The Modern American Home is Overly Feminized and Dysfunctional

TLDR: 

The contemporary home is overly feminized in its structure, aesthetic identity, and management. This results in an imbalance of yin. Male attempts to "be more involved" or "do their share" in this framework almost ineluctably play into a concessionary / servant role that is low key repulsive to everyone involved. This is solved not ONLY by men "doing their share" but by a fundamental change in domestic identity. Case study from a degenerate unmarried but never-single male, applicability to your life not my problem. But basically, YOUR HOUSE IS YOUR HOUSE. It is not the woman space you come back to after work. Domestic harmony will come not ONLY from clocking in equal hours on a feminized (and thus often overly fussy) domestic regime, but reframing the scope of labor and domestic patterns to one that serves YOU. Most American men do not do this, and it encodes a subliminal subservience to everyday interactions that poisons passion and balance.

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The ancient Roman domus was literally structured around the functions of the house patriarch. A visitor entered the vestibulum, which generally lead straight through the atrium that framed the house center: the tablinum, a throne-like panopticon of an office room where the father of the house sat and oversaw domestic affairs. The kitchen was often a small open air patio at the rear. Not a home center, it was what Louis Kahn called "servant space" (versus served space) and often indeed, literally space for servants. Essentially, the ancient Roman house was a stridently masculine space: the most notable and heavily invested-in portions of the home revolved around the primacy of the father role. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domus#/media/File:Domus_romana_Vector002.svg

I mention this because it stands in such stark contrast to the equally feminized space that is the typical American home. Before I rented out my soul to our green veined plutocrats I was an architect who paid the bills doing Tribeca, UES/UWS, and Hamptons custom residences. It always struck me how these highly accomplished, putatively alpha males were so ready to cede the details, flow, and basically IDENTITY of their homes to their wives. With some notable exceptions (often compulsive micromanagers) such things were "woman stuff," and the male contribution to the home was frequently related solely to budget and perhaps one or two little "man cave" moments which acknowledged the majority of the home would be governed by their wives.

This made a great deal of sense during the Beaver Cleaver tradcon Golden Age, that very brief moment where women weren't also engaged in the drudgery of outside labor and made the home their domain. But female workplace participation and the relentless hunger of the consumerist hydra that is the American dream have ended all this. Double income households are the norm, whether out of economic necessity or perceived necessity. And yet the feminine primacy of the home remains relentlessly ensconced in our ideas of domestic space. 

I personally find it revolting. Not because of gender roles, mind you. But as an aesthetically minded male, you notice the effects of a hyper feminized domestic realm. The contemporary American home is a cloying and oppressive orgy of extraneous throw pillows, horrid matronly patterns, and the suffocating stench of vanilla-heavy food smelling candles (Age 35+ with kids). Or else it's a brittle pseudo minimalist staging ground for social media in which there is no breathing room for the vagaries of life (Under Age 35, or no kids). Basically, it's a syrupy overgrowth of yin in which the masculine presence has often receded to a pathetic office, game room, or rank masturbatorium. 

I used to live a more stylish version of this sorry existence myself, during a relationship with a beautiful and obsessive-compulsive (srsly, clinically OCD) girl who ran things with the iron grip and precision of the modern Chinese Communist party. It was GREAT in certain ways (girl literally kept a spreadsheet of everything we needed), and it was a natural reaction to her caring VERY MUCH about every domestic detail (I liked her taste; it included almost none of the exurban rot above) whereas I was pretty chill and happy to let her have her way. But this gradually resulted in a situation where she became the Terrible Master of the house, endlessly flummoxed when the towels were not folded in the correct pattern (and thus arrayed identically together) or the salt wasn't in the right place, etc.

Then we had an amicable breakup (I still stay in her infectious disease lab/cleanroom-like space in LA when I'm there), and i discovered something notable. Running a house is so much easier and more pleasant when it is YOUR FUCKING HOUSE. Like the towels get folded, and sometimes I'm in the mood to do it "right" and sometimes I truly don't give a fuck. Okay. Sometimes, when things are busy, I just put a few towels hanging on the rack and... I leave the unfolded towels in the laundry room until they are needed. The sun still rises.

My most recent innovation has been a delicious inverse of the man cave. I have a beautiful lilac colored corner room with four windows that is basically the open Girl Room for whoever is in my life at the moment. It has been used as a craft room, a camgirl studio, an exercise room, or just a place to put all her fucking clothes. Everything else is my house, freely offered and provided in masculine magnanimity. Now crucially this means I have had to define the identity of the place. If your default living state is a glorified dorm, you are not being a typical man. You are being an underformed man, a man without a domus. It also means I need to proactively run things. When there was a feral vegan rave thot in the Girl Room, the kitchen was stocked with vegan things. My current girlfriend is one step above a terminal weeb, and so I have organized things around the fact that she is sometimes blasting loud anime shows with sugary intro songs that seem to play every fifteen minutes. But if they leave, it will still be MY house. 

What does this mean for a family man? Candidly ... not my problem lol! But perhaps the question could be answered by any individual man looking around the house and asking, what is MINE. Where are the effects of my identity? What have I created here? What is an expression of my will? If the answers are fragmentary or balkanized into some tiny space that isn't central to the house, no amount of choreplay or butlering will help dig you out of your partner's "Frame," because the house is HERS.

Coda TLDR:

If you want a gender egalitarian house, run it like two MUTUAL members, not as your partner's butler. Concentrate on fundamental input, and let the house serve YOUR dreams. This is fun, ideal for many contemporary folks, and the "Ikea Effect" of masculine contribution will result in greater feeling of ownership. If you want to be chained like Prometheus to the rock of domestic drudgery in which your dignity is continually clawed out by the manicured talons of your wife, by all means let her "run the house." If you want to be a masculine "leader" of some type, let it be known in your house. Do not cede its identity or management to your partner. CREATE and CONTROL it. 

The result is beautiful, and generally full of clean towels.