the clean person isn't respecting them by effectively treating them like they're a childish slob (also quite possibly true in any given situation).

I like to live in a reasonably clean house. I'm not a neat freak by any means, I've been the dirty one in both a relationship and a roommate situation, but I've also been the clean person and I've realized that I have a minimum standard that I'm simply not willing to live beneath. I also feel that in an equal partnership, there is an equal division of labor, and I'm not really interested in being in a relationship where I'm handed full responsibility of what I consider necessary housework, because the other party simply doesn't feel like doing it. There's lots of compromises to be made, but "you clean the house while I fuck off and do whatever I feel like" isn't a compromise to me. That is why, when I was single, it was one of the big things on my list of dealbreakers. If a dude's apartment is covered in crumbs, you got out of the shower with feet dirtier than you went in with, and there was a clear lack of concern on his part about leaving messes around, the relationship doesn't have legs for me. That's just it. If he's a bit messier than me, maybe that's okay, but at that point the question is: if I say, hey I'm doing [X house chore], could you do [Y house chore], and the answer was "maybe later" and then never actually doing it, then we aren't compatible, and that's fine. If we move in together, and I realize they were only able to keep an apartment clean to impress me and that expired the moment the lease was signed, then the lease was never going to get re-signed.

When I was younger, I also got pretty far into a relationship with someone who I thought was The One at the time, who was The Clean One (and also very hot, so I kinda get what people in this thread are saying). I don't doubt he was pretty frustrated about the situation, but the way he handled it was incredibly condescending and disrespectful, and was a HUGE learning experience as far as what respect looks like and what incompatibilities do to a relationship in the absence of respectful communication. I have no desire to be in a relationship where I'm frustrated that our burden isn't being shared, and no desire to treat my partner the way I was treated (or be treated that way *ever* again), because it's fucked.

Basically, for me, the secret to this not being a problem in my relationship was pretty much purely that I wasn't in a huge rush to settle down, so I nope'd out of A LOT of potential relationships when I realized that my brain was saying "this was a bad idea," even if my heart/genitals were super on board. The answer was finding someone who had been raised in a way where, when he sees others doing work that benefits him, he feels morally compelled to help them. He doesn't like to clean, he just likes to help me because he knows that when the situation is reversed, I help him.

I like to imagine all those dudes who I felt were a big NOPE found the slovenly gamer chick they seemingly must have wanted based on their lifestyle, and they lived happily ever after, coated in a thick layer of Doritos crumbs.

Tomatoccino · 2019-08-10T02:13:20+00:00

Absolutely they are. Two tired people come home from work, and if only one is cooking dinner, washing up, getting kids ready for bed and getting everything ready for tomorrow while the other ones sits on the couch in front of the tv; who’s going to feel more like sex?

FlavFal · 2019-08-09T17:31:13+00:00

The people complaining about chores must live with someone who has OCD. I don't care about socks on the floor, I don't need the trash to be taken out at a specific time, I don't think you need to make your bed.

But hey, I'll cook and you'll do the dishes, pretty fair right?

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AngelFire_3_14156 · 2019-08-09T17:43:12+00:00

Married woman here.

We both have our preferences as to what chores we're willing to do. I do most of the cooking during the week, we both help with the dishes and in taking care of the kids. My husband pays the bills, then shares with me what he did. He takes care of most of the yard work with my help and maintains any machinery. I do most of the grocery shopping. In other words, we play to our strengths and try to work together to get done faster.

We both try to keep the house picked up and have a maid service that cleans for us. Neither of us are neat freaks, but we're not messy and sloppy either.

So we try really hard to split all the chores 50/50.

darudeboysandstorm · 2019-08-09T19:31:52+00:00

IDK how they could be, but it seems so.

rubyviz · 2019-08-09T20:31:29+00:00

It's never really about the chores themselves. It's about reconciling expectations with reality. Where there is a gap, there will be unhappiness. When expectations and reality align, it's all good.

Whiteliesmatter1 · 2019-08-09T21:31:21+00:00

Chores are not a big deal. If you hate them more than you hate what happens if you don’t do them, don’t do them. If you prefer what happens when you do the chores, do that!

When I live alone, I leave a very clean tidy slick, yet very chore-life lifestyle. My SO prefers a more complicated and more materialistic lifestyle, which comes with more chores. She complains about the chores, but also asks for more chore-creating things, like pets, vehicles, gardens, etc. If you want those things, then don’t expect me to do half the work. I don’t want them. But for me I end up doing them so I don’t have to listen to her complain about doing them. I don’t like doing either, but doing them is certainly more pleasant than listening to someone complain.

boomcheese44 · 2019-08-10T01:27:25+00:00

You guys need more money to hire help to do your chores. It's affordable nowadays.

jackandjill22 · 2019-08-10T19:34:49+00:00

Good point.

ontherailstoday · 2019-08-11T16:13:00+00:00

If I want the household not to deteriorate and I am the only one living in it? Including cooking, shopping, running errands, fixing things, cleaning, tidying, laundry, pet care etc? Maybe an hour and a half a day. But more time needs to be added if the chores must cover the needs of small children, rebellious teenagers and manchildren who do not do not contribute equally on this front.
Life's easier if everyone cleans as they go as much as possible, whether they "feel" bothered or not by the mess they made. Strategic cleaning and organising is still of course necessary, good thing the time for it isn't being stolen by so much regular cleaning.
I like my home to be private space... family and guests only.
Um yeah sure. That's one way yo make sure the house is a dump when I eventually walk out, I guess.
And of course the first question you asked... why is it such a big deal? Because usually a person's attitude to their living space is a microcosm of their general failings as a human being. That's why the first thing the army does to you after giving you a bed is make you responsible for having the bed made up perfectly every day.. they are forcing you to deal with your own bullshit immediately and be stronger than your bullshit. There's no reason not to make that bed if you're not under artillery bombardment right now, and every reason to do it. If I'm continually picking someone's socks up off the floor when they could have shoved them in the hamper a mere two feet away from where they dropped them, I'm not just thinking of the socks, I am thinking about all the things they do that are like that... and all the ways that because they are like that they are not taking care of me as well as I am taking care of them. And the fact they are probably sitting on their fat arse playing computer games while I do this. Later rinse and repeat for 365 pairs of socks a year.

Purecope2019 · 2019-08-09T17:22:09+00:00

Women want things spotless at all times. Its a fact of life men care less

Title	Are chores really such a huge fucking deal to couples?
Author	87AudreyHorne
Upvotes	29
Comments	198
Date	August 9, 2019 5:20 PM UTC (6 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/co5h4v/are_chores_really_such_a_huge_fucking_deal_to/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/are-chores-really-such-a-huge-fucking-deal-to.254517 https://theredarchive.com/post/254517

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